<RANT>
IN WHICH JOHN DECIDES BETWEEN SHAMAN AND PRIEST People take so few creative risks on the lists these days. Sometimes it worries me.
Can I step back from the immediate topics to make a plea for a more creative engagement with our shared world? This is directed at a creeping passivity that seems to have affected a lot of our discussions for two or three years now, including my own. At heart its about Glorantha as a creative ghetto as opposed to a living breathing, shared-myth world.
My plea is: don't be scared to create your own responses to Glorantha, and to share them around. Waiting for the next supplement to appear is *never* going to answer all your questions, so go ahead and trust your own creativity.
Just because *someone* is working on a Lunar book, or a Western book, or a Far Point book, which may or may not appear in twelve or twenty months and may or may not be of the quality and detail you're seeking, shouldn't stop you from creating and sharing your ideas on the West, the Lunars, the Far Place, whatever? In the meantime, does it mean these areas are suddenly a creative no-go zone?
If you build up an idea and it eventually is shown to be at variance, so what? Will your campaign suffer? I'd rather have a hundred people actively sharing their ideas, and building on each others, even disagreeing and producing stuff at variant from the eventually published official corpus than us becoming a passive community waiting on 'the experts' to arbitrate and 'correct' our mythic visions.
Glorantha has survived because of this DIY ethic.
Over the years I've run Sartarite campaigns where Starbrow was a duck (okay, that was a *long* time ago), where a King called White Wolf succeeded Temertain, where Kallyr was a pure Vingan and where Argrath was a scheming minor Colymar noble called Shrike. I soaked up the Lunar Empire of TotRM, and added my own twists. I made guesses, occasionally wild ones, about Vinga, Yelmalio, Elmal and Odayla. Much of what I came up with, or borrowed from other Digesters, is not in accordance with the official cults, including some that I wrote. So what? Those were great campaigns. Glorantha *lived* in those sessions, and we built on the common base as co-creators.
Storytelling and the range of variation mean that for every 'official' fact there is room for a range of variants and outright contradictions. In Sartar, frr instance, the law and tradition of every clan varies, gods are known and worshipped differently from tribe to tribe, and no set of myths is ever the same. Use that to your advantage. Plunder the sources, but don't worship them as some sort of Bible revealing fundamental truths. Keep in mind that about 40% of what's been published about Glorantha is wrong, or at least misleading. Revel in that, and use it as a strength rather than a weakness.
This also ties in with our increasing reliance on published sources. The web has made an incredible wealth of detail available, and Glorantha's depth and richness is one of its greatest strengths. It's also one of its greatest barriers. When published sources, including obscure published sources, are used to limit rather than channel creativity, we may have strayed too far down the Librarian <------>Creator axis.
Rather than creator shamans, shaping raw energies, we are in danger of becoming fundamentalist priests, zealously hoarding received 'truths' and upholding a particular interpretation of orthodoxy. Greg's continual reworking of material is a(trickster arkati) shamanic act, and is a challenge to the priest mindset in all of us. Glorantha is a myth, continually engaging and challenging our energies. Its *not* a collection of received, fundamentalist truths and facts. Enjoy the freedom. :) Use it constructively.
There are two ways of dealing with sources - one is to ask, 'what do they tell us?' and use that to limit our response. The other is to ask, 'what don't they tell us?', and go hell for leather from there.
(This ain't to say I don't love the background, or engage in research myself
when necessary. Its asking questions about the way we think about Glorantha,
and what is it about it that engages us and keeps us interested. Its also
asking questions as to why is so difficult to attract new gamers, young
gamers, women gamers.)
By way of example, the answers I supplied to the Sartar question are in no way official, and all of them are based on quite reasonable extrapolations of material that's been readily available for years. Is it useful? That's for you to judge. Can you use it to build new ideas, or criticize my own assumptions, and so come up with a better idea? Great, be sure to share it. Does it fit in with what you know of Sartar? I hope so (I try), but in the end its up to you. It's your campaign. Will it be the same as the eventual published official position? Probably not? Who cares? Lets assume that, say, my thoughts on Lunar law in Sartar are contradicted by a later official view. There's a creative challenge to show, in game why your area is different, or why the 'official' view didn't work, or was changed to greater advantage. Or you could ignore it. We do this all the time in our games, in a hundred minor ways. And these are strengths rather than weaknesses, because they help us *own* Glorantha, and actively participate in building and maintaining it.
(And yes, its easy for *me* to rave about Sartar. Would I dare to raise
ideas about the Empire, about the West. If not,m why not?)
There's some wonderful creativity on the Gloranthan lists, and lots of positive discussion. There are lots of people whose opinions are well worth seeking out, and who know their chosen areas from years of loving exploration, and deserve our respect. They don't 'own' their areas though, and I think most of them would be horrified if people thought they did. I also sometimes perceive a creeping 'librarian/priest' mindset, and an over-reliance on 'experts' and awaited official products. Yes, new official releases will contain some surprises and challenges. Great. But lets not stop creating or discussing alternatives. Being 'correct' comes a poor second to be part of an active creative community, and having fun.
Okay, rant over. I go bed now. Hope some of it made sense. :)
</RANT>
John
(for those of you who care about such things, I've turned my spell-checker
back on :).
Are you ready, eager young space cadet?
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