>That's what I like to see: Narrators who give
>their groups homework!
That can backfire, though. When all you ask your players to do is read and reply to one or two reasonably-brief email messages between monthly sessions and they can't be bother with even that little amount of effort, it certainly destroys whatever you might have worked on for the next play-session. My "Lonisisaga" campaign is stillborn because of player apathy.
>Having some common referents can help both to
>make sure everyone has a grasp of the culture.
You can lead a player through a joint storytelling experience, but you can't make him or her appreciate it. Several players in my "Lonisisaga" campaign waited until we were a few months into play to tell me that they didn't like the quasi-historical stuff we were doing. All the work I did to help my players... novice and veteran alike... to familiarize themselves with Glorantha, Sartar, Orlanthi culture and their clan, and to participate in a few of the great events of the last three centuries, was for naught.
>New players tend to be more comfortable being
>given a video or a fiction paperback to start
>than Thunder Rebels.
Except that no film or novel portrays life in Glorantha, Sartar, and among the Orlanthi more than incompletely. Having them read THUNDER REBELS gives them a better sense of the reality, the "mythic resonance" as John H. is wont to say, of Glorantha.
Just my two denarii...
-- Michael Richard Schwartz | Language is my playground, mschwartz_at_... | and words, its slides and Ann Arbor, Michigan USA | swingsets. -- yours truly
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