Re: West - Logical Glorantha

From: Topi Pitk?nen <topi.pitkanen_at_helsinki.fi>
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 17:05:50 +0300


> > I have always tried to avoid over-rationalizing Glorantha.
> Me too, but I also want it to fit together in a logical way.

Glorantha should include logical conflicts on purpose!

Avoiding blatant logical inconsistensies is good. Yet logical way may lack some reflecting of an authentic feel in a fantasy world. It requires lack of logic sometimes. That is the meta-logic here. (Mikko, I'm not stating here that your take lacks feeling.)

Conflicting ideas should not be an enemy. They are to be embraced. Glorantha is revealed in the Harmony of opposing ideas. And in their Disorder (one vision frex.) is where adventure takes place.

Talking about meta-levels in realizing Glorantha, there is important question, wheter or not and to what extent one allows or is able to surrender one's own way of percieving real world. Gloranthan reality, I feel, is much much more malleable than ours. Even the mundane is mythic. So things that in our world can only be in stories, are there for real with ease. And not just obvious things, like flying cattle.

Subtle but ground shaking things can be different! Like the basic assumption that the shared reality is quite similar to everyone. In Glorantha, it really has not to be so. The middle world has a bit of such as flavor though. Yet a puma person and a sorcerer not only figure out and percieve the world in a vastly different way. The itchy witchy world simply is often not the same for them two - more than for three moons maximum anyhow.

> So I'm sticking with the early iron-age technology and cultural
> sophistication, and exploring the various magical and religious
> mindsets of Glorantha around that premise.

In my opinion your stuff makes decent roleplaying background material. It doesn't fit in especially gloranthan niche perhaps, but don't let it bother you. If I were to take it on my glorantha I would try to figure the parts that go against the generally accepted views and then maybe with them challenge what is presumed of 'how things work' - in game.

One high fantasy way of putting your parameters to my Gloranthan map, would be some kind of Fonritian idealization of the Northern Mythic West. A short world between Fonrit and Danmalastan superimposed on the western hemi-lozenge in middle world. A world which exitance is hardly recognized by the common rokari and chivalric folk of west. But maybe is too by radiant brithini-lords and the likes of luatha and vadeli - and perhaps fonritian sailors.

The dimness of Brithini lands might be from the protective spells working against this Errorneus Realm (in their perspective) from even percieving them, and thus preventing the likelihood of error affecting them or false religious mindsets challenging them.

"There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one  says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in mind." - Marcel Proust, Rememberance of Things Past -


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