But this is the way Glorantha goes. I play on Glorantha because I like this multicoulered world which gives me a lot of options to play with. Timo Euler asked a few days ago why Glorantha is getting so complicated. I think Glorantha isn't that complicated. In the time I started to play in Glorantha (1985) it was very difficult to get information about this world and over the years I made the expierence how multicoulered and fantastic Glorantha in fact is. It is an adventure for the game master her/himself to make her/his own expierence with all the different parts, views and sides of Glorantha.
What has changed since this time? AH has taken over RQ from Chaosium and they hasn't done a good job as publisher (in Germany the licensees have done a worst job compared to AH). But we have had the RQ Daily and digest as discussion forum. ToRM has become a very proffessional magazine and the RMM has done a good job for Glorantha. Furtheron we have nowadays a lot magazines for this world (BoDR, Enclosure, Tradetalk and RQ-Adventures - and Codex?) and they all sell their issue very well (so far as I can say). We have a lot of gloranthan conventions each year (GC USA, GC down under, RQ - Con Germany and last not least the Convulsion). Over the last five years or so Glorantha has survied mostly through the activity of all these fans of this fantastic world. I don't know any kind of game which has survied such a publishing as we have had it through AH. To come to the end I must say that I didn't see any kind of stagnation in the fan szene of Glorantha. IMO it is difficult to convince newbies to play on Glorantha, because there is no publisher for Glorantha now. But I think we all hope this will change with Issaries Inc. But nevertheless the fans of Glorantha wouldn't stop their creativity on their work on Glorantha IMO, if there won't happen something in the case of publishing. They have done in the past and I think they wouldn't in the future.
I agree with David Cake in the matter that we need something for new players to give them a good and nice made overview of Glorantha, through which they can imagine what could be behind this. Such a book could be given to all newcomers of this game to come.
Furthermore Peter mentioned his opinion about this digest. I don't agree with him in his statement that newbies didn't get a chance to find a way into the dicussion on this forum. All newbies are welcome IMO and I have read a lot of answers on questions from these guys. I don't think the most of the longstanding subscribers of this very digest wouldn't answer questions from newbies. I have done this a lot of times in the past I know some others who are doing this very often.
I agree with Peter in his opinion that the quality of the digest has changed over the times, but in the past we have had the daily and the digest which has made it easier to seperate discussion on specific matters and the sending of material for the use in the game. Nevertheless the digest is for me a very important source in the doing of Tradetalk. Most of the articles in Tradetalk are results of discussions on this forum. Through this discussion I get to know what kind of material is of a lot of interest and which isn't. Without this digest there wouldn't be such a magazine as Tradetalk. IMO it is most important that such a digest is still existing and it makes no matter for me if most of the discussion goes on and on in length. As Nick pointed out this is the nature of this digest and it is good as it is now.
In the past I have had a lot of dicussion about the squids (Boristi), Ralios, Naskorion and Arkat which ended in some material the Chaos Society has published. It has helped me a lot by doing the freeforms Rise of Ralios and Kings Funeral, and in the writing of the articles for Tradetalk.
BTW, we have had some delays on the schedule of Tradetalk. Tradetalk # 3 has have a lot of delays. But I hope it will be out at least on the GC DU. The content will be east ralios and Naskorion. The staff of Tradetalk will try to be much more better in time for TT # 4, which will be a Holy Country issue as well as TT # 5. Both should be out before the Convulsion in the middle of 1998. If somebody of yours would like to send me some contribution for the HC I would be very pleased.
Cheers
ingo
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