Julian Lord sighs and says some things

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_mail.utexas.edu>
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 19:53:04 -0700


Julian Lord says several things:

> > >Glorantha is literature ; not a description of any kind of reality.
> > >And the purpose of this literature is to induce pleasurable dreams
> > >and fantasies which, by necessity, are incompatible with
> > >'the' scientific method of reason.
> >
> > I disagree;

> What's to disagree with ? That Glorantha is not reality ???

         No, that "pleasurable dreams and fantasies which, by necessity, are incompatible with 'the' scientific method of reason." is true. Those dreams and fantasies may have fantastic elements, but if they do not have some logic (based perhaps on wildly different root assumtions), they are not stories (or not very good stories, or incomprenesible stories, or experimental fiction, (the last two of which aren't really stories since they don't exist to tell a story but to do something else.).

> On the other hand :

> > stories must have some underlying structure of logic or
> > they are impossible to follow.

> (Sigh!) Logic isn't Reality.

> RR Mantra : "Go with the story"

> NOT 'Swallow It Hook Line And Sinker'.

        Um, OK, but what does this have to do with anything? If the story has no logic, if anything can happen, it has no direction. Don't you feel cheated by authors who can't keep their plots in line, who rely on dei ex machinae, and revise their "rules of the road" at whim?

> > There is a difference between YGMV and the problems of a setting
> > that has been built up by committee over some 30 years of writing and game
> > play.

> What is this 'difference' ?

        YGMV, it seems to me, deals mostly with little things, or interpretations (Nandan: diety or menace?, which Agrath (or Arkat) is the right one?). If your interpretation of Carminian society differs radically from Mr. Metcalfe' (for example), however, you are going to substantially modify published material for your game. If you disagree on enough topics, YGMV so much that you are playing in an entirely different world. It's nice, then, not to have the rug pulled out from under you too often or, more constuctively, to find ways to justify ill fitting pieces to make them fit better. Glorantha will never be smooth, much like the real world, but if there are too many gaps or contradictions or implausibilities, then the "realness" of the setting suffers.

> And : why didn't anyone invite me to the commitee meetings ??!?

        What do you think this digest is? Maybe not a committee meeting; more like barroom philosophizing (or brawling).

> > That Glorantha will never be consistent does not mean that a certain
>rough consistancy isn't a valuable thing.

> Is anyone suggesting the opposite ?

Well, yes. You are, if you are claiming that the pieces of Glorantha don't need to fit together because they are "mythic." If anything can happen, then nothing that happens is very interesting. Kind of like when I was first playing D&D (around 1976), and we would find TV dinners in monster's treasure chests. It was funny when I was 12....

> You are confusing consistency and logic with reality.

        I'm not. Really, I promise. In the real world, you can't fly, no matter how much you pray to Orlanth; that's reality. If you say "a" and then say "b," and they don't contradict each other, that's consistency. If "b" can be generated from "a;" that's logic (logic is more than that, but I'm trying to keep a parallel construction here; give me a break). Asking the story to make sense is not the same as asking the story to reflect reality or that the story be "true.".

as Carl Fink says:

> Anyway, I *do* want non-contradictory literature. Literature that
>changes the name and > nature of a major character like the Sun depending >on, say, who's talking to him, had >*better* have a good explanation.

        I'm not advocating for a "one true Glorantha," with all the myths neatly lined up. I do believe, however, that the mythic structure of Glorantha should be a structure; it should be possible to see how things fit together, and, when something doesn't fit, it should be possible to see why. After all, the exception does not "prove" the rule; it "proofs" (or tests) it.

Peter Larsen

Peter Larsen


End of The Glorantha Digest V8 #42


Powered by hypermail