5. ------------- GOES TO CHARM SCHOOL.
[Insert me or anybody else, as you wish.] If you're going to enfranchise the Gloranthan creative-community, do so with an element of central control and (enforced) mutual understanding. We've proven unable to provide it ourselves.
The loosely controlled elevation of a disparate, forthright bunch with widely differing views, personalities and prejudices has been a bit of a clusterfuck. I know that `Greg Stafford' is pretty much an antonym for `micro-managing tyrant', but the fall-out from this has blighted Gloranthan creativity and publishing through to the present day.
All contributors are equal, but some are more equal than others.
This is classic Gloranthan elephant-in-the-room territory. Somebody once told me that this creative and personal tension was a good thing, with positive results. I pondered for a moment, recalled those who no longer contributed on account of them pissing each other off; recalled the projects mothballed and lost, some actually completed; and thought: bollocks.
Over the past couple of decades, Glorantha has lain under the influence of successive Greggian prophets and/or cliques with varying degrees of inclusivity, urbanity, backbiting, nuance and panache. Some regimes have worked better than others – but the overall effect has, I think, been wholly negative.
6. SMALL > BIG. HONEST.
Some people are big-picture people; some people are small-picture people. I'd like to try and be equivocal here; to say Your Glorantha Will Vary. But I can't. Big-picture people? Too often your `grand ideas' take away far more than they add. They (often cack-handedly) nip in the bud hundreds upon hundreds of wondeful potentialities that could enrich Glorantha at a variety of levels – all to benefit a `brilliant', uniform cosmological insight.
Take the `universally applicable' (MoLaD, p. 66) elemental progression. Seriously? What is this, Top Trumps Runes? Nevermind that its supposed cyclicity is undermined by myths from across Glorantha (and you obviously didn't mind when you came up with the idea). Myth should be rich and multi-faceted. Not a DBA-style devolution into A beats B beats C beats D beats E beats A. Can cyclicity work? Of course. But on a local level, where cause and consequence are clearly and evocatively wed – as in the example of the Three Feathered Rivals.
Elemental progression? Bad Glorantha. Three Feathered Rivals? Good Glorantha.
In the later 1980s, Glorantha started getting ahead of itself. I'm increasingly perplexed as to why many like Genertela, Crucible of the Hero Wars to the extent that they do. Beforehand, Glorantha had focused on relatively small-scale explorations: Sartar, Pavis and Prax, Balazar. These were populated with gazillions of wonderful ideas. But Genertela, Crucible of the Hero Wars? It ran ahead with a loose, broadly painted overview. It set out a skeletal framework for much of Glorantha; broad themes and ideas were apportioned to various lands, races and cultures, but left undeveloped. It lacked the magic. It paved the way for the rise of the geo-cultural analogue in a way that earlier supplements had not.
The classic areas of Glorantha defy the conventions that later developed. Surely that provides a hint?
Can you imagine what would happen if the Lunar Empire, so close to the frozen north, had been a `blank land', and Greg later opened it up for exploration to Gloranthaphiles? Would it be a land of gleaming phalanxes, luxuriantly bearded Dara Happans and the ziggurats of the tripoleis, existing in a magically preserved climate? Or Valindings riding woolly mammoths? Honestly?
What would the reaction be if an author had floated the idea and image of Yara Aranis as a Lunar Goddess? ("She belongs in Teshnos.") Or suggested that, just across the mountains from those barbarian Orlanthi, there existed a land where nomads rode bison, rhinos, zebras, ostriches and llamas? ("They belong in Pamaltela.")
I feel Glorantha is more effective when it utilises smaller brush-strokes, and works from the ground up. And stops trying to `make sense'.
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