I've read the discussion so far with a lot of interest. For what its worth, here's my two bolgs and a greasy clack. Prefaced by the usual statement that I love Glorantha, respect IsInc in their efforts and greatly value the friendship and entertainment offered by being part of the worldwide Gloranthan community. This isn't intended as an exercise in smart-arsery, but represents my own thoughts as to where we stand. Some of my opinions may well be wrong, but this is how I see the state of the Lozenge.
Glorantha is slowly dying, or at least diminishing. It has been for ten years or more - the last big influx of new blood seems to have been around 1994 with Sun County/Prax and the Rolston Renaissance. When a major American convention like Origins gets 5 people (!!) signing up to its HW events there is something very, very wrong.
Glorantha's setting and ethos reflect an essentially seventies gaming outlook, and this is showing more and more. This is not as obvious to those of us within the community, as a substantial majority of us started our gaming in the late seventies/ early eighties and have primarily travelled with RQ/BRP and the Chaosium stable. This outlook is reflected in the types of stories we tell, the apparent lack of a sustained interest in fiction beyond game mythology (not that I mind myths :)), and even in the style and type of artwork we share and use in our publications.
Hero Wars jolted many of us into the nineties, but gaming has changed, and Glorantha has been increasingly slow in recognising, let alone addressing the fact.
Glorantha is a ghetto, and the ghetto walls are getting higher all the time. The more familiar we become with Glorantha, the more we can delve deeper into its life and mysteries, but the learning curve for outsiders and newbies becomes steeper and steeper.
This ghetto-isation was exacerbated a few years back even within the community when the Digest (at the time our chief vehicle for exploration) went through a period (thankfully now passed) of increasingly esoteric (and to those not involved, incomprehensible) and increasingly heated discussions, backed up by a One True Vision and last word mentality. That side of Lozenge learning can turn off even the most devoted voyager - Wakboth knows what it must have seemed like to outsiders stepping in to test the waters. Thank the goddess for the new lists, and thank the goddess for moderators.
Glorantha is increasingly becoming a male ghetto. My own experience of the gender balance is that it has been spiralling steadily downwards since the early nineties. Part of the reason is that high fantasy rpg sword and sandal settings are increasingly seen as a male domain, though we can all think of numerous exceptions. Part of the reason is that womens' voices and experiences are less seldom heard in our community - a self perpetuating cycle.
Part of it is that our exploration of Glorantha cultures has become increasingly conservative, part of the general conservative trend of the nineties. The cultures we create are (white) bread and butter recreations - when was the last time anyone tried out a radical or innovative cultural idea in a Gloranthan setting? When I first started Glorantha, the Lunars were shot through with a progressive, feminist spirit. This seems to have been steadily whittled away through the eighties and especially the nineties. (This is no way an attack on Mark, Martin and Wesley - I love what I've seen of the ILH - it reflects the ethos of our community as a whole over the last twelve or so years).
And part of the reason is that we don't address the gender issue, and don't address women as part of our prospective audience.
I don't believe Glorantha has to be a ghetto - you CAN jump into Glorantha with a hundred word character description and a one page setting description, but that approach requires a careful and conscious strategy of presentation and layout. It requires entry level products aimed at beginners - short sharp booklets with super clear layouts, brief overview and background articles and entry level, pick up and play scenarios. These days, it requires colour to even get a look-in with younger rpgers. (Obviously, I love the 'deep structure' stuff as well, with the chance it offers to **play** in the deepest sense with the love of history, myth and culture that so many of us share.)
Separating the Digest into the HW lists has been a good thing AFAIC, even though I yearn the loss of 'essay length' explorations. (Another factoid of the millennium: most of us seem to read the lists sitting at work drinking our wake up coffee).
What are other possible solutions? RPGing inherently resists too much detail - its a spontaneous, creative, genre and stereotype/archetype driven activity. What I term 'deep structure' detail can be entertaining and amusing for its own sake, but is often better presented separately from a game context.
I'm thinking for instance of some of the contributions made to Moon Rites. David Millians' Tales of Creation - simply told myth that was overpoweringly beautiful in its effect. The glimpse into Greg's Lunar novel - colour and exoticism for its own sake. Peter Metcalfe's Surgeons of Vitality or Simon Bray's Dirty Little Gods - humour that still conveyed a lot of game information. Oliver Berneutz' Cora of the Two Appetites or Mark Galleotti's incredible Law in the Empire - detailed visions that asked questions about causes and effects in the larger world. These types of stories are not what Issaries are primarily about, but are extremely valuable in building our common world. Not everything has to be tied to a scenario or even a game setting.
And given the incredible detail and colour we can evoke in Glorantha, the wonderful and sustained stories we can tell, why are we so shy about fiction? I don't mean campaign writeups and myths, much as I love them, but sustained stories that stand on their own strengths and can introduce and explore our common world. Given that actual, regular *playing* becomes more difficult to organise as we age, isn't this one obvious, new generation vehicle for Glorantha?
Over the past year or so I've been working on a thick description of the Far Place and one particular stead and its year. As I look at the assorted bits and pieces, the descriptions of people and places and events and story seeds, I realise that it would not take a very great change of emphasis to make it into a novella. But is there a place in our community for such? Would it sell?
Is it time for a Gloranthan short-story magazine? A writers circle? Another 'Heroes of the King/Gloranthan Visions' project?
And of course, most roleplayers these days use computers. KODP is a wonderful game, but suffered from some of the same limitations as our general community. I guess we're all looking for a character-centred rpg open source engine where we can plug in and play our own Gloranthan campaigns and settings, our own visions of the Lozenge we love so much. Does such a beastie exist?
Did I write all that? My coffee's gone cold. Bugger...
John
i wonder if i'll end up like Bernie in his dream a displaced person in some foreign border town waiting for a train part hope part myth while the station changes hands
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