>- Issaries Inc. efforts floundering
You've been very direly misinformed if you've gotten that impression. I've now seen parts of the first four Issaries manuscripts: An Introduction to Glorantha, Hero Wars, Sartar, and The Orlanthi Player's Guide. A very agressive publication schedule has been set out for the first two years, and the first score or so books have been planned. I'd say the future of Glorantha, as laid out by Issaries, looks brighter than it has at just about any other time in the last 20 years. No hyperbole there either. This is going to be real cool.
>- Recent Glorantha-cons ill-attended and poorly reviewed
Prior to 1992 there *weren't* RuneQuest cons (unless the German one is older?). Now you have at least four: the biyearly Convulsion, the biyearly(?) Australian con, the yearly German con, and the yearly (plus-or-minus), floating North American con. Convulsion's attendence looked fine back in 1996, and I'd bet it's fine again this year. The American one is more erratic, but what would you expect with the time, place, and con interval fluctuating so that people from both coasts of North America--all the way up to Canada--can participate at different times?
>- Commericial publications halted, fan-published materials fading fast
I count three solid fan publications right now: Tales of the Reaching Moon, Book of Drastic Resolutions, and Tradetalk. All with constant publication schedules, though at varying speeds, some of them slower than we might like. Prior to 1989: 0 Glorantha fanzines. Prior to 1993: 1. Prior to 1994: 2. For a very short time, from about 1994 to 1995, you actually had a high point of 4: ToTRM, RQA, Codex, and New Lolon Gospel. But I wouldn't say ONLY HAVING THREE at this very moment is a sign of weakness, especially not when one of the sleeping mags, RQA, actually published this year, and I hear another, New Lolon Gospel, isn't dead yet.
And that doesn't even say anything about the huge proliferation of Glorantha web sites. Take a look at the Englund or Dunham or Miller link pages some time! (And for real fun, compare the number of Gloranthan web sites now to the number in 1993... this is a form of creative expression that was just barely available then!)
And as for the lack of commercially published material at this point, I can only shrug and say, "Wait until 1999." Things are on hold right now so that Hero Wars can hit the ground running rather than putting out a rule book and then stumbling about due to a lack of follow-up publications.
>people want RuneQuest *and* Glorantha, together...
Well, it's a damned shame that they weren't buying the RuneQuest/Glorantha books. Keeping RuneQuest and Glorantha together would pretty much have guaranteed Glorantha's place in the grave that you've already consigned it to.
The new Issaries, Inc. publications mark a second chance for Glorantha: a resurrection from the ashes as it were. With a cleaner and simpler game system and an appeal to new players, perhaps Glorantha can begin to shine again as a beacon of fantasy role-playing rather than being consigned to the dregs, as was happening under the Avalon Hill RuneQuest publications. The best game books in the world aren't worth the paper they're written on if no one buys them, and that was unfortunately the case under Avalon Hill. The creation of a new game system, a new company, and a whole new line is all about changing that. Keep your eyes on the horizon because that's where the new Glorantha publications are going to be, rising like Yelm out of the east and shining bright.
Shannon
appel_at_chaosium.com
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