#1 - THE FUTURE OF RUNEQUEST
I have spoken to Mike McGloin, Oliver's partner in producing the next edition
of RuneQuest for Avalon Hill. As far as he is concerned, "the project is
dead."
That is a quote.
My personal suggestion is for you, the reader, to throw your support behind Chaosium's efforts in bringing out new Gloranthan products. Rob Heinsoo, Chaosium's Gloranthan Product Line Manager, issued (very promising) news in V4#4. I am including a copy of that announcement here:
Hello, Uz and Argrathi and everyone in between!
Here's a short Glorantha update from Chaosium....
DEFINITE
* Work is progressing on the skirmish miniatures game which Chaosium is
co-producing with Stratelibri of Italy; we're hoping for a '97 release date.
Stratelibri is already at work on the line of 25mm miniatures for the game.
SPECULATIVE
* The new Gloranthan rpg will appear some time in 1998 after we have gotten
rolling with the miniatures game, reestablished Glorantha's market presence,
and prepared a good deal of new Gloranthan data. For now we're focusing on
the '97 releases.
I'll see you all here on the Digest,
Rob Heinsoo
Chaosium
For those of you who like RQ more for the rules than for Glorantha, I can only suggest you forge ahead with your home-brew rules modifications. I expect that Shannon Appel will resurrect the RuneQuest Rules Digest as announced, and that the Digest will continue to serve as a forum of discussion. However, I leave it to him to confirm or deny this.
#2 - DID "RUNEQUEST" AND "GLORANTHA" GET MENTIONED IN THE MEDIA? Yes. In Monday the 9ths _Daily News_, there is a sub-story related to the authorities searching through Oliver's hard drive. They found MBs of files of his work on RuneQuest. "RuneQuest: Adventures in Glorantha" is mentioned in passing.
Eric Rowe, of Chaosium, tells me that they are aware of this mention and that Chaosium is prepared for any media scrutiny that may come of it. Please be aware that Greg Stafford has for years been on the forefront of defending RPGs in the media. I refer you to an excellent pamphlet he prepared with Mike Stackpole, "Games Don't Kill," available from GAMA.
#3 - DISCUSSING THE SITUATION IN THIS FORUM Many of you know that I am friends with both Oliver Jovanovic and Mike McGloin. I am one of the few that has kept in regular contact with them as they continued to work on the next edition of RuneQuest. (They felt they were getting overloaded by input from the RQ community at large.) I ask that you accept my report from Mike McGloin, "the project is dead," as accurate. He said this to me at approximately 7:15 pm, EST, on Monday December 9 1996.
Given this, my opinion is that the Glorantha and RuneQuest Digests are no place to be discussing the specifics of the charges against Oliver. For those of you who feel the need to have your say, I'm sure there are several Usenet newsgroups that would welcome your input.
I hope you all agree with my opinion that this is no place to discuss Oliver's situation. If anyone does indeed post a message inappropriately, I ask that we as a community summarily ignore it.
#4 - WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE SITUATION? Please do not send me emails asking if I have any inside information. I don't have the desire nor the time to answer. Please don't be offended when such requests are ignored.
While I am very tempted to go on for several paragraphs about what I know (99% of it from the media and available to all of you with web browsers) and my opinions about Oliver's innocence or guilt, I feel the need to abide by my own request in (#3), above.
Please forgive one indulgent comment: never before has the statement "innocent until proven guilty" resonated so forcefully in my thoughts.
Thanks for reading and keeping on topic,
* David Cheng
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #7
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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