Glorantha is Myth... right?

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi droog,

My bad. "Density" was (speaking of 'words, words, words') the wrong word to use.  

In my subjective and based only on my taste these days opinion, the novel just "ramble on."

The works I referenced used compact langauge to make clear visuals to tell a story cleanly. (Whether or not you see them this way, I don't know. But I do. I may well be a fool on this count.)

Yes, they are still words, words, words -- but a screenplay (not a movie) -- is only words, words, words as well.  110 to 120 lightly typed pages that convey -- in diaglogue and description -- what will be shot, and finally edited, into the thing we see as a buch of blurred images run together to form a movie.

But long before it was a movie, before it was edited, before it was shot, it had to be those words, words, words. Words written in such a compact way, with clear images and story, that a bunch of stranger would invest far too much time and money based off of 110 pages of material.

Another comarison: a critic who really didn't like Dune (I can't remember who) said something along these lines: "People keep defending it's rambling nature because it's an 'epic.' Well, the Iliad is an Epic. At its word count is substantially shorter than Dune. Something Herbert might have thought about when editing his own work."

I'm not saying a screenplay should be written like a screenplay. Meter wouldn't work well at all for the form. But I am saying that a screenwriter is better served looking at Homer and Shakespeare much more than any contemporary novel for learning how to use words on the page.

But this is far off topic (but almost kind of on it as well).  If you'd like to discuss (or hear me ramble on) about the specifics of this matter, just send me a PM.

Just remember, I'm not talking about porting metered writing directly into a screenplay. I'm talking about learning what one can from one form and applying that education to another form.

Christopher

[Mike Holmes]

Chris let's not devolve into semantics. Let me instead explain what I'm saying. Your argument seems to be:

If anyone were to try to push the logic of these tales to rational limits... the tales would quickly fall apart. Because that's not the job of these tales.

Like "soft" sci-fi, right? We aren't supposed to worry about the logic gaps and just pay attention to the moral of the story.

This is fine, especially for fiction (and even for RPGs). But no, there's nothing about Glorantha that specifies that it should be in any way parallel to these sorts of stories particularly. In part because RPGs are not stories, I think they are more like Myths. The tales told of King Arthur may have at one point been myths, but today as we read them in a book, they are not myths. They are stories. The difference being that as fictions, stories can get away with, yes, handwaving. We know that they're not true, so we can say, just pay attention to the point.

Myths, OTOH, you cannot do this with. Yes, myths can be contradictory, but the person involved in the transmission of the myth is not enjoined to ignore the contradictions, but to understand that they are truths merely not understood.

RPGs we do intend as fictions - I'm not arguing that when I talk about Glorantha that I'm talking about some place that actually existed in the past that sheds some light on our actual universe. But some RPGs at least (and maybe all, I'm not sure), expecially Heroquest, I think work best when you try to emulate myth, not stories. Meaning that the goal includes explaining things in internally consistent manners. That doesn't mean that you won't have contradictions. But it does mean that it's reasonable to be asked questions about why things are the way they are.

Shaman: Remember how First Man drank the sea?
Child: Yes, but how could a man drink all of that water - I can only drink very little.
Shaman: First Man was very large you see.

In fact in RPGs and in Myth, I think a lot of the "reality" gets made out of answering questions. When a player says that his character goes to the left, he's asking what is to the left in the mythic world. What he won't accept is, "Don't worry about it, go right instead."

Mike

[Christopher Kubasik]

Um, I think you and I are saying the same thing.

I'm apparently saying it badly.

Whatever you think I was saying, that would involve telling someone to ignore the "logic gaps and just pay attention to the moral of the story," is not at all what I was talking about.

I don't know exactly what led you to these conclusions. But from this post, and your responses to Gareth on the neighboring thread, I think you and I would play the same.

Thanks for the talk, all.

Christopher

[contracycle]

Well, I'm sympathetic to the idea, anyway.  That is the only way in which I can see Glorantha as a genuine product rather than a tool in a scam.

Ratgher likie, lets say, the Alien in Alien et al.  LLots of people have wondered about the Alien, includeing me, but as far as I can tell there is no underlying logic to its structure.  I do not think there ever was any thought put into making it a "plausible" space critter - it is assembled fairly randomly from component parts that frighten humans, thats all.  Investigating it is a mistake; it should be treated on symbolic and iconic terms, not logical or simulationist ones.

Thats great for a medium in which your audience cannot ask questions.  I fiund it much much less great for a medium in which asking question-and-answer is fundmanetal to establishing the imaginary space.

In this regard, I can imagine Glorantha as one large collection of props, to be used in RPG's.  It would make more sense if it appeared only in this way, rather than trying to reconcile its conflicts into one world.

[joshua neff]

Ratgher likie, lets say, the Alien in Alien et al.  LLots of people have wondered about the Alien, includeing me, but as far as I can tell there is no underlying logic to its structure.  I do not think there ever was any thought put into making it a "plausible" space critter - it is assembled fairly randomly from component parts that frighten humans, thats all.  Investigating it is a mistake; it should be treated on symbolic and iconic terms, not logical or simulationist ones.

I've never thought of the alien in the Alien movies as anything else. It's a creature in a horror movie meant to scare the audience. How else would you think of it?

[Mike Holmes]

Chris, I have no idea what your point is, then. I am pretty sure that we'd play the same. But that doesn't help me understand what you're saying.

I'm saying that I agree with Gareth here that you have to be able to ask any question you like about the setting. It's not like Alien where you're just asked not to look at thing X or thing Y, and to focus only on certain parts of the content. Actually, if the handwaving is made clear, I don't mind it. For example, in games with FTL travel, we're pretty much asked not to look too closely at the physics, because no attempt is made to make it work. We're just asked to not present the contradictions implied. Often, for sci-fi, this is presented with "here's some future technology we don't understand yet in the real world, which makes it all work out." That's fine.

But you can't say, "It all makes internal sense" and then not have it make internal sense. RPGs say, I believe, "It all makes internal sense, unless we've handwaved it away."

For Glorantha, I merely believe that the "sense" it makes is, as real life makes sense, based on ambiguous perceptions. And, no, that's not a contradiction.

Mike

[contracycle]

I've never thought of the alien in the Alien movies as anything else. It's a creature in a horror movie meant to scare the audience. How else would you think of it?

[boggle]

As an alien, of course, likenthe title.  Therefore, an evolved creature that metabolises food and procreates.  And yes, there is good solid precedent of Science Fiction doing this sort of Exploration purposefully, and doing it purposefully.  And therein we get to the question of "is Alien properly Horror or SF", which quite clearly a lot of people have pursued.

The film exploits this confusion by delivering everything in an extremely realistic tone, right from the opening shots of the Nostromo as an unexciting but very large cargo hulk - the tenor of hard science and deadpan delivery is maintained throughout.  But it is an illusion, and in fact any attempt at closer exploration will fail as there is in fact nothing there to Explore.  It is a sort of optical illusion.  Certainly, its a long way from Space Truckers.

[pete_darby]

it should be treated on symbolic and iconic terms, not logical or simulationist ones.

Thats great for a medium in which your audience cannot ask questions.  I fiund it much much less great for a medium in which asking question-and-answer is fundmanetal to establishing the imaginary space.

Actually, it's also great for exploring worlds constructed as fucntioning mythologies, rather than scientifically causal, as long as you don't mind the answers to the questions being mythically rather than scientifically sound.

In this regard, I can imagine Glorantha as one large collection of props, to be used in RPG's.  It would make more sense if it appeared only in this way, rather than trying to reconcile its conflicts into one world

You're getting there, but replace RPG's in that with stories or myths, throw out the false dichotomy that this negates its ability to be a coherent setting, and recognise that every damn story or RPG setting is the same, and you'll get a lot further.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Mike,

I have no idea any more if we'd play the same way.

But first, let me get the alien from Alien out of the way. From what I know only from that movie, I have no idea if it makes any sense. Since the story didn't depend on explicating it's logic as a creature, I really don't know. The point of a story isn't to footnote everything. The question isn't whether or not questions could be asked about the creature. In a variation on the telling of the story, questions might have been asked, and answered.

