Can you read GROY? B5 & Retcon et al

From: Danny Mr <ad236_at_dial.pipex.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 12:23:30 +0100


Oh boy, am I looking forward to Convulsion.

>
>>I guess you don't mean that unlike Greg's works, the fan stuff is actually
>>coherent, readable, gameable, and entertaining?
>
>You really think that GRoY, FS and Entekosiad is unreadable and lacking in
>gaming concepts

Well I for one do. I bought all three of them (at whatever ridiculous combined cost they were), tried to read all three, failed and sold them. And that's not for want of trying to work out what the bloody hell was going on either. KODP is infinitely superior in that regard. Do you want a 60 year campaign? Well then, play a long game and then print out your tale of years. Bingo! Instant campaign complete with plot lines, lots of NPC's and other funky goings on.

>For example, if we took G'kars character in season 1,

(snip rest of B5 example)

As a script writer I can tell you that B5 is one of my least favourite series, not only because of its completely flawed and shallow set up, but also because of what you (and JMS) call evolution. In reality it's down to poor scripting with little or no reference back to original sources. I'd be interested to see if Rob Wolfe has similar or divergent views. (Not that this is really relevant on the digest, but B5 is one of my particular bugbears).

And so did the writers of some Gloranthan fan stuff. This is what I'm getting at. Do you think it hasn't occured to me that I might be retconned a
few years from now? Of course it has.

As for retconning or subsequent changes what's the point unless the new version offers something new - and better- compared to the old. I still think back to the Elmal/Yelmalio debate with loathing.

This is implicitly understood when
you write for Glorantha, or at least I would have thought it would be.

I had a similar sort of experience working on Grazepak where things were said, retracted and changed. The final result of which was that I vowed I would never work on anything based in Glorantha again (although that's probably no great loss to the Gloranthan world), purely because of the frustration of being jerked from pillar to post (and that despite all the great work Steve Martin & Rob Heinsoo did with our Grazepak submissions).

(I was going to say "named it George" but unless you were a Marvin the Martian fan, you wouldn't get that)

Or, more accurately, if you've ever read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck where the idea was taken from.

As for Greg's letter I can only say the following:

Greg is in favour of serious ambiguity regarding the way the Emperor works Cop out on Greg's part.

He said there are groups who believe they can place an Emperor on the throne through one of their number taking the mantle AND through finding the soul of
the one true Emperor. Greg explicitly stated that neither is right nor are they wrong.
Cop out on Greg's part.


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