Re: Heroquest 2.0 and adventuring

From: Kevin J. Maroney <kjm_at_...>
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:47:15 -0400

On Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:06:58 +0100, Lawrence Whitaker wrote:
>In answer to all your questions: no. Or, rather, not quite.
>
>As an example, I'm currently working on the district descriptions of New
>Pavis. I could, if I wanted to, c&p some of the fine descriptions from P&BR
>but I've actually found it easier to rewrite the material. Where I have used
>c&p I've invariably reworked it. If you look at Pavis in its original state,
>the city is quite sparely described; good in some ways but bad in others.
>Here's an opportunity to flesh-out a lot of stuff and capitalise on
>opportunities missed. The final book will be the recognisable Pavis that
>everyone knows and loves, but it certainly won't be great swathes of pasted
>original text with a few new sentences or cults chucked in for good measure.
>This is a ground-up building job.

Take it as given that the new Gloranthan steering committees are basically dedicated to new material--not just revisitations of the RQII material--and that any new publications covering familiar territory will have so much new information that they will be of interest to people who already have the older versions. Given that, one of the best ways to drum up interest in Glorantha as a living project would be to post on the web, free, much of the early material *in its original format*.

The experience of publishers who have tried this type of IP giveaway has been overwhelmingly positive. The standout example of this is of course the Baen Free Library, a large (and growing) collection of free novels (and story collections) from the backstock of Baen Books, one of the larger fantasy and sf publishers. Putting an author's books up on the Baen Free Library leads directly to increased sales of that author's books--including the ones which are available for free!

I think this would be a great attention-getter for Glorantha, and would help solve the "where do I start" problem. Start with Cults of Prax, Borderlands, and the Pavis boxes and you can hook anyone. (Goodness knows, it worked for me!)

Yes, there is the danger of this undercutting sales in Moon Design's excellent reprint volumes. However, as I said, the Baen experience indicates that people will buy copies of books that are available *for free*, both to have a real printed copy and to support the generousity of the authors and publishers.

I realize it's easy for me to be open-handed with other people's IP, but it seems to me that there is a good "please all sides" solution. However, Greg can testify that I'm perfectly willing to pony up my own money for Gloranthan items; I've spent more on such items, new and out of print, in the last year than I have on all other RPGs combined in the last decade.

I am a completely disinterested party in this--I now *have* copies of (almost) every professional Gloranthan publication. (I'm only missing Militia and Mercenaries and Blood Over Gold.)

If this is an idea which has been discussed and dismissed at length, I apologize. But it just hit me as a nice solution to both the "where are the new players" and "why am I buying material I've already bought" questions.

-- 
Kevin J. Maroney | kjm_at_... | www.maroney.org
Games are my entire waking life.