Sacred Cows, fan publications, and other things from Meints, Richard (R.J.) on 2000-05-09 (Glorantha Digest Vol 07)

From: Meints, Richard (R.J.) <"Meints,>
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 05:46:43 -0400

Watching the Red Emporer debate rage on compels me to embarrasingly gaze over at the books in my Gloranthan collection. I could call it a library, but that would imply that I actually read the stuff on a regular basis. The debate did motivate me to reread various bits in the Fortunate Succession, which I really hadn't opened since I purchased it at RQCon 2 in 1996. The conversation between Yelmgatha and the Red Emperor summed up my feelings on the whole RE debate within its few short paragraphs. "Change is good" AND "some of the old ways should be kept". If the rest of the book wasn't full of 5 syllable names and odd references I might have learned even more.

Not being one of the authors of any of the RMM Lunar material (other than having the honour of being in a number of the authors' discussions about it), I don't feel as strongly as my friends do about whether their material gets revised. MOB, Nick, David Hall, and many others have put in uncountable hours keeping their favorite gaming world living and breathing. They probably feel like adoptive parents would feel if the biological parents reclaimed their child after a ten year absence. One thing I can assure them is that their work is not in vain. Tales of the Reaching Moon and the rest of the Megacorp's products will only increase in status over the years. I can't envision the day when they would suffer the same fate at a German convention as Daughters of Darkness or Eldarad currently do.

One thing I have noticed in every RQ campaign, freeform, or event I have ever played in is that it has always varied from the published sources. You take what you like and leave or change the rest. To Greg Stafford's credit, he has never, as far as I know, ever prevented an "unofficial" or "fan" publication from being done. Wizard's Attic has always stocked them right along side all the "official" materials without exception, with the fan stuff far outnumbering the official items.

I don't subscribe to the "if it ain't broke, break it anyway" philosophy, but I do believe that there are virtually no sacred cows. Everything should be at least considered for change, even if the conclusion is a resounding "no".

I wonder if many of the GAG things that will get changed for Hero Wars will suffer that fate because it is deemed easier to write a new version than it is to sift through all the great stuff scattered over the net, in fan publications (many of which are out of print), and here on the daily.

We seem to be potentially setting ourselves up for a viscious cycle. Fans develop their own stuff for areas that don't have large amounts of published material. Issaries Inc. will eventually publish the HW version, which may or may not bear little resemblence to what the fans did. Will we get the same retcon for Sog City? Boldhome? Shadow Plateau? Kingdom of War? the Pharoah? or many others...

PS: I've updated the Convulsion 2000 membership list. More updates to the site for event and freeform info are planned for this weekend.

Rick Meints
www.glorantha.co.uk

End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #631