Re: Re: Tarnils

From: Roderick and Ellen Robertson <rjremr_at_...>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 12:41:57 -0700

> My gaming group is all "old-time" RQ platers, including Ray Turney
> and John Holmes. Attempting constructive criticism, one of our
> problems with HeroWars is that too much of the material seems to be
> ignoring or contradictory to earlier Gloranthan stuff. There's just
> tons of interesting older stuff that could use explanation or
> enhancement. (Like why Carmanians even worship pagan gods) Instead,
> there really seems to be much of an "oops, that's screwed up, lets
> just throw in a skillion new gods and cover up the mess" approach.
> Sheesh, the whole Lightbringer's quest has fundamentally changed from
> retrieving and atoning to Yelm to rescuing Ernalda! (this makes
> Orlanth a lot less heroically admirable BTW)
>
> I'm exaggerating for emphasis, but there are too many new cults of
> little interest or even negative interest. Elmal has always struck
> me as an abomination. Danfive Xaron used to be interesting, I worry
> about it's future.

Well, there's not much I can say but "blame Greg" :-) It isn't really a problem of Hero Wars, per se, but one of Greg having time and energy to put into Glorantha. Were Runequest still produced by Chaosium, and Charlie told Greg "here's some money - you just take care of Glorantha and Runequest, and let us take care of Call of Cthulhu" you'd probably see a similar expansion of gods/cults/cultures/ideas.

Greg has a *lot* of creative energy that was bottled up during the whole Avalon Hill/Interregnum eras, when he really didn't have the chance to make real changes to the *game* - look at the Unfinished works, and King of Sartar, though, and you can see that he *was* working on Glorantha. Now he has a game and a company that allows him to expand his creation (and he's letting us play in his sandbox). Anything that ends up in print under the Issaries logo was read, commented on, and ultimately approved by Greg, no matter who the author is cited to be. All the authors have faced the pen of Greg at one point or another, being told "No, this is wrong, here's the truth of the matter". Some of us have faced it *many* times...

Roderick