Syncretism in HQ

[James Holloway]

Sure James, I can pick one, but then you know, why I am paying money for this stuff in the first place if I'm just going to have to make it all up again?

I hardly think picking one of a couple of options is "having to make it all up again." I can't think of anything major you'd have to change by going with the "magic works objectively thus" approach.

But then, obviously how much work something is and how much work it's worth are subjective things that differ between you and me. I hardly ever run a game without some tweaking of the setting because I'm a cranky perfectionist and nothing ever fully satisfies me. Truth be told, I rather like doing this. Obviously, you don't so much.

But Glorantha has a metaphysical system that is, to me, pretty consistent as long as you're willing to read between the lines a bit. It's not actually one of the things I felt necessary to muck about with in the game. But then, I quite like the idea  that there are multiple Greatest Mountains, just like I like the idea that Arkat was simultaneously the same entity inhabiting five different bodies and five different people using the same name. I suspect that would bug you.

[Mike Holmes]

I agree with Josh and James unsurprisingly.

1. Such ambiguity comes about in Glorantha only because it has a cosmologically complex take on things. Other cosmologies ask you to do far greater handwaving it seems to me. Explain to me, for example, how Egyptian dieties end up in D&D worlds. At some point you just accept that no RPG is going to be perfect and accept some of the absurdity. Or you play some other game with absurdities that bug you less.

2. Real life is just as existential in nature. Or I at least, and others too, find it to be that way. To the extent that Glorantha is existential, it's more believable and interesting to players like myself. Not less.

3. When it all comes down to it, you aren't pointing out a logical flaw of any sort, but a preference for different axioms about your game world. Well, what would you have us do? We can't change those axioms. I've already agreed with you that, given your preferences, that the game has problems for you. Well that makes you unlucky. It doesn't make the game bad for everyone else, however (or even for a many it seems to me).


So to get back to syncretization, yes, if you assume your version of Glorantha where magic does not exist, then it's hard to reconcile syncretization the way that I have, for instance. But if you accept the axiom for a moment that magic does exist, and that this is how I, for one am trying to explain how it works, it's quite logical I think.

If you feel that the argument from my axioms is not logical, I'd like to know where the problem is specifically.

Mike

[droog]

I'd like to quote another Holmes here:

a) Relativism is an Absolute: there can be no certainties. There are at least four and a half correct explanations for anything. Everything you believe is only a prelude to initiation into gnosis. Arkat made but half the journey. Only baboons know the truth, and only Lunars are aware of this. Godlearner documents are memic land mines. Epistemology and ontology consciously arise only when cultures clash (and twice on Godsdays). Choose your errors consciously and wisely. Mythos is logos. Praxis before doxis.

b) Cultivate Wonder: Mystery is a value in itself. Not knowing is a path to liberation. Enjoy the magical, the mythical, the mystical. Surprise yourself at least once per session.

c) Your created world is itself a myth; fluid, open to many interpretations, semiotically charged and awash with possibility. Get in there and start hacking your own memes. Never be afraid to kiss the trickster.
................................................

23. It's YOUR Glorantha.
There is no, there cannot be, a One-True Glorantha. No matter how much we recognise and strive to achieve the values of consistency and coherence, we have to recognise that myths just aren't like that!

Myths are by definition multivalent. They never have a single interpretation, or even a single authoritative version. And Glorantha is a myth. Its also your own personal shamanic journey, your own inner-world. The treasures and truths you discover and return with are yours, to be shared with your co-creative community.

So never be afraid to tinker. Official or prevalent ain't necessarily best. You can't keep a good idea down. (Just look what happened to the cult of Vinga...) Cast your threads upon the electronic waters, and in seven days four Digesters will have told you why you're wrong and six dozen will have silently adopted your idea into their own thinking.

Which leads me to the most important point of all...

24. Follow Your Bliss.
You're here to have fun. So have it. None of us are in this for the money. Glorantha is neither a work of art, nor an excuse for a personal jihad/crusade. It's a ramshackle, living, breathing group experiment, a bubbling cauldron of creativity and community. Love it.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/pipnjim/questlines/trickster.html

[Christopher Kubasik]

I'd like to quote another Holmes here:
.....
http://home.iprimus.com.au/pipnjim/questlines/trickster.html

Droog,

Just read that page.

That's pretty much summed it up for me! Thanks for linking it.

Christopher

[droog]

You're very welcome, Christopher. Glad to be able to give something back.




EDIT: Even if I did screw up John Hughes' name.

[contracycle]

I can't promise to break down your door, but would it help if I told you your Glorantha is not allowed to vary?

No, that does not help at all.  Will you refund me my £50?

Fundamantally, a game which a) refuses to make firm statements about its own content and b) exhibits no concern about that is so broken that empty platitudes about "glorantha varying" are merely insulting.

What I thought I was doing was paying someone else to design this stuff for me, so that I would not have to.  But it appears that contract has been violated - not only is the material contradictory but there is no prospect of that issue ever being addressed.

