Hi all,

The really long Glorantha thread has so much going on in it, I thought I'd step over here and check something out.

In the HQ rules, and source material, Gloranths is defined Myth? Right?

Whenever I review the material, I always assume that I'm stepping into a world very much like the Homeric Epics or Le Morte D'Arthur or Beowulf. And even fairy tales from around the world.

And these worlds of these stories are simply not real. They aren't our world with magic added. And the logic of the magic could not possible be squared with how our world would really work if our world had magic added.

It isn't a "primitave" state of reality. It's a state of fiction that we (or, at least, some of us) enjoy because the world exists outside of a world we know -- similiar in some form, very different in another.

If anyone were to try to push the logic of these tales to rational limits ("Well, if there's one giant in the clouds, there's got to be more -- where are they?" or "If there's a Holy Grail and the Christian God rules, who the hell's the Lady of the Lake and why is she handing out swords to men chose by God to rule?" and so on...) the tales would quickly fall apart. Because that's not the job of these tales.

I understand that a lot of imaginative (and most modern) fiction does try to push rational implications to the limits. Good. I wouldn't want to deny anyone their fun. In the same way, many people want a cohesive, objective reality to play from. And, again, good.

Certainly Glorantha can be played this way. I'm not saying anyone should play it one way or another.

I am saying the text says, "Glorantha is Myth." And to play that way means to step into a certain kind of fiction.

This fiction is at its heart poetic in its logic. The fantastical events and magic are reflections of the needs of the characters and the story. Yes, there is a larger society at stake. But these tales do not depend on a world that "works."

I understand that this kind of matter has been debated on Glorantha lists (or something like it -- I've only heard the rumors of it), and I'm not wishing to rip the issue open again here.

I'm simply positing a point of view. If the characters live in a world like the Homeric Epics or Le Morte D'Arthur, that is, a specific story where the issues and the logic of the world matter far less than the characters' choices, experiences and journey, and the Players focus on creating the logic of a tale and not a functionig world, I think a lot of issues of how Glorahta works will fall away.

In other words, what matters is the orbit of events around the PCs. The world is there to draw on (or not) as needed to keep the that orbit around the PCs imaginitive, poetic, and compelling.

Are there compelling stories that doe focus us on the logic of the world? Yes. And most of the 20th centuries Science Fiction was often about that. (Often, for this reader, at the expense of the kind of story I would like to read.)

Nothing I'm written is written to suggest that in Glorantha things simply happen higgeldy-piggeldy. Like the pre-enlightenment stories referenced, Glorantha as Myth will have a logic and consistency for the events being created by the group in active play. That's the reference point that matters for some players -- not all of Glorantha, but the experience of the PCs, as the protagonists of a fantastical tale.

Christopher

Well, that's one way of looking at it. Historically, however, and still today, there's a lively trend of highly-detailed, nitty-gritty stuff about how the different peoples of Glorantha live. Sometimes this can clash with the mythic theme that's recently been being emphasized, other times they work together surprisingly well. I think the computer game King of Dragon Pass is an example of the latter -- a very interesting, challenging strategy game about keeping your clan alive in hard times, making alliances, fighting wars etc. while still maintaining a strong mythological, sacral element.

For me, I'd say that actual play in Glorantha is more saga than myth, but I think it supports a mythic approach well enough.

Hi James,

Fair enough.

I'm not concerned with the term "Myth" though. After all, I referenced fairy tales, and I have no idea if anyone would actually consider the Homeric Epics and Le Morte D'Arthur "myth". I was simply quoting the book.

I am suggesting one way of playing HeroQuest is with the idea of saying, "In Glorantha, you're PC is in a story. A specific kind of story that relieves the story tellers of a certain kinds of things (a concern for an uber-logic for the whole world being one of these things).

We often approach RPGs with the idea that, "Yeah, it's fictional, but we want it also to make sense like it were real." (I think this has a lot to do with needing to make an appeal for credibility when we want things to go our way. There are more grounds for appeal these days -- like, "But it would make a cooler story if we do it this way...")

