> I think your postings on this topic are quite tenebrous enough, without
> wanting to rewrite the usual meaning of "quibble" from minor disagreement,
> to total disagreement on a issue unilaterally declared to be minor,
> despite being the entire topic of the thread...
Well I'm sorry, but you seem to have taken a throwaway remark and blown it completely out of proportion. When I said "quibble" I meant it, in the sense that it is (as far as I can remember, this is already a fairly old thread, you know) an _exception_ to the general rule that Glorantha is generally ineffable.
> > The difference being that our knowledge of Glorantha is *entirely*
> > literary/linguistic, so that there is a particular class of
> > Gloranthan facts, expressed officially using literary/linguistic
> > methods, that we can simply accept as facts (In Our Gloranthas),
> > because of the medium used, whereas real Gloranthans would constantly
> > need to adjust such ideas to actual reality as known by far more
> > direct (but far less effective) magical and natural means.
>
> Which amounts to say that "top-down" Glorantha is better than "bottom-up".
No, not "better". Different.
And this is also a "quibble" because the number of these basic positive facts that we do know is _very small_ compared to those that we can discover through Gloranthan gaming and writing, and which fail to transcend their general ineffability.
This is a quibble for quantitative reasons, not qualitative ones.
Put, I hope, more clearly, there is a class of abstract, general, basic Gloranthan knowledge that we possess, and Gloranthans don't. OTOH there is a far, far larger category of direct, local, positive, sensory, etc, knowledge that Gloranthanspossess and we don't.
Which is meant to suggest that "bottom-up" glorantha is inherently superior to the "top-down" version, with the minor quibble that in one very abstract and definitionally localised field, the "top-down" version is superior to the other.
Which is, quite eminently, a minor quibble.
> One of the attractions of Glorantha for me is that the perceptions of
> the inhabitants (and it's the inhabitants, after all, that we'll be
> RPing, story-viewpoint, etc) are _not_ subordinated to some a priori
> "how things really are" that may be seen to negate their validity.
Absolutely.
> Sure, some things are "expressed officially as facts" which correspond
> to those perceptions were they are genuinely universal (there's a
> big yellow thing in the sky, it's warm and bright, it moves -- well,
> at least in _this_ age there is), but that's evidently not what we're
> talking about here, is it now?
Yes and No.
> Rather it's where some alleged
> "higher level of Gloranthan fact" is either _counter_ to those
> perceptions, or in a total disconnect from them.
If you will, it's a "higher level of Gloranthan fact" that those perceptions are derived from, and defined by.
<sigh!> This is *extremely* abstract. We're talking about such meta-laws as "Gloranthan realities are derived from the variable consequences of those realities".
This, or something like it, is a positive, albeit highly abstract, fact about Glorantha.
> > > Or equally, let's suppose that Greg or Mark decides to
> > > inform us of one or other such fact. In what sense is this more
> > > positive knowledge than a Gloranthans experience of this truth?
> >
> > It is more positive because of our fiat.
>
> Yes, I understand that you're saying this; but you're not making any
> case that this is in any way true. Not from gaming utility, not in
> narrative terms, not in any that can be connected to an experience
> of that world, not philosophically. Well, depending on one's choice
> of philosophy, I suppose (sensing a very large landmine go *click* as
> I step on it).
I think that one's a dud, lucky guy !!
I think you're overinterpreting my statements : our fiat is made of a certain number of basic decisions which, in our Gloranthas, become inherently true.
The fact that we can share, and diversely interpret, such decisions, does not actually rob them of their basic truth, particularly when these decisions are enshrined as officially accepted HQ world rules.
It seems to me that you are suggesting that our knowledge of Glorantha is itself variable, and that therefore these basic facts are themselves subject to a basic variability and therefore ineffability. This is a valid objection IMO, up to a certain point, where certain general structures and/or particular details of Glorantha can be confidently described as invariables, as we would otherwise be unable to share what we're talking about.
> The most natural comparison as, I suppose with the authorial voice
> in a conventional story, where we drift into an "... but in point
> of fact..." mode. (Or by way of ObGeekery, maybe I should say The
> Book in HHGttG, or the somewhat anal-compulsive "notes" in Schlock
> Mercenary...) Those are not, however, in the the normal reading
> of such, any more positive pieces of knowledge than those mediated
> by the experiences of characters. And in any event, conventionally
> those are merely things that happen to be beyond the _current_ scope
> of _certain_ characters, not things that in principle unknowable
> to everyone in the narrative (which is at least two orders of magnitude
> more obscure and pointless, it seems to me).
