> Take out the detail, the cultural verisimilitude, and what is
> Glorantha? Actually, stripped down to its basics, a lot of Glorantha
> is pretty obvious and unexceptional fantasy fare (pseudo-medieval
> West, pseudo-Chinese east, etc). What makes it amazing is -- as with
> Tekumel -- the loving and imaginative layering of detail and finish.
> Frankly, all the anthropological finesse John Hughes added to TR is
> what made the Orlanthi -- a pretty tedious bunch of romanticised
> thugs IMO -- more interesting to me.
I'd hope that it's possible to make something approachable for newbies without cutting out too much of the detail (although it's not necessarily easy). 'Gyrda' might be an example of this - it's not that they don't exist any more, it's just that we're not mentioning what the Heortling word for them is. For the same reason, I tend to refer to the "elves" of Tarinwood in LotW2, rather than saying "aldryami" - it's not they aren't aldryami any more, it's just that we don't need to use the more technical term in a book that isn't even really about them.
Which is why I ask about BoG, which seems to me to have struck a balance between richness and readability - but I don't know whether those who have a problem with, say, TR would agree.
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ Not a Dead Communist: http://jrevell.blogspot.com/
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