> My personal interest is that I've been thinking of starting a Gloranthan
> poetry/myth/arts/design /literary electronic newsletter, where people
would
> submit stories and mini-articles.
I think this sounds an *excellent* idea. In many ways, making it none too frequent would also help. There is a tyranny of immediacy with instant-response egroups, and a lot of ephemeral repetition, chat, etc. This is certainly not a bad thing, it is just a different thing from what you appear to be suggesting, which in some ways would be to the GD what GD is to the egroup lists. The linkage to GD/egroups for comment and discussion would also work well.
> There certainly seems potential for a community/personal/ freezone type
list
> for weird and marginal stuff, rants and flame wars- a sort of 'Geo's Duck
> Inn'. There was a recent attempt at such a list, though the motivation
> seemed exceedingly personal, and its failure (the list is moribund)
> demonstrates how hard a moderator's job actually is. I still think there's
a
> place for a properly conceived 'open area'.
Maybe I am a brainwashed lackey of the status quo, but I find the existing virtual forum, bounded as it is by GD, HW-list and HWrules-list and personal email, pretty open and flexible. OK, I am no fan of flamewars (if you hate someone and want to denigrate their ancestors, that's your business, it is what making this into a public act visited on other people that I find distasteful), but beyond personal attacks and prolonged OT discussion, there doesn't seem much beyond the pale. It is more a question of identifying the most appropriate medium for each message, and here your point about the blurring of GD and HW-list is an important one. What - if anything - do people see as the difference between the two? Or, to put it another way, what are their respective Unique Selling Points?
> And I'm still concerned about the very steep learning curve for new
players,
<snip> there may be a case for the creation of a beginner's list
> for clear archived!) explanations and step by step examples, where you
can
> ask questions like 'What is a Humakt?' or 'I don't understand missile
fire'
> without being overwhelmed by Glorantha or rules esoteria.
Yes, this is a tricky enough issue, though. In a way, as hwrules shows, as the main posters progress up the learning curve, they take the list with them. Someone asks 'What is Humakt?' To one person, 'The Orlanthi Death God' is the right and adequate answer. To another, a one-paragraph summary of Humakt's role in the LBQ. To another, a thousand word discourse on the social role of the Humakt. Then some raises the fact that Humakt is also a Carmanian deity - after all, the original question didn't state that this was just within an Orlanthi context... and before you know it, GD2 or MoreHW is born! I'm not trying to knock your idea, but in many ways I think the FAQs on the Issaries site provides the best model, the real problem is that they need to be hyped more.
I do hope the 'Hero's Book' helps make HW more accessible, and I'm sure that HW2 will when it comes out later this year. Maybe there is mileage in having a 'basic HW rules' section, with a good index, step-by-step examples and such on the Issaries site, too. But I'm still not sure how a Beginners HW List would work. But happy to be convinced!
Nice ideas.
Mark
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