Dave P.
>I'm with Mr. Cake here. Martin, you seem to be incapable of divorcing
>your military bias (call it strategy or logistics or whatever) from _any_
>aspect of a society.
Alas, I'm a convinced Clausewitzian.
>Not everything relates to the military or strategic
>goals of a state.
What?!?! Horror of horrors! Blasphemy! Burn the heretic!
:)
>To put it another way it is equaly valid to view everything through a
>economics perspective.
Yes, which is a strategic view.
>In this case the excersize of force, be it
>conquest, internal dispute, etc are all simply ploys to enhance a
>particular faction/nation/individual's economic position or to
>disadvantage one's opponents.
Agreed. Consider though the term "strategy", this is _not_ a military term. It is also a business term, a term used by Govts to describe policy that is often not at all warlike in any way. It is policy directed goal creation. This is not a warlike concept, but one central to the whole of human endeavour. Clausewitz recognised that war is subordinate to policy. Policy need not be rational and usually isn't but it works upon its own logic.
>Thus the conquest of Sartar and the Holy
>Country is simply a means to get a secure route through to the sea for
>trading purposes.
Agreed, which is a strategic decision, not military.
>Alternatively one could view it from a religious perspective. The LE is a
>means of spreading the influence of the RG as widely as possible and as
>such is only useful when it accomplishes this.
The spread of ones faith or ideology is an act of policy. It is defined by strategic goals. As I said, policy need not be rational in the "spock" logic fashion, it can be passionate and emotive.
>Indeed the empire itself
>is just a distraction and can be discarded when its purpose has been
>served.
Right, but that is the policy of one ideological group, who have their own concepts of what is important and strategies to persue those concepts and goals.
>Hell, one could even look at it from a Darwinin perspective. In this view
>the LE and RG are memes that are competing with the established Orlanth
>meme and striving to displace each other.
True enough, though this is not open to strategic analysis because you are referring to a natural concept or "law" rather than the interaction of the players as individual actors in the process. Here the process subsumes all aspects of the individual or sub-group.
>War and military conquest is
>simply one way of achieving this goal, neither more or less important than
>peaceful cultural assimilation, etc.
Agreed. But all of those are aspects of strategic decision making.
>If I was sick enough I could come up with a plausible Freudian explanation
>of the entire thing (I'll leave that to somebody else...)
Please do!
>Each of these views gives rise to completely different motivations being
>attributed to the same actions and different potential outcomes. Why
>quash these by elevating one above all others.
I wouldn't dream to. My terminology may be the sticking point here. It all depends on what you view as strategy. It is not a military term alone.
>These are all equally valid ways of looking at things - the problem with
>viewing things from only one perspective is that you lose all the fun and
>subtlety (I know you think that is a nasty word ;)
I agree, one perspective is a bad thing. The more the merrier.
>that is possible from
>combining them. Forgive me for saying this but you haven't given any
>indication that any of these other perspectives are a part of your vision
>of the LE, except as subsidary to a largely militaristic view.
Oh they are. I don't deny my passion is in things military, but part of that study brings you to view politics, economics and social + religious factors as being all part of the matrix of possibility.
>Why could it not be that the armies and upright heroic Conan types that
>you like are simply unwitting tools being manipulated by the scheming,
>subtle buerocrats and politicians and who don't end up with a "scimitar
>through thier heads"?
Oh they do! It would be no fun if the Conan character triumphed with ease. Plus Conan is merely one form of the heroic concept. He is an extreme. The icon that is Conan can only fulfil one part of the struggle for the Empire. There are bureacrats (who can both be heroic and cowardly), merchants (who can be honest and treacherous), politicians (who can be self serving or idealistic), Priests (who can be parochial or inclusive), Nobles (who can be noblesse oblige incarnate or ruthless tyrants). etc
All these things are possible in the Empire. I have no dislike of any of these. I merely expressed a preference for the ultimate goal of a campaign I run.
>Indeed that is far more likely to happent to the
>Conan-type anyway. I want the empire to be as amenable (or even more
>so) to "Yes Minister" type games as it is to the Dirty Dozen.