I understand that Glorantha has a long -- and shifting history. And I'm aware many people can play the game very different ways. (If I didn't make that clear in my first post, I apologize.)

What I'm trying to lay out is a historically-not-very-common way of approaching RPG play -- that the players assume they are making up a story, with the focus not on making up a coherent world the PCs move through, but instead creating and respecting the logic of a world that meets the needs of the PCs for the tale.

In most stories, you want just enough rational for events, just enough detail to ground the tale -- but put too much in and it becomes something else -- not good, not bad -- just something else.

Again, the notion is that the session is PC-centric. The needs and the logic of the world are secondary to the events, experiences and actions of the PCs.

And, again, Gloratha (and RPGs in general) have along tradition of world-buildings and tossing around unified field theories for fictional worlds and such. I wouldn't want to deny anyone their fun.

I'm just saying that in PC-centric sessions a lot of this world/logic stuff falls away.

I am saying that one way of looking at the HQ rules and the Glorantha environment certaily encourages this way of playing.

Christopher

Christopher,

I am a newbie when it comes to Glorantha. That said, my perspective is that of someone who has not been indoctrinated with the canon, who has never read nor played RuneQuest, and whose only exposure to HQ is the rulebook and some discussions here.

And I would play the game the way you describe. I was happy to read the rulebook and see that mythology is at the core of it. There's a reason that HeroQuesting can work out in many different ways, with vastly different stations--it seems to me that there's a good hint that stories vary, that it's the meaning of the story, not the details, that matters. Heroquesting seems to be a metaphor for all of Glorantha.

So, as you said, to each their own. I am just personally excited that I could play a game that distinctly allows me to mend things and put meaning and story before details and "realistic causality."

Oh, one more thing James....

I see no contradiction in terms of "nitty-gritty" with what I've written.

I think it all falls under "enough detail to ground it enough."

Le Morte D'Arthur isn't just airy-fairy magic fluff. Malory lists the costs of eqipment, how much this item is worth, the value of this piece of land vs. another. It's just that these items lend color to the tale -- he's not trying to make us undertand the whole economy of the society his story is set in. It's just enough to help us understand what is of value -- and that one piece of land (or whatnot) is of more value than another. Or that a castle is really valuable. And so on.

Same with the Homeric Epics. Details about rituals are given and so on. There's no harm in this. What I'm discussing is a matter of focus and the use of these details. Playing one way they become the fun by putting a lot of focus on getting them right, thinking through the implications and so on. Playing another way, they are one more color on the palette to choose from to heighten elements fo the tale.

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
What I'm trying to lay out is a historically-not-very-common way of approaching RPG play -- that the players assume they are making up a story, with the focus not on making up a coherent world the PCs move through, but instead creating and respecting the logic of a world that meets the needs of the PCs for the tale.

Hmmmm.

Apparently I'm explaining myself poorly. I don't think this is a danger from what I've posted above.

Let's look again at the stories I'm referencing:

The Homeric Epics, Le Morte D'Arthur, Beowulf, and I'll add The Mabinogion, The Lord of the Rings. There are others. These I know well.

None of these float off into unground airy-fairy cloud land. They are rooted in a reality. There is an otherside.

More over, there's plenyt of nitty gritty cynicism in the actions of the characters in all the stories mentioned. I'm seeing no contradiction at all.

(Please, folks, don't get caught up on the word "mythic" meaning some sort of "really crazy shit that happens willy-nilly." I'm referencing specific, commonly shared stories as illustration for the kind of stuff I'm talking about.)

The key point I'm trying to make is the point of view of being within a story during play. A lot of RPG play has depended on building the objective, cohesive, logical world independent of the PCs.

I'm saying that to think within a story means not always sweating out the biggest implications of pushing any odd logic too far. Because pushing the logic isn't what the stories (and this kind of play) are about.

What matters is the PCs, not the world. And the PCs need to be grounded enough that their stories make sense, are compelling and understandable.

A final point: someone can find a passion for rooting about deeper into Greek Culture, burrowing through JRR's notes for Middle Earth and so on. That's fine. (And its very much in the tradition of Gloranthan Freemason Thinking.)