[contracycle]

I hardly think picking one of a couple of options is "having to make it all up again." I can't think of anything major you'd have to change by going with the "magic works objectively thus" approach.

Everything.  Because the contradictory statements would have to go.  So if I decided Orlanthi should indeed have objective magic, then the things they think about the Lunars must also be true.  So, in making this selection, I have just rendered 80% of the world irrelevant, and the materials I have purchased useless.

tha the problem with the "pick one" approach - in promoting that as a solution, you are conceding that the bulk of Glorantha is useless.

I hardly ever run a game without some tweaking of the setting because I'm a cranky perfectionist and nothing ever fully satisfies me. Truth be told, I rather like doing this. Obviously, you don't so much.

But I do, you see.  It was exactly in doing that process that I found the discrepancies.  But " a bit of tweaking" is not all the Gklorantha requires to work just to achieve basic-level Exploration; 80% of it must be binned.

[James Holloway]

So if I decided Orlanthi should indeed have objective magic, then the things they think about the Lunars must also be true.

a) What do they think about the Lunars that isn't true?

b) I don't understand why you say this. Why does the Orlanthi having magic mean that they have to be right about everything?

Gklorantha requires to work just to achieve basic-level Exploration; 80% of it must be binned.

Obviously this is untrue. We haven't all sat down and completely rewritten the game, and yet we've had no problems playing it (or not game-breaking problems anyway). So what's going on here? My suggestion is that you're making mistakes in evaluating the metaphysics that are making things unnecessarily difficult for you.

[soru]

So if I decided Orlanthi should indeed have objective magic, then the things they think about the Lunars must also be true.

'if the americans have working aeroplanes, then everything they think about French people must be true'.

Perhaps you could explain why you think this?

soru

[contracycle]

'if the americans have working aeroplanes, then everything they think about French people must be true'.

Perhaps you could explain why you think this?

soru

I really don't understand where you are coming from.  We are talking about Glorantha, not the real world.

And it is true if I am to privilege one culture as being ontologically correct, according to the proposed solution.

So for example, emperor takenegi IS a fat lazy sybarite after all, not a posessor of the Eagle soul.  This is now necessarily true in order that the righteous barbarians can triumph over the corrupt and hypocritical empire.

Wherever any material contradicts Orlanthi cosmology, Orlanthi cosmology wins.  Or whichever group you have selected.  Unfortunately, this renders a large percentage of the others erroneous.

Please remember *I* did not propose this solution.

[James Holloway]

So for example, emperor takenegi IS a fat lazy sybarite after all, not a posessor of the Eagle soul.  This is now necessarily true in order that the righteous barbarians can triumph over the corrupt and hypocritical empire.

Moonson is both a fat lazy sybarite and possessor of the eagle soul. What's the problem? Even other Lunars see the person of the emperor as a lazy drunk -- but, to paraphrase ILH1, the Greatest Lazy Drunk in the Empire. They differentiate between the person and the Takenegi.

Additionally, Orlanthi cosmology does not contradict the idea "the Lunar Emperor is, according to traditional succession mechanisms, Emperor of Dara Happa, Paradisal Aviator of Rinliddi, and Padishah of Carmania."

[contracycle]

b) I don't understand why you say this. Why does the Orlanthi having magic mean that they have to be right about everything?

For the thousandth time, please address the point of view of the players, not the characters.  The characters are only imaginary.

If the proposed solution is to pick on culture and privilige it as the point-of-view of the GAME SYSTEM, so that narration and resolution coincide, then anywhere that this culture's perspective contradicts any other culture, the foreign culture must be wrong.  And seeing as so much of Glorantha is contradictory to such extent, about nearly everything, then yes the ovwerwhelming bulk of all other dicuments will have to be treated as mistaken or fraudulent.

Thus, if the Lunars have magic based on their erroneous understanding of what really happened in the lightbringers quest, then it cannot work.

Obviously, the Malkioni are inherently wrong at most levels if Orlanthi culture is privileged.

Obviously this is untrue. We haven't all sat down and completely rewritten the game, and yet we've had no problems playing it (or not game-breaking problems anyway). So what's going on here? My suggestion is that you're making mistakes in evaluating the metaphysics that are making things unnecessarily difficult for you.

Well then, over the course of this thread, how come these errors cannot be pointed out?  Thats precisely the topic of the thread!

But instead, you have proposed that I should not ask those questions, because they cannot be answered, and instead propose I simply pick a culture as a short cut to getting an actual game running with a working social contract.

No you seem unhappy with what your proposed solution produces, and want to go back to talking metpahyisics.  OK, what are the metaphysics of Glorantha that reconcile its contradictory statements?  My £50 remains unclaimed.  I WANT to know.

But then, I quite like the idea that there are multiple Greatest Mountains, just like I like the idea that Arkat was simultaneously the same entity inhabiting five different bodies and five different people using the same name. I suspect that would bug you.

