Strange bit of Art Description going in the Guide

[Jeff Richard]

Here’s the art description for a piece that Jeff Laubenstein is doing for the Guide – fourteen panels on the Lightbringers Quest. It is based on a cryptic diagram that Greg Stafford gave me some years ago and was allegedly based directly on the testimony of Harmast Barefoot.

[Harald Smith]

Interesting that the the Judge of the Dead occurs before the Bridge over the River of Swords here. Suggests that even these stations are not as fixed as you might suspect.

[Jeff Richard]

Stations are a terrible word, I think. These are elements in a story – think when a storyteller retells a story to new audience. There are key things that need to be in the story, and maybe a few that even need to be in a certain sequence. Put too few of these in, and the story isn’t the “same”; put too many new bits in, and you’ve got something different as well. But a good storyteller can shuffle these elements around and still tell the “same” story (just a different version), more or less. How much change results in a “new” story is not something that can be established by an iron-clad rule and sometimes we accept pretty extensive changes to a story still being the same story (frex, Hollywood’s treatment of almost any story previously written). But sometimes we don’t.

[Joerg Baumgartner]

Stations are associated with railroads – a common trap when reenacting a story by the letter.

But then, there is also the trap Hollywood likes to fall in to retell a story missing the point of the story. AKA the God Learner method of exploitative heroquesting.

A quest often has a middle ground that is pretty much a sandbox of encounters or locations that should be included (but might be replaced by a different event with a similar outcome, like e.g. using Daliath’s Well of Wisdom to overcome the Proof of Fire). Some are prerequisites for later encounters, others merely offer an advantage. And in some versions (like CA’s Resurrection rite) entire side threads or prequels are ignored. Which may lead to the God Learner way of exploitative questing.

[Harald Smith]

Quote:

Stations are a terrible word, I think. These are elements in a story – think when a storyteller retells a story to new audience.

Yes, quite agree, and is a much better way to describe it.

Quote:

there is also the trap Hollywood likes to fall in to retell a story missing the point of the story. AKA the God Learner method of exploitative heroquesting.

I’m not sure if it’s a trap or not, but certainly fitting the story into whatever is popular and sells at the moment. But it does sound very much like the God Learner method of fitting the story into whatever gets them the most ‘power’ at the moment.

[Author]

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