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Re: (TFT) Is this a decade of thought? SO SAD!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Margaret Tapley"
I'm not entirely sure I understand your definition of "spirituality".
You seem to have it opposed to knowledge. I can see this being the
case; there have been plenty of times through history when religion,
or quasi-religion, was opposed to truth. For example, the medieval
church's persecution of heretics (including people like Copernicus),
or the "personality cults" of Stalin and Mao (and other dictators, but
those two were the most obnoxious about it).
However, I posit that in a world where "supernatural" phenomena, like
wizards' spells and a variety of beings like wights and demons, are
part of the "physics" of the world, and actual deities sometimes show
up in physical form, what we call spirituality could easily be an
accepted form of knowledge, or even a full-fledged science.
Please clarify this for the sake of someone who never really thought
of spirituality (as opposed to religion) as standing in the way of
knowledge :)
Hi Mrs. T.
I've thought about this question for a couple of days now, it's a very good
one.
I'm not sure if my answer will measure up, but here goes.
I see this from two perspectives.
First, I'm looking at the setup of societial values as a mathmatical
construct that exibits some symetery.
From a basic structrual standpoint any given society value setup has its
direct opposite that is not opposed idealogically.
In other words, spirituality is strongly opposed to prosperity while
prosperity is strongly opposed to authority, itself strongly opposed to
knowledge and so on.
This is mainly a game mechanic and how such a model stands up to reality is
highly questionable but it does provide a whole rainbow of different
conflict situations for players.
The idea is that buildings produce possative and/or negative quantities of
these values depending on the building function and the type of society
being fostered by the leadership of the area.
A wealthy neighborhood may be built with housing requiring a unit or two of
prosperity (generated by other buildings in town like shopes) per house. In
exchange, each prosperious home might generate taxes. Mannisions would
require larger amounts of prosperity and palace type buildings even larger
still. An artistic neighborhood may require creativity (art school,
gallery, coffee shop?) and etc.
I'll have something of a building list up in the next few days, but I wanna
keep it simple.
http://designbyme.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx
(recall that using 1 inch hexes drawn on quarter inch graphpaper a 6 foot
tall human Figure standing at attention fits into a box encompassed by 4
standard height bricks 1 dot by 2 dots. A halfling that is litterly half a 6
foot human in porportion would fit in 2 standard height 1 dot bricks and a
12 giant fits in 8, 2 by 4 dot bricks)
Then there's the question of the terms I've hung on the mechanics.
The terms themselves come from Sim Cities Societies.
I was useing education instead of knowledge, consumption instead of
prosperity and research instead of creativity.
Spirituality opposed to education sounds even worse huh?
Several things about those terms though that it might have helped if I'd
mentioned earlier.
Opposed isn't exclusive.
Just because the vatican is focused on spirituality dosen't mean they can't
have an observatory (they do), but it is ceartinly more diffacult for them
than it would be for many other private or public institutions. An example
here would be the vatican observatory comming out with work supporting a
steady state universe.
I'll include rough aproxamations for building effects and modifications, and
how they affect each other in the building list.
Also, too much/little of any given trait is generally a bad thing.
Ampping up production for the big war is one thing. Maintaing that
production after the war for several generations profoundly changes the
focus of the society in question.
Then there's the timescale at which this stuff gets counted.
This is certantly more suited for campaigns than for shorter adventure
types, although having a functioning city/town/village model can certianly
add to even a one-shot secenario.
Philosophicly speaking, I suggest spirituality as opposite of knowledge in
that, while both seek for "truth", spirituality relies more on feeling,
emotion and intuition while knowledge depends more on study, observation and
deduction.
Is the friction twixt science and religion really there?
As to your point about magic, I agree that magic as expressed in TFT could
easilly be seen to encompass much of what we consider supernatural.
I'd argue though that it'd take a more detailed explnation of magic that
what is offered for that to work though.
I've no problem with this, but I feel a good RPG should be inclusive of this
type of work rather than feature one particular system as "the" magic system
to the exclusion of other lines of thought.
It's a kinder, gentler world that has something like vacume fluxuation as
the energy source that is shaped by magic rather than something like a blood
sacrafice... or is it? I suspose that depends on the spell list.
Killing one virgin or, even better moraly mayhapse, warrior to stop a period
of drought may be "nicer" than assuming 1 outta every 300 of us have access
to the TFT spell list. That's well over 100 million wizards in the u.s. I'd
think.
Anyway, once you've picked an explicit magic system, anything else is
"supernatural".
I wouldn't say that spirituality stands in the way of knowledge, rather that
they represent two seprate paths. Assuming both paths are of roughly equal
length it takes at least three times as long to follow both paths as it does
to choose one. Of course, you know one of them forewards and backwards...
hummmmm
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