B1 is a very useful concept though. But I think that, to some extent, the Gloranthan community already has that: it's called Apple Lane (or am I wrong?).
And for those who rejoinder that Glorantha needs an "Enemy Within" analog, don't they also have that in Borderlands/Griffin Mountain?
Apple Lane is already available in "HW translation" (thanks to those who pointed me there). It would be cool if Borderlands were also so available, but I understand Issaries desire to focus on parts of the world non-Praxian for the moment. (And I understand that Multisim has already published a French version of the series of adventures from the AH River of Cradles book, so I'll likely be getting that for use with my other campaign group to start in a month or so. Mind you; not all that useful for those who don't read French and/or German.)
> most of the people who feel they need those [anthropological]
> details are probably also the people who are best placed to
> write it/make it up for themselves - many of the rest of us go
> "Hey, I've got a cool idea for a scenario involving a wedding"
> and sod trying to work out the bloodline implications of the
> two NPC's we use actually marrying.
Speaking for myself, what I'm worried about is staging such a wedding in my game, and getting some incidental (but perhaps campaign-locally meaningful) detail "out of canon". Quite often, such things can just be handwaved away in the spirit of IMGU (In My Gloranthan Universe), but every now and then one of these details can have nasty repercussions that react badly with canon details later published (or concurrently, but not yet read).
Like when large sections of your Traveller campaign rest on the precise behaviour of an X-Boat, for example, which you interpret in a non-canon fashion...
> (Incidentally, I also think ILH-1 should provide a template
> for people looking at other areas of Glorantha - be it a more
> in depth look at the cultures in and around Dragon Pass, or
> the far West/East/South - Can you distill the information a
> Player will need to know into a 2 Page spread "Homeland" piece
> so that a GM wishing to play in that area can get Characters
> started with a minimal amount of reading and explanation?)
One thing that no-one has to this point mentioned (not even, to their utmost credit, Martin and Mark and the rest of the ILH creative team) is that these high level approachable distillations of game worlds are probably the most difficult kinds of things to write. Thus, producing them, in favour of "B1" style adventures, or encyclopaedic cultural tracts, may be very difficult to do and do properly.
(I make this assertion not out of first hand experience in the gaming field, but because I know that in my field of writing, high-level, introductory encapsulations of complex systems are commonly believed to be easily written, when in fact they are very very difficult to do properly.)
Kudos to Martin, Mark, et al, and I for one hope that Issaries continues both the high level of quality and the level of approachability, we've seen in the past few books.
-- Viktor
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