[Glorantha] "Just a Game" answer

[Jane Williams]

> > --- Gary Sturgess <gazza666 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> The best explanation I ever heard was on
> someone's web page  
> >> (unfortunately I cannot recall where; perhaps
> they read the  
> >> mailing list?) that the secret was: "It's just a
> game!"
> 
> And then Jane said:
> 
> >
> > That's the GLS I work to. I've never claimed that
> it's the same one  
> > in anyone else's game, but it's the one for my
> Glorantha.

--- Mike Dawson <mdawson at mac.com> wrote:
> Just to supply another side of the coin, I hate hate
> hate this answer with an abiding passion.
> 
> It "pulls back the veil" too much for me,..

Well, since IMG the change of any PC rediscovering
this is very low (HQ doesn't do "impossible", but it
does "resistance of 10W14" quite well), it doesn't
matter enormously.

But FWIW, there have been books that have explored
this theme quite well. "And then you woke up and it
was all a dream" would be pretty dire, I agree. But
think about Thomas Convenant. OK, so the idea was
ruined by a whinging hero who we wanted to die and put
us out of our misery, but his belief that the fantasy
world he was in wasn't real, so what he did didn't
matter, and his realisation that this wasn't true, was
interesting.

The there's Gael Baudino and the "Dragonsword" series:
the one where first the lead characters, then the
"NPCs", start to realise that they only exist as
products of one lead character's imagination. And some
of them get very depressed, and some refuse to believe
it, and some fight back and insist on creating their
own reality. It's very well done.

I suppose once you get past all the silly excuses for
special effects, the Matrix covers the same ground.
Neo is a Godlearner.

You know, I bet Gloranthans would have far less
trouble coping with the idea than we do. So, you spend
time pretending to be someone you're not, with powers
you don't have, in a richer and more intense world
than the one you live in, and learning things about
yourself as a result. Sure. It's called hero-questing.
So Glorantha is one of the Otherworlds to our mundane.
OK. Easy enough concept to get to grips with. It
doesn't make the place unreal.



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