The future of Glorantha

From: rmeints_at_e-mail.com
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 11:45:19 EDT

While I realize that Martin Laurie will now label me as a                       
"whining maggot" and I may also end up "choking on my own                       
vomitous outpourings" (why do I feel like he would make                         
a fantastic drill sergeant?), I have no trouble agreeing                        
with the spirit of what Robert Wolfe was saying when he                         
thought it would be beneficial if we gloranthaphiles would                      
game more. To me, it's a matter of balance. A lot of great                      
additions to the game have come from campaigns. If you asked                    
Greg and Sandy, they would confirm that many of the things                      
they have published (especially for RQ2) came from their                        
campaigns, especially the Chaosium in-house one.                                
This does not mean that we need to abandon our scholarly                        
approach to many of the topics. I wish I actually                               
played RQ/Glorantha more.                                                       

As for some logical basis for supporting Objectivism...                         

There is room for both approaches (Sub/Obj) in Glorantha.                       
We don't need for one or the other to reign supreme. They                       
can and have coexisted quite peacefully for many years.                         
Unfortunately, the main producers of "official" objective material              
(Chaosium and Avalon Hill) have largely dried up. We, the                       
consumers, have been hesitant, for the most part, to fill the void              
ourselves. This does not mean that we haven't had any great things              
come out, likes Tales, Codex, RQA, Drastic, etc., but our output                
doesn't replace a game company's support of a product.                          

A time for some hard choices...                                                 

Avalon Hill is not going to be producing any more Runequest, although           
they will use the name "Runequest" for a brand new RPG which has                
nothing to do with Glorantha. Chaosium is trying to produce more                
Gloranthan source material, but they aren't putting any resources at            
present into creating a new rules system for Gloranthan roleplaying.            

To me, the rules aren't that important. What I want is fairly concise           
and well organized game-usable material on Glorantha. Most of the info          
I want does need a small portion of the rules as a backdrop, but that           
amount isn't overwhelming. Most of it would be cult related, like the           
number of points for a spell and its background information.                    
My advice to myself has been to get writing. If I get stuck, I ask              
a few other gloranthaphiles to help. When I have enough for an article          
I will submit it to Tales or Tradetalk. If they reject it I'll probably         
put it on someone's web page or the daily.                                      

As a gross oversimplification. If only 20% of the (roughly) 500 people who      
read/subscribe to this digest wrote one page of material every other month,     
we could publish a MONTHLY magazine the size of Tales or Tradetalk.             


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