If you're playing an RPG, not eveything is going to have questions asked about it. That doesn't mean the whole session of a play was a sham because the evening wasn't annotated with the equivalent of a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

As for Glorantha... Mike you wrote:

"Shaman: Remember how First Man drank the sea?
Child: Yes, but how could a man drink all of that water - I can only drink very little.
Shaman: First Man was very large you see. "

You seem to put this out as an idea that somehow will answer questions.

Okay. That makes sense to me. But I can imagine someone very much like Gareth (but not Gareth, cause I don't wanna speak for him), jumping in and saying, "Wait. What big man? How big? Where did he stand when he was drinking the water? Did he objectivley do this? Or is this one of those damned things this tribe believes, but did't really happen -- or maybe did kind of happen, and kind of didn't happen -- so it answers nothing. And where are his bones?"

Now. All of those questions could be answered to in the manner the Shaman asks in your example above. I believe the problem would be, almost like playing Baron Munchausen, our much-like-Gareth guy would hound you (with logic, however, not more fancy) until all the Glorantha had been re-written to justify the existence of the Big Man who drank the ocean.

Which would still be fine.... but you'd still have a bunch of issues that would still bug other-Gareth.

I'm not saying that people aren't allowed to ask questions -- I have no idea where that idea got started. I am saying that some people accept some kinds of answers, and others don't.

Using Alien as a frog to disect was kind of a shell game, as far as I'm concerned. It's an SF movie, and while SF movies have little in common with SF literature, there's still the expectation of it making sense.

With fantastic literature -- of the older kind -- it's not that you can't ask quesions -- it's that different people and different groups are going to ask different kinds of questions.

And what the group wants to create will be a different kind of creation.

Examples:

I was playing a playtest of Whispering Vault with Mike Nystul. Mike was one of the most verbally adept GM's I've ever encountered in my life. I fucking loved listening to him set up scenes.

Our PCs walk into a room. He says, "The Demon is there, reading an improbably large book."

Now. What does "improbably large book" mean? How big is it? As big as a man? As big as a house? Who knows. I do know everyone at the table had an image that made smile... if not laugh.

If we had tried to steal the book, say, it would be clear we would need to do more than a mere mortal picking a book up off a shelf. We'd need a PC with super-human or magic of some kind.  Just to keep the bit going.

Now, some people would want to know how many kilos were talkin'. And others would want to know the dimensions. But that wasn't our concern.

On another thread (Gloranths Tropes, linked page: http://indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9615&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=godlearners&start=105 ) Simon Hibbs wrote:

"
It's like the descriptions of the angels in Jewish folklore, one is described as having 70,000 bodies, each with 70,000 heads, each with 70,000 mouths, each of which has 70,000 tongues, which each speak 70,000 languages. Or something like that (it's been a while). The point is not to literaly describe the physical characteristics of an angel. The point is to knock your imagination for six because they're not imaginable - they're angels for goodness sake! :)"

I thought that sounded great. And seemed to me that exactly the sort of thing Mike Nystul did with his descriptions, and the sort of thing that would work great for Glorantha.

Then Gareth arrived in a foul mood:

"That would be a great answer if only the question were about religious people or seekers after truth. However, down in humdrum reality the game books are setting it up such that I-the-player have a real prospect of meeting an angel, and I-the-GM will have to roleplay it for them if they do."

Okay. A few things here:

I don't consider the world of Glorantha hum-drum. Me, I don't see how anyone could.

The "roleplaying" part is: What does a PC decide to do, how is narrated, what is the conclusion -- based on what goal the PC had. Note that the cool description of the Angel is not blown apart because the GM doesn't know, at that instant, how any and all events might transpire because not eveything's defined. So, if the player says, "My guy wants to wrestel the Angel to the ground, the GM sets otu the resistance, we roll dice, narration occurs, the conflict is resolved -- and VOILA! -- we have a cool bit of story. And the significant thing is (I hope) WHY the PC wrestled the Angel to the ground.

