Chaos!

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Almost all mythological monsters are chaotic in that they are the chopped up, left over bits of other animals and are therefore an affront to order and law.

Joseph Paul

That's only true until you look into their origin, though; most of them are deliberate efforts on someone's part, and are at least consistent within type.

[TRose]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

That's only true until you look into their origin, though; most of them are deliberate efforts on some one's part, and are at least consistent within type.

I remember watching a show on the history channel while back where they put forth the theory that many mythical creatures where the results of the ancient trying to explain what creatures ancient fossils where. One example they gave was that the Griffin was the result of people finding skulls of Protecetops dinosaurs. After all the skull looks like that of a bird ,but one larger then any alive. While that of a mammoth could have given rise to the cyclops. The skull of the mammoth has a big hole in the middle for the trunk that could be mistaken for an eye socket if you never seen a elephants skull.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by TRose

I remember watching a show on the history channel while back where they put forth the theory that many mythical creatures where the results of the ancient trying to explain what creatures ancient fossils where. One example they gave was that the Griffin was the result of people finding skulls of Protecetops dinosaurs. After all the skull looks like that of a bird ,but one larger then any alive. While that of a mammoth could have given rise to the cyclops. The skull of the mammoth has a big hole in the middle for the trunk that could be mistaken for an eye socket if you never seen a elephants skull.

I was refering to their mythological, rather than anthropological origins.

[beeber]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I was refering to their mythological, rather than anthropological origins.

but at some point they are one and the same, yes?

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by beeber

but at some point they are one and the same, yes?

Not really. One exists in the context of an in-myth, in-game reason, the other is a sociological/metagame reason. As such, what's relevant for the discussion tends to be one or the other, not both.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Not really. One exists in the context of an in-myth, in-game reason, the other is a sociological/metagame reason. As such, what's relevant for the discussion tends to be one or the other, not both.

Uh, yes really. People in previous era believed that mythological creatures existed. Most myths are attempts to explain those things about life that people don't understand. All the mythological monsters serve some sort of purpose to the societies that created them, usually several purposes.

RPGs merely let modern people play as part of such a culture, and often makes such creatures real. Even setting speficic monsters are drawn in some part from real world ideas-as the authors live in in the real world.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Uh, yes really. People in previous era believed that mythological creatures existed. Most myths are attempts to explain those things about life that people don't understand. All the mythological monsters serve some sort of purpose to the societies that created them, usually several purposes.

But its still only relevant on one level. When talking about the function a monster serves mythologically, you're inevitably talking about sociology on a metalevel; but the PCs don't see sociology. They see its in-world function (which may be metaphysical or religious, but that's _not_ the same thing).
One is origin context, the other world context. The difference is that the mythological context is _real_ in world, which it isn't when looking at sociological/anthropological origins. As such they're simply not the same thing.

[drohem]

Mythological = anthropological to eariler socities and cutlures.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by drohem

Mythological = anthropological to eariler socities and cutlures.

Irrelevant to my point however; what function something serves _in the mythology_ has no direct relationship to the reason it exists in an anthropological sense. Anthropological meanings are based on sociology and psychology; mythology meanings are based on divine politics and mythical history. The latter is derived from the former, but they _aren't_ the same things.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Irrelevant to my point however; what function something serves _in the mythology_ has no direct relationship to the reason it exists in an anthropological sense. Anthropological meanings are based on sociology and psychology; mythology meanings are based on divine politics and mythical history. The latter is derived from the former, but they _aren't_ the same things.

They would be to the people of those times.

It is like the world is flat or the sun going round the earth. We know neither is true (well there is a slight bit of truth to both of them).

FOr gaming purposes it all depends on what paradigm you are using. If a magical setting then the anthropological (actually that's the wrong word for it-since anthro- implies that the creatures are some form of man) origins might have no meaning whatsoever.

We used to run into stuff like this when playing medieval and other historical settings. For instance, metal fell faster than wood, illness was caused by evil sprints, thunder and lightning were revealed, and a bunch of other things that we know to be untrue were enforced as the laws of the universe.

The problem is some games tend to mix & match. For instance D&D used to do "ecology" series on mythical beasts. If magic and the other medieval ideas actually exist and work on a world, then science, evolution, and ecoloogy might not.

However, most myths are swamed by some truth. With creatures, here the linkage exists historically, is with the idea of what would you do if you came across the remains of some unidentifiable, by scary-looking creature? As has been mentioned before, the prevailing theory is that when people discovered dinosaur bones it led to the legends of dragons.