I like the idea of internal conflicts within cultures - IMO this isn't covered enough within the fantasy genre; you just get situations of "troll hates elf hates dwarf: all like humans (especially trolls - yum yum)". There are shining examples of Gloranthan intra-culture conflict though, particularly in Orlanthi tribes, and Sun Dome or Lunar political factions.
> Richard Meints wrote
[snip]
> > The digest, with several shining exceptions, has fallen into a state of
> > people asking questions (a great thing to do) and getting vague/esoteric
> > snotty/condescending answers,
This is exactly what has stopped me from posting several times. When I first delurked on the digest three years ago, I asked a few questions about areas/things I had no source material on, and got replies that made me feel like I'd said something stupid, which wasn't what I was looking for. When you don't know something, and you ask someone who does, you don't expect them to belittle you at the same time because of your "lack" of knowledge.
> This is my first posting to this list. I have been lurking since April.
> I joined, hoping to get access to scenarios - YES: SCENARIOS, or at least
> scenario ideas which would help me springboard my mind and my players
> into realms of ADVENTURE!
If you tour the RQ websites, you'll find a wide range of material that you can use and adapt to your own version of Glorantha. Most of the sites are linked to several others, but a good starting point is Kim Englund's page, which is regularly updated with RQ/Glorantha links.
> New folks like me, while interested in some of what is said (eg. the stuff
> I accidentally deleted on how dwarves sense things underground), are I'm
> sure put off by the debates which make up most of this list.
I think it's only fair (despite my comment above) to bear in mind that there are people on the digest who have been playing (RQ) in Glorantha since it was first published, and their campaigns require such obscure rambling :-). I have now been playing RQ for about four years, and I have found that my games are now evolving themselves into deeper and deeper realms - things I would be unable to sit down and create by myself occur naturally in play. For me this is the beauty of Glorantha - it's a bit like an onion: at whatever level you, there are always others (above AND below) that you can rise/sink to to suit your own campaign/players/GM skill.
> Scenarios? Most magazines dealing with Glorantha are looking out for
> scenarios. If you ever tried to write down a scenario for publication, you
> may have noticed that it is a quite different task from preparing a gaming
> session, and includes a fair amount of tedium.
Hmmm... I think this really depends on how detailed your session notes are. I know that when you are running a campaign that has been going some time, most of the action is generated by past exploits, sub-plots and the PCs own activities, but when you have a new campaign or (like me) an incredibly bad memory, you tend to write more detailed notes for your sessions. For me, adapting something I've written to a publishable scenario just needs a little plot-juggling to extract it from your campaign.
Of course, this doesn't mean that I feel my scenarios are strong enough to stand up on their own. I would certainly publish stuff if I felt more confident about it, or thought it would be treated as reasonable material rather than just being trashed by those whose Glorantha Lore is greater than mine.
> Apart from that, there have been numerous contributions which may have
> provided such scenario ideas in the past. You can't expect them in ongoing
> discussions, really...
This is very true. Certainly the Elves and Dwarves IMG are based on articles/discussions I've read in the digest, and not on published material. Using ideas from other sources can give your game an extra bit of flavour, especially if (like me) you are running a game with players who know (The published) Glorantha better than you do.
> The regular gaming group I have isn't quite prepared for myth-rich gaming,
> so my refereeing Glorantha is more sporadic than it could be too.
The campaign I've been recently playing seems to have got itself into "myth-rich" areas - something I wasn't prepared for. But I suddenly found refereeing much more enjoyable because I was being challenged as well as the players. Maybe you just need to take that first step ;-)
> When I started participating on this list's predecessor, I had more opinion
> than knowledge, too. It is fairly easy to get a well-founded opinion on a
> special part of Glorantha knowledge if you specialize. There are lots of
> topics left to explore, really.
Yes, but if you're a newcomer, it's a hell of a lot easier to rely on published material and others' more "experienced" knowledge than start writing material that you cannot later integrate with the published stuff because of basic flaws in what you first wrote. I chose Pavis as my campaign base because the amount of stuff I need to remember to run Pavis politics is nothing compared to the amount of "when which clan did what to whom in what year" that gets bandied about for DP Orlanthis.
> And thanks to Hal Bowman to addressing the needs expressed above nicely!
Hear hear!
> Brian Tickler seemed to be very pessimistic about Runequest and Glorantha but
> a lot of digesters seem to disagree with him. I personally think Glorantha is
> more interesting at the moment than it has EVER been. There seem to be more
> publications than ever. How well attended were RQ cons in 1985? Runequest may
> be dead, long live Glorantha!
I agree that Glorantha is interesting - bugger it, Glorantha is Excellent! It's definately one of the best gaming worlds ever written (along with Harn and Talislanta both of which seem to have died a lot younger than Glorantha) But I think Brians point can't just be aimed at Glorantha/RQ. Certainly in the UK, Role-playing seems to be dominated by Games Workshop, even more than D&D nowadays, and the only people I have met recently that have even HEARD of other games are those who join the University RPG groups (and they tend to play a lot of LARP and White Wolf stuff).
I don't know the situation in other countries but RPGing in the UK has certainly taken a steady dive throughout the 90's. For Gloranthan gaming to increase in popularity, it needs to compete with some serious advertising, and the only place I've ever seen an advert was the good ol' White Dwarf.
> I do wonder about the demographics and playing habits of Gloranthaphiles. I
> personally have trouble finding enough time for serious gaming of any sort.
Certainly in my group, each player has to travel from a different town when we get together for a session, about 2/3 has work/home/family commitments that interfer with arrangements, so sessions are few and far between. Praise the email!
Arf
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