Now if not-Gareth decides to stop the game to hash out what would happen if we shoved a nuke warhead into one of the angel's 70,000 mouths.... I supposed some people would find it fun to stop the game for that. I wouldn't. The fun is in the creation of the narrative. The choices the characters make. The part that has to make sense is the events that occur. For all I know there was fifteen minute scene explaining the biology of the alien in the rough cut of Alien that got left on the cutting room floor. But it didn't matter to the story... so it's gone. Does that mean the questions can't be asked? No. But they become part of the story.

It -- for some reason -- doesn't seem that complicated to me.

Some people might see my point of view as lazy, as a cheat, as missing the point, as robbing the players, as supporting Issaries plan to destroy rational thinking among gamers.

Strangely, I find myself unperturbed.

A final thought.

Greg uses a lot of subjective points of view in the books. For some, this is a disaster. For others, freedom. Either way, I believe that this format is a clue to how to play the game -- and supports the point of view I'm putting forth as a viable one.

I am not concerned about an "objective" Glorantha. What matters -- to me -- is the events as they are played out at the table. That is the reality. That story is the truth. Gareth might argue that then there's no "objective" reality for the Players to push against with their PCs. He'd be wrong. The reality the PC's push against is the reality that the GM and the Players define, cooperatively at the table, building on previous facts, establishing new facts as they go.

Best gaming to all,

Christopher

[Mike Holmes]

But I can imagine someone very much like Gareth (but not Gareth, cause I don't wanna speak for him), jumping in and saying, "Wait. What big man? How big? Where did he stand when he was drinking the water? Did he objectivley do this? Or is this one of those damned things this tribe believes, but did't really happen -- or maybe did kind of happen, and kind of didn't happen -- so it answers nothing. And where are his bones?"

Now. All of those questions could be answered to in the manner the Shaman asks in your example above. I believe the problem would be, almost like playing Baron Munchausen, our much-like-Gareth guy would hound you (with logic, however, not more fancy) until all the Glorantha had been re-written to justify the existence of the Big Man who drank the ocean.

This seems wrapped up in bashing Gareth and his playstyle. The attempt to point to "somebody like Gareth" notwithstanding. Shit or get off the pot - are you describing dysfunctional play? Do you really think that Gareth plays this way? If not, then you've created a straw man. Because I don't know anyone who plays like you're describing, nor anyone who suggests that people do or should.

We agree on this as you say, Chris:

I'm not saying that people aren't allowed to ask questions -- I have no idea where that idea got started. I am saying that some people accept some kinds of answers, and others don't.

But note that none of this has anything to do with "stopping play" to ask questions. We're not talking about players going of on perigrinations of "what if?" As long as you keep trying to cast Gareth's arguments in that light, you'll miss his points completely. He's saying that this might happen:

Player: My character shoves an atomic bomb in the angel's mouth. What happens?

Not "stopping play" to ask "what if", but actual play in which such might happen. The resulting narration has a creative agenda. All you're saying Chris is that you prefer a narrativism result instead of simulationism:

And the significant thing is (I hope) WHY the PC wrestled the Angel to the ground.

I'd argue that the same is significan't for Gareth. But for him that the answer is pointless unless he understands the causality of the process in question in terms of the in-game "physics" of the world. Sans a world that seems to have it's own objective "hardness" any result that people come up with is...

just Story Now

AKA the Simulationism POV.  

So the only real question is, which does Glorantha support? "Hum-drum" is a red herring. The question is, given how Glorantha is presented, does it support simulationism or narrativism. Well, guess what? It's a setting. It probably doesn't promote either much alone. When it was used as the setting for Runequest, would you really argue that it wasn't strictly meant to support a simulationism agenda?

It's only now under Hero Quest that we can even start to think of it as supporting narrativism. What I'd say about the system is that it is incoherent and easily drifted to narrativism. But that Stafford doesn't really care about narrativism at all, and plays himself in a strictly simulationism fashion. All about the narrator telling stories to the players. Check out his scenarios if you don't believe me. What he wants is simulationism where the "hard physics" of the universe match a very cinematic and cosmologically ambiguous truth.

