"Let's talk a little bit about Your Glorantha Will Vary (YGWV)" by Ian Cooper

[Shawn Carpenter]

18 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

HArn isn't as detailed.  It's a rich world, I 'll grant you, but  it's reglions and cultures don't have anywhere near the same depth. Harn is mostly a medeival society with a little customization, and Tolkien fantasy races thrown in. Show me one HArrinc hero or dietiry with as much written about them as , say Humakt.

Should I pontificate on the number of Angels that can dance on the head of a pin while I'm at it?

Sorry, I'm here for the game, not to prove my orthodoxy. 

[Atgxtg]

24 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Star Wars, I guess? Difference is, few people take the internal consistensy of Star Wars as seriously as many Gloranthaphiles seem to do, and the Star Wars galaxy has a lot more "holes" in it where you can fill out the blanks yourse (at least compared to a campaign set in Sartar in the early 1600s). 

I did say FRPG, although a case could be made for Star Wars being Space Fantasy. But Star Wars culure is so cosmopolitain (or so oppressive deepening on  the place and time), that culture isn't all that important.  You really don't need to know all that much about Star Wars peoples and cultures to play it. It's basically one  big culture. Thats why in any Star Wars RPG  you don't usually need of both with things like homeworld for characters (even Senators) and just need a profession. 

There probably is as much detail to the Star Wars universe now, after decades of various authors adding to it. It certinaly asn't all that detailed prior to WEG. Even so, much of it is contradictory, or has been rectonned out of existence (ie. the entire EU), and Lucas'retconning the original trilogy is much less popular that any changes brought about by "Gregging". "Han Shot first!" rings with Staw Wars fans in a way that "Yelmalio not Elmal" never did.

Yet..most of the detail was in the EU, which Lucasfilm never adhered to. So if you were to stick to the canon, then it wasn't all that detailed. And was does exist tends to get glossed over by big events. We d on't know as much about sand people as we do about Agrimoril for example. But the EU was big, so  maybe.

 

24 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I guess maybe Trek comes close in the obsessive detail department, and I can only assume they have some licensed tabletop RPG or other. Once again the setting scale opening up more wiggle room though.

Trek certainly had more detail than Star Wars, and it was more significant too, as the setting was more culturally driven. Also, there is a whole lot more of it than there is Star Wars. Even ingnoring the various bits that were retconned, rebooted, or just plain messed up there is still hundred of houses of primary source  material plus a lot of non-canon (in Trek only what is on screen counts and even some of that   isn't supposed to). I'm not sure I'f I could call it a FRPG  setting though but letting that slide.

Most of Star Treks depth and detail is superferouls  to the game  becuase, much like with Star Wars, the main setting  is very composition, and  you don't really need to know it.  Trek ruyns just fine without knowing much a bout the Deltans, Caitains, or even the Gorn. A GM does need to know about the Federations, Humans, Klginons and Romulans, and maybe some of the other major powers, but most Federation memember specials are civil towards each other and culturally accepting, and  most that aren't tend to be one shot appearances. 

Trek probably hints more at a culture than actually fleshing  one out. We got entire episodes about 20th Century Rome and even a planet run by Nazis, but neither setting had or needed much detail beyond linking it to the historic cultures used for the episode.

 

 

[Atgxtg]

1 minute ago, Shawn Carpenter said:

Should I pontificate on the number of Angels that can dance on the head of a pin while I'm at it?

Not unless you want to claim that more can do so on Harn than in Glorantha.

1 minute ago, Shawn Carpenter said:

Sorry, I'm here for the game, not to prove my orthodoxy. 

But Orthodxy in one form or another is a big part of Glorantha. It is a worth that is  literally drived by reglion and gods. HArn is more medieval Europe with a facelift.                   

[Shawn Carpenter]

Orthodoxy in Glorantha is impossible if one adheres to Greg's presentation of the world. His works on the myth are replete with contradictions, not only between faiths but within them. I don't believe this was an accident or poor world design on his part. I believe it was purposefully presented as a part of the world and its workings. I think that the parable of the God Learners exists as a warning against strict orthodoxy, both within the world and as a meta-commentary on the game and its players.

You asked for game worlds that approached the detail of Glorantha and I and several others provided those examples. You can eliminate or belittle them based on your subjective tastes, but in our minds they are worthy comparisons. 

[Lordabdul]

It's an interesting theory to say that the YGWV mantra was started because the authors' Glorantha started to vary, due in part to the convoluted publishing history of Gloranthan material, and in part to Greg changing his mind and bringing in collaborators with different views. I'd like to see when "YGWV" was introduced to see if it lines up.

Either way, yeah, I've never seen it used as a selling point. At best, it was used as a "no, no, please come back" point when the selling points were proven to be ineffective on GMs who were discouraged about the amount of material to read before running their first adventure. I believe YGWV was meant to mean "don't worry, you don't have to know everything, we are aware there's a lot out there, but feel free to start with minimum knowledge... if you improvise/invent stuff that you later realize contradicts some other book, it's no big deal". As a GM who did struggle with figuring out where/when to start, I sympathize with the effort. I'm not sure it's a very effective way to fix the problem though -- "YGWV" always felt poorly reassuring to me.

