Hi all!
I had a blast at the Eighth German RQ Con. I think Ingo, Andre, Joerg and the other German RQ Society people for putting on a great show and for helping me attend.
The following is my for-fun writeup of the convention. Obviously I'm not trying to be a completist about it. Heck, I'm not even covering every letter of the alphabet. Note also that my writeup is unsullied by contact with anyone else's writeups of the con, meaning I haven't kept up with the Digest to see what you all wrote about the event.
A is for ANTELOPE LANCERS
In the "Peoples of Pavis" freeform game, Simon Bray and Dan Barker played
Sable Antelope chiefs working for the Lunars. Glorantha's
masters-of-art-and-death painted for war and lived up to their warpaint,
finishing the game as Twin Masters of the Big Rubble. I confess that my
favorite moment came during their introductions in Lunar HQ at the
beginning of the game. . . Simon finished his brass-tacks pep-speech by
saluting with an outflung left hand and pounding his chest with his right
fist. Dan quickly followed suit, but with much more dramatic impact,
because Dan's costume included a rabbit skull hung around his neck on a
chain. Smack, Dan's right fist smashed the skull. "Oh s**t," said Dan, but
he soldiered on with a shrug for the fallen. At the time I thought that the
moment was going to be an omen, and it was -- but it wasn't an omen for the
Sables, more for the Sable tribe's enemies, the Zebra folk, who got stuck
on the wrong side of a "No Prisoners!!!!" Twin Sable military campaign.
B is for BALASTAR'S EGGS
I started the freeform without a character. Then I decided I wanted to play
a bit, so I tagged along with Rick Meints' Lunar caravan guard, Ponates,
for awhile, as another Lunar thug. Halfway through, I decided to step out
of the game and get a feel for everything that was going on. I soon
discovered that Fabian Kuchler's Fleeter Nemm character was involved in
heavy politics and near conflict with his own Pavis temple. Fleeter wasn't
about to go along with the planned marriage of Pavis to the Red Goddess.
Instead he was ready to confront his Pavis-sympathisizing bosses by running
for Mayor, and he had obtained Balastor's Eggs to help his campaign.
"Balastor's Eggs. . . wow. . . ." I thought. "I must have missed
something in one of those old Pavis books, because I sure as hell can't
remember why Balastor's Eggs are gonna be of any use to anyone." It wasn't
until I witnessed the big face-off between Fleeter and his Pavis
higher-ups, when Fleeter promised not to use his weapon against the Pavis
temple, that I realized that I was getting screwed up by German accents and
the whirl of the moment. Balastar's Axe. Oh. Right. I knew that.
C is for CULTURAL RESPECT
Nick Brooke played a 7 Mothers priestess. Speaking of the Sable Antelope
tribe's methods for eliciting necessary confessions from a hapless
underworld figure, Nick ably represented the high moral ground occupied by
Lunar civilization. "Torture was right out. But traditional ethnic customs
were in. Their ethnic customs just happen to include covering people in
honey and ants."
D is for DRAGON PASS FANATICS
Maybe I should have already known that Germany is home to some true Dragon
Pass fans. There were one or two and maybe sometimes three Dragon Pass
games ongoing in the Ritterhall upstairs inthe castle. I never would have
thought that *anyone* would play Dragon Pass by mail, but the board spread
out in Fabian's basement is proof that at least two German guys are doing
it. Gunnar Kotsch and a number of others are doing their best to stage a
DRAGON PASS renaissance in Germany. They're having a big tournament in
October in Cologne. I didn't make time to play any games, but I did watch
enough to realize that these guys know Dragon Pass the way other people
know chess: when the Storm Walkers start at Duck Point and aim at the Red
Dragon, 20 hexes away, that's the StormWalker/Red Dragon Opening. They are
playing the game enough to explore openings, mid-games tactics, and endgame
strategies.
E is for EYE OF WAKBOTH
Late one night Mr. Michael Madman Raaterova regaled Neil Robinson and me
with a plan for a lozenge-spanning campaign focused upon the Reconstruction
of Genert. In order to set up his campaign's action scenes, Michael played
the popular Glorantha-con game titled "Is It Not So. . .", wherein someone
asks a leading question and the Chaosium representative assents to the
obvious answer, while struggling to keep a small portion of his brain free
from the wicked suggestive influence of inductive reasoning. Neil and I
ended up feeling like we were sitting in on Glorantha's warmup run for
Foucault's Pendulum, which is a compliment to Michael. The ideas amounted
to Wakboth-sized fun. I hope we can do something with 'em some day.
