I think that's splitting hairs on the main point.
Until the Montpelier brothers, number of humans that could fly = 0.
Even if the number of people that could fly was vanishingly small - say one
hundredth of one percent, that still means that close to 400 can in
Maniria, and almost 1000 in Loskalm.
I think there's a radical change in viewpoint that comes from this, and it
would be present if you divide these even by a factor of 10. (Remember,
that actual "flight" isn't really necessary - a boosted mystic vision would
allow the sage to view things from on-high from the comfort of his or her
easy chair.)
Look at *most* medieval maps - they refer to things by size, and by
distance, but its uncommon that you see a map that refers to things in what
we would recognize as a "cartographically rigorous" fashion. (This is
excepting mariners navigational maps, which were exceedingly accurante for
the time. But if you want to talk about mariners, IMO, it'd be a foolish
sea captain indeed that wouldn't have/hire someone who could do such a
thing during a voyage. The value of such early-warning in terms of
pirates, storms, shallows, monsters, etc would be almost priceless.)
Alex continues:
>> In Glorantha, any large scale merchant, ruler, or scholarly =
>institution
>> worth its salt would have a basically perfect map of at least their =
>area,
>> if not the world.
>
>I think this assumption is Boring and Uncool, for reasons similar to
>the objections raised to the idea of perfect, multiple-compass
>navigation. Glorantha with Lozengal Positioning Satellites (dwarf
>ones aside) is getting too far away from the idea of "ancient world
>as it really _should_ have been" and into "cod fantasy".
I will certainly accept the argument in regards to MGF. But that's like arguing "orange" is prettier than "blue" - it's purely subjective. I personally don't see why it would be against MGF, though - 90% of the players will already have a mental map of places better than any bronze age navigator could have hoped for. I think it actually makes things easier for the players that they can make decisions based on this knowledge, rather than "pretending" they don't have it...
For a dim American: What's a "cod fantasy"? I hesitate to visualize such thing.
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