From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Tue 15 Jul 1997 - 22:26:43 EEST
Nick also says, amid an alarming lack of context, on "winning" at the HoG:
> Again, I am annoyed at the dullness of so-called creative heroquesting.
> If everyone in Glorantha thought their priests were talking rubbish,
> and that their mythology was a poor second-best to what Yours Truly
> would have done in similar circumstances, the world would be a very
> sad place indeed.
I've never suggested the HoG myth was in any way "wrong"; Sandy's
interpretation of this makes perfect sense to me, namely that you can
(possibly) "succeed" the heterodox way, by "winning" your battles
(however difficult or unlikely this is), but you won't get the "correct"
benefits from doing so, as you won't have learnt the "right" lesson from
it. Last I heard, almost everyone was saying this, not that "losing"
was a "second-best" result. What I was, and am, disputing is the idea
that defeating ZZ would cause a victory for chaos, as that just doesn't
work from a Yelmalian viewpoint, and you don't even bother disputing this.
Anyway, the reason why "winning" at the HoG keeps coming up is because,
late one night, about seven years ago, one FGS chose it in particular as
an example of the very sort of adversarial quest we're talking about.
Go gripe at him, if you must. It may not be very profound, but it beats
saying "Questor A on HQ X against HQer B", in discussing the mechanical
nitty-gritties.
Another point: several commentators have spoken of "changing" myth,
as if it can only mean "erase old myth, insert new one". Nothing
could be further from my conception of how extrapolative questing
works. "Changing" a myth will generally involve adding to it, or
creating a new, related myth, not doing away with the old one. For
example, when Garundyer frees Siglolf, he's effectively adding another
chapter to Siggy's mythology, with himself inserted firmly into it.
Not, for example, simply supplanting Siglolf's mythology with a
"corrected" version involving Garundyer Cloudcrusher (though that
could conceivably happen at some point, if identification of the two
hero cults became total).
Hungrily,
Alex.
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