Honor and Virtue

[Utgardloki]

Maybe I'm living dangerously, but I consider it a testament to the richness of the Gloranthan setting that I feel like I have a good understanding of it, even though I have precious little Gloranthan material to read.

Even before the MRQ rules came out, I was thinking of a way to add concepts of Honor and Virtue to the region around Sartar. Now that the rules have come out, my idea is to treat these as pseudo-skills that may be important in certain settings.

New PCs start out with Honor equal to Intelligence + Charisma, and Virtue equal to Intelligence + Power. These are scaled as the other skills, but they are really pseudo-skills, to which the following rules apply:

* Characters may not spend Improvement rolls to improve Honor or Virtue. These go up if the character performs Honorable or Virtuous deeds, and it is up to the GM (me) whether and how much to adjust these. In general, they can be raised about as fast as other skills, but only by actually exercising these traits.

* Honor and Virtue can also go down. (Just ask Mark Foley. You can Google his name if you don't recognize it.)

* It is also possible to have negative Honor and Virtue. (I'd guess that Mr. Foley is somewhere around minus 70% Honor as of this writing -- but I don't intend to debate an exact figure.) While building these traits up takes time and effort, dropping these traits into the negatives can be very rapid, indeed.

These ideas arose out of my considerations for how the Gloranthans would regard sexual relations. The early Glorantha materials suggested that strictures against premarital sex were a lot looser than in the modern Earth, but I didn't think it appropriate that anything would be accepted. Perhaps the sexual rules are a little less strict around Sartar and Tarsh, but prudent PCs should still take care for their reputations.

These rules are also useful as an alternative to D&D-style alignment. Glorantha still has the "allegiance is not based on abstract alignments" that was expressed in the early days, but there are still penalties for the dishonorable.

 

[Rurik]

It is a very good idea. Are you familiar with Pendragon? Particularly Personality Traits and Passions?

Pendragon Pass (google it) is a conversion to run a Gloranthan Campaign (particularly Orlanthi around Sartar) using the Pendragon Rules with RQ Magic.

It is a D20 system, and Personality Traits come in pairs, such as Valorous/Cowardly or Chaste/Lustful. Each Pair adds up to 20, so if your Merciful is 12 uour Cruel is 8. You may have to roll against your Merciful, and if you do it gets an experience check just like a skill. If it goes up to 13, your Cruel goes down to 7. Later if you want to torture a captive, the GM may require a cruel roll. If it goes up as a result, Merciful goes down.

Passions are similar, but not in opposed pairs. Hate(Trolls) 17 and Loyalty (Family) 14 would be examples. Make a roll it may go up through experience. Fail a roll it may go down.

The system could easily be adapted to a percentile system and used in MRQ if desired. It is a very good fit if you ask me. I think Pendragon is pretty much the perfect sweet spot between a 'crunchy' system like RQ and a Narrative system like HeroQuest.

 

[Utgardloki]

I was thinking more in terms of the effects this would have on NPCs: a character with a high Honor would be likely to have favorable reaction rolls, while a character with a low Honor would have unfavorable reaction rolls.

It's also easy enough to throw in modifiers for situation, so an effective Lunar military officer would not get as much of a benefit from a high Honor when among the Sartarites as he would in the Lunar Empire.

This is also designed to be customizable for the setting. If a character has a reputation for mercilessness, that could be noted in a culture that celebrates violence (such as Assyria).

A culture with competing honor systems might have two separate Honor scores, such as Piety and Secularism. I'd be careful about taking this system too far, however.

 

[simonh]

Traits like this will be very culture specific. Satratites are very relaxed about their sexual relationships compared to many cultures. There are many different forms of mariage, including mariages limited to a one-year term for example, and women can have a lot of freedom (not always). Their attitudes seem to be modeled on some Celtic and Scandanavian practices. In contrast many Malkioni are very restrictive and streight laced, as are the Dara Happans.

What a Dragon Pass Olranthi considers to be moral and honourable behaviour might appear to be base and craven to a Dara Happan and Praxians are a world unto themselves in this regard. I don't think we can realy make broad-reaching generalisations about Gloranthan in general any more than we can about Babylonians, Gauls and Sioux.

 

[soltakss]

You could use something similar to the Fame/Reputation rules in RQ Companion. There, PCs can build their Fame/Reputation depending on their deeds.

I would assume that Honour would be something similar. After all, Honour is measured by your deeds more than anything else. It can go up or down and is a perceived trait as well as an actual one.

 

[Trifletraxor]

Let's add allignement too! Chaotic, neutral, lawfull and evil, neutral, good!

SGL.

 

[Utgardloki]

My take on D&D alignment was that it was similar to The Force in Star Wars. This kind of thing could be added to the Runequest game as another form of magic.

Perhaps a person would have a "Lawcasting" skill which would require a code of honor like in D&D, and would be used to cast spells such as "Dispel Chaos". Other such skills would be possible, except that it would be impossible to have two skills that oppose each other (such as "Lawcasting" and "Chaoscasting".

As for the sexual morality of the Sartarites, I was thinking that a society like that would be more likely to be concerned about a variable "Honor %" (can he be trusted?) than a more straight-laced society, which would just use a binary classification (sex == bad).

So a Sartarite could get away with things that a Malkioni could not, but a bad reputation can still burn him (or her).

I also intend to work social class into this scheme, since my plans are to have the PCs come from that general area of the world. I'll probably start a thread about social class, since I intend to use that for PC generation instead of the concept of Professions described in the MRQ rulebook.

 

[Utgardloki]

On my drive home from work, I was thinking about how Honor could be used in a campaign focused on court intrigue. Events could happen that could force a PC to react in order to save his honor. It would even be possible to attack another character's Honor using an opposed roll, although it would be risky because it could backfire and cost you Honor instead.

(Of course, you can't just say "I attack his Honor!" You have to come up with something to do, such as spread rumors, or spy on your enemy to come up with something, or challenge your enemy to a ritual combat, etc.)

I was going to post an example of how this could work, but I don't think I'll get a chance to do that until this weekend.

Use of Honor could be a potent tool in a bard-like character's arsenal, or a courtier who can make or break reputations.

 

[Trifletraxor]

My take on D&D alignment was that it was similar to The Force in Star Wars. This kind of thing could be added to the Runequest game as another form of magic.

Perhaps a person would have a "Lawcasting" skill which would require a code of honor like in D&D, and would be used to cast spells such as "Dispel Chaos". Other such skills would be possible, except that it would be impossible to have two skills that oppose each other (such as "Lawcasting" and "Chaoscasting".

:shock: Oh my God!!!

SGL.