While there are certainly those that are more one or the other (Stephen, for example, has already said he doesn't play regularly) but there are certainly quite a few of us who are both. I am both somewhat interested in Dara Happan minutia and a regular GM as well (one day I'll even combine them when I run my long planned Dara Happan noble house campaign). I'm not the only one.
But the suggestion of taking things to email when they get too esoteric is a good one, and something I do try to do - the only problem is that the really interesting discussions via email either a) end up involving enough people its convenient to use the digest or b) end up being recapitulated on the digest anyway - eg the recent does Shargash have Berserk question I discussed via email a year or so ago. Still, we can but try.
Roderick Robertsons suggestion of the Lunar Foreign Legion is EXCELLENT. A fine fine basis for a campaign. The Elevens probably are a good candidate too - more noble than the Danfive Xarons, yet known to include criminals and madmen. I always figured they kind of died out, but its quite possible they still exist. So, why don't they show up in Dragon Pass, KOS, etc ? - obviously the poor bastards are out in the Redlands, in lonely dessert forts defending against Pentan aggression, or other unknown hell holes on the edge of Empire - of course, later in the Hero Wars they could do anything IYG.
languages
>Every dialect seems to have its own phrases for this sort of thing.
>And, very strangely, for bread. "Loaf" stays constant, but a bread roll
>can have all sorts of strange names.
And beer. Often in a pub I ask for 'a middy of super' (though not if I'm in a decent pub). Obviously the most important things suffer linguistic drift. And things that primarily children are interested in vary a lot - a classic example being what we called sand boondies (lumps of sand that retain some structural stability, enough so that the whole lump can be thrown and satisfyingly explodes on impact).
>I'm _still_ dying to have a chat
>about the Gloranthan use of field artillery engines on the battlefield,
>but when I brought it up, it sank like a lead balloon.
I take it you don't mean cannons and stuff? I thought the sole unit of real gunpowder field artillery was the Cannon Cult. Is there any more? The threat of gunpowder gobblers should pretty much restrict any gunpowder weapons to dwarven use, anyway. If you mean catapults, ballista, trebuchets etc, yes, it hasn't been mentioned enough. Note that you can use Multimissile with siege artillery as well, so I imagine Gloranthan magical enhanced catapults are quite devastating in their initial barrage at least - - another Lunar innovation? Probably, as Lunars are able to simply use Amplify where others would need to learn very powerful Multimissile spells, so they are able to have their versatile LCM trained magicians amplify artillery as well as many other tasks, where others would probably need specially trained Multimissile magicians (unlikely).
Lead balloons, of course, are sometimes a useful means of travel in the underworld, as the magically enhanced lead is attracted towards large areas of primal darkness, giving it some reverse lift.
>>From GCotHW you get the impression that in the west everyone has
>>medieval style armour but unenchanted iron stops magic which means all
>I got the impression it's the tiny minority of knights, with a punch of
>badly armored and equipped ground-pounding peons, myself.
There are an awful lot of knights even in the minority - 3000 Grand Knights in the Golden Battle of the Flame alone (I probably got that name wrong), the Loskalmi elite forces. I think its highly unlikely they have 3000 suits of enchanted iron armour, highly unlikely that they use unenchanted iron (they are wizard knights, quite magically capable), and also unlikely they are unarmoured (they may not all have plate, but at least chain), so I think their armour must be made of something else. Gloranthan brass? Fancy bronze?
Cheers
David
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #157
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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