What I'd like to see published would be a fair combination of background material and scenarios/cameos of a locale. Sun County did so very well - especially since it included fun-to-read fiction (Jaxarte). River of Cradles almost filled that bill, except for the fact that there was only one scenario, and not much room for using it if you didn't want to have all characters join Zola Fel. What I disliked most about them was that they played in distant "civilized Prax", and not in Sartar, or preferably the Holy Country or the Lunar Empire.
What I'd like to publish is a huge amount of information on the Holy Country, with material on Heortland, Nochet, the Islands, etc. I tried to start getting organized with my web page (look out for a few additions soonish), and I do have a long-term project of producing material in a similar style as Book of Drastic Resolutions or New Lolon Gospel. I simply don't see a chance to get my ideas published by Chaosium, and since I already put lots of work into them, I dislike the notion of rewriting every bit, so I rather forego the stamp of "officially approved" and do my best to get it as close to the official material as possible. I don't insist in doing everything myself, either, and I'm always happy to take in new ideas as long as they don't disagree too much with my own concepts. I guess having been a chief editor forms the character...
Would such a project be useful for newcomers to Glorantha? I hope so. I myself have always received inspiration from background descriptions more than from readily available game stats. My usual campaign scenario consists of a few notes describing the main NPCs and how they try to achieve their aims. Stats and goons are produced as needed.
I tried to do the same thing for my magazine scenarios - I've published two in Free INT (in German language), and have another one due out soon. However, to write up a magazine scenario expands the work to be done on a scenario greatly. Instead of a map with key locations and short explanatory notes, plus a sheet with whatever intro I prepared and notes on the NPCs, I ended up with 10+ pages of three-column, 8-point print each time I tried.
IMO the future of Glorantha roleplaying lies in the fan publications. RQ-Adventures carried more gaming impetus than any other publication after Sun County, because the scenarios were playable, and there were a lot of them. Too bad that "magazine" has gone into hibernation.
The reason why such fan products don't survive long is that they don't feed the authors and editors. Still, I like to see one-offs which work, and get distributed to whoever wants them. Although sometimes subject to delays, the world-wide distribution of magazines seems to work admirably well - for a non- or low-profit "organisation".
How to keep us from becoming living fossils? I found the conventions featuring Glorantha in a major way, best with one (or more) of the freeforms, the best bait to make indifferent "I have heard of Glorantha" players into hard core fans. Worked with me, anyway... Now the problem is to get enough people who "have heard about Glorantha", probably by forcing them to play "shallow" scenarios in Glorantha, and then maneuver them to visit such conventions.
I had the chance to play Tarsh Wars at Convulsions, and publishing it for general use might well be the way to make Glorantha accessible. The over-scaled freeforms like Home of the Bold with far over 60 participants just don't play well at home, but practically rules-free, character-based freeforms for a handful of players can just be organized. While the referee needs to do a bit more work than for game of Civilisation, it takes about the same effort to round up the players, and about the same or less time to run it.
"Shallow scenarios": do we really need lots of those in print? It isn't really hard to produce a treasure hunt with only a few Glorantha-specific references (encounters), just enough to try and hook the players. But there are (at least in German language) lots of such scenarios available in magazines or published by small companies. Wouldn't we get more scenarios by giving out a "guide" how to adapt existing scenarios for a campaign in wherever in Glorantha the game is set?
At least that's what I try to do for my Heortland pages. To use largely out-of-print city descriptions (Thieves World Box, City of Carse) may not have been the best idea for easy access, I admit, but then I've been working on the ideas for quite a bit.
Has anybody ever adapted the basic campaign used both in RQ Vikings and RQ Land of Ninja (yes, except for a few details, they're the same - talk about recycling) for Glorantha?
Sorry about the long rant. May some of you find it useful...
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