[MUD-Dev] Re: Fantasy clich s

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2000 02:01:59 -0700 
Zak Jarvis <zak at voidmonster.com> wrote:

>> From: Ryan Schotte [schotter at bigfoot.com] Sent: Sunday, July 09,
>> 2000 10:41 PM

>> on 9/7/00 11:27 PM, Michael Tresca (talien at toast.net) wrote:

>> Indeed, one of my staff once started constructing a region based
>> on the mythology of the Australian Aborigines (which has existed
>> for around 40,000 years). It was a great area, but the players
>> hated it, because whenever they stumbled across a Kurdaitcha they
>> just had no idea what it was supposed to be... 

> What context was given to this area? How were Kurdaitcha
> presented? (They certainly wouldn't be neutral pronouns, as
> they're exclusively male).

ObSegue: Actually the term "Kurdaitcha" is one of those curiously
homonymic nouns where the principlal definition is the name of a
rather type of shoe, and the secondary definition is in reference to
the people who wear those shoes and what they do (the noun
transparently both adjectifying and verbifying).

  http://www.csn.ul.ie/~smokin/conspiracies/demons3.html

When I was a kid in Australia, I only knew the term in reference to
shoess'd we'd joke and play about with the idea of being able to
walk across various things without leaving tracks (the main purpose
beeing to escape square dancing classes at school or otherwise rook
the teachers).

> If I were presented with 'A Kurdaitcha', I would probably not be
> particularly impressed. If it were 'An emu-masked man', I might
> pay more attention. The point here is how you convey information,
> and its context.

Quoting from the above URL as I suspect most of the lit isn't
familiar with the area:

--<cut>--
The kurdaitcha take their name from the special slippers they wear
when hunting a condemned man. These are woven from cockatoo feathers
and human hair and leave virtually no footprints. The hunters clothe
themselves with kangaroo hair, which the stick to their skin after
first coating themselves with human blood, and they don masks of emu
feathers.  Usually operating in twos and threes, they are relentless
and pursue their quarry for years if necessary.
--<cut>--

Quite the romantic image.  I found that page on a queick search.
Anybody got any actually rigorous web references for the area, or
even aboriginee mythology?

> I know, as a player, I'd be quite interested to see one NPC
> stalking another, and then pointing a sharpened bone at them and
> leaving.

> You really cannot expect players to know what the Alcheringa
> is. It's truly a wonderful word, but it's not common knowledge and
> treating it as such is cheap and boring.

Given the mythic scale and high level of implied wonder in the
dreamtime its a tough call to do in a game setting without
trivialising it to a Dargonball-Z-style stats question on how many
zeros.

I'd love to see it attempted.

--
"Finally coming home"                       Home: claw at kanga.nu
J C Lawrence                               Other: coder at kanga.nu
----------(*)                     Keys etc: finger claw at kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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