F is for FREEFORMS IN GENERAL
I'd never played in one before. In general I'm one of those people who GMs
rather than plays, so I confess that I didn't know what to make of playing
in a freeform at the start. Now that I have a clue about LARPs, I'm very
much looking forward to "Life of Moonson" in Victoria.
G is for GIM-GIM THE GRIM
Before the freeform, Rick Meints got a lot of mileage moaning about the
uselessness of his caravan guard character. Everybody believed him. Most
everybody still believed him when the game was over, but Rick's true
character, Gim-gim the Grim, head of Lunar intelligence, had by that time
become the controller of the hazia trade in Pavis, head of the Pavis
Constabulary, and ultimate behind the scenes controller of most of the
major events that went down in the game, including MOB's ill-fated coup
attempt against Governor Soreel. I don't really need to say more, since
Lunar intelligence chiefs should be allowed to keep their methods secret.
H is for HEINO
Y'know, it's been a long long time since I spent five minutes straight
listening to people making fun of my name. But such was my fate in Germany,
where my father's full name, "Heino Heinsoo," generated immediate shockwave
comparisons to a famous (albino) German folkcrooner named Heino. Never mind
that our family name and my father's first name are actually pronounced
Estonian-style, so that the 'ei' is spoken with a long 'a' sound instead of
the German long 'i.' Ach well, I'm sure it serves me right, somehow.
I is for ISIDILIAN'S SLAVES
The con was lucky to have two incredibly cool t-shirts, a Simon Bray piece
of four trollkin related to the infamous Neep and a Dan Barker piece to be
discussed below. There was also another Simon painting that didn't get
used, an Isidilian/Dwarf Run piece that's pretty damn cool, and will be
used somewhere, somewhen, I wager. I jokingly teased Simon about the
manacled human slaves working on the cannons in this other picture, saying
that I thought that the Dwarf's human slaves worked willingly in order to
as much like Dwarves as possible, not as chained slaves. Simon thought
about three seconds and then said: "They wear the chains so that the
clanking noises make them sound more like pieces of the World Machine."
Yessss!
J is for JAR-EEL THE RAZORESS
Dan Barker's shirt for the convention is my personal favorite Jar-eel
picture, ever.
M is for MAYOR
I didn't record the name of the new mayor of Pavis. He's from Switzerland
and a good bloke. When I was playing in the freeform, I'd disobeyed an
order from MOB (who was chewing the scenery as the commander of the Marble
Phalanx) to garrote the future mayor, but that's a long story. Via other
long and more polished stories, he won something of a landslide in the
final Pavis electoral count. Upon election, he uttered one of the con's
best lines, standing above his people with outstretched victory arms and
yelling, "All Hail the Reaching Mayor!"
N is for NEUROSURGEON
Chewing the fat after a Glorantha panel, we talked about previous ToRM art.
I mentioned my affection for the cover of ToRM #8, the Chaotic templar
scene, and learned that the artist, Mark Baldwin, is now a neurosurgeon.
All Hail the Son of Thanatar.
O is for OH MY GOD!
OK, that's a lame intro blurb, but it's a pretty accurate reaction to the
issue of ToRM that was released at the convention. Some damn fine stuff in
this isue #16. And a very nice cover by Dario Corallo.
P is for PAMALTELA BOOK
I brought two items from Greg's files for the auction. The first was a copy
of some Lunar religion notes, the second was a copy of the Pamaltela Book.
Andre Jarolsch took them both in the auction, overcoming determined
resistance from people who were bidding just to knock the price up because
they knew that Andre was going to keep bidding no matter what.
Q IS FOR QUIZ SHOW
I heard from one of the winners that the RQ/Glorantha Quiz held for people
who had been knocked out of the freeform was a very well-done event. I
didn't follow up at the time to learn how it was done. . . .
R IS FOR RUNETHINGS
There are a lot of different words that begin with the word rune, and at
the moment I don't feel like writing about any of them. Sideways smile.
S IS FOR STRATELIBRI
After the convention at Castle Stahlech, I flew to Milan to visit
Stratelibri. I would have taken the train but an Italian rail strike
coincided with my travel time.
