Build College and philosophical

[Gary V. Foss]

Jonathan Picklesimer wrote:

> First, as far as cooperating religions go, I must disagree with the person
> who said that it would be unlikely for several churches to work together.
> Pie in the sky pure academics would indicate that it would be in the best
> intrest of education that they did. We, of course, know that this does
> not work. What does work? POLITICS. If I, as the high priest of the
> temple of Rournil, allow the college to be ran basically by the Andurians,
> what is going to happen to my temple? Eventually it will fall out of
> favor with the nobility because all of the nobility would have been
> educated by the Adurians. Not good. I cannot allow any other religion to
> gain a foothold that I cannot counter. As a priest of Rournil, I can
> temper the teachings of the war god with the need to protect nature. I can
> not temper these lessons after the students have been fully converted to
> think about the world from the Andurian perspective.

I don't know that politics is quite the force of unity, goodwill and
cooperation that you suggest. Isn't it more likely that in view of the
political situation you describe that each of these individual religious
movements would start up their own educational institutions, independant of one
another, each fighting to control the education of the elite?

> The only other thing I want to talk about is the "realism" debate that was
> spawned by some of my comments. Can our fictional worlds function exactly
> like the RW or duplicate the history of earth? Of course not! However,
> it is the only paradigm that we have. How do we know that university
> students are likely to rebel? Because every university student we know
> rebels. I find it amusing that one of hte people who was stridently
> opposing the RW influence in role playing cited university uprisings as a
> possible effect of having a university, based upon his RW observations!

Me? Strident? Whoo-hoo! I'm strident! Yee-haw! I just love being
strident! Kinda sounds like a new awnsheghlien, doesn't it? The Strident!
:-D

I think if you go back and read my original post on this subject, you'll find
that I pretty much agreed with what you said above. I wrote, "Jonathan's
description, [of the historical influence of religion on universities] however,
was excellent and I found it very interesting. As an example, I think that
description could be quite useful. Unfortunately, we haven't much to work with
aside from examples from history. Such examples, however, should be taken with
a grain of salt, not only because they may not really fit into a campaign
world, but because the influences that created them differ greatly from those
that would exist in the campaign world.

If we are going to use historical examples to flesh out a campaign world we
should not forget to include other gaming influences that would be hugely
influential. Magic, being the big one, but also including the existence of
gods, drastically different races, intelligent monsters, etc. These things
would really throw a kink in the machinery of history in the RW if they made an
appearance. They would have a signficant influence upon the history of a game
world.

Anyway, I think there's a little confusion here between the forces of
realism/historical accuracy and we glassy-eyed, anti-realist dreamers. Yes, I
pointed out riots by students as a possibile result of founding a university
based upon my RW observations, but I don't think that was really an application
of history to the RPG universe. I'd rather call it an application of human
nature. Sure, students riot. So do sports fans, concert goers, people at a
wake, attendees at the more interesting political conventions, etc. People
have a quaint need to burn things and break windows when they are disgruntled.
I'm from Los Angeles, I know....

Laters,
Gary

[Tim Nutting]

[Tim Nutting]

cooperation that you suggest. Isn't it more likely that in view of the
> political situation you describe that each of these individual religious
> movements would start up their own educational institutions, independant
of one
> another, each fighting to control the education of the elite?


Okay, 1) Gary - my memory may have faltered and the post previous this one
I may have accidentally taken credit for one of your posts, sorry if it was
all you and I'm just a loser with a poor memory, but I think we both pretty
much said the same thing.

2) I am preparing to be laughed at for the following, but here goes:

Ever seen Starhip Troopers? Of all things I was watching that the other
night as a no brainer, it being my second time, and I actually started
picking up some serious threads in the movie. I had heard that the movie
was very similar in some elements to "All Quiet on the Western Front", an
older German movie about the ethics of WWII - so maybe the following is
just a copy of another source, but ST is where I caught the line.

In the classroom scenario that outlies the politics of this very
Hitleresque facist world, the old vet outlines some of the most basic
thoughts and foundations, that voting was essentially the exercising of
force, and merely an extension of violence. Also it was mentioned the
violence had been used to settle more issues in the world than any other
social engine.

Where the hell am I going with this?

Politics is not friendly - at all. I see this in our society (USA) as well
as others where there's more machine guns. Politics is about getting
exactly what you want while limiting the gains of your opposition/enemy.
Those, coincidentally, are the same goals as physical war.

Politics is the best form of warfare invented yet, as you may actually have
less to lose (sometimes) and you definitely are not wasting money on supply
lines and training soldiers.

Later
Tim Nutting