Gloranthan Adult Themes (Ramble).

From: Paul Snow <pyspas_at_bath.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1998 13:46:08 +0100 (BST)


Hi All,

[This is a quick but apparently not brief de-lurk]

One thing that struck me at Convulsion is that HW is sensibly going to be squarely aimed at the RPG buying public. This means that it is going to have to appeal to, how shall I say this, "young-teenagers" who really want to be a HERO who is at WAR (as RL pointed out).

Now, the full glory of Gloranthan Mythology contains many adult themes - and I don't necessarily mean "adult" in the contemporary nudge-nudge sense.

Has anyone talked about how this is going to be handled?

What do I mean here? Well, when, in the UK, we face up to our compulsory Shakespeare play at School at age ~15, we probably read "Romeo & Juliet" or "Macbeth" because they contain themes that are easy to understand at that age. i.e. being young, in love and at cross purposes with your parents or being an ambitious yet doomed warrior king (who'd have been better off meeting three Elric! players rather than three witches).

You can't sensibly teach "King Lear" to 16 year olds because it is largely about parenthood, aging and facing death. I remember seeing an English Lit. Prof talking about this and saying he didn't understand Lear until he had had kids - and hearing Greg say that his whole idea of mortality had changed when he had kids and he then produced the longer time-scale game in Pendragon.

So, what the hell am I on about? Well, I guess that the Glorantha that goes out into HW products is always going to be the pint from the quart and pint pot interface scenario. Where will the full Gloranthan depth be, the Real Glorantha?

I suppose in Gloranthan fiction that can stretch the younger readers, out on those web sites (which I'm still banking on) that push the parameters and here where the full face of Glorantha will always be discussed. But it's worth realising this now. HW will be a product using Glorantha, it can't be fully Gloranthan.

Thanks for all your interesting discussions,

PAS


End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #109


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