(Guy Hoyle wrote)
>make some concessions to playability, after all; we don't even know what a
>lot
>of the music of the ancient world sounded like. I doubt I could get my
>gamers
>very worked up by filking up some Elder Edda selections.
You might be surprised--I've had a fair bit of success in Pendragon using primary sources, and I wouldn't describe most of my friends as boffins. There is a power in those old songs and stories which nobody can reproduce today. Feel the power.
"Playability" is a relative term. As I say, I have been able to keep people fascinated with a reading of "Morte d'Arthur" or "Beowulf"--it jolted them out of their own lives for a minute. We may not know what the music of the ancients sounded like (though some scholars have made a stab at it), but we know it did NOT sound like 19th century music-hall.
Likewise, a lengthy
>dissertation upon Gloranthan musicality would probably go right over my
>head,
>and remained unused by me.
Me too. I don't think we need to detail music or any other field of Gloranthan activity to those lengths. Atmosphere, ambience, is what I'm on about.
>Gloranthans don't speak English, French, Finnish, or any other earthly
>language
>that we who buy the game products do; yet I haven't seen a Sartarite
>dictionary, or lengthy New Pelorian glossaries or Malkioni grammars.
No, we don't need them, and it would be wasted effort to produce them (sorry JRRT). I'm not really suggesting that we write and play Gloranthan toons. It's all about models and archetypes.
I don't
>think of these tunes as true Gloranthan songs, but as "translations" of
>Gloranthan tunes into a form that is more meaningful to my players and
>myself.
>I just want to capture some of the spirit of the times musically, even if
>it
>isn't precisely what would actually be played that way in Glorantha.
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think that that IS the spirit of the times. The spirit is epic poetry (apart from the Lunars and their decadent urban filth). Some players have done it quite successfully (was it on Wesley Quadros' site?).
>Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who
>believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. - Thomas Jefferson
Thus: better to have no music than the wrong sort?
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