There are plenty of other complex and rich worlds out there yeah, but it's possible Glorantha was the first to hit a certain "critical mass" with the RPG community. Different games deal with it differently:

• Middle Earth-based games for example don't front-load so much stuff: they can rely on typical medieval fantasy tropes because, thankfully, most of those tropes were built upon the very books they're trying to model. So you can play a rogue/fighter/wizard/whatever elf/dwarf/hobbit and go on merry adventures right away. Comparatively, new Gloranthan players will ask "what's a Humakt? what's a High Llama?" before they can even figure what they want to play... there's a lot of up-front work, unless you really frame your campaign and say "everybody plays that kind of people".
• Other games like Harn or, to some degree Star Wars/Middle Earth, are actually fairly static. In Harn, all the books are actually describing the world up to the same point in time. For better or worse, Glorantha is very dynamic setting -- you play in any era from late 1500s to mid-1600s and there's a shitload of stuff happening. "Play an Esrolian priestess? Oh, I guess I forgot to tell you that you've seen your lands ravaged and plundered at least 2 or 3 times by these and these and these people. Let me tell you about the oceans...". Star Wars is famous for having no significant changes for centuries at a time. Sure you can play in a few different eras, but they're so far apart it's easy to compartmentalize. Middle Earth also has very broad strokes, and you get into complex stuff only when you look closely. There's no such thing in Glorantha: books tend to immediately expose you to an almost year-by-year break down of Dragon Pass history, and every entry has names of people and places that you have to look up, and only 5 years into the timeline you've already gone down a rabbit hole that took up 2 hours of your time.
• Last, some games like Traveller just acknowledge different versions of the world. Between Traveller5 and Mongoose Traveller and MegaTraveller and GURPS Traveller and what have you, the timeline is different and that's that. No "YTWV". I'm not sure how the Traveller community deals with it though, I'm not very involved in that.

I think the original problem that "YGWV" was trying to fix would be better fixed IMHO with:

• Finding a way of presenting Glorantha in a more "layered" approach. Less up-front work for GMs to learn about the world, and for players to know who they want to play. Move the details and richness further down the line.
• More "starter adventures" and GM resources. I think that's what Chaosium is trying to do this time around.

Edited December 5, 2019 by lordabdul

[Shawn Carpenter]

Back to the original post:

I agree that most experienced game masters understand that the concept of canon in an RPG is ludicrous. The setting of any game changes upon contact with game masters and players. That said, not all players and GMs who pick up a Glorantha product are necessarily that experienced, so YGWV is a nice affirmation that they don't have to know the 10,000 myths of HUMAKT to play the game.

Frankly, I think YGWV doesn't grant a GM permission to monkey with the world, it places a restriction on would be Pharisees who try to use "canon" to control the GM, other players, and the game world itself.

8 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

• Finding a way of presenting Glorantha in a more "layered" approach. Less up-front work for GMs to learn about the world, and for players to know who they want to play. Move the details and richness further down the line.
• More "starter adventures" and GM resources. I think that's what Chaosium is trying to do this time around.

This is on the money, IMO, and not just because it's the approach I'm taking on my JC project. 

[g33k]

2 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

...

• More "starter adventures" and GM resources. I think that's what Chaosium is trying to do this time around.

It'd be a lot of work, and possibly not a profitable one, but... I would like to see SEVERAL "starter" packages:  Sartar-centric (we already have the GM's Screen Pack, which is a GREAT resource here; and there's a "Starter Set" coming which... I think ALSO going to be Sartar-centric???), Prax/Nomad-centric, Pavis/Rubble-centric, Esrolia-centric, etc.

The point being, a "starter" package is for Glorantha newbies to follow the traditional/common advice to new GM's intimidated by all.that.lore:  start small/local, grow Your Glorantha as your campaign and characters grow.

There are actually a LOT of good places to start newbies in Glorantha... if only those places had a decent "Starter Pack" treatment!

[Bill the barbarian]

24 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Either way, yeah, I've never seen it used as a selling point. At best, it was used as a "no, no, please come back" point when the selling points were proven to be ineffective on GMs who were discouraged about the amount of material to read before running their first adventure.

YGWV. 
I always knew that some used it as a way of covering up what some might assume (wrongly) are embarrassing areas of Glorantha (slowly starts pushing duck back behind with sole of foot. Duck protests, but is suddenly kicked backed with force releasing a gasped exhalation and a startled quack covered by quick harrumphing.

"Sorry, frog in my throat. What was that .... What was what... As i was saying... Ducks, don’t need em, I mean your game may vary, right?"

Me, I like that if I want Scandinavian/Celtic types and my table agrees, well damn it, my game will vary thankyouverymuch and I shan’t invite naysayers to kibitz and decry the horror of my choice. 