Of course it bugs me becuase its blatently bogus.  I can understand oine entity in 5 bodies; I can understand 5 different people; I cannot understand what on earth you mean when you say both of these are the case simultaneously.

They cannot be.  So what do you ACTUALLY mean by this statement?

[pete_darby]

Gareth, you keep osting false dichotomies and demanding that they are absolute: Takenegi possesses the Eagle soul, and he is also a human sybarite.

Consider this: the Orlanthi are right about as much as they need to be right to mythologically connect with Orlanth, who is the channel of their magic. But this doesn't make them right about everything. They've forgotten more about Orlanth than they know now.

Similarly, the Lunars haven't got the privelige on the absolute truth, nor do the Malkioni, the Praxians, or any other single group. That they have magic is just an expression of their mythic relationships with the otherworlds, which grant magic through mythic relationships, not through empirical relationships only available to groups possessed of an overriding, empirical, objective truth.

Ontological privelige does not reside in any one ethnic, political or geographic group: I find it hard to believe you would find this hard to accept.

To get things back to syncretism; Gareth, you mentioned the attitude of Roman nobles, looking down on the peasants worshipping the pantheon. What you neglected to mention is the heteredoxy at this level. Some nobles believed that the gods were the expressions of one god, others that they were expressions of an impersonal divine power, others that they were personifications of entirely natural processes (whatever that would mean to a Roman).

I can very well see Lunars especially, but sophisticates of other cultures as well, taking similar views. The main difference is that ceremony and heroquesting demonstrably works in Glorantha, but if you can only interact with the inhuman, supernatural otherworld through the tools of myth and ritual, if they really are (objectively!) the only ways to obtain magic, then even an illuminate who treats the Gods as personifications of abstract ideas will still burn the incense, chant the chant and follow the steps of the Gods, because that's still the only way to obtain the Sunspear feat...

[joshua neff]

But then, I quite like the idea that there are multiple Greatest Mountains, just like I like the idea that Arkat was simultaneously the same entity inhabiting five different bodies and five different people using the same name. I suspect that would bug you.

Of course it bugs me becuase its blatently bogus.  I can understand oine entity in 5 bodies; I can understand 5 different people; I cannot understand what on earth you mean when you say both of these are the case simultaneously.

They cannot be.  So what do you ACTUALLY mean by this statement?

He means Arkat was one person in five bodies and five different people using the same name. Was Arkat also Gbaji? Yes. Was Arkat the guy who fought Gbaji? Yes. Was Nysalor Gbaji? Yes. Was Nysalor the guy who fought Gbaji? Yes.

It makes sense to me. It apparently makes sense to a lot of people who play in Glorantha.

Just because you, Gareth, have problems with this doesn't mean the game is bogus or broken. It obviously indicates that Glorantha isn't your cup of tea, and I fail to understand why you persist in insisting that it is, if only it's "fixed" to jibe with how you want it to be. My advice? Either accept that the game and the setting is what it is, and if you want it to fit in with your wants & needs, you're going to have to tweak it; or accept that Glorantha and HeroQuest was never designed for you, it doesn't work for you, and move on. You haven't explained why it's so important for you to prove that the setting and game are "broken" simply because you personally don't accept things about the setting that a lot of us do accept.

[contracycle]

He means Arkat was one person in five bodies and five different people using the same name. Was Arkat also Gbaji? Yes. Was Arkat the guy who fought Gbaji? Yes. Was Nysalor Gbaji? Yes. Was Nysalor the guy who fought Gbaji? Yes.

No.  Why not assert that blue is red, that white is purple, or that 2+2 = 108.

How do you resolve the contradictions?

It makes sense to me. It apparently makes sense to a lot of people who play in Glorantha.

Sure, well, OK then, explain it to me.  As you have just said, it makes sense to you, it does  not to me.  This is precisely the issue on which I am seeking clarification.

Just because you, Gareth, have problems with this doesn't mean the game is bogus or broken. It obviously indicates that Glorantha isn't your cup of tea, and I fail to understand why you persist in insisting that it is, if only it's "fixed" to jibe with how you want it to be.

'But hang on - the only "fix" I have ever proposed is that there be a frank discussion on this issue.  I mean, what is your position, that Glorantha is only expected to be sold to some higher quality of being and that peasants like myself should not dare to ask uppity questions?

You see, you say you accept it , understand it, but how then can you not explain it?

I actually don't think anyone does understand it, they merely "accept" it by turning a blind eye.  I'm aware this is a contentious claim, but there have no been so many assaults on my person and intellect I don't care.  I suspect the game "works" on two levels: 1) you don't need to think about anything while killing broo: the game can operate as a simplistic dungeon crawl adequately, and 2) having faith that in some way unknown to you personally there is some underlying reason known to Greg Stafford.

What it is not is a complete and working game.  If it had been proposed for design here with such gaping conceptual gaps and no express design intent to explain why these are gaps are features rather than bugs, I fancy it would have been shot down in flames.