From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Wed 26 Jan 2000 - 23:31:17 EET
Nils:
> I think an objective truth (or something resembling it)
> can be useful when it comes to drawing conclusions on a
> matter you haven't thought too closely on before. If
> everything is shifting and undecided, it is hard to be
> consistent on the fly.
I agree that one has to have a 'working model', but speaking
personally, I wouldn't claim mine is fully conscious, has any
claims to be logically consistent, is definitely not 'complete',
with regard to Glorantha as a whole, leaving aside the small
matter of whether it's correct/Canon/GAG/Greg-compliant. I
don't need to know everything, or to be able to resolve
'inconsistent' or 'incompatible' views of the world in every
case in order simply to intuit 'what happens next'. (What
I often need is more inspiration, more caffeine, or more
inpsired ideas from elsewhere to steal from, though...)
> Mind you, this "objective truth" need not be shared by other GMs
> (if we are talking about actual gaming situations).
This is the fun thing about Absolute Moralities and Industry
Standards, too: there are so many of 'em...
> The situation where the need for absolutes arise is
> probably fairly esoteric though. My personal preference
> for objectivity at some level stems from too many years
> of systems development.
The first step in eliminating illusory desires is to analyse
them and recognise them for what they are, glasshoppah. ;-)
> This I think is immediately useful. If we decide that A and
> B are indeed the same and we know a lot about A but only a
> little about B (on the practical level), we can make an informed
> opinion about B from that equivalence.
If you ask me, such deliberations have confused more often than
they've revealed. Assumptions like this regularly reduce discussion
of "The Carmainian Humakt", or of Tolat, to the most simplistic
and unhelpful level, IMO. If someone were to elaborate what
these much-discussed entities were like in an organic, culture-driven
fashion, rather than trying to reverse-engineer them from their
better-known alleged-cognates, we'd be a darn sight better off, IMO.
[Shargash = Orlanth?]
> Indeed. In thi particular case, I'd say they don't quack very
> similarly at all.
It's certainly not the 'most similar' case I could have come up
with, but it's interesting in that some Gloranthan _are_ noted to
compare them on a 'just a preverted form of [insert favoured god
here] worship, and they're certainly not entirely dissimilar, either.
I'd be as hestitant to say unqualifiedly 'Shargash and Orlanth are
umambiguously different' as I would be to say that (for example)
Dendara and Entekos _were_ 'the same'.
> Probably because I take some silly armchair historian position,
> which has no effect at all on how I see the perception of the
> inhabitants on Glorantha...
Well, invest in a pipe and perhaps there'll be a Major New BBC
Series in it for you one day. ;-)
Cheers,
Alex.
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