Bias in Glorantha? from Tim Eccles on 1996-02-09 (Glorantha Digest Vol 02)

From: Tim Eccles <T.Eccles_at_kingston.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 16:59:22 GMT

My apologies if this comment seems a bit dumb or irrelevant, but I am rather concerned about the shift in bias over Sartarites, and can't get my mind round it.

IMHO in RQ/RQ2 Glorantha, all PCs were Sartarite or pro-Sartar. In RQ3 we have much more info on playing Lunars, Fonritians, westerners etc. This is fine. Brilliant in fact. However, it seems to me that with this enlightenment, comes a tendency to be anti-Sartarite and view them as dumb barbarians. Now, it seems to me that it is bad intellectual practice to assume that "barbarians" are stupid. They are just different.

Take Strangers in Prax, for example. Arlaten, a racist bigot, is portrayed as an intelligent free thinker. The Sartarite pagans are just dumb. Now, it is okay for Arlaten to think this way, but SiP itself seems IMHO to adopt this view. Look at the way Sartarites are portrayed as dumb for not wanting to be pumped full of sorcery spells. I would not let some doctor, dentist or employer have free reign to do whatever they felt like to me. Seems intelligent, not dumb to me.

I am sorry if this seems a trifle off the wall, but apart from being indoctrinated by RQ2 into being a Lunar hater, I do not see why there is this shift. Is this just my imagination? Or perhaps both I and the Sartarites ARE dumb!

Tim Eccles