Encouraging Newcomers

From: MOBTOTRM_at_vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 03:16:11 +1000


G'day all,

David Boatright responds (V3 #77)

>Since I started playing RQ\Glorantha I have always promoted it, and
>always will.

I am sorry to have misread you, and am glad to see you're actually a staunch supporter and persuasive advocate of Glorantha (except maybe when you're pissed*).

>What is the chances of finding new people such as the poster. When at the
>minute the only two ways to get into Glorantha and RQ is to have email
>and stumble across the digests or find a copy of Tales buried in a game
>store. Your probably saying why the hell does he not do something about
>it. How can anyone do anything when there is nothing concrete to fall back
>on. My god there will probably be a thread about which end of a worm is
>female. There needs to be some sort of offical word, from somone who has
>their feet somewhere near the ground.
 

Perhaps I'm just looking through my patented Lunar rose-coloured glasses, but I think your thoughts about the future of Gloranthan gaming are unduly pessimistic.

>As for the "Your fucked" statment I was indeed rather pissed* and at the
>time and half the Province was burning down around me. I think I was in a
>rather negative frame of mind at the time. As far as I remember the poster
>was asking about RQ and not just Glorantha.

In actual fact, the poster already owns the RQ3 rules and was asking about Glorantha, quoth:

     >>I've heard a lot about Glorantha, so I bought RQ3 Deluxe and read 
     >>cover to cover. Having done so, I am still utterly and entirely at a 
     >>loss with respect to most of the conversation going on here.

>If he is intrested in seeing a well supported RQ he is in trouble.

OK, there ain't much happening on the AH horizon for those of us with well-stocked shelves, but for the newbie who wants to play Glorantha things are actually pretty damn good. Apart from all the Reaching Moon Megacorp material on offer, just think - virtually *all* of the AH product line is still available! Indeed, the person who you said might as well fuck off has posted to tell us after a trip to his local game store he's now got at his fingertips:

     Runequest Deluxe Edition
     Elder Secrets (box)
     Glorantha: Genertela.... (box)
     Gods of Glorantha (box)
     Dorastor, Land of Doom
     Lords of Terror
     Strangers in Prax
     Sun Country
     Troll Gods (box)
     Trollpak (box)
     Wyrms Footprints.

If that ain't enough to get going in Glorantha, what is? (Shit, when I first began, all we had was a copy of Apple Lane! It took me another couple of months to save up for the rules!)

****My original point was, it's up to those of us who have been around for years to encourage enthusiastic newcomers rather than stop 'em dead in their tracks. Like Nick, I felt your 'fuck off' post did just that, and said so.

>I will end this rant by saying that I will promote RQ\Glorantha by
>scanning stuff for people or providing sources that I have, without a
>glossy cover, and probably not spell checked. Just like this.

If by this you mean scanning and photocopying material that is readily available in game stores or publishers like RMM (without permission of the copyright holders), is this more likely to help or hinder the Gloranthan Counter-Reformation? RMM funds one project from the profits of the last, and the people at Chaosium and AH actually produce their stuff to make a living. As Rick Meints pointed out recently, ask Greg about his response when someone asked him to autograph a *photocopy* of Glorious Reascent.

Perhaps a list of what's available and where to get it would be a better idea?

See also David Chengs excellent article on gaming evangelism, in the RQ Con I program book. Now I know that is probably difficult to get hold of; if Dave's reading this, maybe he can post it here again?

>BTW the end of the week I should be putting up some Aranwyth stuff or now
>that I have been MOBbed I should probably just unsubscribe.

Come on David, I know you're made of sterner stuff than that! Please post more of your Aranwyth stuff.

>begin 600 WINMAIL.DAT
>M>)\^(_at_(,`0:0" `$```````!``$``0>0!@`(````Y 0```````#H``$-@ 0`
>M`_at_````(``@`!!) &`$ $```"````% ````,``# %````"P`/#@`````"`?\/
>M`0```%\`````````_at_2L?I+ZC$!F=;@#=`0]4`@````!G;&]R86YT:&% :&]P
>etc. etc. etc.

Assuming your spelling hasn't taken a turn for the worse, and this is actually a dissertation on the mythic significance of the names of the rule books in Worlds of Wonder, I for one can do without 100+ lines of this gibberish at the end of your posts.

Cheers

MOB P.S. * for the benefit of our American readers, please note that in this context "pissed" means "..as a newt", eg. drunk, rather than angry or annoyed. For that, we Aussies and the Brits use "pissed off".


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