More about west/east play of RuneQuest (split)

[NickHollingsworth]

One difficulty here is that I'm not really talking about freeform vs. rules-heavy at all.

When Simon mentions that the Tales/Unspoken peoples stuff is 'freeform' he means they are theater style LARPS. Hes not really commenting on the type of rules used. In the UK hobby, at least in the RuneQuest circles, 'Freeform' and LARP were nigh on interchangable terms for a decade.

So he means that they wrote loads of stuff that described the background and the characters and the complex inter-relations between them and set up a start point for the game. During play they had zero input and the players improvised everything from this start point. So thats pretty similar to your relationship mapped scenario method if I have understood it properly.

Finally, if there's one thing I'm not really interested in getting into, it's the whole "More Greg than Thou" debate that often insinuates itself into Gloranthan discussions. I've got a bag of "Greg says ..." to dip into as well, and it won't get us anywhere to keep dipping into our bags and waving quotes at one another.
Ron

Not that I want to disagree as you are right. But it made me think of this, and I hope i'm not too off topic...

There is an important but not often discussed Gloranthan MetaGame that the fans Played for two decades. That is, they tried to add more detail to Glorantha on various forumns and in print without contradicting what had already been said. This is not exactly Roleplaying. But its similar to what happens in (say) Topos. A lot of people stopped really playing RuneQuest and focussed on this instead spending all their time on the newsgroups trying to twist the know facts in a gracefull way to conform with the latest word from Greg or the latest fanzine, but in a way that allowed everything else to remain true.

My point, if I have one, is that this was a narrativist game too. Operating in conjunction with peoples own games. Feeding into them and fed from them. Just as valid and amusing as any other sort of game. And 'Greg says' was a core part of that game.

As a sort of narrativist game operating as a metagame to a sim game perhaps the huge activity was a sign of a lot of frustrated players who didn't really want a sim but didnt realise exactly what they did want.

[Ian Cooper]

Nick,

It is generally considered bad form at the Forge to post to old threads where debate has stopped happening for some time. The general form is start a new topic saying you want to discuss the issue and posting a link to the previous thread if required.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

The above two posts were split from British vs. west-coast play of RuneQuest.

Ian, don't leap to moderate so quick for posts like this. Give me just a day or so to get to it, all right?

Nick, good point. I'm not sure I'd call it Narrativist [/i]play[/i] because I'm picky about that, but I think you've nailed the source of the activity. I certainly wrote my share of Glorantha fiction in college out of frustration with never managing to get RuneQuest played "right" by my lights.

Best,
Ron

[NickHollingsworth]

Apologies for bad form.

I certainly wrote my share of Glorantha fiction in college out of frustration ...

Yep. Though I am thinking specifically about the online community that was building (well trying to build) a shared reality across the whole fan base. And I'm not thinking of fiction, not that theres anything wrong with that, but the creation of considerable world detail where there were just a few lines before.

The fan base was stupidly active on several mailing lists. To the point where just lurking took a good percentage of your evening. And it was very active through the periods that the game was pretty much unsupported.

The rules of the meta game were unwritten AFAIK but I'd say they included:

Do not contradict what has been established unless you can explain the contradiction

Sources have different validity. Printed sources are worth more. Most recent sources take precidence over older ones. Greg Stafford opinion is always right.

Explanations that contradict the least established facts are best.

Greg does not necessarily play the meta game.[/list:u]

Obviously there was actually a lot of disagreement and even name calling. But watching the mail lists over the course of a long time span you could see these things play out and a consensus develop.

Does this sort of rabid fan activity commonly exist for other settings? And are the unwritten rules the same in spirit?

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi,

Interesting thread. I agree with just about everything Nick says, except this: It isn't Narrativism. It isn't play (as in playing a roleplaying game).

Narrativism, as I understand it, implies creation of a theme, an answer to a moral question, through the telling of a story. In my opinion, the mailing lists were mapping out, debating, and creating a shared Glorantha, not creating a theme by telling a shared narrative.

Editing in: Oh, I think that Harn has a similar following, but I'm not very familiar with how its fanbase operates.

Cheers,

/Peter N

[Bankuei]

Hi Nick,

I can't speak of any other game world that necessarily has that level of fan contribution, although we can see parallels in the "Star Wars universe" and probably a few other places as well, where fans increasingly gained access towards producing "legitimate" works that were accepted or added into the established setting.

This has been on my mind a lot, as I've been doing some Glorantha research...I'd ask about something, or look into something, and someone would produce some answer from somewhere.  I'd ask about more references, which would lead to a link to another person, who wrote it up from somewhere else.  

This sort of collaborative creation is cool, and definitely has a level of appeal...but...I definitely see there's a pecking order, and having to "play detective" just to get a decent amount of setting info to contribute is definitely frustrating.  To give a slight twist on a phrase Ron has used, I see the "drive towards the Hardcore" as something that keeps the fanbase going, but also is intimidating to the new player.

Chris

[NickHollingsworth]

... I agree ... except this: It isn't Narrativism. It isn't play (as in playing a roleplaying game).

You are right about the narrativism. They are not creating a narrative. They are creating a shared setting.

I'm not so clear on the 'It isn't play' bit. Ron said the same thing, so perhaps 'play' has a very tightly defined meaning of The Forge. Generally speaking I would call it a game; which, for me, by definition means they are playing said game. How does Topos fit into your terminology?

...I definitely see there's a pecking order... and having to "play detective" just to get a decent amount of setting info to contribute is definitely frustrating. To give a slight twist on a phrase Ron has used, I see the "drive towards the Hardcore" as something that keeps the fanbase going, but also is intimidating to the new player.

