Peter Metcalfe notes:
I understood by 'de-gloranthized' to mean that the Imther background
material was taken out and the adventures redone for a new background.
This project was dropped later on and so I understand the material is
still able to be used. I suspect that it wasn't the gloranthan material
that was at fault but rather Chaosium & AH were manuveuring for a divorce
of sorts.
Nick adds:
I think the "veto" was on (a) Avalon Hill producing a new
(and damn good) Gloranthan product, and (b) Chaosium/Greg
putting enough time into editing Harald's work to make sure
it was so, back when the business relationship between AH
and Chaosium was very poor and when the Stratelibri deal
still seemed to be on. If that's so, "ImtherPak" would
have been an entirely innocent casualty of the squabbles....
This is my uninformed opinion, and may well be wrong: I
haven't talked about it to any of the people involved.
Nick and Peter are both largely correct in this matter. As the primary participant involved, I can clarify the situation from my end. When the material went to and was accepted by AH, Greg was at the point of trying to separate Glorantha from RuneQuest. Imther got caught in the middle of the struggle. There were some issues with scale that concerned Greg but I know he did not want to spend time working on something that AH would publish. So Imther was vetoed as a Gloranthan product.
Since I wanted to publish the material and it was unclear whether there
would be a new Glorantha game at any time in the foreseeable future,
I took the material out of its Glorantha setting and converted it to a
unique
fantasy world. By the time that was ready, AH decided to produce its
new Runequest and AH did not want to do anything with RQ3. AH did
not extend a contract, so the material remains my property and exists
in both Gloranthan and non-Gloranthan forms.
Greg has indicated that he has an interest in seeing the material published in the new game, but there is nothing definite on the table in this regard at the moment. I am working with Greg and others at this point on more historical and mythic background for southern Peloria with my particular focus on Vanch and Imther. This effort should provide a stronger foundation for the game material should it be published in the future.
I would note that some bits from the Imther pack found there way into New Lolon Gospels #1 & 2 (which are now officially out-of-print in the US and Europe--though there may still be copies out of Australia) and some more should find its way into #3 (which is slowly in process).
And on a separate note, I am changing jobs as of next week, so please address any correspondence to my home email: MarandHar_at_aol.com
Harald
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