Cerebralism.

From: Stephen P Martin <ilium_at_juno.com>
Date: Mon, 03 Feb 1997 02:11:48 EST


Martin Laurie <102541.3423_at_CompuServe.COM> The Digest - too cerebral?
>
>Frex Gregs books, even KoS are great for nutters like me and all the
other
>Gloranthaphiles but I lent KoS (which is a lot more Western culture
centred >than the Entekosiad or FS/GRoY) to my players (who are all adults, working
>and pretty smart, most with degrees) and they were baffled. They
thought it was
>confusing and badly written, they complained that it made no sense and
>contradicted itself all over the place - naturally I told them that that
was the >point, that it was
>written from the perspective of Gloranthans, not us in the RW.
>

This may be a common reaction, but it is not universal. When I gave King of Sartar to my sister to review for a fantasy magazine she was editing, she loved it, even though she knew nothing about Glorantha. She was amazed at the amount of detail, and was somewhat amused by how boring parts of it were -- whether this is what Greg wanted or not, she thought it was intentional. She understood that the book was a mystery to be unravelled.

>Now we here that the new Gloranthan game is not due out for another few
years,
>that David Hall has been dropped and production is dependant on the
minitures
>and it just leaves me feeling like - why do we bother? Whats the
sodding point?
>

Um, unless I misunderstood his post, David Hall was not dropped, he dropped out -- there is a big difference. I am sure that he left with good reason -- I have been working with Greg for years now, and I know how he and Chaosium can be.

>The _only_ people who seem to care are those who post to this digest, so
lets
>not let that die too, lets be as cerebral as possible and as MGF as
possible but
>at least we achieve something!
>

I really doubt that the people on this Digest are the only ones who care. I was not on the Digest for years, by choice, and I certainly cared, enough to volunteer a lot of my time helping with both RuneQuest and Chaosium Gloranthan releases, just about everything from River of Cradles on. There are a _lot_ of people who play RQ and who love Glorantha who are not on this Digest. With due respect, Martin, your comment in the above paragraph is one reason people on the Digest have been looked on as _elitists_ for a very long time. Don't forget that for every person who sees your post, there are at the very least another 100 people who play RQ who won't. They are the ones who are missing out on things, not us.

This is one place where the fanzines are very important -- one of the primary reasons I finally joined the Digest was to mine it for material for Tmy fanzine, and in this respect it has been very successful. I've filled in a lot of material for the current and following issues, and hope to get more in the future. In this Digest, Ingo mentioned how he had been able to write an article based on the discussions in the Digest.

Instead of complaining about what we haven't got, I think we ought to concentrate, as Martin says, on what we do have -- an excellent discussion forum, five or more well-produced if irregular fanzines (in English alone), plus the occasional extra, such as the Tradetalk translation and Questlines. If more of the people on the Digest invested the time in producing their own material in printed form, everyone would benefit. Even if you can't afford to this, either due to time or money constraints, take your discussions and turn them into an article that one of the fanzines can use. I can't wait for the Seattle crowds' LARP to be made available to everyone, and I hope that Mssr. Gadbois gets Tarsh War soon. I wonder for months when the next Tales is going to be ready, as do a lot of you, I am sure.

Stephen Martin
ilium_at_juno.com

- -----------------------------------------------
The Book of Drastic Resolutions
drastic_at_juno.com

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