Re: Gloranthan newcomers

From: Paolo Guccione <teigupa_at_tss.tei.ericsson.se>
Date: Tue, 04 Feb 1997 19:06:17 +0100


Trent Smith

> The lesson I've learned from all of this is that the wealth of scholarly
> Gloranthan material, especially the recent stuff, is a tempting distraction
> from actually playing the game. If kept in the background and alluded to, it
> can immeasurably increase the intrinsic interest of the "game reality" and
> make events like the Cradle or the fall of Whitewall feel important, but when
> the world-detail creeps into the forefront, it's stifling to casual players.
> In this regard, although much less satisfying on a scholarly level, I
> think that the piecemeal approach to Glorantha taken in RQ1-2 was actually
> much more effective from a gaming standpoint than the encyclopedic approach
> from RQ3+.

[ invoke scissors of Humakt here ]

> Of course, the real issue here might be my group of players ("casual"
> might not even be sufficient to descibe them) and the fragmented nature of my
> campaign (we only play on breaks from college-- summer, XMas, maybe spring),
> but since I see myself and my peer-group as an ideal audience for RQ and
> Glorantha (people who've "outgrown" D&D-type games but still want to get
> together and play something) I think that we shouldn't automatically be
> dismissed as somehow "insufficiently serious". It's exactly such non-serious
> players which allowed RQ to be successful once and will be necessary to make
> any future Gloranthan venture successful once again.

I think this is a very useful account and comment. Attracting new players to the world of Glorantha is one major problem, the one whithout solving which we cannot expect new "mass produced quality supplements". And we can reasonably expect to have them produced in the near future if we can attract new players, as new markets are opened. In the very moment I was writing this e-mail I received another, from the editor of Stratelibri's magazine, who is discussing which background information he is going to publish on the zine (in ITALIAN, at last!). And since Stratelibri publishes also the Italian edition of Magic: the Gathering (tm, upon insistance of my attorney), I do ensure you that a lot of gamers who have never heard of Glorantha will be reading these. So let's move on and produce quality stuff for the newcomers, too, and let's start campaign games where adventure and cultural background are well balanced: players will try them, it is up to ourselves to have them enjoy Glorantha. Maybe this is the long-awaited opportunity!

Done with the digression and back to Trent's comment. One of the first and most useful hint' s in RQ3 GM Book is: start with action, and leave the background to out-of-session readings and handouts. Trent objected that giving bakground stuff as handouts or available material did not succeed in interesting his players. They were finally involved in the plot when confronted with a "good old fantasy adventure" set in Glorantha, and THEN they could enjoy playing in the Cradle incident. What I desume from this, and from my personal GMing experience (nine years in general, six of which almost exclusively in Glorantha), is that most players become interested in learning more about the Gloranthan setting when the reward for this is more opportunites for adventures, which for many players (luckiny not all) means almost exclusively more power for their PCs. And with this I am not insinuating that they are bad players.

So what is my suggestion for GMing newcomers? Make culture an opportunity for roleplaying and adventure, even combat. I loved the discussion about fighting live chaos during SB initation because it makes an usually off-the-scene event a memorable combat to be actually staged. Digests ago I suggested to enhance rituals as the way of getting DM. The idea behind this was to force players to become more involved in the cult if they wanted more magic. Make adherence to the god's way, not the POW sacrificed, the real limit to the amount of magic they get from the deity, and you get players interested in everything about the cult. Let players understand that they can get more useful equipment, even magic items, if they understand how to enter in the rulers' graces, then let they figure out how to do it without any evident suggestions on your part, and see if they do not read everthing about local costumes.

Instead of letting PCs find the usual, boring magic item that boosts their combat efficiency (including the River Voices tattoos, writers of RoC please forgive me), let the Big Reward be that the High Priest has them perform the part of the deity in the Sacred Time ritual/heroquest, then give them the appropriate spell as reusable (you choose which, so it is not unbalancing, just MGF) if they peform it well and see if they do not gain interest in every obscure part of mythology when they understand that they can actually roleplay it and get fun and power. One of my players really loves Dark Walk as a tactical spell. He steals the shoes of every troll he meets, hoping in some reward...

			http://www.geco.it/~guccione

------------------------------

Powered by hypermail