Fascinating thoughts.
If nothing else, his example of a few words about a setting, then attaching likely issues to it looks like a good quick and dirty way to make setting material more compact and useful (I was struggling towards a concept like this in the discussions about ILH1 at Gloranthacon, but he shows it more concisely.
--Bryan
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hey Ian,
>
> >Newcomers were put off by the amount of material they needed to
> >purchase or digest to start...but established users wanted
increased
> >detail applied on top of what had accumulated so far.
>
> >....the existing fans want you to move on. You cannot gain new
fans
> >without risking losing your existing demographic.
>
> I think you can satisfy both, though it will require dramatically
> reimagining the relationship Issaries has with users of the game
and
> conveying that reimagined relationship within the text of the
> published products.
>
> I remember M.A.R. Barker describing his interactions with the
Tekumel
> fan culture in a seminar at an Origins in the early 80s. He spoke
of
> how he'd get written reports through the mail from people playing
in
> parts of the game world he hadn't used or described himself, and
that
> he'd incorporate what they were doing, names of significant NPCs,
> political details and everything, into the canon. Those details
would
> appear in published products and in newsletters.
>
> This is one wrong way to do it. This method, as well as the long
> history of published supplements that Glorantha is carrying, both
> create a culture of setting geeks. Sure, they're both good methods
> for a while. They show a community engaged with the game. But
> inevitably with both of them there's a sweet spot of engagement
> during the lifespan of the game, at some point before the barrier
to
> entry becomes too steep. And to be blunt, for Tekumel and Glorantha
> that sweet spot is many years gone. If you're going to do this,
what
> you want to avoid is creating the geeks. The setting geeks will be
> your litmus test for whether you've been successful or not.
>
> So, if I were doing this for Glorantha, the first thing I'd do is
> take William Faulkner's advice very much to heart: kill your
> darlings. In a manner of speaking, I'd hire John Byrne and start
the
> comic book series over with issue #1. I'd reinvent the setting
> somehow that invalidates all the geeks. I suspect it's probably
> almost unfathomable to you to even consider such a move, but you're
> carrying a culture of static knowledge in all that published
product
> that's absolute poison to the dynamic you need to promote going
> forward.
>
> And if you get it right, you only have to do this once. Put up a
> picture of Faulkner for support.
>
> Then you need to aggressively promote a dynamic of user engagement
> with the setting. You need to show users in the text of the game
> products how to use what you do publish. Demonstrate through
examples
> and mini-scenarios how a prospective GM and player group might take
a
> bit of sketchy setting detail and produce a meaningful scenario for
> themselves. And then show how another group comes up with something
> entirely different from the same sketchy bit. I imagine published
> setting something like this:
>
> "In [location] the royal family has a summer home, where they often
> hunt the king's forest by day, and hold lavish parties by night,
> attended by servants drawn from the very same oppressed minorities
> who resist their rulership so violently in the capitol. Issues
here:
> cross-class romance, revolt, royal obliviousness."
>
> So you can still publish setting, but by showing how different play
> groups hook into the same bit of setting and issues and produce
very
> different scenarios, focusing on very different nuances of the
> embedded conflicts, and by aggressively affirming as publisher that
> this is the way to play the game, you never create the setting
geeks.
> You get a culture of dynamic and collaborative play, without the
> barrier to entry of authoritativeness.
>
> Paul
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