Delurking for a moment on mostly non-Gloranthan stuff (sorry, but at least it ain't the KoW 8-)).
The NY Times had a semi-interesting article on Korean shamanism this morning
(written with predictable though perhaps not unwarranted skepticism) which
included two interesting items of note I thought I'd pass along. One is the
number of purported practitioners of Korean shamanism -- 100,000, according
to the article, which, while perhaps not significant in terms of the total
population of the two Koreas nevertheless struck me as being happily
mind-boggling for the year 1995. The second was the seeming distrust with
which most Koreans view the shamanic practitioners of their own village --
apparently, most find it difficult to believe that someone they've known all
their life is an actual shaman, and so treat the local villager as a fake and
prefer to go to a shaman in _another_ village when necessary. While
heavily-shamanic cultures such as that of the Prax probably wouldn't follow
that model, it struck me as an interesting cultural feature for Gloranthan
cultures in which shamanism is rarer/non-central, such as perhaps the
Orlanthi, so I thought I'd pass that tidbit along.
Scott Delecti wondered a bit on the WotC move; as a fellow AOLer, you can go
to the Gaming Company Support boards and check out the WotC folder to get an
ear(eye)ful on what's going on (if you've never been to the board before,
just use the recent message feature to look at the last 5 - 10 days worth of
posts). While WotC is in fact axing Ars Magica (bought from White Wolf only
a little while ago), Everway, SLA, etc.,and firing their entire rpg staff in
time for happy-happy-joy-joy Christmas, it appears at the moment as though
most of them will have some sort of continued after-life; Atlas Games has
made a bid on Everway, and it appears as though the just-fired ArM developers
are trying to swing financial backing to buy the rights to ArM themselves
(the 4th edition was apparently only a week from being shot for the printers,
and I know WotC had already solicited advance orders). The whole thing kind
of leaves me puzzled about the industry as a whole (any word on what's up
with the Avalon Hill sale?), particularly as I _still_ don't understand the
whole card game phenom and hope it goes away ASAP (hmm; perhaps I should make
the upcoming Cthulhu ccg an exception?).
Anyway, back to lurking.
Mark
P.S. While I'm here, much applause to Erik Sieurin both for his "pleasing the examiners" piece (which convinced me to lurk as much as possible if I can help it) and the excellent Bonepecker/Woodpecker story.
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