Re: What world-building lessons have you learned from Glorantha? [Part 1]

From: Rick <rmeints_at_NU_Qj7NdVevbY8lAY07UUqs8pW44Ive5oCLdkQRiiq98RyQrE67mxvO-JXiLnf7dBIAR>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 17:19:55 -0000

• "julianlord" <julian.lord_at_...> wrote:
  > As my contribution to the REALISM theme of this thread, I'll have to start by saying that I'll always be a far better editor than writer.
  >
  > As an editor, well, the fact that your creativity was vehicled into some dead-end project like that is very dismaying.
  >
  > In terms of world-building, and still with my editor's hat on, well, there should always be a place for some broader world-building with no obvious gameability, both for the exploration of potentially new areas of gaming, and (more importantly) for colour and GM reading pleasure -- but if this should ever become a primary focus of a publication project, rather than just some colour and background descriptions, you are then stepping away from the concept of publishing RPG materials.
  

> > It's time to stop taking Glorantha apart, and start putting it back together. Recent supplements are a good start.
>
> More than this, the apparent requirement that all published materials should be coherent with each other is a stifling one. Glorantha is a world where multiple points of view and multiple realities coexist, but there has been a very annoying tendency in recent years towards blank description rather than the delicious openness of the 1980s materials.
>
> Multiple realities exist in Glorantha, and contradicting any of them on the fly for simple purposes of story-telling or whatever can be a good thing.
>

To which I respond:

One person's "lack of coherence" is another person's "confusion". While a handful of very knowledgable gloranthan scholars revel in adding all manner of contradiction via esoterica, there is a much larger audience of newcomers and more casual gloranthans who get overwhelmed by it, and often just walk away, usually forever.

As for what Moon Design "requires" for materials we publish, we sincerely feel we are taking both a needed and well received approach. I would be happy to contrast the Sartar Companion to the "delicious openness of the 1980s materials" you refer to, but I'm honestly not sure which ones you are referring to. If nothing else, we publish the Stafford Library, which if they don't embody "multiple realities" and "multiple points of view" I have no idea what does.

Moon Design also licenses other Gloranthan publishers like D101, which has both a different and more wide sweeping approach to what it publishers, and that's great. There's also Rule One, and Tradetalk, and other publishing outlets available. What's being stifled?