Stratelibri was a completely enjoyable romp and an utterly necessary
business trip. Maybe later I'll do another alphabet roundup note for the
details of the trip to Milan, but for now suffice it to say that the
Stratelibri people are huge fun to work with and I'm looking forward to
working much more closely with them in the months to come. The prototypes
of the skirmish miniatures game and the new boardgames are coming along
nicely. By the time I write a convention report on the upcoming Victoria
GloranthaCon, I may have more to report on the specifics of the timing of
Stratelibri & Chaosium's projects. For now, in regard to timing issues, see
X IS FOR XAOS.
T IS FOR TRADETALK #2
Singing advance hymns for a new Glorantha magazine isn't really necessary
here on the Digest, especially since the new Tradetalk is mainly composed
of material who more or less LIVE here on the Digest! But I should say
something, so what I'll say is that I'm impressed by the magazine's new
look, and by its extremely smooth into-English editing (accomplished by
American editor Peter Maranci, I believe), and its probable future as
another fun place for Glorantha games to flourish. Go Ingo go.
U IS FOR URBAN TRIBESMEN
WARNING: PARAGRAPH WHICH FOLLOWS MAY BE TOLERABLE ONLY TO THOSE WHO
TOLERATE SOCCER/FOOTBALL: The closest I came to serious trouble in Milan
was getting muddled in the serious rivalry between Stratelibri's
president's team (Giovanni loves perennial European champion AC-Milan) and
the head of production's favorite team (Silvio lives and breathes the
younger team, Inter-Milan). To complicate matters, AC Milan has had a hard
year, and fallen behind the pack, while Inter-Milan was playing for the
European club championship against Schalke from Germany while I was there.
So of course I went to Silvio's house and cheered for Inter-Milan; all
apologies to my German friends, but I can't stand the boring style of
soccer a lot of Bundesliga teams and the German national squad play. True
to form, Schalke won on penalty kicks. The next day at Stratelibri someone
asked me "Why do you cheer for such a suck team like Inter-Milan?" These
are savage and jealous gods, to be sure. True to my status as an
Illuminate, I managed to join all the cults - a couple days after cheering
Inter-Milan I visited the AC Milan team store and bought an AC Milan mini
soccer ball so my fiancee and I will have something to kick around the house.
W is for WIZARD'S ATTIC
What the heck, may as well slip some commercial data into this alphabet.
I've mentioned Tales of the Reaching Moon #16 and the upcoming Tradetalk
#2. If you're not a subscriber to these magazines, one place to get them
(and lots of other Glorantha stuff) is by mail order through Wizards Attic.
To get a catalog or contact Wizards Attic in the U.S., call
1-800-213-1493. Or write to Wizards Attic, 950 56th Street, Oakland, CA
94608. You can use Mastercard or VISA. Overseas folks can order as well,
though shipping is obviously more expensive. You can also fax orders in, to
(510) 547-2651, but if you fax in make sure to leave telephone contact
numbers in case there are problems. E-mail addresses are also nice. . . and
for that matter, Wizards Attic can be reached by e-mail at WizAttic_at_aol.com.
At the moment, Wizards Attic orders are being accompanied by issue #2 of
Chaosium's 16 page company zine, Starry Wisdom. Issue #2 has a couple pages
relevant to Glorantha, including a page on Greg's artifact collection and
faux archeology, in which we learn that it's a good thing that Greg has had
Glorantha to keep him away from life as a tricksterish archeological
bamboozler. FYI, the purpose of the Starry Wisdom zine has shifted.
Originally it was going to be only available to members of the Cult of
Chaos, Chaosium's new fan club. But that didn't make much sense: we were
putting too much work into it and the zine deserves higher circulation, so
now Starry Wisdom is getting wider distribution through retailers and
distributors, Wizards Attic customers, and conventions. Cult of Chaos
members are being made to feel special in other exclusive ways.
X is for XAOS
Which is the Greek root of Chaos which is the nature of Chaosium. . . .
which explains why I'm not spending breath issuing timing promises for
future Glorantha releases. . . I'm just letting you know that Greg and I
are working as hard as we can to bring them about.
Yours in the Whirl,
Rob Heinsoo
Glorantha editor
Chaosium
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