This has turned out to be a very long post, despite cutting a lot of my reply out. Page Down if you want .....
Dead Blue Clown said:
But I've heard it said that a lot of Glorantha players have too many sacred cows. You can't change anything without culling someone's herd. I'm relatively thick-skinned, so I'm aware and prepared for some changes to be viewed as heresy rather than an improvement or a spit n' polish. But still, it's a concern because so much of Glorantha is precious to so many people. Uncomfortably so, especially since people's views don't seem to align perfectly.
Individuals have their own ideas of what makes Glorantha great and what is the best thing about Glorantha. You will always step on individuals' toes by writing new things. Don't worry about that. It's when most people disagree with something that the problems start. The classic example was the Yelmalio/Elmal rubbish that Greg Stafford came out with, pretty much everyone I know didn't like it and eventually he had to back down and agree that he ws talking rubbish. But, that never made it into print as official history, except in KIng of Sartar in passing, so it was really a semi-offical semi-fannish comment.
I am sure that if everyone hated something put in the MRQ supplements, then you would quickly hear about it. But, there is a big difference between hating something because it is wrong/contradicts established history and hating something because you don't like it. The first is bad, the second is tough and people can house-rule or ignore it.
Dead Blue Clown said:
The troll thing is a perfect example. Despite seeing warthog monsters in the past, raggedy old men, trolls with muzzles, trolls with muzzles, beards and crazy hair, and now monsters with pig noses, and it's heresy across the board.
In the same way that if you suddenly made elves into walking bushes then people might complain. Oh, you have and nobody minded, except me and I'm not complaining. Some people are very vocal, some are not. Don't worry about it.
Dead Blue Clown said:
Glorantha is a mess of inconsistency. Problems are freshly churned out every single edition, and this one will be no different. It can't be any other way.
That's like saying "We can never improve because everyone makes mistakes, so it's not worth trying".
Unless you are deliberately trying to introduce inconsistencies, then it isn't that difficult to cut them down.
Dead Blue Clown said:
If even the experts got it right 24/7 then Glorantha message lists would be less...intense...than they are. And they sure aren't less of anything, except maybe less peaceful than World War 6.
Most Gloranthan discussion boards, this one excepted, talk about people's ideas on areas of Glorantha that have not been published. Generally, people don't discuss published material because most of it is so old that it has been generally accepted.
Of course, the Gloranthan issues on the MRQ sites are discussions about new material and how it fits in with older material and, as such, are perhaps too intense at times.
Dead Blue Clown said:
This is where I've accused you of being Ivory Towerish in the past. Though not with anything like serious accusatory intent. But there is an atmosphere around a lot of comments about Glorantha where they take - not just pride - but withering and utterly exaggerated hubris over Glorantha's depth and genius.
Well, on the one hand, Glorantha is just another fantasy setting. On the other hand, it is well detailed and has a flavour of its own. Making it more like a generic fantasy setting would be a mistake, not because there is anything wrong with those settings, but because Glorantha has traditionally had more depth. By that, I mean that there are cultures and areas in Glorantha that have been written up in a lot of detail, they have a lot of background and a lot of flavour. Generic fantsay settings just don't have this because there's no need to write 200 pages on trolls, after all everyone knows what trolls are like.
Dead Blue Clown said:
But at the same time, almost any change can be viewed as "trying to appeal to a mass-market" or "More D&Dish" if a critic has those glasses on. The troll thing is a recent example, where some people said they were trying to be more monstrous as enemies, not PCs. I doubt that. I suspect the intent was actually "I want them to look awesome, scary and cool."
And there was a comment I made about how I bet more people would prefer the art of a MRQ troll than a RQ3 one, because the quality was better and it looked cool. Yet I was answered with "Appealing to a mass market of people is not what Glorantha is about" and so on. Which, let's be honest, was a million miles away from my point. I was saying a piece of art looked cooler and more like an awesome inhuman monster. Not "Doesn't it rule how MRQ has made things look sweet to D&D fans."
People have always compared RQ with D&D on a lot of levels. Personally, I have found the D&D background to be very sketchy and generic, but there's a lot of it. I would prefer to see a lot more RQ background, but with a lot of detail.
Dead Blue Clown said:
It can be immensely frustrating to try to combat this tide of opinion, when practically everything you do runs the risk of diehard fans - wallowing in their elitism -seeing your every sentence as The Moment They Made Glorantha Sell Out.
Ah, wallowing in their elitism, I like it. Speaking only for myself, of course, I pretty much only buy HeroQuest and RuneQuest products these days, and have done so for nearly 20 years. I really like the RQ game and really like the Glorantha setting. That would be pretty much to the exclusion of any other RPG game/setting, except maybe Alternate Earth. That does make me elitist, I suppose. Do I wallow in it? Sure, when describing why I like Glorantha and why I think Glorantha is a good setting. Also when describing why RQ is better than many other RPGs. Is that a bad thing? I hope not.
