Re: The End of Glorantha?

From: Simon Hibbs <simonh_at_msi-uk.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 09:52:42 +0100


Simon Phipp :

> Is the "Death Lord" a bona fide change or is it a typo?

Many peopel have commented on this to 'the authorities', and after all it's this sort of thing that playtesting and circulation for comment is designed to catch. Untill it appears in print in a commercial publication I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

> Similarly, Orlanth the Warrior.
> Is this a change designed to reflect the new Gloranthan Orlanth
> Aspect, that of the Warrior or is it merely Orlanth Adventurous but
> without Adventuring as that is an old RPG concept.

Likewise, if you don't like it, say so to someone who can do something about it. There have been plenty of opportunities for people to do so. But at the end of the day, I have great difficulty caring about a few semantic quibles.

>I remember reading when RQ3 came out that Arkat lived for 75 years
>and that his War was compressed from the timeline in RQ2 Cults of
>Terror.

Well, obviously how can I possibly play my Orlanthi characters any more knowing this? It totaly invalidates my... er.... the fundamental premisess of........ erm...... why he believes that........ um....

Ok, I confess it makes not the blindest bit of difference.

Note that this change actualy made it potentialy _more_ fun to play Lankor Mhy history professors - it gives you much more stuff to argue about.

>It seems to me that whenever a new game comes out things are >changed
simply for the sake of being changed. This tends to negate >the concept of Glorantha existing in its own right outside the Game
>Structure.

Which is like saying that because most of the (many differnt and contradictory) accepted timelines for egyptian antiquity are now widely believed to be hundreds of years out of whack somehow negates the concept of ancient egypt existing in it's own right. At least to me, anyway.

>The argument that "if you don't like it then you can simply ignore
>that part of Glorantha or use your own ideas" sucks. If we all did
>this then why have Glorantha as a game world in the first place. We
>could adventure in any one of a number of Heroic worlds, ranging >from
Ancient Real World to almost any Fantasy Worlds described in >novels.

And what do you do when the latest erchaeological evidence proves that your Vikings campaign is grossly missrepresenting historical viking religious practices in the outer hebrides? Or when the plot for your Midkemia game is totaly undermined by the latest raymond E. Feist novell. Well, serves yuor right for runnign a game in a world created by a living author still capable of operating a keyboard.

Which brings us back to Glorantha. The only way to avoid the kinds of thing's you dislike is to ban Greg from ever writing anythign more about Glorantha. I have actualy seen this actively proposed on this digest!

>I may be too cynical but from what I see, Gloranthan as a >RolePlaying
World is in its death throes.

*boggle*

I beg to differ.

Simon Hibbs


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