Gloranthan player characters certainly do not partake of any such level of absolute truth.
"Schlock Mercenary" ? Tell me more !!
Obscure, certainly. Pointless ? May I remind you that this is a _quibble_, and is presented as such ? You realise that you're implicitly agreeing with me about that ?
What I'm saying is that there are a certain number of Gloranthan descriptives that we simply *must* accept as being positive facts about Glorantha, if that is we wish to continue discussing Glorantha and not talk about something completely different instead.
And if there's any useful point here at all, it lies in the direction of declaring that the God Learners weren't completely wrong, and that GL descriptions of Glorantha are more useful than currently agreed..
> > > (Or
> > > these truths...) In one sense, it's entirely less "positive", as it's
> > > beyond any verification, whereas experiential knowledge has at least
> > > vicarious verification available to it.
> >
> > I respect your opinion, but this much depends on belief more than any
> > transcendental experience, such as your vicariousness appears to rely
> > on.
>
> I don't see how you get that impression at all. I'm speaking of
> experience of _Glorantha_, not of RW religious experience or whatever.
Sorry, "transcendental" is a polysemic, and it's usually best to avoid using the t-word.
I think that I simply added to the prevailing confusion there. Sorry.
> To be more explicit: We experience Glorantha most directly and most
> verisimilitudinous when we do so from the PoV of someone _in_ that world.
You see, that's exactly why this is a quibble.
I agree with you.
But our extra-Gloranthan knowledge of the Many Suns, and the Many Dark Sides of the Moon is closer to Truth than a Gloranthan's perception or POV of "The Sun", or "The Dark Side of the Moon".
This is a thin area where our knowledge is superior to theirs, sandwiched between knowledge of Gloranthan cultures and cosmologies and RW philosophical difficulties regarding the nature of knowledge itself.
But it is true that we KNOW that there are many Suns, and we know how this distressing fact will be problematic during the Hero Wars, and Gloranthans don't.
> If I introduce a "fact" into my Glorantha, that's _in principle_ unknowable
> by anyone in it, what am adding to Glorantha in any real sense?
If you introduce a "fact" into YG, you are by definition introducing it, tacitly or overtly, into your game/writing. If this "fact" were to have zero implications, even potentially, IYG, then you quite simply have not introduced it into YG.
> OK,
> the Unknowable It was pink. This is beyond the perception of any
> sentient being in Glorantha (what with It being... well, Unknowable).
This is outside Glorantha, by definition.
> Even if they were _told_ of the pinkness of the II (hrm, interesting
> acronym, obviously a Deep Secret there), they'd have no objective
> means of verifying this. It can't add to our games set in Glorantha,
> our stories about it, or even our learned postulations, except in
> the restricted field of Unknowable It Pinkness, necessarily disjoint
> from the rest of what we can say about the world.
ie, it's not Gloranthan. In fact, it's the precise opposite of what I've suggested.
> > > A further question is: are such 'facts' about the world, which by
> > > assumption are unverifiable within it,
> >
> > YGWV .. ;-)
>
> Eh, no, it was _implicit_ in the matter as stated. If it's knowledge
> that _can_ be obtained by someone in Glorantha, then it's (potentially)
> in-Glorantha knowledge, and thus Not What We're talking About.
"These are not the droids you're looking for."
The in-Gloranthan knowable is indeed Not What We're talking About.
We're talking about high level official and GM decisions about basic Gloranthan facts.
> > All I am aying is that we share a certain class of information,
> > unavailable to Gloranthans, but common to our conceptions of what
> > Glorantha is.
>
> Yes, but you're not exemplifying this, or otherwise demonstrating
> that it exists, in any useful sense. If you did so, we might be
> getting someplace.
"There are Many Suns" "There is a Transcendental Plane, whence all Magic ultimately derives" "All Gloranthan knowledge is culturally and/or locally determined" "There are n Worlds" "**** insert GLS here ***" "HeroQuest more accurately represents Glorantha than RuneQuest"
et cetera
Don't tell me such facts are non-useful, they are in fact the lifeblood of many of many interesting (IMO) list discussions.
> > > a truth that omits such considerations
> > > is distinctly suspect, rather like classical physics kvetching about
> > > the 'imperfections' of quantum mechanics, if you will.
> >
> > No, this is about the basic imperfections of human rationality.
>
> Don't see where this comes from at all.
General philosophy : but of course, this isn't the General Philosophy Digest, so ...
cheers,
Julian Lord
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