>
> One thing, can people enlighten me: I have not the faintest idea what
> 'Living' means in the above.
>
At it's most basic, the idea behind a Living campaign is that the scenarios are run at conventions / clubs / shops* and you can use the same character from one scenario to the next - thus making the "convention game" more of a "campaign" than a "one off".
WotC have run a few of these, and probably other people as well, and, as they say, they are very popualr with people who like that sort of thing...
Things can get more complicated (and Mongoose plan to do this once they have an established base) by taking feedback from sessions and building that into future scenarios. One example (from a living Traveller perspective) was that a character who did something particularly cool might have a Starport named after them, thus becoming part of the "canon".
The part I am most suspicious of is when the actual outcome of a session feeds back to the future, eg in scenario 1, you are trying to raise the seige of lords castle. If the majority of groups fail, then in scenario 2 the lord may be deposed and the local population starving. I am worried that while this is great for the majority, if you are in the minority that succeeded, you will end up with a major retcon. That said, I don't think Mongoose are that clear on exactly how this might work yet either, they are adopting a "start simple, and build up if necessary" approach.
The good news is that they will be producing lots of scenarios, and they will be free, which hopefully will encourage (a) people to try RQ and (b) people to try Glorantha - which hopefully leads to a bigger market not only for Mongoose (which is obviously what they want) but also for the other Issaries licencees (Moon Design and the assorted fan publishers) and for "our" conventions.
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