But the stories work fine without all this extra stuff. That's my point. That extra stuff is extra.

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote:

I see no contradiction in terms of "nitty-gritty" with what I've written.

Christopher Kubasik wrote:
I'm saying that to think within a story means not always sweating out the biggest implications of pushing any odd logic too far. Because pushing the logic isn't what the stories (and this kind of play) are about.

Christopher,

"Amen", man. I grok it. In fact, this has been one of my major gripes about and pushes towards in fantasy setting creation: mythological worlds, not (a)historical or realistic "we coulda lived there" worlds.

I see too few of the former, and far too many of the latter -- both in fiction and gaming -- and enough that I am simply uninterested in any setting that touts itself as a "complete, detailed, realistic world!" Etc. Etc.

That's not the point of play for me. Myth is. Exploring myth. Living out mythological tales, creating them and interacting with them rather than reading them out of some dusty old book (not that I have anything against those dusty old books).

Creating a new mythology that is personally and experentially meaningful to both today's culture and me myself as a living human being. That is the function of myth, after all, whether it is a thousand years old or twenty days old.

Of course it isn't all in the setting -- that sort of thing has to be directed mechanically as well, or you get ICE's Middle-Earth, geared more towards Simulationist expression and understanding of M.E. than the underlying mythic elements that inform the setting's progress and unfolding.

I Soru,

I'm pretty much willing to admit now that I suck.

I'll make my few las stabs at this, and let it go.

Would this point of view find unanimous agreement? I think not. A majority? Yes. But over on the Syncretism thread, there are at least a few voices that think you should be able to push all points until a coherent metaphysics for all of Glorantha in all situations is found. I am arguing specifically against that.

And independent of the uber-rationalists, there are people who love arguing around the theological and social and historical issues and find great enjoyment in trying to squre them.

I am saying each group that's playing within the context of a story (not a "world"), will build their own coherence in actual play. And that the logic they find in that story is the logic that matters. Much like one author's take on the Trojan War would be very different than another's.

Which touches on another point. I'm not suggesting the works I've refenced are not coherent and self-consistent. Just the opposit. Within themselves, they're fine. My point is that in terms of an actual world beyond the story there are flaws -- or, at least flaws if people want to dig deeper and call them flaws:

Where is there any religious ritual in LotR? What societies, even those with dissenters, ever existed without some section of the populace acknowledging through ritual something larger than themselves?

Where does Merlin get his magic? If it's a Chrisitan universe (sometimes it sure seems to be!) isn't magic the devil's handiwork? This makes no sense that Arthur keeps this guy around. Unless he's not using the Devil's magic. But then... What is it?

Do the gods actaully control the Greeks on the beach of Troy -- or merely tempt them to one action or another? An arguement could be made for each. But for the purpose of the story it doesn't need to be nailed down either way.

Of course, someone could come in and start making a very clear aguement about any of these points by referencing material outside the story. And that's my point -- they'd be arguing the point outside of the story. The story itself has a slippery story logic that is not completely rational.

(By the way, I'm not saying the Players shouldn't (or wouldn't) have opinions about the above issues. Nor that their characters wouldn't have opinions or thoughts or percieved notions about what's "really" happening when Merlin uses magic. I am saying a story can, but need not, nail these matters down into "what's really going on." Some people would feel comfortable with this, others would not.)

I'd also suggest that what many people fear is "not going far enough" is further than some groups would need (according to their Creative Agendas) and that in RPGs in general we've often assume a bar higher than it needs to be.

Finally, keep in mind that what I'm discussing here is not a simple matter of degree. I'm touching on issues that are debated about HQ all the time, and that are at the heart of a lot of discussions about RPGs right now.

Is a Strenght 17 an objective rating in the world, or only a metric so we know where the worlds items and events stand in relation to the PC? People argue both points well. I don't care who's right. (They both are, really -- depending one what makes sense to you.

I do care that one point of view over another opens up a whole bunch of implications of what game play, player point of view, and purpose of play and Glorantha "logic" is going to be about.

