Jane Williams wrote:
> How can you deal with the situation where you as Narrator have
> made an error in canon Gloranthan fact, or in rules-based How
> Glorantha Works, and a player has noticed and been confused by
> it?
This is something that just came up recently in my Play-by-Post adventure on RPG.net -- I described a Dara Happan woman seen in a crowd as wearing the robes and other regalia of an initiate of Buserian. Whoops -- I meant to write "Irippi Ontor", but the text editor wouldn't allow me to change the post after 24 hours. So I continued to refer to her as "the Buserian woman" as long as no one was making a big deal of it. Eventually one of the players pointed out that a female initiate of Buserian would be almost unthinkable in male-dominated Dara Happan culture.
So, I found myself running down all the possible flub-points you've outlined. I could claim that women can be part of the Buserian religion in My Glorantha, but that isn't what I had intended, and not how I wanted My Glorantha to be. I suggested to all players that, now that the mistake was out in the open, we all just acknowledge the woman as an initiate of Irippi Ontor thereafter and ignore all previous references to Buserian. The likely solution was suggested by the fellow who caught the gaffe, and matches your #4. Cooperative discussion has revealed possible explanations for the discrepancy in the robes -- misidentification of the robes, the robes may be Buserian but not necessarily the person wearing them, etc.
I'm sorry to say that I wasn't clever enough on this occasion to work it out on my own, but when a Narrator really finds himself or herself holding the sticky end of a canon or coninuity gaffe, is unable to figure out a solution on his or her own, and the gaffe really is jarring to the suspension of disbelief, then turning to a cooperative solution seems best.
!i!
Powered by hypermail