[Rq-rules] Farewell to CON

[Gary Sturgess]

On 1/12/07, Lev Lafayette <lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> --- Gary Sturgess <gazza666 at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you can, by force of will, type on a keyboard, then
> that's evidence that you can direct your fingers to do
> things will mental expression.

Agreed. And I don't agree that I can. It SEEMS that I can, and because
I don't know the ultimate causes of the particular physical states
that cause me to type this, "force of will" is as good a term as any,
but there's nothing metaphysical about it. Were you to manually
stimulate the parts of my brain that are currently being stimulated, I
couldn't NOT type through a force of will.

> As for spirit, it seems you have a particular
> interpretation of the word which is regrettably
> typical to monolingual anglophones.

No, not really. Dictionary.com has 31 different meanings. Most of them
have to do with "the vital principle in humans" or an otherwise
incorporeal aspect, and I dispute the existence of said incorporeal
aspect.

I enjoy the implied insult (how dare I speak only one language?!!),
but frankly if you're going to use a word to mean something different
than common usage, then any misunderstandings are hardly the fault of
your audience ("monolingual anglophones" or otherwise).

> 'Spirit' in both the Germanic and Romance languages (not sure of the Slavic etc) refers to being connected with shared symbolic values generated through mutual understanding. English, perhaps clumsily, would translate this as somewhere between 'language' and 'ideology' (which is why I referred previously to l'esprit - the German geist would also have worked).

So in Gloranthan terms that sounds like a Wyter? Or are you just using
spirit as a synonym for "culture"?

> Your assumption is way off the mark. The formation of
> meaningful symbolic values is not something that can
> be established through bio-chemical goal states - if
> it were all members of the human species would speak
> the same language!

All members of the human species do not experience the same
biochemical goal states. Both genetics and environment exert unique
influences. The conclusion does not follow from the premise.

Were every member of the human species a clone, and subjected to the
exact same environmental conditions (eg "being taught to speak
English"), they would indeed speak the same language, and do
everything else the same as well. In practice while genetics are
digital and therefore in principle capable of perfect duplication,
environmental factors are probably not, so you would find it difficult
to perform the experiment.

> The fact we are physical creatures does not mean we
> are only physical creatures. We are not robots (POW
> 0).

IYHO. I say we are biological robots. We're just complex biological robots.

> Inside your mind (i.e., the software part) is what I
> mean.

Defining the mind as "brain software" is fine. The analogy holds
perfectly. Software in a computer is an illusion; at the lowest level,
it's electrons that do all the work - software is simply a way we
created to allow us to set up hardware situations whereby the result
of those moving electrons can be described at a higher level, in
exactly the way that "mind" is just a function of, ultimately,
chemical reactions and other physical phenomena.

> I've actually never interpreted the RQ definition as
> being metaphysical. There is magical 'colour' to it
> and a magical game-system, certainly. But it's much
> more about belief systems. Have a reread of the
> introductions to the magic book (The Shaman's Answers,
> The Priestess's Answers, The Sorcerer's Answers).

It is ironic, is it not, that in an attempt to show that RQ's
definition of POW is not magical, you begin by going to the magic book
and suggesting I consider the statements of the three archetypical
magicians? ;)

Which is not to misunderstand you (except for comic purposes) - yes,
those sections describe many things that are cultural more than
metaphysical.

> Strip the comments of their metaphysical aspects and
> read them as an anthropologist or historian trying to
> understand values and meaning, the psychology of a
> people.

Given that I suspect I wouldn't be alone in suggesting that the "What
the X says" portions of the RQ3 rules are among the most useful
sections of the rules, I don't disagree specifically with any of that.

However, they are describing the situation from a narrative POV,
whereas when we step back to consider the POW characteristic we're
playing at the simulationist level. In RQ, POW is basically a measure
of your magical abilities; the only other things that it affects are
your communication skills and (negatively) your stealth skills. In the
real world - unless you have evidence otherwise, and it should be
obvious I'm a skeptic - magic doesn't exist, and frankly I've never
noticed that charismatic people had a harder time moving silently and
hiding, so there's nothing for POW to measure.

Now, having said that, if we take a step back and consider the BRP
implications rather than merely RQ, we find that POW has been used in
settings where magic is much rarer and/or non-existent. Unfortunately
I am probably unique here; though I've played dozens of gaming systems
over many years, Call of Cthulu is not amongst them (I'm not an HP
Lovecraft fan, and I've never found a GM willing to run it), but I
understand that POW is still basically used for magic there. Certainly
it is in Stormbringer (the forerunner to Elric!, which I don't have,
but I assume that they're similar enough) and to an extent Superworld.
But in principle there may well be a BRP game that contains no magic
and still finds a use for POW.

As far as the core discussion, I'm not really convinced we
fundamentally disagree; my point basically is that I don't accept the
existence of the metaphysical, and that humans (or indeed any other
complex life form) can in principle be described by purely physical
processes. However, it certainly FEELS like we have free will, and it
can't possibly hurt to act as if we do (since if we don't, we're
unable to act otherwise). I'm not really sure that this is what POW is
supposed to measure, though.

Backing away from the actual existence of willpower for the moment,
most people would ascribe someone who had a high pain tolerance, was
difficult to persuade, or had determination as strong willed. In RQ,
the first would be measured by CON, the second by opposed Fast Talk
rolls (of which POW is a very minor influence), and the third really
doesn't have any game mechanic. The strongest evidence for "POW =
Willpower" would seem to be that a high POW means you have a large
number of Magic Points which in turn makes you hard to affect with
magic, but unfortunately that gets clouded by the open question of
whether that's only for magic; if it is, then my point that in a
magicless world POW would have no use stands (even if you do not agree
that magic doesn't exist in this world - Greg Stafford, for example,
would be on that side).

The only time POW is used as a characteristic roll is for Luck rolls
(POW * 5, or POW * 3 for Initiation, and so on). It doesn't seem that
those who are characterised as strong willed are the same group of
people that are characterised as lucky. Of course characteristics
don't necessarily measure only one thing, but in RQ terms if POW means
you're magically potent, then that can certainly be used to explain
luck (you subconsciously manipulate magic in your favour - especially
good as an explanation in a world such as Glorantha where the laws of
physics do not exist - EVERYTHING is magical).

In the end, I would say that the evidence for POW being a measure of
willpower is not non-existent, but it's not particularly strong.
Depending on the situation I could see CON (for throwing off the
effects of drugs, and resisting pain) or INT (for resisting
manipulation) being used to test "willpower"; outside of magic use, I
can't think of too many cases I'd use POW.
-- 
GAZZA