I was within a hairs breadth of listing the Pecking Order in the unwritten rules of the game, but decided it might sound critical. Opinions of some players definately carried more weight than others, which is normal for any human endeavour.  For a long time this was based on the quality of their posts. I'd say its now also based on whether they have been given some form of rights over a topic by Issaries Inc. This is not as good. For example I rate the Reaching Moon peoples output highly and would have liked it if they were coordinating the Lunar empire. But hey, at least stuff is coming off the presses, and its good stuff, so its not hard to live with it.

The archives of the old mailing lists are mostly searchable. So that sort of detective work should be OK. But if you mean the fans who have fragments of notes from Greg on a topic, well yes. Thats a pain. But you dont tend to see people trumping each other with 'Well my secret note from Greg says you are wrong but I can't quote it'.  Secret sources dont count for as much as public ones. Unless they help explain things - but thats true of any post.

Hey, two more rules:

A source thats unavailable rates lower.
A theory thats entertaining or just

works gets a better wieghting than a dull one.[/list:u]

Anyway I think the meta game is suspended at the moment. The creative processes have gone underground and are popping up as published works. And these dont necessarily build on the 'well known facts' established by the fan base over the years. With variable results. For example the concept of the three magic planes doesn't work for me because it contradicts one of the key rules of the setting that I was used to by making what should be subjective reality provably real to the people of glorantha.

[Bankuei]

Hi Nick,

I was within a hairs breadth of listing the Pecking Order in the unwritten rules of the game, but decided it might sound critical.

Well, that's sort of the nature of the beast.  

On the positive side, the folks who've been around the longest, and have contributed a lot, and networked well with the community gain status and influence.  This also keeps knuckleheads from running in and simply washing things out from the hardcore fanbase("And now we'll add Ninja Gunguns from Star Wars!!! Cool!").  

On the other side, it also means a slower rate of entry into that community for new folks.  While the detective work isn't terrible, its more work trying to piece together a simple overview of a culture or religion based on bits and pieces, as opposed to the usual, "buy the splatbook" of other game settings.  And of course, if you happen to be ignorant, and contribute something that is contradictory, or that one of the higher ranking folks takes exception to...well, there you go.

This isn't intended as criticism, just observation.  I find the tight knit community of Glorantha inspiring for its hardcore fan base, but at the same time scary, for folks writing up stuff like the chemical properties of troll urine.

Chris

[contracycle]

Anyway I think the meta game is suspended at the moment.

Good.  

The creative processes have gone underground and are popping up as published works.

Even better

[NickHollingsworth]

Why is the suspension of the creative Meta Game necessarily all good? It seems more of a two edged sword to me. Having a good rate of published stuff falling of the presses is great; suspension of creation by consensus to whatever extent it's happening is the price to pay.

Perhaps you could be more forthcoming on why the meta game has no redeeming qualities for you.

[contracycle]

Hmm, well perhaps far be it for me to say given my experience was negative, but to me it all felt too cliquey and too much like office politics, about which, as they say, the emotions run high precisely because the stakes are so low.  More generally, I don't much approve of unstructured, let alone permanently ongoing, design by committee.  Given the tenuous nature of the RPG imaginary construct, doubt and ambivalence about it's "true nature" and what have you can only, IMO, be destructive.  Far better, IMO, to exploit a singular and cohesive vision strongly expressed; even if that is achieved by consensus.  

The meta game may well have been entertaining to the participants, but quite naturally that excluded anyone who was not interested in that game as opposed to that of the actual printed product.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

If I understand it correctly, the concept of "Your Glorantha May Vary" is now being so strongly emphasized by Issaries (which is to say, Greg) due to these very issues with the unconstructed-yet-canon-obsessed nature of the "metagame" setting work in the past.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

Hmm.  I tend to see that as a cop-out.  I think a better solution would be to organise it, not just try to handwave it all away.  YGMV = only use the rules you like, which is to say, system and setting don't matter.  Great, but then why am I paying money?

[joshua neff]

Gareth--

I believe the YGMV is more along the lines of, "You just payed 40 some dollars for this game. The setting now belongs to you & the other players. Don't feel like you have to devote all of your free time to reading the internet to keep up with every little change to the setting people you've never met have made. Don't feel like there's some 'canon' you have to preserve."

Considering how fervent many gamers get about the setting being "canon" (& not just gamers--fans of any setting, be it Star Trek or Star Wars or even the loosely-coherent & frequently-contradictory universe of Doctor Who, tend to get fanatic about adhering to published "canon"), I appreciate the YGMV principle. I read it & didn't think it was anything like White Wolf's "Golden Rule" (feel free to chuck these rules you just shelled out money for"), which I find stupid & exactly along the lines you mentioned.

And consulting the HeroQuest book, I see that it's actually not YGMV (Your Glorantha May Vary) but YGWV (Your Glorantha Will Vary).

[simon_hibbs]

... having to "play detective" just to get a decent amount of setting info to contribute is definitely frustrating.  To give a slight twist on a phrase Ron has used, I see the "drive towards the Hardcore" as something that keeps the fanbase going, but also is intimidating to the new player.

This should be a whole lot easier from now on, at least with regard to online resources. The Lokarnos site is an index to online material about glorantha. It makes hunting for information on a prticular topic, such as a region, race, culture or other topic much easier.

Otherwise obscure background material is coming out in-print though. Only a year or two ago all the information in The Imperial Lunar Handbook, and the information on Wizardry and the west in HeroQuest and the Introduction to Glorantha was only available in old fan products.

As a problem is identified, the community and Issaries Inc have shown a willingness to come up with solutions.


Simon Hibbs