I was up very late on Sunday finishing some writing. I'm not usually a coffee drinker, but my wife introduced me to some *marvellous* chocolate coffee, and as the night progressed, I sipped. And sipped. And sipped. Relative caffeine virgin that I am, I went through *two pots* of the damn thing before I wondered a) why I wasn't sleeping and b) why the room seemed to be buzzing.
Yesterday at work was *very* interesting. The following ramble may also be purely caffeine-induced. :)
I will respond to some of the marriage and kinship posts in a few days when I can come up for the proverbial air, but in the meantime, here's one of those short series of questions I throw to the crowd occasionally and then step back in wonder to watch the fireworks.
Glorantha is a shared world. It is supported by an imaginative and creative international community. It seems to undergo periodic quantum jumps in terms of the level of detail we can absorb and build on. Take Sartar for an example. In the early eighties, Sartar was where good barbarians came from. WF provided a few tantalising details, but little systematic information. RQ3 gave us more detail, focussing on game-related details of cults and spells and attitudes. KOS blew away our preconceptions and offered systematic perspectives on Sartarite culture and society that, as recent debates illustrate, we are still absorbing. Thunder Rebels is about to offer more information that is both cultural and game focussed.
The Glorantha community has grown as the internet and web has grown. The Runequest daily united the tribe internationally, and was as instrumental as TOTRM in keeping Glorantha alive. Today, we have hundreds of creators working on various projects of interest, and can easily share large amounts of information including, increasingly, art and maps and tunes and sounds.
So if we want to continue to systematically explore Glorantha, and have the information available in some systematic way, what structures do we need to build?
If we set say, a ten year horizon, what are the goals we should be working towards?
Where will Glorantha be as a gaming world in ten years time? What are the areas that need further development and exploration in that period?
Where will Glorantha be as a literary/storytelling world in ten years time? How we advance the quantity and quality of Gloranthan stories and myths? Is Glorantha always going to always be a western, male, urban mythology? Should we try and encourage more literary and sophisticated types of stories, or should we comfortable that the template is, essentially, campaign writeups?
Where will Glorantha be as a shared myth / joint world project in ten years time? Is there scope for exploring Gloratha for its own sake, *apart from its gaming setting*? Can we set systematic paths of development for culture areas, so that we begin with broad essays on myth and history and culture and end up in ten years time with a knowledge of say, detailed maps of every city and descriptions of every clan and a basic vocab of the language and an understanding of how say religious beliefs and cults build unique social perspectives? Can we take templates further? Or is anarchy and creative chaos perhaps the best way to progress?
Obviously Ossuaries and its plans are a big part of Glorantha's future. Greg's vision remains central. But if *you* were responsible for building Glorantha over the next years, what priorities would you set? What would you encourage? What might you do differently? How would you use technology?
Who is going to organise the next generation of Gloranthacons? How can we recruit, and widen Glorantha's appeal? How can we sell the dream?
Big questions like this have no right or wrong answers. Even the wildest or most improbable ideas can take root and lead in surprising new directions. Kiss the trickster.
What do you think?
In my own thinking, I'm toying with producing a purely internet/PDF Glorantha project or magazine. I'm a real convert to Acrobat/PDF, and the fact that I can combine photos, photoshop art and text together in a colourful way that can be easily distributed and printed but not changed. Recent theoretical discussions have made me eager to describe some Sartarite/Far Place clans (and bloodlines, and marriages :)) in a systematic way, in enough detail that we can understand the effects of various customs and practices.
"Hallo? Mary Ford Clinic? How long does a coffee detox take? That long!? Oh well, its been kinda fun..."
Cheers
John
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