Martin Crim, grim crusader for a better Glorantha, writes:
>Cute smiley notwithstanding, this is a personal slap. As ad hominem
>attacks generally mean that you have no substantive argument to make, I
>suggest you lose.
And also:
>I'm suggesting ways to improve the game. The hostile
>reaction I'm getting is irrational,
Okay, let's look at examples of insults and hostility:
>I could continue to heap invective and ridicule on the embarrassing and
>ridiculous relics of the wargaming past, relics which haunt the present
>like platform shoes and naugahyde jackets in the bottom of the trunk, but
>my point is made and the arguments against it, if I may say so, smack of
>inertia and a counterproductive nostalgia.
Look familiar. He also said the following:
>It's more akin to clipping your toenails at dinner with the President
>than it's like trying to divide by zero: you can do it, but it's
>esthetically and socially displeasing.
Wait, there's more:
>Rationalizing place names reminds me of Trekkies who try to rationalize
the bits in the show that don't fit. (Snipping bit's) It's pathetic.
I could use Martin's own argument back on him:
>As ad hominem attacks generally mean that you have no substantive
>argument to make, I suggest you lose.
But will try (once again) to get him to defend his position and address the points I raised. To help him out, I'll list some.
1)Explain how requiring your players to speak Sartarite when speaking in character is a straw man (or even Alex's and Peter's less absurd examples), but insisting that names such as Swenstown imply the Sartarite word for town is town is not one.
2)Explain how changing the place names to their native language versions instead of the translations would help introduce new players to the world when it would impose an even steeper learning curve than what Glorantha actually has. If possible, use your personal experience of actually bringing new players to Glorantha, as I did.
3)Explain how having a unintelligible series of syllables (I call it thus because I doubt if anyone short of M.A.R. Barker or J.R.R. Tolkein would actually learn an artificial language such as this to the point of thinking in it) better represents a name "as the natives of Glorantha see it" than the translation of that name would.
and a new argument:
4)Explain how having Gloranthan names based on real world people or things reduces the verisimilitude as long as valid Gloranthan explanations exist, when any method of generating names has, ultimately, a real world cause. Thus the fact that Notchet's actual origin is based on a bad pun has no bearing on it's Gloranthan reality.
I state that your "ways to improve the game" would actually have the opposite effect, and have presented numerous reasons why I think so. If you want to defend your point, address mine.
Finally, if you had presented these things simply as your opinions, or if you had been suggesting finding the Gloranthan names while keeping the current ones for general use, there wouldn't have been near the reaction you received. However, you did not, as is shown by these quotes:
>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.
and
>Let's get rid of the embarrassing names already.
These are just some examples of you presenting opinion as absolute fact. I can't speak for anyone else, but this is extremely annoying and insulting to me. You should remember the motto of the digest; "Everything Greg says is wrong". If we don't accept his pronouncements ex cathadra, why would we accept your's?
Hoping for a substantive reply
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