Myth comes from the Greek muthos which means "story" ... I believe I saw Greg Stafford once quote someone's aphorism that "the universe isn't made up of matter, it's made up of stories." That might not be true for the RW, but it is most definitely true for Glorantha. Myths are the building blocks
>
> Maybe the Orlanthi "Myths" should actually be named and presented as
> Orlanthi "History". But they aren't. (at least in my impression)
>
> I'm 99% with Garreth on this - knowing a culture's myths does not
> tell you its behavior. Everybody go read Elaine Pagel's
> fantastic "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" to see how the Western World's
> main myth has generated so incredibly many diverse meanings and
> interpretations. And almost nobody goes around not eating apples.
In celebration of Christ, who united god and man, spirit and flesh, Christians partake of the host, which in both bread and the sacred body of christ, which is also a ritual repetition of an action Christ performed with his apostles.
The life of Christ was transposed upon the European calendar, marking off feast days, days free from labour. Every important part of the year was co-ordinated with the life (or the "myth") of Christ.
In reality knights were the ignorant, brutal leisured warrior caste enforcing the rule of robber barons -- but in "myth" they were the protectors of the faith and defenders of chivalry. Do you want to role play the misery of medieval Europe, or the myth?
Glorantha IS driven by its stories. The Christian ritual of the sacrament might not be "true" and religion might very well be the opiate of the masses, and an ideological tool of domination (and in my historical simulation I might want to document the depredations the Church made on the labour of the impoverished masses of Europe). BUT in Glorantha, myths are not ideology they are reality. So describing Sun County as a society whose myth of the solar father god serves to perpetuate patriarchal property relations might make for good sociology -- but one hell of a dull RPG.
What RPG on Earth provides the social-materialistic truth that is befuddled by myths of the respective cultures of the setting?
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