From: Chris Francis (fra@eatl.co.uk)
Date: Tue 16 Jul 1996 - 15:45:08 EEST
Sandy,
You deserve praise for your stand on this committee.
It's a delight to see an attempt to save RQ as it appears to be dying by
degrees. I have been a beginner at Glorantha for about ten years now and still
am.
As I have just suffered a new player who took several hours to have a character
made up, and disappeared in sulk 'cause his 'thief' couldn't 'backstab' in the
middle of a melee in a savannah plain, this is a subject that desperately needs
addressing. In the UK, I don't think we ever recovered from Games Workshop
trying (intentionally or not, they charged shops the full mail order price of
all their products back when they had UK rights to RQ3) to bankrupt every
independent stockist and chain in the country.
I have been lurking in between suffering career syndrome (where real life
impinges on the important things) for some time. All I have ascertained is that
many prefer fighting their corner in esoteric parts of Glorantha than anything
else (applause is due to the person who wanted to expand background on Dragon
Pass material, published a Androgeus article, called for others to help and was
subsequently ignored, my sympathies!).
I would for instance ask who Elmal is, but I'm terrified someone on the digest
might actually answer me. (Yes, think about it)
The one thing that you missed is playability. The need for intro and low level
Glorantha scenarios is pretty desperate. Those in print can all turn very
deadly and often require an experienced GM to play high level NPCs as a
moderating force. Simple scenarios for beginners, both players and GMs set in
GLORANTHA are needed. (Notable exception being the River of Cradles). Imagine
a complete beginner picking up Strangers in Prax, its a bit daunting.
This is particulary a worry for RQ as a by product of the games versatility.
Complex characters take huge amounts of work and scenarios can easily become a
nightmare. Most difficult of all is it takes TIME (of which I have very little).
This precludes RQ for busy people or beginners without an enormous amount of
motivation!
I have been searching for years for some old products and think that a move to
circulate old material would be marvellous. (Anyone got a spare copy of
Borderlands? Postage and return paid to & from anywhere!)
Good luck with the committee and dealings with Chaosium!
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