I hope to god I've made it clear I'm not arguing for a lack of logic or a concern for making the details of the world matter. I don't know how else to say it anymore. But this: the reason HQ as an abstract Wealth is because the details of the Wealth don't matter. (Or, at least, as James will soon rush into clarify again -- to some of us!). What matters is the relative wealth between the charcters, the reward of the deed done, or gained for murdering some clan leader -- or something.

For some people, this is too little detail. And so they come up with new systems of Wealth. For some people the slipperiness of theological issues is too much to bear so they try to find the Unified Field Theory of Magic and Faith.

But what I'm offering -- specifically as a response to Syncretism thread (from my reading of HQ -- without several decades of Glorantha under my scalp), is that HQ isn't about building a world that "works." It's about building stories. That, again, while self consistent, exist as discrete units independent of the rational requirement of an "objective" viewer of real life -- whether modern or primitive.

Looking at the game session (not the world, but the session) this way relieves one of all sorts of mental gymnastics to get on with play.

Christopher

PS cross posted with greyorm -- maybe I don't suck!

Perhaps "Romanticised" is a better word than "Mythic" for this useage.

What you're saying about Glorantha (unless I'm misreading you completely) is pretty much the same rationale that would be applied to the "Wild West". Movies, novels, and RPGs set in the "Wild West" aren't really about the actual U.S. Western Frontier as it existed circa 1830-1890. It about using a romanticised version of the west as a back drop for telling various morality plays.

Glorantha doesn't need to "sweat the details" in order to work any more than having a burgeoning town with insanely wide streets in the middle of a desert for no apparent reason needs to be justified in order for a Fist Full of Dollars to work...any more than it matters which bridge in what state got blown up in The Good The Bad and The Ugly, or why all of the farmers clothes are spotlessly white after a hard days work in "The Magnificent Seven". These details are so irrelevant to the purpose of the story that to waste time pondering them is to miss that purpose completely.

Hi Ralph,

And just because I'm a bastard on this point...

Remember that before Don Quixote came along, almost all stories were romantic.

I've finally come to terms with the fact that, for whatever reason, even though I was raised into the 20th century, stories written long befor my time seem completely normal to me, whereas the novel -- with all its obsession on getting the minutia and logic of daily life correct, seem quite peculiar as a form of storytelling.

Thus, for me (and perhaps only me), it's less a matter of "romanticizing" Glorantha, than letting Gloranth breath easily as it wants to breath. The extra stuff seems to me to be when we try to make it work by the contemporary standards of a secular rational that removes ambiguity, mystery and poetic impression.

My point is I seem to be looking at this matter (like greyorm, like xenopulse) from a natural position at the opposite end of the telescope than is normally used by contemporary folk.

Christopher

Valamir wrote: why all of the farmers clothes are spotlessly white after a hard days work in "The Magnificent Seven".

Just because I'm protective about having people lay crap at my feet, no one in this thread said anythig about anyone being 'an inferior person'.

Right?

Sorry, i meant no implication that you or anyone else here would, just that some hypothetical straw man might.

soru

Why does somebody always keep bringing the hypothetical straw man to the party?

He can't drink. Doesn't dance. And can't even serve as a designated driver.

People, let's leave the guy at home.

;)

Christopher

Chris, re everything you've said:

Yes.

That is all.

soru wrote:

Valamir wrote: why all of the farmers clothes are spotlessly white after a hard days work in "The Magnificent Seven".

Thing is, that one in particular, maybe some of the others, does count as a thematic mistake, something that will makes some viewers think of the whole thing as an artificial set-bound Hollywood formal exercise of possible historical interest, instead of a dramatic story that could possibly be real somewhere. I really don't think it has a deliberate symbolic or narrative purpose: sometimes a wardrobe malfunction is just a wardrobe malfunction.

soru wrote: the alternative is to tell people 'you must ignore the flaws in my art, and if you can't bring yourself to do that, then you are an inferior person'.

greyorm wrote:

People complain about the movie "the Matrix" because one of the movie's premises is that it is scientifically impossible to gather usable amounts of energy from the human body and not expend the same or more in gathering it.

