Please note that I have "playing" games in Gloranthan in my title. People are free to write whatever they want. I have no desire to bad mouth anyone's contributions to Glorantha. If someone wants to describe the 500 aspects of Orlanth, or detail mysticism with a third hand account of a rumor from Vithela, more power to them.
Blizzard's email inspired me to write in and agree with his sentiments. I don't enjoy having Orlanth divided into umpteen subcults. I don't particularly enjoy supplements written from the perspective of a culture. I don't want to reopen the subjective vs. objective debate! What I want to see are supplements for Glorantha that I enjoy and want to play. I don't want unfinished works to run a campaign from. I want lower level stuff like any of the classic RQ boxed campaigns, or much of the stuff published during the RQ Renaissance. What I find hard to believe is that no one wants to write this stuff any more. I know that Greg doesn't want to, and I know that Issaries doesn't want to publish stuff like that, at least not with any priority, but what about the rest of us.
There is nothing to stop any of us from writing a campaign or scenario that has the same level of detail or material focus of a Big Rubble. There are enough "fan publishers" out there between Tradetalk, UW, and myself that one of us is bound to publish it if it is well written. I know that I would. Putting a more specific focus on many of the details not currently included in Hero Wars stuff is not out of bounds or undoable. It's not like you can't writeup a caravan with its trade routes and trade goods. Its not as if you can't map out a building or a town, or even a dungeon (GASP). If detailing magic items is what you like, it's not like any magic item in Plunder couldn't be written up for HW/HQ.
As for how you describe current Gloranthan things to newbies, less is probably more. I see no reason to play humakti as deeply emotionally distrubed. I don't really want to play with "anyone can be argrath". I wouldn't even mention that. Let them believe there is only one, and he's some bad dude from the wastes, or whatever. Why add complexity you don't want to use. I don't particularly like having to ignore wide swaths of recently published material, but it beats the alternative of my using it. Just like Greg doesn't dictate what I write, I don't dictate to him, just like anyone else.
In the end, I hope more people write material far more akin to Griffin Mountain than Orlanth is dead. There's plenty of room for both. I just know that Issaries will only publish stuff like OiD, so it's up to us to do the other type.
Rick
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