Well, I think that that might not be so far off what Martin might _want_, but he at least recognises that his tastes are weird and will compensate accordingly. (Or rather, that all of us and Greg besides and weird...) Though I do sometimes wonder if Martin isn't so far off that particular end of the preoccupation spectrum as to somewhat distort his view significantly... ("I'm cutting right down on the martial cults: only half the book will be devoted to them... Hrm? Oria who?")
> AFAIK, his treatment of the Lunars in SGU *does* involve things
> that don't involve a scimitar, after all.
The 'Auxiliaries' chapter, doubtless? ;-)
> But as noted, one big point for Martin: he was willing to bring this up
> (on his initiative) on the GD *well-before* SGU comes out. A proposed
> RetCon now is less annoying than a RetCon from behind the scenes (ala
> Elmal) when the books comes out, and (if I understand Martin right) people
> are convincing him, by fleshing out and presenting the "Multi" position
> clearly, to possibly modify the Singular Emperor theory.
I concur. I imagine that in his position, I'd have reached a more 'moderate' compromise (though see below for the Greg wildcard...), but given the tone of some of the debate, I might have had to take out some contract killings just to make me feel better about the process. (Well, or the odd incandescent rant, at the least.) Martin, though occassionally infuriating, seems to be fairly calm about it all, and at least apparently open to input. (I hedge with 'apparently', as we haven't seen the result yet...)
> Let's not roast
> Martin alive for those sins which may be Greg's.
Let's roast him alive in any case, on the basis that if it's roasted a sufficiently already, roast it some more anyway, just to be certain. ;-) Greg is certainly known for taking extreme-sounding positions. Frequently, apparently opposite ones in rapid succession, or at moments of peak form, simultaneously. The anxiety I have about the Singular Martin Emperor Guff (henceforth, 'SMEG' <g>) is that it's based on one such Greggly extrema, without the same degree of 'I can believe 5 mutually contradictory things before breakfast' mental juggling that Greg seems to perform in many such cases. There's no easy remedy for this, other than a bit of caution, fence-sitting, and differencesplitting, but it a common difficulty I see in the 'Gloranthan process', since most of us, being computerists or lawyers or scientists or accountants, tend to be a lot more reductionist in our thinking than, well, Californian Arkati neo-shamanic Trickster mythographers, for example.
As others have pointed out, though, it's perfectly consistent to have Moonson be a highly magical, unique divine being, _and_ have his remanifestation mediatated by mortals, and hence almost of necessity by human politics, without any requirement for a D. Phil. in Illumination, Zen Koan and Doublethink. So this one ought not to be an insuperable problem...
> The only caveat I might add to it is a slight worry that it's too much
> Excitement. There seem to be an *awful* lot of horrible World-Spanning
> plots out there; the good thing about this is that it gives a lot of
> room for GMs to pick and choose what works in their campaigns (as I'd do
> IMG). The bad thing is that I worry that it might just numb the players
> after a while. <exaggeration> "Oh, the Blue Moon is going to fall on
> Sartar? Wow, the Red Moon just fell on it last week -- the part that
> wasn't destroyed by the Big Flood, eaten by the Gorp Mountain, trampled
> by the Indigo Dragon or destroyed by the Volcano Giants." </ex>
Indeed. I'm not averse to a spot of world-shattering myself, but if it isn't reasonably 'grounded', it essentially just leads to World-Spanningness Inflation, with numbers likewise spirally before progressively less and less impressed players. I tactic I personally like to to mix the 'grounded' and the 'whacky out there stuff', firstly for a bit of colour and contrast, and secondly so that when the shit _does_ hit the proverbial fan, one feels some sort of emotional attachment to said fan (or to said shit, perhaps). "The Volcano Giant steps on this house, here..." "Booger, that's Uncle Venric's place! I'll never hear the end of this!!"
> I'm not certain as to the full extent of what's going on, but it *does*
> seem to me like each region, elder race, religion, et. al. has some
> massive scheme/event coming (much previously suggested in the GB, of
> course). Hopefully this all works for the best, but if the *ducks* have
> a Big HW Plot, I draw the line.
Form would suggest that a) they do, and b) it's momentally silly, if not, to use a technical Scottish term, Total Shite. ;-)
Cheers,
Alex.
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