> The problem is that the fans and he [Greg] have different ideas of his
> world. While it's not as critical in a "fan publication", he wants
> *Issaries* to publish *his* world.
And the question is, _is_ it Greg's Glorantha? Should it be?
The recent debate over the Red Emperor can be seen as the first battle (and hopefully the last) over the ownership of Glorantha. By 'ownership' I mean something akin to a moral authority; this discussion has absolutely nothing to do with copyright law and the like. The position on that is crystal clear.
Ownership
Generally Accepted Glorantha
In fact, this lack of a "one true way" has been a strength in Glorantha, not a weakness. Because GAG had to be a church broad enough to accommodate the myriad of individual Gloranthas, GAG reflected more accurately the complexity and diversity that is present in any real world equivalent. This enhanced the notion that Glorantha was a living, breathing world, that interesting things were happening over the next hill, that there was always something exciting to explore and discover. The loose framework encouraged all of us to develop our own little bits of Glorantha and share the results; a great many of these small developments found their way into GAG.
This was the position as of last week. There wasn't anything anyone could point to and say, "That's Glorantha." Instead, the best anyone could do was say, "This is my Glorantha," and everyone accepted that all these Gloranthas were different and that none was better than another. And that went for Greg's Glorantha too.
Fan or Official?
At the same time, that fan material was of a phenomonally high quality. A large number of very talented people were thinking hard about Glorantha, and expressing their ideas clearly. This set the standard for fan publication about Glorantha, a standard that has been adhered to for a long while. In the fan community, ideas were expressed, explored, critiqued, stretched. The result of all this activity was that good ideas became better, and we all benefitted from the process.
The result of all this activity is that there was little, if any, qualitative difference between 'fan' and 'official' materials. I don't consider official materials better than fan stuff. In fact, when I read something like Tales, I don't even notice whether an article is deemed 'official' or not. When I read an article, I evaluate the ideas that are contained within it, whether those ideas are good, and whether they would fit into my Glorantha. I then either adopt them or not. Whether it's official or not is irrelevant to my decision. Greg was just another fan. His Glorantha was one among many.
Issaries and the wider market
Issaries, Inc. have different plans. They have much bigger plans. They're planning to shift several thousand boxed sets in the first print run. Eric mentioned they want Glorantha to touch over a million players. Almost all of these players will probably never have touched Glorantha before. For Glorantha to be a success, these new players need to be able to have a Glorantha that's playable right out of the box. This means they need something simple, something they can comprehend quickly in the process of setting up and running a game. These people don't have time for all the complexity and subtelty of Glorantha as it has been developed over the past three decades or so. What they need, in Issaries's publications, is a simplified, streamlined Glorantha that doesn't require mastery of Pelorian metaphysics to be useful.
But there is a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The great strength of Glorantha as a game world is not really the magic, the funny creatures, or any of the other stock fantasy elements. What marks out Glorantha among game worlds is the richness of the setting. What's made Glorantha unique is the sense that each of us has his own Glorantha and that we've been encouraged to extend it how we want.
What to Do?
Martin Laurie's questions on the Red Emperor started all this off, but it was really all a storm in a teacup. As he's said, there will only be a few thousand words in _She_Guards_Us_ about the Emperor. I would expect only a few hundred of these to be dedicated to the mechanics of what happens when a Mask changes. In those few hundred words, Martin can present a 'standard model' that's simple enough to be gameable with little effort. But if he does it skillfully, as I'm sure he will, he can hint that things are not that simple. There is subtlety and complexity that's left unsaid. Most readers will just ignore it. But some, the budding Gloranthaphiles, will be interested enough to explore these complexities. They'll develop the ideas, and their Gloranthas will be the richer for it.
What's important here is not that people somehow 'progress' from Greg's model to Nick's model (if that is a progression). What's important is that there is scope in the published sources for people to explore, develop, and extend their own Gloranthas in whatever direction they wish, while remaining within the structure of Generally Accepted Glorantha that allows them to communicate their discoveries. We all should be aiming to preserve and nurture that process, and be willing to be excited about where different people end up.
The fan community can encourage this by doing what it's been doing for years: publishing fanzines, discussing ideas on the digest, and so on. Issaries can foster the process by not publishing material about Greg's Glorantha, but by publishing material that could easily become _everyone's_ Glorantha.
Neil.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #639
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