From: Nick Brooke (100270.337@CompuServe.COM)
Date: Wed 25 May 1994 - 00:45:37 EEST
> Q: How many Gregs does it take to change a light bulb?
> A: One, but how often does Greg need to change the goddam light bulb?
Which had me rolling in the aisles! (Not that the others didn't, but this was particularly fine).
> Well yes Nick, they do but I thought that this was the _RQ_Digest.
Implying, I presume, that I should tell lies about the relative ages of RuneQuest and Glorantha, out of deference to my hosts' sensibilities? ;-)
> I would also be curious as to what kinds of compaigns the "scholars"
> are running. My hunch is that they do tend to be microcosmic, very
> unheroic (i.e. concerned with day-to-day-living), and tend to be short-
> lived (i.e. they run a bunch of short term regional campaigns as opposed
> to a long-lived and/or heroic/world-spanning campaign). Am I right or
> wrong?
Wrong, for the most part. Assuming you include me as a "scholar". ;-)
Microcosmic, yeah. See my post yesterday for details. We prefer developing the depth of our campaign settings to the shallower, broad-brush approach. Others prefer foreign travel, I know, but to me the old Inter-rail cliche springs to mind: "It's Fireday, this must be Teshnos." I wonder if your interest in standardising religions and societies across the world is in some way connected to the speed with which you move through it? Like the Hilton Hamburger: the creeping Americanisation of Gloranthan cultures.
Unheroic, no. We have heroquested, fought in battles, travelled to distant foreign lands (Heortland; Lunar Tarsh; the Grazelands) and fabled cities (Boldhome, Durengard, Bagnot). But we're loyal to our clan and tribe, and always do our bit at the harvests, weapontakes and tribal moots. Only if "heroic" means "powergaming" (as I at first thought your posting implied) are we Greydogs "unheroic".
Short-lived, by no means! Although our games are infrequent, David's Sartar Campaign has been running longer than I've known him. Characters have grown from uninitiated youths to near-Rune level. Steve's character, Corwen, is now a Sword of Humakt, but he's a bit strange -- the rest of us are more normal.
> In any case, does creativity require inconsistency and multiplicity?
Well, I suppose we could separately develop identical new ideas (indeed, Paul and I take it as "proof" we're on the right track when this happens), but barring coincidences of Shakespeare's monkeys' proportions, it's more likely that campaigns will become inconsistent. They're already multiple.
> GroY (which I don't yet have) seems to now postulate a bunch of other
> Yelmalio clones, so the trend is growing.
Not so, IMHO -- and I have read the Glorious ReAscent (a bit). Unless my understanding of the word "clone" is very different to yours. There are two Dara Happan gods who have similarities in some respects to Yelmalio: a god of War (Shargash), and a god of Emperors (Antirius). The similarities are tenuous, and the nature and substance of these deities is, I think, wholly unlike that of Yelmalio.
> If Glorantha is not a vehicle to play RQ in, then what exactly is it?
Hmmm... why did nobody ask Greg that, back in '66?
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