This point, even though true, is completely irrelevant to the film.

greyorm wrote:
This point, even though true, is completely irrelevant to the film. To bring it up is to basically shout, "Hey, I completely and totally missed the point of that whole movie!"

I'd like to suggest that the truth of Glorantha lies somewhere between the two sides posited here. It is not one with ancient myth and legend, neither is it the sort of Unified Field Theory world Chris (rightly, in my view) criticizes.

It is modern mythopoetry, inextricably linked to modern ideas and attitudes; in the same way that written fiction of our time cannot escape being part of the video world (compare Lord of the Rings with Harry Potter and ask why one translates much more neatly to the screen than the other).

The meanings we find in Glorantha are meanings of our time. Similarly, The Matrix is neither entirely uninteresting nor the sum of the meanings deliberately placed within it.

When I saw The Matrix at a local theatre in Slovenia, I had the unique opportunity of sitting close to the ideal spectator of the film - namely, to an idiot. A man in the late 20ies at my right was so immersed in the film that he all the time disturbed other spectators with loud exclamations, like "My God, wow, so there is no reality!"… I definitely prefer such naive immersion to the pseudo-sophisticated intellectualist readings which project into the film the refined philosophical or psychoanalytic conceptual distinctions.

It is nonetheless easy to understand this intellectual attraction of The Matrix: is it not that The Matrix is one of the films which function as a kind of Rorschach test [http://rorschach.test.at/] setting in motion the universalized process of recognition, like the proverbial painting of God which seems always to stare directly at you, from wherever you look at it — practically every orientation seems to recognize itself in it? My Lacanian friends are telling me that the authors must have read Lacan; the Frankfurt School partisans see in the Matrix the extrapolated embodiment of Kulturindustrie, the alienated-reified social Substance (of the Capital) directly taking over, colonizing our inner life itself, using us as the source of energy; New Agers see in the source of speculations on how our world is just a mirage generated by a global Mind embodied inthe World Wide Web. This series goes back to Plato's Republic: does The Matrix not repeat exactly Plato's dispositif of the cave (ordinary humans as prisoners, tied firmly to their seats and compelled to watch the shadowy performance of (what they falsely consider to be) reality? The important difference, of course, is that when some individuals escape their cave predicament and step out to the surface of the Earth, what they find there is no longer the bright surface illuminated by the rays of the Sun, the supreme Good, but the desolate "desert of the real." The key opposition is here the one between Frankfurt School and Lacan: should we historicize the Matrix into the metaphor of the Capital that colonized culture and subjectivity, or is it the reification of the symbolic order as such? However, what if this very alternative is false? What if the virtual character of the symbolic order "as such" is the very condition of historicity?

Slavoj Zizek The Matrix, or Two Sides of Perversion
http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizek-the-matrix-or-two-sides-of-perversion.html

I'd just like to pick up on another points of Chris', which is a bugbear of Gloranthan minutiae hunters: Glorantha runs on myth, but it's a ragbag collection of oftimes contradictory myths and myth complexes.

This much is pretty much a commonplace in Gloranthan discussions, but it does help to get past questions of "So who's right, the Lunars, the Orlanthi, the Malkioni, or who?"

More importantly though, it gets us into the very area Chris starts in: If Le Morte D'Arthur is a christian myth, what are all these pagans doing flinging magic about, and where's the devil? If Genesis is the story of a single faith, why are there many and varied names for God in the original Hebrew, and where the heck did those Nephilim come from? Is Robin Hood a displaced cotter or a disinherited nobleman?

These myths and legends were, though the "authors" would blush to admit it, the products of contradictory syncretic myth systems in collision. To a great extent, retellings of Arthur which place a struggle between christianity and paganism, or which prize "historical reality" miss the point, that the stories are products of Babel mythology, and, in their own way, in emerging from those traditions, in speaking from them, transcend them.

And that's the kind of stories that Gloranthan players can make: I'm not saying should (all you should do is play the game you enjoy). But it seems to me that the melting pot of empowered myths generates such stories emergently.

Hi Pete,

Thanks for picking up on those points. Since no one had mentioned them specifically, I thought I'd buried them somehow.

And the rest of ya'... We're not RPGing "At the Movies" here, so be careful!

droog, I think you're point about Glorantha (and HQ play) being a mix of past and present is well taken. There's simply no way to literally go backward in our thinking and storytelling. That said, Greg has made it clear he built Glorantha to help us do that very thing -- so it's part part of what Glorantha and HQ is about. Not as an intellectual exericise in Edith Hamilton style Mythology -- but, in the ideal, as an actual experience.

Certainly today's RPGers are influenced by cinema and TV. I would only add that an aspiring screenwriter who actually read Homer, Shakespeare, Beowulf and Malory would find more in common with a contemporary screenplay -- and more to learn from in term of laying out words on the page and structuring the tale -- than he would from novels written during the time of cinema's history. Counter intuitive, but true. "Literary" today means thick blocks of text that often take pride in the densityof the language. The works I just mentioned are pointed visuals that get on with it.

Much like HQ's resolution rules, in contrast to AD&D and many other RPG resolution mechanics.

Did I just create an anology of HQ resolution to Homeric Poetry? Yes! Because I'm not talking about a one to one analogy of product. These days I'm obsessing on analogies of creative process across media and metaphores to convey the differences what is produced in different creative agendas of play.

Christopher

here's another way pf putting it:

Glorantha is _really_ myth.

In Glorantha, a story can be both naturalistic and epic myth, at one and the same time.

soru

I think that what Soru, Droog and others are getting at is that Glorantha is Mythic, not Myth.

OK, forget I just said that.

Chris, are you familiar with Chris Lehrich's definition of Myth? I think this is the problem here. Myth, as it existed in civilizations where it was a living thing, and not as it is in ours where it's a phenomenon to be observed, is about the act of explaining reality. So it very, very much has to make sense. It's basically about making sense out of the real world which can seem very senseless to some people.

So, no, when it's pointed out that Glorantha has some myth quality, it's not saying that it's like a storybook where things can be handwaved. Not in the slightest. Yes, we believe that we're making fiction, and it would work to play it your way. But it also works on another level to require Glorantha to be internally consistent as though it were "real" myths (if you'll excuse what might look like an oxymoron but is not), that we were creating.

Not to even get into the "myths within myths" concept. Looked at another way, Glorantha is a hard, hard world in which myths have power. Not any more Mythical than our world is. Just fictional.

Mike

Hand waving?

Hand WAVING?

Mike, a quick question:

Is the "world" of The Iliad hard or soft? (And, as I hope I've made clear by now, when I use "world" in that context, I'm referring to the world as we know it from that specific telling of the story.)

Is the "world" of The Odyssey hard or soft?

Is the "world" of Le Morte D'Arthur hard or soft?

Is the "world" of Beowulf hard or soft?

Is Middle Earth hard or soft?

Because I see them as hard worlds. And those are the stories I've been referencing. I'd love to hear, if you do, why you think those worlds are soft?

(And I don't know if you caught it, but I made a special plea for folks not to get caught up in the word "Myth" a while back -- and pay more attention the tales I was referencing. Did you miss that? Or are the world's of the tales I'm referencing actually all soft and I never noticed it before?)

Christopher

soru wrote: I think we are going to have to agree to differ. The Matrix raises no interesting points...etc.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: Certainly today's RPGers are influenced by cinema and TV. I would only add that an aspiring screenwriter who actually read Homer, Shakespeare, Beowulf and Malory would find more in common with a contemporary screenplay -- and more to learn from in term of laying out words on the page and structuring the tale -- than he would from novels written during the time of cinema's history. Counter intuitive, but true. "Literary" today means thick blocks of text that often take pride in the densityof the language. The works I just mentioned are pointed visuals that get on with it.

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

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.

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

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.

contracycle wrote: 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.

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

joshua neff wrote:
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?

contracycle wrote: 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

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

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.

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.

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

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'.

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