From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Thu 25 May 2000 - 02:37:50 EEST
Nick:
> But informing the freelance community that "Issaries won't print anything
> set in Prax for many years to come, because no major Hero Wars events take
> place there, and besides it's all been printed in the last twenty years or
> so" is hardly motivating them to provide input, no? It all looks like a most
> un-level playing field for the poor old Praxians, compared to TrollPak 3 and
> KralorelaPak and all the other zany works in progress.
There's no KralorelaPak in progress, at least that I've been informed
of. As for 'zany', I'll choose to enter no plea at this time...
You must admit though, Kralorela is inches away from being a Blank
Land at this point, and given its purported importance in Gloranthan
history and 'future history', this seems a tad disproportionate.
And I'm not just saying that because it's Kralorela, there are many
other places that I think deserve a 'fair crack of the whip'.
As for 'many years', I think you're putting words into Greg's
mouth. And over-estimating the degree of planning involved, to
boot...
> As a minimum, I hope the website will swiftly fill up with
> externally-submitted Praxian material (inc. keywords for cultures,
> occupations, traditions, etc.). Sounds like it's up to us to write it,
> though...
I share this hope too. And once again, I hope Issaries will
wink at existing material, theirs or otherwise, being 'retreaded'
for HW, and not stand on IPR ceremony about it.
Me on Prax:
> >The only reason it seems any more 'interesting and gameable' is
> >_because_it's been so well-covered, frankly.
Daniel:
> Have to disagree here. Trotsky said it is "pretty clear", and not that it
> only "seems" so.
I know he did, and I was disagreeing! To wit, that it only 'seemed'
that way to him, too... I repeat (though hopefully not cyclically...)
that this is an endless, self-defeating argument. ("Previously
published areas seem the most intesting, therefore we must endlessly
publish there above and beyond all else, even if it means publishing
the same things over and over again...")
> It seems a lot of us find Prax more interesting than many other parts.
You have my sympathy. ;-)
> That seems to be what's happening. Several of us are poised on the brink of
> diving into still another Prax project. I do wonder myself tho just what
> more would be useful to write about Prax. Most has been covered fairly well.
> I'd like to point out that Ian has done much more than "collate existing
> material". There's quite a bit of new stuff in his work.
This is precisely the dilemma I'm trying to point to. Prax is pretty
well-covered in the 'basic' areas. You have to think hard these
days for an actually new topic to address. But if HW Went Official
On Its Ass, then basically what it'd be doing is republishing copious
wads of material that already exists (though HWised, obviously).
Chris Lemens:
> Hmm. I said "Drastic: Prax 1 & 2" in my other message. I conflated
> Drastic: Prax and TotRM Prax 1 & 2, naturally due to all of their excellence
> in publication. Hopefully, neither publisher could be offended by the
> implicit comparison.
I'd have guessed 'both', myself. ;-)
> The first would be termed a "Player's Book" and would have
> a title like "Beast Riders" or some such. The more detailed books would be
> termed "Regional Books"; since the Issaries line deals with Tarsh separately
> from Sartar and Rinliddi separately from Dara Happa, surely separating Pavis
> and Sun County is not too far a stretch.
I find this mildly terrifying, to be frank. Perhaps such books are just
I found myself writing all three of the above replies separately, and
what the game needs, and would sell like hot cakes and leave Issaries
rolling in cash for the forseeable future. But I very much doubt it.
What seems more likely is that it would tie up a whole 'wave' of books
(at least four, apparently?) on rehashing old material that's seen
print several times before, in many cases, on an area that can be
charitably described as The Armpit of Genertela? If Issaries end
up doing that, I'll chalk it up to quiet desparation, and I wince
to think what the 'neutral press' would end up saying about it...
only latterly though to 'collate' (OK, concatenate...) them. Pardon me
if I've merely repeated myself in a smaller number of messages than
usual, but my amazement at the apparent clamour for Prax material is
such that a little extreme length seems a rather modest vice, at worst.
Are we really not just a bunch of sad old grognards here, but are
actually turning into hobbits, that are keenest to read books of things
they know already? There's a whole wide lozenge out there, why be
content simply to wear the deepest, smallest ruts of it a few more
wheeltracks' deep?
Cheers,
Alex.
------------------------------
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #669
***********************************
To unsubscribe from the Glorantha Digest, send an "unsubscribe"
command to glorantha-digest-request@chaosium.com. Glorantha is a
Trademark of Issaries Inc. With the exception of previously
copyrighted material, unless specified otherwise all text in this
digest is copyright by the author or authors, with rights granted to
copy for personal use, to excerpt in reviews and replies, and to
archive unchanged for electronic retrieval.
Official WWW at http://www.glorantha.com
Archives at http://www.kondalski.org/brian/Glorantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 21:43:43 EEST