Don't forget that Glorantha has been sold out many times before. They sold out to Avalon Hill and brought out RQ3. They sold out again and brought out Hero Wars. Then they brought out HeroQuest and finally they have sold out and brought out Mongoose's RQ. AH was supposed to mass-market RQ as is Mongoose. That's good, more sales mean more supplements being produced and that can never be bad.
Dead Blue Clown said:
I was talking (writing...) about trolls and how humans and other races find it uncomfortable to be around them.
Now, this is an example of how one person thinks differently to another.
I would say that not everyone finds it uncomfortable to be around trolls - there are enough humans in troll cults such as Zorak Zoran and Argan Argar to refute the idea. Also, trolls and humans have been coexisting in the Shadowlands and Ralios for centuries.
Those that do find it uncomfortable to be around trolls do so for several reasons, some might include:
1. Cultural reasons - a Dara Happan is never going to be comfortable near trolls.
2. Religious reasons - Members of anti-troll cults such as Humakti, Yelmalians or Yelornans are never going to like being near trolls.
3. Historical reasons - if trolls often raid your homesteads you're not going to like them.
4. Practical reasons - trolls are alien, they worship strange gods, they eat their own kind, they eat elves and dwarves, they might eat you. Troll gods are cruel and so are their worshippers, Zorak Zorani might kill you, Argan Argari might enslave you. When you visit a troll's house, he points to all the things that you can touch and all the things that he will kill you for touching, this makes visitors uncomfortable.
So, there's no real reason to have another reason why people don't like trolls. It boils down to the fact that they might eat you, in my opinion.
Dead Blue Clown said:
Three days later, I read (on here) that D&D trolls take extra damage from fire. I'd completely forgotten that. I now have a coupleof paragraphs in my draft, dealing with a weakness that I think is characterful, well-reasoned and perfectly explained, yet the calls to see it axed would be legion because it happened in D&D.
No, the calls would be because it didn't make sense. D&D trolls regenrate, so do Cave Trolls and Sea Trolls in RQ. Do people care? Not at all. Introducing such a fundamental weakness into probably the most-established non-human would be a mistake, in my opinion. Not because change is bad but because it doesn't fit with the likes of Zorak Zoran, Argan Argar and Cragsipder, all of whom have fire-worshipping trolls.
Dead Blue Clown said:
I hope that serves as an illuminating example.
Oh, it does, although perhaps not in the way that you intended :twisted:
Dead Blue Clown said:
The one I'm dreading - and I'm a fool for even saying this - is when people read Magic of Glorantha and say bullshit about it being like Exalted. They'll likely drag my White Wolf history into the equation, as well.
I've never read it, wallowing in my elitism and all.
I tend to judge things on what they are rather than what the author has done before. It's a strange view, I know, but that's me being old fashioned.
Dead Blue Clown said:
If that's the case, it'll be ironic really, seeing as how I loathe most everything I know about Exalted, I know practically nothing aboutit anyway, and have never worked a single sentence into the game line.
So why bring it up in the first place?
Dead Blue Clown said:
But little changes or enhancements or additions are what I'm keen on. I'm wondering, for an extreme example, how the description of the Inhuman King will go down. I almost put in a sidebar saying "Aha! It's all because..." but I decided to trust my instincts and assume people will clock it all fine when reading it first time.
If he's big, scaly and can shape the landscape with a thought then fine. If he's little, with hairy toes and likes smoking pipes then perhaps we'd be against it.
Dead Blue Clown said:
Now, I know why people have warned me against it (though that was a more general warning about Glorantha mailing lists/forums/etc.) and I know why I sometimes dread coming here, because I think about a lesser minority of the complaints are petty and I don't agree with them, yet I recognise those with these opinions aren't interested in changing them or talking about them: they're interested in yelling them and having people agree, no matter the counterarguments.
There's a lot about the Glornathan Digest, for instance, that I hate and have been on the record as hating for a long time. Things here are a lot less extreme, as it is dealing with specific supplements, not general discussion.
Dead Blue Clown said:
But I still think there's value in actively participating here. For everyone who automatically dislikes my work because they dislike me or Mongoose (and there are some, I know it all too well), there's an opportunity to find out what someone else's vision of Glorantha looks like, and how I can write things that gel with my image of the setting, yet will still please them.
Now, you see, I'm confused again. I can understand people disliking Mongoose in principle, I know people who still won't read RQ3 on principle because RQ2 is all you need.
