Uuuurgh! Well thats no worse than a book publishing house but it is still an annoyance to the authors.
>As for how Greg is, he is just like any other creative genius -- he
>writes what comes to him, when it comes to him. As anyone on the Digest
>probably knows, writing something is not always easy. And if Greg does
>not have interest or inspiration, or if he does not have time, something
>is going to get ignored.
Hmmmm, trouble with that is that Greg, by making his game world part of the lives of a lot of people also has a responsibility to those people and should listen to those people - if he doesn't want involvement, he should never have made it game playable in the first place and if he does want involvement (as he seems to) then he should put aside many of his own needs for the greater good of the group he has involved. Thats what I would do anyway, though all folk are different.
>I don't know how the production decisions are made at Chaosium, though I
>suspect that if the word Chthulhu (or Mythos) is in the title it has a
>much better chance of seeing print sooner. I am sure Greg is not the sole
>person to decide these things -- he is not the only owner of Chaosium.
Well some stuff sells more than others t'is true and only business sense but look at Nephilim and Elric! which have had several books published in the last few years yet I can't imagine they would have had more of a market than the likes of Glorantha - its simply that Glorantha is not pushed or produced with any degree of effort or resources in comparison.
>I agree that it is a shame Greg is not involved on the Digest, though I
>can partly understand this -- the time commitment required is tremendous.
It doesn't take much to be one of the many, many people on the digest who don't contribute regularily, who simply enjoy the discussions or skim what they don't want - it doesn't take much at all. As for time, I don't accept this as an argument, I work a six day week, fence, run a badmington class and have now started Muay Tai again plus I write, run a game a week and socialise - true I only sleep 4-5 hours a night but I didn't used to, I was an "8 hours or I'm a zombie kind of guy", I just trained myself, if I (a real lazy bastard) can do that, who can't?
What it comes down to is this - Greg doesn't want to be on the Digest - presumably he doesn't because he _would_ get involved in the discussions and might see a lot of stuff he doesn't like and this would mean he'd have to defend his postion and answer questions. I can understand such a view but its a shame because the list would truly come alive with that kind of input, even more than currently.
>It is one of the reasons I avoided the Digest for so long -- I spend at
>least an extra hour a day on my computer, reading and responding to the
>Digest. For my purposes, it is well worth it, but it is taxing. As it is,
>I have done less work on the next volume of Drastic in the last two
>months than I did in the month before I started on the Digest. And some
>of my other computer commitments have been held up for a bit.
Well, as economists say, you've suffered Opportunity Cost, that being the next best alternative foregone. But you like it or you wouldn't do it so its a good thing for you as it is for everyone who enjoys discussing stuff with you or gets any ideas from you or anyone. Thats why the digest is so good, its a continuous brainstorimg session and thats why I think the powers that be at Chaosium should have more of a prescence. Thats way they'd get feedback from us and we would learn new stuff too.
Re: sureveys
>I would suggest you send your concerns directly to Rob Heinsoo, as this
>is now part of his area of concern, if I understand his position at
>Chaosium correctly.
I've already written to Rob in the last few weeks about Sheng Seleris but haven't heard back as yet. But I might try the survey idea myself and see what happens.
Re: Digest contributions:
>I have to take issue with this -- how many of the people on the Digest
>sent any material to Avalon Hill over the last six years? When Ken
>Rolston came on board, there were maybe 4 manuscripts on hand, two of
>which were incomplete. Most of what was published at Avalon Hill while he
>was there was created and written based on his ideas. A lot of it was
>reprinted material, dressed up as new in mostly good ways.
How many people were asked? How do you get new and good material? You go and find it and this digest has a hell of a lot of people on it who have probed the companies involved to see if they are interested and have met a brick wall. Why submit when it lies on the shelf for two years? Why submit when nobody knows whether all the work you do will see the light of day, whether you're RQ stats will be useless or whether all your ideas will be Gregged. Its pointless to invest time and effort into something without any recognition of the work. The reason why fanzines work is because you have freedom of expression - the compaines have their way or no way. Greg is a prime example of this as its his game world in a very personal way to him and as a result the gaming public get shafted by changed minds - hell there's even an adverb for it: "Gregged" as you well know.
What I'm saying is that incentive creates activity, currently there is NO incentive to work your arse of, no enthusiasm and no certainty to grow a solid culture of submissions in. It sucks.
>No game company can publish material based solely on _ideas_ -- if more
>people had submitted manuscripts, even incomplete ones, to Ken Rolston,
>what came out might have been different. Though I will admit that we
>would still be where we are today.
Then whats the point? This is exactly what I'm getting at, there is no sodding point to submit, to think of new stuff. Even if you do, then if it doesn't fit into the mold of whats accepted, its no good, end of story, regardless of its marketability.
>But when and/or if a new Gloranthan game comes out, people on the Digest
>are going to need to do more than have _ideas_ about Yelm and Shargash,
>more than what has appeared in the fanzines, more than discussions. If
>Chaosium does not receive submissions, no matter what their intent is,
>nothing will be published.
Aaargh! But the "ideas" are merely the expression of a lot of work and thought. But take Shargash and Yelm frex - how can you turn those ideas into text when Greg has officially declared Peloria a work in progress - we can't do diddly without Greg saying yes or no and if you have to wait for Greg, you might as well go and order heroquest and put it on back order - he painly has other commitments that take the lead.
>>>Fanzines and no product. Does this sound right to you?
>>>Does this sound even remotely fair to the fans of Glorantha?
>Again, who has written even a single scenario and submitted it? MOB has
>done a hell of a lot more, and is in my opinion one of the driving forces
>behind the RQ Renaissance, in some ways more than David Hall -- his focus
>and time commitment resulted in Sun County. Ken's time and effort
>resulted in RoC (which was 1/2 reprinted material), Shadows on the
>Borderlands (2/3 reprinted), Dorastor, Strangers in Prax, and Lords of
>Terror (about 1/3 reprinted).
MOB has done a hell of a lot, and good on him for it but even he got well and truly knacked with Elmal and Yelmalio which took all sorts of horrible twisty turney efforts from various folk, including yourself, to explain.
Don't you see what I'm getting at? Is this a good environment in which to write? No it isn't, there are not even the remotest guidlines around as to _what_ to write. I and many others have been waiting for the Glorantha fiction guidlines for a long time now but there seems little point because if they can't even agree that the game is to be brought out as an RPG then how is there going to be any fiction?
>Some others tried, and unfortunately did not have a chance to see their
>work in print -- Pat Elwer's Tower of Night, Harald Smith's Imther. Am I
>missing anything? And, I will point out that _both_ of these campaign
>sets were submitted to Chaosium in the late 80s, languishing first there
>and then at Avalon Hill. _That_ was unfair. The current situation is just
>unfortunate.
Its not "unfortunate" because decisions are made to make things "unfortunate" which needn't have been made - a more rigid and defined submissions policy and clearly defined ideas of what is wanted with a solid base of "fact" in the game would help enormously. Would MOB have written Sun County the same way if he'd known that Elmal was round the corner?
Here's a quick survey - WRITE IN IF YOU HAVE IDEAS YOU"D LOVE TO SUBMIT FOR PUBLICATION - WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE WRITTEN? Lets here from the 544 people on this list - come on all - lets tell everone our views, it'll just take a second or two to write it.
Martin Laurie
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #164
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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