A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

[marycatelli]

To be read here.

Ancient Mediterranean, mostly, medieval, and pop culture. But fascinating. Particularly the Practical Polytheism series, starting here, that starts with a gibe against D&D that I can only back up entirely.

Comments

[jbellinger]

Thanks for the reference--very interesting. I knew Sparta was pretty nasty, but not how bad their track record was.

Tag: Role-Playing Games

[nodrog]

Somewhere here - I just spent serious time trying to find it - we talked about the practice of creating immensely detailed backgrounds for each and every character before starting to write the story.  I called them "dossiers," and a colossal waste of time and energy.  "If you want to be a writer, write."

What prompted this comment was a role-playing game I saw, which reminded me that I used to use those games, specifically the character creation process, for my characters!  Still not the "dossiers," but I think that can be a good idea, depending on what game you use, of course.  (I imagine GURPS would be good for that, but I never engaged with that system, for some reason.  I far prefer West End Games' D6 system.  Go figure.)

[nodrog]

BTW, that "Unmitigated Pedantry" article is fascinating & I am neglecting drudge chores to read it.

The business of “Never mind how it works, find out what works and do it” reminded me of the Lord Darcy detective stories, wherein, you may have noticed, tho’ the Christian faith is literally catholic, magic is essentially secular - sorcerers work spells, they don’t pray for divine intervention - or indeed at all.  (In fact, no one does.  Prayer per se never appears in those stories.)  Saying, “Bibbity-bobbity boo” works automatically, like a law of physics.  (Harry Potter is the same way - wisely, J K Rowling never factored any religion into her wizardry.  Yet having people who clearly are not the Second Coming able to work miracles nonetheless, would give the Church ecclesiarchy the fan-tods.)

“Never mind how it works, find out what works and do it” has a modern, secular application also:  Cholera used to burn through London like a grass fire, killing thousands in its nasty way.  Further, the Thames was an open sewer, its stink disturbing even Parliament.  That the two were related was the first modern instance of “number crunching,” plotting on a map how many deaths happened where - and there was the pattern:  Drinking nasty Thames water was fatal.  So they undertook the Great Work, built these colossal Victorian pumps that took sewage out and far from the river, and everything cleared up - cholera epidemics, stinking Thames, all gone.  And there was much rejoicing.

But at no time ever, did they know or learn why.  What was cholera?  They still had no idea.  Who cared?  They’d learned how to stop it.  They’d learned what works.