Canon

From: MOB <mrmob_at_ozemail.com.au>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 00:04:41 +1000

G'day all,

---

Canon

It seems like I can no longer go on deluding myself...

Martin sez:

>After all, what good does it do you to work like crazy on a region if a
canon
>source comes along and blows it all out of the water?

and mate, it's particularly galling when:

1. the material you worked on "like crazy" was created in collaboration with Greg, and published, presumably with his approval (albeit in mere "fan" sources, for want of any official product line at the time);
2. the material you worked on gained wide acceptance amongst the Gloranthan readership, found its way into people's own gaming and writing and generally added to everyone's MGF enjoyment of Glorantha;
3. the replacement material on the face of it doesn't seem to be anywhere near as interesting and looks suspiciously like change for change's sake; and,
4. one of the original authors even seems to deny there was a previous version.

>What we publish becomes canon.

I'm sure the screenwriters of "Highlander 2" thought this too.

>What is canon is widely believed by most gamers to be "true" and given that
>"truth" it makes it rather hard for those who disagree with the canon to be
>in the same ball park of arguing as those who agree with canon.

Yet it states in "Strangers in Prax" that Glorantha has no horizon, yet we ardent Gloranthaphiles know this isn't true. Stafford hamfistedly tried to retcon the Yelmalio cult out of existence, but thanks to work of Nick etc to clean up Greg's nasty mess on the floor, the good folk of the Sun Dome seem more real to me than the latest list of incomprehensible names in tomes like GRoY, FS or whatever. Anyway, I prefer the term GAG ("Generally-Accepted-Glorantha") to "canon": one of the things that originally attracted me to RQ/Glorantha was that unlike AD&D, it wasn't prescriptive and dogmatic.

>This is the double edged sword of publishing in Glorantha.

I see the double-edged-sword as the fact that fan-publishing kept Glorantha going for much of the past decade while its erstwhile owners were too feckless to bring out anything of their own, and now that it seems they just about might be up to it, a lot of good material is being unceremoniously binned, dismissed as mere "fan speculation", or (worst of all) possibly even being worked into new stuff without recognition of its provenance.

>We ALL want more product, we just don't want product that interferes or
>contradicts OUR view of the way things are.

Correct. So I wonder why you (and presumably Greg) are going out of your way to completely fuck around with what has been accepted as GAG by the very same people I assume you want to buy HW? Or are current Glorantha fans considered to be such a piddling minority of the vast multitudes of potential HW purchasers that we don't matter?

>I know fine well that some people will read my stuff and say "hey cool"
while
>others will wish to insert an ice pick in my head, rather like your
namesake.
> Again, this is inevitable.

Interesting, because in the all the years I've been writing Gloranthan material, involved with TotRM, helping develop the LARPS, and in my own small way, *helping keep Glorantha alive*, no one has ever reacted to my work - or that of my colleagues either - in such a violent fashion. Until now, it seems...

Cheers,

MOB

---