It did work very well, for a while. Ultimately, IMO, the GLers were a failure - being squashed in a most spectacular way is a failure in my book.
>One could liken the God Learners to careless atomic scientists. They
>discover that they can control chain reactions. They can even make really
>big explosions. They dream of atomic airplanes. But they neglect to see the
>environmental cost of careless use.
I know the atomic scientist analogy is appealing, but I'm going to use a less politically charged one - fiscal spreadsheets. Many folk in finance tend to categorize revenues and expenditures into manageable items so that trends can be spotted, future performance gauged, etc. Similarly the GLers categorized myth into manageable themes for similar purposes (manageability is just another word for control). Unfortunately, these categories usually don't add up perfectly when you start making really complicated cross-comparisons. When a project requires intense detail, the handy categorization system collapses because it is a simplification.
Similarly, the GLer myth-categorization is damned handy as a tool for examining mythic themes and cults. That's why we use the Jrusteli method in GoG - nobody wants to inventory the several thousands of cults of Orlanth in Genertela, so much detail would be useless (just like a comprehensive low-org report of a major program is all but useless). Unfortunately, nasty surprises can be hidden in that detail - when one of the cults don't fit into the matrix.
IMO, that was ultimately the flaw in GLer method. It was mostly correct, but mostly isn't exactly. Unfortunately, exactly is what the GLers needed.
Yours truly in fiscal joy,
Jeff Richard
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #651
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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