It is? Greg might argue thusly, so I wouldn't dismiss it _too_ casually, but I haven't noticed anyone actually arguing here from this position. I for one certainly think that religious experience in Glorantha is "genuine" in a sense that RW religion is not. However, I don't think that having a genuine religious experience has much to do with being able to get God's telephone number.
> This notion that everyone's right and nobodies wrong smacks of humanism
> not theism.
OK, I'll bite. Who in Glorantha is "wrong", then? Presumably, all the non-theists, in the light of the above.
> This argument is getting pretty damn boring.
I'll not disagree with that. The trouble is, while the "subjectivists" seem largely happy with the Gloranthan status quo, that certain "objectivist" splinter groups insist on demanding that Glorantha be "fixed". When they're repeatedly invited to explain what's broken about it, we reach this sort of impasse. The implication is often made that a "subjective" Glorantha is a moral atrocity or an unplayable nightmare, but rarely gets backed up by any reasoned argument, or at least not one what takes makes account of what the other side is actually saying.
If this all just comes down to a personal preference, fine and dandy. If someone wants to assume, or construct, or JeSeven out of late-60's- -early-80's obscuria an Objective Reality that suits their campaign purposes, or simply their personal predilictions, then good on 'em. If subsequent Gregging attempts to dent this, then I strongly recommend you cry "Screw the fecker", as they might say in these parts. For most campaigns, I suspect what the "objective truth" of Gloranthan reality is doesn't matter a whole lot, as there's probably not much disgreement between different subjective viewpoints, so to assume that the consensus view is Objectively True is (at worst) largely harmless. If ones campaign is so broad-ranging that different viewpoints are going to require a lot of work to reconcile ("It's Tuesday, so this must be Carmania", if you will), then one can try to do the same thing, but you may have to knock some corners off the "official" version.
What my concern is, though, is the apparent wish to establish some sort of before-the-fact criteria that only things which _can_ be so reconciled become part of the Gloranthan Canon (and I suspect that not even the self-proclaimed Objectivists would agree what sort of reconciliation is possible or desirable). I see this as, to pinch Martin's phrase, limiting. I don't see that (say) hunters, herders, and civilised folk perforce _ought_ to agree what happens to animal's souls upon slaughter, or that there should be some Ordained Truth as to which of them is right, and which wrong. Ditto with Doraddi and Losalmi beliefs about what happened at the Dawn and in the Darkness, etc, etc, yadda-yadda, blah, blah. Some people seem to think the "subjectivists" are intolerantly and unilaterally trying to impose a "One True Glorantha" on everyone else, but the reverse danger seems altogether more real.
> Sure, it has no effect on PC/NPC interaction but it could have an effect
> on game play as far as we're concerned. [...] If two cultures are
> clashing [...] it's nice to know the basis of their belief.
There's a considerable difference between something having a perceptible effect on game play, and something which a particular GM thinks it would be "nice to know". In order for the Objective Truth to make any difference in a "culture clash" situation, it implies that at some point it'll poke out at them, and one (or both) will realise their error, repent of it and assume some more "true" position. As _you yourself argue_, Oliver, this doesn't seem to happen very much. Cultures encounter each other, and emerge with their prejudices largely intact, if not reinforced. Furthermore, when it does have an effect, as in the case of say the Theyalan Coucil, or the Middle Sea Empire, many would question if the New Truths discovered are any more Objectively True than the old ones, as compared with what a hypothetical "unbiased" person would think the most likely historical facts to be.
> I really dislike this idea that myth is so mutable that it can easily be
> changed to suit changes in circumstance or situation.
I don't think anyone is suggesting myth is "easily" changed. We're talking Major HeroQuest, here. To take the Huma?t? example, we're dealing with _Arkat_, heavens to murgatroid. And the net result of this huge change is that: an associate deity or two gets dropped; a certain spell becomes reusable, and maybe they get one or two others; a single letter in the god's name gets moved and transmuted; and there's a change in the mythology, to "explain" all the above. Sounds dealable-with to me. I think the idea that Arkat could equally have changed Humath into the god of Pink Bananas or whatever is fanciful, and bordering on being one of these humanoid figures constructed of dried grain stalks. Making an entirely wholesale, and mythically unreasonable change is either a) flatly impossible, or b) requires a corresponding bigger heroquest to accomplish (thus in effect, see a), for all practical purposes).
The real clincher for me is that the above two cases are effectively indistinguishable. When Arkat "invented" Humakt, was he making up new myth out of whole cloth, or was "rediscovering" bits of the Objective Truth which were previously obscured under subjective cultural detail? It's impossible to tell either way. If you want to interpret it as one rather than the other, you're entirely free to do so.
(Dead)Doggedly,
Alex.
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