Excellent! I'd play in a game like that in a shot. I love Yes Minister or House of Cards or other political works. I'd also happliy play in the Wild Bunch with Sam Peckinpah firing real bullets at his actors to get real reactions...
>Nothing in
>what you've written in the digest or the Lunar discussion list or from
>gaming with you has suggested that this will be whole-heartedly supported.
I hope the work will convince you otherwise.
> Me:
> >Far from it. The
> >military and magical spheres are linked utterly. One cannot think army
> >without thinking magic. One cannot think battle without thinking heroquest
> >and ritual. In Glorantha these things are utterly interlinked.
> David
> > ...but what I was asking for is for them not to linked - to have
> >heroquest without battles
> Like an Erissa quest or a Yestendos quest? No problem with that.
>No, like major plot arcs or the fate of empires _not_ being an exclusively
>military matter. The fall of the Middle-Sea empire came about as a
>mythico-religious backlash. The Gift Carriers, the fall of the
>Six-leggers, the expulsion of the False-Dragon ring were not primarily
>military.
Fair enough. In Glorantha I think very, very little is decided in a purely "military" manner, as we would understand it in our world. Of course, your definition of military in G might have to change a bit due to the effect of magic and myth.
>Yes they can be viewed as "surgical strikes" but that, IMHO,
>robs them of a significant part of their interest and importance.
Agreed. Myth is the keystone of Glorantha and everything should ultimately revolve around that.
> >This is far more the norm than armies clashing in Peloria. Label> >subtler effects than that, and doesn't involve direct engagement with the
> >it 'commando style action by small elite units' if you wish to try and fit
> >it into your military worldview, but I don't think that really captures
> >much of the feel of whats going on - a lot of heroquesting has rather
> In war, the fact that a worker in a factory never sees the enemy or even
> understands what the war is about has no impact on the definition of his
role
> in the conflict. He is part of the grand strategic actions of the nation
or
> group of federation he is represented by. A magical ritual, used to
> strength crops is a strategic asset. It gives food, which feeds the base
> population, which enhances the logistical attributes of the nation. On a
> magical level, the cumulative rituals of the priests for the blessing of
the
> Emperor empower him with magics that are used for strategic purposes.
Their
> low level worship is also a strategic asset. All of these things are
> interlinked. When I discuss military action, it is not distinct from non
> military action, because all actions that a state performs, whether
military
> or not are directly related to its strategic function and goals.
>This is only one way of looking at it. I'm afraid that you are losing a
>great deal of the subtelties and richness by adhering to this blinkered
>view...
It is a method of expression and analysis I am used to.
>Just reread that paragraph above - "war, logistics, strategic
>asset, strategic function and goals"! Even when you say that the military
>perspective is not the most important you couch it in miltary terms!
Perhaps they sound military in all particulars to you, but they are not, if one looks at the definitions of those terms. Just go to the library and check out all the business and economics and politics titles with the word "strategy" in there somewhere.
Three of my business degree courses we Marketing Strategy, Operations Strategies and Systems Strategies. A less military bunch of lecturers you'd be hard pressed to find outside the sociology department.
>Please don't take this as a personal attack,
Not at all, a good post with valid concerns.
>I'm merely trying to point
>out that a military methphor is not neccesarily always the best way to
>approach something.
True enough. If I analyse in military terms it is a product of a lot of time spent doing so. I am most comfortable with strategic analysis in that mode. Roleplaying and Glorantha needs some military analysis, as many games lack it terribly. Memories of Forgotten Realms armies of 80,000 troops supported by 100,000 people spring to mind.
However, in no way do I intend SGU to be a military treatise. There are perhaps 3000 words devoted to a brief summary of the Imperial military. Most of that summary revolves around the current state of the army and the roleplaying opportunities its decline as a fighting force brings.
Equal sections concentrate on the economy, law, travel, getting drunk. The truly huge section is on cults. Massive 1/3 of the book. The cultural keywords and herobands take up the rest.
Martin Laurie
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