Age, etc.

From: ANDOVER_at_delphi.com
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 17:05:48 -0400 (EDT)


Nick Brooke writes that 1968 was a good year. Same for me, it was the year I got married!
The old Tales poll had the oldest reader as being born in December 1941. I was born in October that year, which definitely puts me among the oldest group of gamers, even in RQ. 1941 was an even more exciting year than 1968, from all that I have heard. However, despite my age, I have helped keep the RQ audience young by contributing my sons and their friends to the game. June is a heavy political month in NYC this year, and I have not been able to keep up with the 3-4 digests a day (not to mention dozens of other messages) that have been arriving "over the transom." I have saved them all and will catch up in July. The Gim Gim stories will resume also. As for the various discussions on the line, I came to Glorantha through Runequest. My gaming experience stretches all the way back to the Fifties, playing Gettysburg with rulers and Fletcher Pratt's naval game on the floor!
I like the world, as I do Tekumel and Middle-Earth. I'm afraid that, without being tied to actual play, discussions on this line have the danger of drifting off into "fantasy" or esoterica, rather like late studies of mysticism.
I think I am a "Hidden Variable Objectivist" about Glorantha, as I am about Earth. While there is an underlying "reality," there is no reason to expect humans (or GMs) to know what it is. That's why we always roll for DI -- the GM has no more reason to know what "the Gods" want than anyone else does.
However, the pure "subjectivist" position is off-putting, seeming to verge on solipsism. Glorantha is a socially-constructed reality, else why are we talking at all about it? So it isn't much confort to say that "your Glorantha may differ," whether speaking of us or Gloranthans!

Jim Chapin


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