Hotducks and keets

From: Sérgio Mascarenhas <sermasalmeida_at_mail.telepac.pt>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 1997 15:27:28 +0100


V.S. Greene:
> The _real_ truth about ducks of course is that they were added as
> sort of a joke; something to do with a friend of Greg's wanting a
"Duckburg"
> on the Dragon Pass map.

I'm well aware (thanks to Ruquest/Glorantha Digest) that Greg created ducks for fun. The problem is, as someone has already written in in the Digest, they became part of Glrantha.
The way I see-it, it's like what happend with trolls. Remember, it was Greg that wrote:
>Sometimes, (...) my speculations went far from the originals (...)
> Trolls illustrate how it happend. They were first a species in my lofty
histories, dark villains of the night with odd and frightning powers. (...)
> I was determined to show to my players that these creatures were
something more besides monster to kill. (Designer's notes for Trollpack 2).

In the same page Sandy remarked:
> I had certain preconceptions about how a troll worked (...). The trolls
matured and developed into fully-rounded individuals (...). As I delved deeper and deeper in the motivations of trolls, their customs and mores, I began to respect them (...).

Sandy also wrote something that I think is as true now has it was all those years ago:
>Trollpack (...) is the first game aid that completely describes an alien
race. It is not only the first, but I am certain that it will remain one of the best for years to come. It has set a standard that it will remain hard to equal.

It was so good, that nobody dared do something in its line in what concerns the other races. It was so good, that I called my little work Duck-MINI Pack. But I continue to think that, from elves to mostali, from giants to baboons (and I love baboons as much as ducks), from morokanth to newtlings, all deserve their pack.

By the way, trolls prefer hotducks with keetshup.

> "Ducks are the Jews of Glorantha".

I've seen in RD or GD something about that. It seems to be an interesting idea but I prefer to look in other directions when searrching from inspiration in RW.
I tend to see ducks, not has the Jews of Glorantha, but as the Gipsies of Glorantha. Why? Consider this:
Jews had such a strong culture that it permeated all European culture. Gipsies didn't have such an influence and were acultured. Jews tended to act near to the powerful of society (attention: my reference to Jews - for reasons that are easy to understand - is sefardite merchants, not askenazi peasants) while Gipsies were and are near the social bottom. My second reference when trying to compare ducks in Glorantha with RW is the bands of homeless children in Brezil and other south american countries. They're small, persecuted and belong to the marginal / criminal strata of society.

Trotsky:
 > I have to say, while I like much of Sergio's recent duck work Thank you for the compliment. Note that I would really like to make it a collective work. All the comments poste to GD about ducks and what I've been writing have influenced the way I see ducks.

> I'd certainly agree with Michael that if anyone were to produce a
DuckPak, the keets could not be ignored (...).

I don4t ignore keets. If my DuckMiniPack was to be published (see above for the mini in the name) I would introduce a paragraph saying: "Somewhere in the Golden age / lesser darkness / greater darkness Anatantropos Donaldis (I'm writting it on memory) split into two branches: one headed to Dragon Pass, the other to the East Isles. The first became known as Ducks; the second was named Keets. This is an account on ducks. Suffice it to say that", and next I would reproduce the information on Keets contained in Elder Secrets.
I don't have material on Keets. I would be very pleased to see somebody writing about keets. It would be specialy interesting if he or she worked on keets independent from me and other people writting about ducks. In the end we could conceive a campaign or a LARP where ducks and keets would find themselves face to face. I think that it would be fascinating to role-play how individuals of the same race but with completly alien cultures, beliefs and backgrounds, would sort-out the situation.

Sergio Mascarenhas


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