I won't repeat all the good things that have been said about the need of scenarios and campaigns... It is so obvious that this is one of the main points that I don't feel like twisting the knife in the wound.
I just wanted to add that another important point is to give examples of lives in Glorantha. What I especially like is knowing the biography of some special character: a major NPC (good guy or bad guy), a potential PC, an exile,a drifter, whoever... I would like to read what happened (only the major events, of course) to someone from his (her) birth to his (her) death (and maybe what happened after). This kind of story gives you a good idea of what can happen in Glorantha and how is Life. You can weave several biographies together, you can describe plots, you can tell about major events in the history of Glorantha from the "real" point of view (I mean, not the God-learner one).
If you feel like it, write a whole novel of course... but my point is that it is much of an effort and maybe you won't be read. Biographies are kind of the "skeleton" of a novel IMO... When you described what happened to several characters, you can then still decide to tell in more details a special part of their lives and make it a short story...
Those bios can be especially useful to use as a reference when you run a campaign. It reminds the GM of what happened and what is going to happen next. it can help to devise plots who don't appear when needed but rather seem to come from a long way in the past (revenges, haunting spirits, secrets,...)
The problem could be that, if the player ever get to know these biographies, they could kind of "foresee" the future. I don't think that's a real problem since you can still decide that Fate is not that powerful. Because of the PCs, the bios could become false... The biographies are only a guide-line. Of course the PCs can alter the lives of people like Muriah, Jezra, Griselda,... Maybe those changes they can induce is kind of a way to measure how much important they become in Glorantha.
I think writing bios is surely one of the best way to describe gloranthan History. From the poor up to the nobility, each life is kind of a brick in the big edifice of Glorantha. The point is to chose some special brick rather than a dull one and to chisel it to make it fit your campaign.
Of course I can't expect a compendium of biography to get ever published (I don't expect anything to get published very soon anyway). But I think such bios could be a nice addendum to scenario or to supplements about a specific place.
Xavier SPINAT >>>>> e-mail: spinat_at_poly.polytechnique.fr
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