No recipies for sticklepick in this one, so skip if you haven't been following the MGF thread.
Thank you Nils, Nick, Sandy and Martin for your thoughtful, well-considered and very helpful responses to my late-night musings. You've pointed out the miscasts in my own thinking, and helped put the main issue back on centre stage, free of some of my self-described "mean-hearted pseudo ranting and raving". At least I wasn't anthropowanking, ay MOB? :-)
Straw Dolly? You know Sandy, I think you're right, even if I did warn I was exaggerating for effect. Hoist on me own petard :-). Digesters who used to subscribe to White Dwarf during its transition from quality gaming magazine (Rune Rites etc.) to infuriating Citadel house organ will recognise where my "exploding illuminated were-hobbits" come from. I think the actual figures advertised were "chaos mutant ninja were-snotlings" (!), but the sentiment is pretty much the same.
The Issues:
Nils:
>>MAXIMUM LOCAL DIVERSITY - MD
>Shouldn't it rather be Sufficient Local Diversity? Calling it Maximum
> might encourage too much variation.
I'm not too attached to any of the labels, but used 'Maximum' because I thought both principles were essentially subsets of MGF.
>After all, plants and animals can
> find their way to the next valley.
Sandy makes this point as well. I didn't mean that flora and fauna should be totally unique of course, and I'd probably only apply the rule in areas considerably larger than a valley. Notice in the cultural examples (where I'm more at home), I gave the East Isles, where, in my understanding, you've got as much variation as anywhere on the Lozenge, a rating of 60 - i.e. there's still a good 40% in common (language, kinship material culture etc.). I imagine most areas would have ratings of only 10-30 i.e. between 70% and 90% in common between tribes. I wouldn't be suggesting higher figures for biology, except in the obvious of cases of chaos or radically different biomes (transition to high mountains etc.),
I'm no biologist, so Sandy or someone, what's a good rule-of-thumb for Gloranthan variation? Around 5% over a hundred Km?
My suggesting this at all came because I'm trying to put together a comprehensive Far Point wildlife list for my campaign. The few Gloranthan sources give me fairly generic descriptions of Euro-Siberian fauna, the Dagori Inkarth Uz-related stuff, and Greg's Dinosaurs. There's also my own increasing fascination with the E-S mammalian megafauna (now extinct) , and a few unique creatures of my own devising. My problem is that if I spend a considerable amount of time developing a local ecology, it most certainly won't mesh exactly with what say Dave Hall and Co. have developed for the Lismelder area. Any GM doing similar work is faced with the same problem.
Our choices are to attempt definitive Genertelan ecology guidelines ( a big project, but not completely out of the question...) or make a principle out of necessity - the nature of Glorantha is such that there's a certain amount of unique flora and fauna in any given area. Or the old standby... your Glorantha is not my Glorantha.
>>So, how do you infuse mystery and excitement in the non-action parts?
That's the eternal quest. I have my own tentative ideas, which I've explored in articles in TOTRM and Questlines. My line of exploration involves a greater emphasis on storytelling, on giving everyone in the group more input as cocreators (which remoulds the job of the gm somewhat), and on making more conscious some of the mythical dynamics of our stories and characters.
All MCI suggests is that there's no harm in aiming high.
Nick:
> John Hughes' post read a little oddly to me, as he seemed to be replying to
his
> own interpretation of the doctrine of "Maximum Game Fun," rather than looking
at
> the circumstances in which it has been invoked by its proponents.
I didn't mention the strengths of MGF, which are pretty obvious to everyone. Perhaps I should have. Given that my raving was about two things that I basically see as subsets of MGF, I thought that my confidence in the basic principle should have been apparent. However, like some other posters, I have sometimes interpreted 'fun' in the narrow sense, with obvious misgivings. My mistake, and all the more so since I've had MOB's wonderful Questlines article on the topic sitting before me for a couple of months now.
>we should be producing a
>non-dictatorial, enjoyable, usable game setting, not a thoroughly-researched
but
>unplayable thesis. The difference between Sun County and the Glorious ReAscent,
in a nutshell.
That says it all really. Your entire definition should be set in neon somewhere. (Though in its defence, GRAY was never intended as anything more than a skeleton on which to lay more vibrant flesh ).
Sandy:
> Rather than
> having the Orlanthi and the Tarshites be utterly different in every
> detail, I find it more fun to display them has having essentially
> the same culture and many of the same gods, but perceived from a
> slightly different angle. This also adds interest to their
> interaction and especially to their mutual contempt, esp. when
> viewed by an outsider (as most of my PCs normally are).
This was my intention. I wasn't advocating wholesale variation. The examples I gave for the Tovtaros - a love of liquefied fish (sticklepick), a passion for sweat lodges and cuk fighting (imported by some of the first settlers from their original home in Bilini) an exaggerated (by most Orlanthi standards) respect for the authority of women - are all small things really, but add a lot to the flavour of a campaign. Still, a Praxian or Lowland Sartarite would have a lot of trouble telling a Tovtaros from a Vantaros or a Tres, even though all of the latter have probably fought wars over their differences. (Steamface! Fish Breath! Your cuk's a hen!).
Martin:
> Finish your thought!
I'm preparing something at the moment for RQ Con Down Under, and will post something on the archetypes I'm playing with as soon as I can. Its as much an attitude as a technique. After all the answer, the right balance, is different for every group and every campaign.
And I don't think we can expect miracles overnight. Like my own post, there will be tentative steps, explorations, mistakes and false starts. (I think the most apt description for my late-night musing was "suck it and see".) However, Glorantha, and campaigning in Glorantha now has an unstoppable momentum. Think of how much more we understand the nature of heroquest now than we did when it was first broadcast in 1982. And how much further we still have to go till we get heroquest working properly!
> It's the group nature of the hack 'n' slash model which makes it so useful.
Now THAT is an idea worth exploring, though I'm not sure what you mean by the hack-n-slash model.
Thanks for the response folks. The exercise has certainly helped me come to grips more strongly with what it is we're on about, and cleared up a few misconceptions.
Cheers
John
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