First of all, there is a matter of style. P.M. stated that some players
get "flamed" for daring to say they do not agree with the mainstream. Is
there any reason why he states this? Well, although I agree with almost
every line in Nick Brooke's recent posting about revisionism (as one can
guess from the fact that my personal confutation appeared shortly
thereafter), this posting _could_ (but should not) be interpreted as
"flaming". Although there was no real offense in the text, taking one
entire digest to confute another's opinion is a bit excessive. I mean,
V.S. Greene might not have liked it. Or perhaps he liked Nick's reply
because it "made him feel important" but was offended by mine because I
devoted only few lines to his opinions... ;-)
AS for the overabundant details, we should establish some guidelines for
attracting new players. If the lack of an "Universal" truth is a
problem, one should only introduce new players to monocultural games,
where nobody has any doubt wheteher, for instance, "Chaos is Bad" or
"Lunars eat babies". It should be made clear to newcomers that "there is
more in this game world, but it has nothing to do with _this_ game, so
don't worry about it unless you are a True Scholar".
In this sense, a place like Pavis is one of the _worst_ settings to
start with. It has room for many different cultures and races, making
things very interesting for the True Believer (who has a clear view of
everything), but it can give a powerful headache to the poor newbie
playing a Sartarite exile who cannot understand why a fellow Storm Bull
with strange feathers on his headgear is insisting that he ceases riding
"that sacrilegous four-legged animal".
In a game, having Gloranthan scholars debate about myth and culture may certainly be as unpleasant as having Rules Lawyers debate about whether a glaive-guisarm attack versus a downed foe gets a +5% bonus or not. Heck, their characters shouldn't know other cultures' POVs, so what are they talking about? Let' s keep all this out of the game, as we should be already used to do for rules debates.
As for posting more gaming materials on the Digest, well, I, among others, have appreciated all the fictional work and the playable background stuff submitted. But I think the best format for the Digest should be the current Q&A style, with an occasional scenario or two. The best place for scenarios and NPCs should be Web Pages, with some FTP support for those who have no www access. The Digest should only be used to inform others that there is some new stuff on the page. Those who do not have a www page could (and should) be hosted by other Gloranthapiles, with the usual associate cult restrictions ("Never email Orlanthi worshipers or publish their stuff on your web site"). One might object that my webpage has no NPCs and scenarios, but this is only due to the fact that I do not consider them useful.
Paolo Guccione p.guccione_at_geco.it http://www.geco.it/~guccione ------------------------------
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #292
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