GianniVacca
Mongoose
I see this Living Glorantha mentioned in several threads. What does it refer to?
cheers
cheers
Living Glorantha
- Thread starter GianniVacca
- Start date
duncan_disorderly
Mongoose
GianniVacca said:
I must admit I'm not 100% clear what a living campaign actually consists of, so I'm not sure whether this is something to be thrilled about or to dread.
As I understand it, the basic premise is that there will be a number of linked scenarios that will be run as Living Glorantha events at conventions. This is a good thing. By running Gloranthan RQ games Mongoose will be promoting both brands, and giving people a chance to experience them before parting with their cash. By making them linked scenarios they ensure that regular attendees won't find that the game this time is the same as the one they played last time. (There is obviously a slight conflict here in that if the people who played in your game last time all want to do so again this time then the potential newcomer may not be able to get a game...). Also if Mongoose are writing a lot of new scenarios for the Living Campaign there is a much higher chance of their being scenarios being published, whether as stand alone adventures, pdf downloads, S&P articles or as part of a background book or campaign book.
I'm not sure whether the idea is that people can bring their own characters to these scenarios. I'm much less keen on this, since a convention slot is generally of a limited and fairly fixed duration, and I'd sooner that not be taken up with the GM having to read and vet everyone's character before play can start.
I am slightly concerned that there is an element of feedback into the campaign from the results of the games. If each scenario is only played once then this is a very good thing - but if a scenario is run a number of times and the results are aggregated in some way then this is the worst aspect of metaplot gaming. You get to take part in an "official stotyline event" but your results are invalidated by the published results.
GianniVacca
Mongoose
This sounds very interesting. OTOH I can't really see which area of Second Age-Glorantha could possibly be left open for us mere fans to modify -- given all the further Third Age-implications :?:
WotC did something similar with their Living Greyhawk campaign. They
published a guide for it, including specific character creation rules. Each
character came from a specific region of the World of Greyhawk, depen-
ding on where the player lived, and there was a kind of regional referee
who organized the events both in the relevant part of the World of Grey-
hawk and the real world region where the players of that part of the set-
ting came from.
Since D&D was not my kind of game, and the idea did not really take off
in Germany, I have no idea how this developed, and I also do not know
whether Living Glorantha will be in any way similar to this.
But perhaps there is someone who knows more about Living Greyhawk,
and can give us a better idea what such a concept is about ?
Edit.:
Perhaps this can give an impression of Living Greyhawk (although not
necessarily the idea behind Living Glorantha):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Greyhawk
published a guide for it, including specific character creation rules. Each
character came from a specific region of the World of Greyhawk, depen-
ding on where the player lived, and there was a kind of regional referee
who organized the events both in the relevant part of the World of Grey-
hawk and the real world region where the players of that part of the set-
ting came from.
Since D&D was not my kind of game, and the idea did not really take off
in Germany, I have no idea how this developed, and I also do not know
whether Living Glorantha will be in any way similar to this.
But perhaps there is someone who knows more about Living Greyhawk,
and can give us a better idea what such a concept is about ?
Edit.:
Perhaps this can give an impression of Living Greyhawk (although not
necessarily the idea behind Living Glorantha):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Greyhawk
Loz
Mongoose
Duncan's pretty much got it, and Rust's summary is good too.
Characters are created according to a set of cats-iron guidelines, so GM vetting shouldn't take too long, and all characters begin from a common frame. There will be guidelines too, for GMs, so that moderation will again have a common framework that should ensure reasonable balance irrespective of geography.
At present, my thinking is that the whole of Glorantha will be covered by the metaplots (and there will be several), which tie into already published works, like Blood of Orlanth, Dara Happa Stirs and the forthcoming Pavis Rises. I do agree that feedback into these metaplots may be tricky, but feedback will be evaluated based on the nature of the scenario and its importance to the metaplots. Some major scenarios will only be run once, which will limit the possible effect of plot inflation, but the details on how it will work are still under discussion.
But it should result in, as Duncan notes, far more adventuring material that GMs can use, within or without the Living Glorantha framework, for their campaigns.
I'm looking forward to it. Its going to bring the kind of dimension to Glorantha that we saw during the 90s Renaissance when there was a distinct frisson between what Tales of the Reaching Moon was doing and AH's work when Ken Rolston was developing Gloranthan supplements.
Characters are created according to a set of cats-iron guidelines, so GM vetting shouldn't take too long, and all characters begin from a common frame. There will be guidelines too, for GMs, so that moderation will again have a common framework that should ensure reasonable balance irrespective of geography.
At present, my thinking is that the whole of Glorantha will be covered by the metaplots (and there will be several), which tie into already published works, like Blood of Orlanth, Dara Happa Stirs and the forthcoming Pavis Rises. I do agree that feedback into these metaplots may be tricky, but feedback will be evaluated based on the nature of the scenario and its importance to the metaplots. Some major scenarios will only be run once, which will limit the possible effect of plot inflation, but the details on how it will work are still under discussion.
But it should result in, as Duncan notes, far more adventuring material that GMs can use, within or without the Living Glorantha framework, for their campaigns.
I'm looking forward to it. Its going to bring the kind of dimension to Glorantha that we saw during the 90s Renaissance when there was a distinct frisson between what Tales of the Reaching Moon was doing and AH's work when Ken Rolston was developing Gloranthan supplements.
RosenMcStern
Mongoose
Loz said:
Ah, the RuneQuest Renaissance times...
This sounds rather similar to what my original group is doing with its 3rd age BRP campaign. It has been run for 10+ years now by 3-4 GMs, it has its own Yahoo group for inter-session exchanges and links three distinct storylines - one set in Sartar, one in Balazar and one in the Lunar Empire. The storylines cross only when we manage to assemble the players who play live with the ones who play over Skype.
I think I will play in it. Can we re-use existing characters? I have a very nice God Learner character I would like to play again, but Rurik can no longer continue that PBP game.
Loz
Mongoose
Not so sure about using an existing character, Paolo
. All characters will need to be RQII generated to a particular standard most likely using the Points Build option and Glorantha: The Second Age cultural backgrounds. The aim is for all LG characters to start at the same level using the same frame of reference and progress from there.RosenMcStern said:
If you are still interested I plan on starting a couple PBP games come February. If there was interest among the players I would pick that game up (possibly with MRQ2 rules). Though if you prefer to take Juliano elswhere I won't spend too much time casting evil spells upon you... :wink:
