>And half the American states have names in "foreign languages" drawn
>from a variety of tongues, including French, Spanish, Latin, Greek and
>various Indian tongues.
A wonderful variety of in-this-world sources for names. Surely with so many examples of how names can be derived, there is no need to resort to cute names which mean nothing to persons in the world?
>The worst Glorantha name, and the only one found in other games, is
Corflu
>(Correction fluid, an ancient and now forgotten technology). As for
towns
>and other features named after game players and designers, that was a
>convention of 70's game designers.
Brian Tickler also pointed this out, and it's something I've been aware of a long time. I've played a lot of '70's games, however, and never noticed this as a "convention" before. In any case, being a convention doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake. If everybody else jumped off a cliff...
>So keep the names! By now they have deep historical and legendary
roots.
Like what?
And Rick Meints opines:
>WHAT I RECOMMEND AS A SOLUTION...
>Take the silly names as a challenge to think up a plausable history.
>I much prefer that to having to redo the maps and learn a whole new
>set of place names. If that violates your need to have everything
>make linguistic and cultural sense, sorry.
Thanks for the chuckle on "redoing the maps." Isn't that exactly what Chaosium et al. have done every time they put out a map, or couldn't they tell that none of their scales agree? As for "learning a whole new set of place names," I'd rather learn the real *Gloranthan* ones than these obviously contrived substitutes.
Let me make clear why my proto-list isn't "10 things I hate" or "10 things that suck" or even "10 things Greg could have done better." It's "10 Things Greg Stafford Got Wrong About Glorantha (tm)" because they were *mistakes*, pure and simple. I'll quote briefly from the FAQ:
>>>>
<excerpt>* Glorantha as background for a roleplaying game
(the RuneQuest or rules level),
(the genre or mythological level),
breathing nuts-and-bolts world (the 'emic' or
Gloranthan level), and
(the absolute or 'nomic' level).
</excerpt><<<<<<<<
Of these 4 levels, the only one on which the fake, mundane, plagiarized, silly, or out of place names work is the second. And on that level they're outdated and were at best in jokes, not amusing to the rest of us, when they were fresh.
Am I imagining things, or wasn't Biggle Stone described (and pictured on the map) as a stand of mushrooms? In the middle of Prax? Is there some additional in-joke here, perhaps?
One of the things I immediately liked about Glorantha was one of Greg's comments from the intro to Griffin Mountain, about the first draft of the map: "The original geography had an appalling lack of realism. Even as magical geography it lacked enough familiarity to let me suspend my disbelief."
Too bad he didn't apply this rule to himself.
Let the goal be losing ourselves for as long as possible in Glorantha. Stafford isn't Bertold Brecht, deliberately denying the audience the ability to get caught up in the action and achieve catharsis. Glorantha should be the kind of place where you don't have to rationalize the place names.
Rationalizing place names reminds me of Trekkies who try to rationalize the bits in the show that don't fit. For example, when Spock showed emotion in the pilot, later aired as part of the 2-part episode, rather than admit that the writers hadn't figured out the character yet, the fans want to say that Spock was experimenting with feeling emotion. It's pathetic.
Boris adds, while completing missing my points, a plea for:
>>>>
<excerpt>mythological ... verisimilitude
</excerpt><<<<<<<<
But Swenstown (fake English; named after RW person) doesn't add verisimilitude, mythological or otherwise. It's a big fish that slaps you in the face and says "it's a game, and a silly one at that." I want my silliness in the world, not a world whose very existence is silly.
Keith N isn't worried about the actual Gloranthan languages. But I am, and apparently I'm not entirely alone. I'd at least like to have enough to create some rea-freaking-listic place names along the lines of Loren Miller's work.
And yes, I meant to say Loren Miller when I wrote David Dunham. Sorry to you both and to anyone else I may have offended, here or in Glorantha...
Oh, and the "What are Uleria's runes" thread seems to be in the "yes it is"/"no it isn't" stages. Any hope of peace before Christmas?
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