Back from a week away on school camp at the beach with 45 rabid 11 year olds, with *2* new Glorantha-related products to enthuse about!:
Eric Rowe has already commented upon the eerily similar covers of the RQ Con Down Under fund-raiser book Questlines and the RQ Con II Compendium. I will only add that Dan Barker's dragonewt pic is a corker, and worthy of multiple reproduction (it also graced the cover of an issue of the German zine FREE INT *and* was on our RQ Con DU flyers!).
Fortunately, the similarities end with the cover, and both are excellent additions to the ardent Gloranthaphile's library (stick BoDR between 'em so you can tell 'em apart).
Nicely laid-out and edited, the RQ Con II Compendium is a chunky 128 pages of LARP Narratives and Seminar Transcripts.
The con was a two-LARP event - the 'Broken Council', about the creation of Nysalor, and a reprise of Reaching Moon's 'How the West was One', or rather How the West *wasn't*, as the Rokari stormed out and repudiated the council's bid for unity. I was lucky enough to play in both of 'em, and enjoyed myself immensely. I mean, what is more fun than spending the first two hours of a game as the Emperor's footrest, only to usurp the throne oneself at a critical moment, marry the previous incumbent's queen (ably played by a bloke in an 'Alice in Wonderland' outfit), and later have the legitimate heir succumb to the silken bowstring? Not to mention make people approach the imperial presence on their faces and bellies, propelled along the floor using only their toes (sorry Mr Polk).
The LARP narratives are lots of fun - ignore the bizarre statement on the back cover that says "...the results deviated from Real Gloranthan History (!?)" As far as I'm concerned, these LARPS *were* history in the making!*
*Hmmm, I don't really understand what the writer of this statement
is getting at. Does this mean we're better off staging freeforms in
the Gloranthan 'future' [HotB, HtWwO] than the 'past' [BC], if we're
meant to be worried about such definitive and restrictive concepts
as 'Real Gloranthan History'). If so, perhaps we'd better not
stage Gloranthan LARPS (gaming even?) at all?
The narratives have been written in a variety of imaginative styles, ranging from Mike Derry's "Interview with Kwaratch Kang" to Curtis Taylor's "Note on a Soiled Napkin", to my coin portrait of Mathiman, erroneously known to history as 'The Impaler' (Cool off-hand remark in Neil Robinson's account: "What, you haven't heard of Mathiman the Impaler? I think that had something to do with the way he ate his food").
David Cheng rationalises why he spent 8 hours wandering around the hotel in a fleshtone leotard and blonde wig (no doubt shocking the Kindergarten Teachers of America who were in the adjoining seminar rooms), and David Hall recounts the murderous deeds of Wahnakar the Iron/Adamant/Jelly Bison in a suitably barbaric chant. And, yes, Pam Carlson in her piece reveals that it was the overiding aim of the Dara Happans to incorporate the Emperor's stepson into the new god's 'willie'!
The seminar transcripts include Stafford's Address, HQ, Lore Auction, Imther, GMing in Glorantha, Nick Brooke's Cultural Exchange and Lunar Tunes, a momentus seminar in which we introduce for the first time Pookie, the regimental giant crayfish. Topics covered in the Lore Auction have been cleverly grouped by similar subjects, not question order, making it easy to follow, and seminars have been footnoted by the transcribers to clarify or expand upon fuzzy points.
Like Erik 'Bachelor Boy' Sieurin, I have enjoyed reading this book in the loo, and heartily recommend it, not only for the soft, absorbent quality of the paper, but for the content as well.
I have just my copy of this, yet another Gloranthan fanzine to welcome onto the scene, though the author Stephen Martin admits that he is not yet sure whether BoDR will make it to another issue. Stephen (whom you also might recognise as Troy Bankert) co-authored Lords of Terror, and did much of the design and development under the auspices of the late-lamented Rune-Czar Ken Rolston. Indeed, BoDR features a great deal of material cut out of LoT during the editorial stage, and features a lengthy section of designer notes, comments and errata for the earlier work. But there's lots more besides, including a WoG-style description of Dorastor, including maps. "The Eight-fold Way of Chaos" is particularly good, and features a number of new runes including the Tap rune (is it just me, or does it resemble a old-fashioned water tap?)
BoDR features the ubiquitous Dan Barker's take on the LoT cover (in colour, a first for a new zine!), and is nicely laid out, though one topic seems to follow another at random (appropriate, I guess, given the chaotic theme).
This is a worthy companion to both LoT and Dorastor and well worth tracking down. It will be available from Reaching Moon Megacorp shortly.
Cheers
MOB
P.S.
Mr. Brooke:
>I'm a bit surprised to hear that this tendency isn't more manifest in
>France, which is, after all, internationally famous for its pose of
>cultural snobbery and superiority. As well for as inflicting
>Chaotic Atrocities on innocent South Pacific islands...
M. Moulin:
>>Peter [Nick?] should explain more clearly how the H... [hell?] that comment
>>brings any kind of information on Glorantha, which is after all the
>>subject of that list.
Well, wasn't Nick *comparing* values of certain Gloranthans to those of Earth (British public school/France)? Lighten up pal.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #385
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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