But automatically disliking your work because they don't like you personally, I can't understand. How many people dislike you personally? If it's enough to affect sales of RQ then you've got more problems than you think
Dead Blue Clown said:
smiorgan said:
Second, DBC made a point about the different appearance of Trolls in (early) RQ2 and RQ3. There are a lot of similar things: RQ2 Dwarves and Dragonewts using spirit magic and divine magic instead of sorcery and dragon magic is one. That said I like the snout better
Me too. But I could **** kiss you for at least admitting the point. I was beginning to think my posts were invisible.
Yes, things change. Some change is good (Mostali using sorcery, Dragonewts usings dragonmagic, trollpack), some change is indifferent, some change is bad (Elmal/Yelmalio).
Dead Blue Clown said:
"Watering down."
I've seen a lot of this already, and I expect to see it in the future. In some cases, it's people with decades of knowledge, gathered from several editions of books and multiple database websites, complaining that the info is sparse.
Well...well, yeah. Compared to what you know. Of course it is - there's been a couple of Gloranthan books out so far.
Of course, you can't bring things out all at once. Your publishing schedule so far has beaten the likes of Avalon Hill, Chaoisum and Issaries into a cocked hat and nobody can accuse Mongoose of not working on the RQ range.
There are generally three kinds of Gloranthan supplements (although I am probably wrong):
1. Overview books that have sketchy detail over a whole range of areas (Genertlea:CotHW, Missing Lands, Glorantha:Second Age)
2. Detailed compaign packs covering an area or culture (Troll Pack, Pavis & Big Rubble, Griffin Mountain, Sun County, River of Cradles, Imperial Lunar Handbooks, Ralios PDF)
3. Single scenario packs that cover a single or several scenarios in a single supplement or which focus on specific issues such as magic items(Plunder, Runemasters, Borderlands, Snakepipe Hollow, Strangers in Prax, Shadows on the Borderlands, Sartar Rising)
So far, Mongoose has published Glorantha Second Age and the Ralios PDF. Possibly, the Ralios PDF is in category 1, but is detailed enough to be in 2. So, saying that Glorantha Second Age is sketchy is not a criticism but simply a description. I, for one, eagerly await the publication of all the Gloranthan supplements and hope to see more in categories 2 and 3.
So, people can't complain that info is sparse. They can complain that it is wrong, if that's the case, but not sparse.
Dead Blue Clown said:
Magic of Glorantha will get this in spades.
Are you always so down on things you have written? If you keep saying it then people will start believing it.
Dead Blue Clown said:
Magic of Glorantha will receive criticism - I'm sure of this - about...I don't know...something, anything...not being as comprehensively explained as Chutney Making and Gangsta Rapping or whatever else were back in RQ1, 2 or 3.
There you go again ...
Dead Blue Clown said:
There's a lot to be saying, being said for the first time. And only a certainnumber of words per book. That breeds an air of 'looser' books at first, becoming more and more specific as time goes on. I could've made Magic of Glorantha 5 times as long and still have had stuff to write about, yet I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly proud of it. (I saw the final .pdf of it the other day. I had such a Moment, I swear.)
Proud of it? Good, so it isn't rubbish then, despite your protestations that nobody will like it and it doesn't matter because we're all going to die anyway?
Overview books followed by detailed books is probably the best way to go about Glorantha.
Dead Blue Clown said:
Yeah, the complaints about the 'lots of little books get expensive' are valid. But they're also naive. That's the way the industry is now. Look at WotC and White Wolf - the Big 2. It's practically the only way RPG publishers can turn a profit, and lots of people like it. The books are higher quality, there's more stuff coming out, and you get to make a collection if you're a completionist. Some people hate it, which is fine, too.
What I don't particularly like is the fact that the core rules are split amongst so many books. You want rules on shamans, go to Cults2. Sorcery - Companion. Dragon Magic - Magic of Glorantha. But, it's a minor criticism.
The books are higher quality, but I'd prefer cheaper softbacks as I take care of my books.
Dead Blue Clown said:
My point is that in X or Y years, when all the Second Age lore we're churning out now is common knowledge, a future edition of RQ will also suffer for not living up the level of information we provided, purely because our stuff, like RQ1, 2 and 3, had been absorbed over time.
And when Glorantha gets sold out again and someone starts with RQ:Special Edition based on First Age Glorantha, people will say "It's not as good as the old RQ, what about Glorantha Second Age and Magic of Glorantha, now they were good supplements".
But, don't let it get you down, although I have a sneaky suspicion that you haven't. Remember that people like Glorantha and will like Glorantha supplements if they are well written, which they seem to be. People will also criticise them and nitpick about facts and view their own opinions about why this is wrong and that is wrong and why this should have been included and why that should have been dropped. Ignore them and carry on.
So far, Mongoose is doing a fine job, I only hope they can keep it up.