So it seems to me to be pretty absurd to suggest that Glorantha as a setting supports narrativism particularly. Given the level of simulationism detail that goes into explaining the cosmology and world at hand, I think it's really hard to argue that it all exists for narrativism's sake.

Do I think it plays well for narrativism despite it's creator's intentions, and using the drifted HQ rules? Well, I've seen it work for that. But consider that I don't run Hero Quest using Glorantha at all. I find it, in fact, problematic for narrativism, and so use another world entirely. It should be a great irony that the world I use, Shadow World, was created for the poster child for simulationism, Rolemaster, and yet works better than Glorantha using the HQ rules to produce narrativism, in my experience. Simply because there's less written about it, and more room to use narrativism techniques.

If you really want to get only-narrativism out of HQ, I'd start a completely new world. But I'm not a player who looks for only narrativism. Yes, I believe that it's important to create meaning in RPGs. But I also value that "hardness" to some extent as well. What that makes my creative agenda, I don't know. But it's not one in which players will not ask questions about how the universe operates through the agency of their characters. I and they are constantly "stopping play" to have characters ask about how the political process of a place works. Or what a magic ritual looks like. Or a ton of things. Because, no, we're not only interested in "why the PC wrestled" but also "how strong are angels?"

Why do we care? Well, because it's not just a story, where all we care about is why. It's a myth, where the why has to be backed by causality. Myths are not about some other place, some other time, that doesn't exist or need to be understood by the reader. Myths are about explaining the real world. If I don't get how something works, I have to ask about it so that I then do, so I understand and believe it.

Now, again, I'm not suggesting that we make actual myths (in fact, the notion is somewhat of an oxymoron, myths just exist). What I'm suggesting is that RPGs can be used to simulate myths. But in doing so, that requires that, like myths, that investigation of cause is actually one of the primary activities involved.

Thus, again, it's not like reading stories derived from myths of Arthur at all. It's like telling the original myths. And like in my example, even if we know why Lancelot and Guenivere have an affair, it very much does matter also that Lancelot is strong enough to defeat Arthur in battle (or not, I'm not up on my Arthur). Why does Arthur's sword have a name that means Iron Cutter? How does that matter to the motives and actions of the characters? It doesn't. It's merely a detail that makes the myth seem more real. Exploration.

Narrativism itself doesn't claim to abandon exploration, it only means that exploration isn't prioritiezed more than story now. The difference between story telling as a non-RPG activity and narrativism is precisely where exploration starts to occur. And even the slightest exploration has at it's heart, I believe, an intention to move the play from being something like other story media, to being something like myth. Yes, the extent of the exploration will neccessarily vary. But it's merely a matter of degree, and whether or not it gets prioritized above story now.

So, yeah, I think we all play the same in that we here all play RPGs, we all have exploration, and we all attempt to create theme. But we're all different in how we play in how we prioritize these things. No surprises there. That's a red herring, too.

Mike

[Christopher Kubasik]

You know,

I give up.

I gave up specifically here:

"Or a ton of things. Because, no, we're not only interested in 'why the PC wrestled' but also 'how strong are angels?'"...

Since I specifically stated the GM would have to assign the difficulty of the challenge.  (Me, I'd go for 1W5... based off the charts in the, you know, rules.)

How you keep inferring all this stuff which completely contradicts what I've actually typed is too baffling to bother with anymore.

As for Gareth, I have great respect for him actually. I have not a fucking clue how he plays. I was referencing the manner in which he doesn't get around to playing HeroQuest -- which is recorded in numerous threads covering the same ground again and again all over the HQ board. I respect him -- but don't understand why he puts the himself through the anguish of having the same coversation about Glorantha every 5 months.

Taking a lesson from my confusion at his endless efforts to make people understand his points only to have to start again and again -- I'm dropping this.

See ya'.

[Ron Edwards]

And this thread is closed.

Mike and Gareth, I consider you guys to have willfully ignored the basic rule of letting people know you understand their points, rather than battling to disagree.

Best,
Ron