Edited December 5, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Shawn Carpenter]

2 minutes ago, g33k said:

It'd be a lot of work, and possibly not a profitable one, but... I would like to see SEVERAL "starter" packages:  Sartar-centric (we already have the GM's Screen Pack, which is a GREAT resource here; and there's a "Starter Set" coming which... I think ALSO going to be Sartar-centric???), Prax/Nomad-centric, Pavis/Rubble-centric, Esrolia-centric, etc.

Amen!

2 minutes ago, g33k said:

There are actually a LOT of good places to start newbies in Glorantha... if only those places had a decent "Starter Pack" treatment!

Again, on the money, IMO. I'm hoping some folks will take advantage of Jonstown Compendium to lend Chaosium a hand with this. I've got several starting places I'd like to work on and even more I'd like to PLAY in. I'd love to see Duck Point get the full Origin Story Setting treatment.

 

[Shawn Carpenter]

13 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Ducks, don’t need em

Heretic! Unclean! Barbarous ignorance is no excuse! Fetch the tinder! Fetch the fuel! Fetch the torches!

[Bill the barbarian]

Just now, Shawn Carpenter said:

Heretic! Unclean! Barbarous ignorance is no excuse! Fetch the tinder! Fetch the fuel! Fetch the torches!

But I don’t weigh as much as a duck nor can I float like a duck oh please I really am not a witch...

[Bill the barbarian]

20 minutes ago, g33k said:

It'd be a lot of work, and possibly not a profitable one, but... I would like to see SEVERAL "starter" packages:  Sartar-centric (we already have the GM's Screen Pack, which is a GREAT resource here; and there's a "Starter Set" coming which... I think ALSO going to be Sartar-centric???), Prax/Nomad-centric, Pavis/Rubble-centric, Esrolia-centric, etc.

 

Two words, Jonstown Compendium....

[g33k]

10 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

But I don’t weigh as much as a duck nor can I float like a duck oh please I really am not a witch...

That's what Sunspear is for.

 

Well.... not really.

 

But we'll make an exception, just for you.

(does this satisfy your objections?)

[Bill the barbarian]

Just now, g33k said:

That's what Sunspear is for.

 

Well.... not really.

 

But we'll make an exception, just for you.

(does this satisfy your objections?)

I just wish to point out you have extremely violent tendencies toward ducks that you really should have take care of...

[g33k]

2 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I just wish to point out you have extremely violent tendencies toward ducks that you really should have take care of...

Oh, yes... I'll "take care of" that!

Absolutely.

 

[Prinz Slasar]

Regarding the statement that Glorantha is a highly described setting with a huge catalogue of material: I'm following the Glorantha discussions on the social networks quite a while and my conclusion is: If someone is asking about details about a specific place in Glorantha [mostly small ones] the answers are either "there is no description. YGMV" or the answers are coming up with always the same 2-10 sources. And these sources are mostly from RQG/HQG.

So it's interesting that on the one hand the opinion is "Glorantha is overwhelming in its source material" but on the other hand you often didn't get any in-depth descriptions for specific places in Glorantha or the tribe will direct you to a quite small catalogue of books and supplements.

Jason Durall pointed it out in a way, which I think is the truth: Glorantha as a world is HUGE and there are infinite things to write about it in the future. But the published informations are not that extensive. This difference seems small but its the whole thing to answer the above mentioned contradiction, imho.

Edited December 5, 2019 by prinz.slasar

[g33k]

9 minutes ago, prinz.slasar said:

Regarding the statement that Glorantha is a highly described setting with a huge catalog of material: I'm following the Glorantha discussions on the social networks quite a while and my conclusion is: If someone is asking about details about a specific place in Glorantha [mostly small ones] the answers are either "there is no description. YGMV" or the answers are coming up with always the same 2-10 sources. And these sources are mostly from RQG/HQG.

So it's interesting that on the one hand the opinion is "Glorantha is overwhelming in its source material" but on the other hand you often didn't get any in-depth descriptions for specific places in Glorantha or the tribe will direct you to a quite small catalog of books and supplements.

The "places" (villages, steads, etc) don't matter so much ...  Why are the PC's there?  Who already lives there, and what do they want?  These are largely what the games are about, and will vary (to greater or lesser degree) per-campaign.

But a village (for example) in Sartar will be largely Orlanthi/Ernaldan, possibly with Lunarization... and the Orlanthi, the Ernaldans, and the Lunars ARE indeed deeply and extensively addressed in canon!

[Joerg]

10 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

Yes, I find the whole YGMV overdone and it is mentioned too often. So it becomes a bit of irritating to read it over and over again in all different contextes.

It has become a shorthand for "I don't think you are approaching this canonically, but keep on talking, maybe I can re-align your ideas with my understanding of canon".

10 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

For me as a Glorantha fan and with an RPG background of nearly three decades, this phrase doesn't provide anything new or helpful.

This does come across as a grognard wording...

10 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

I guess, this is a RQ/Glorantha thing from the past or in other words: a grognard wording, which hasn't aged well.

Think of it as a protective spell against the gift-bringers of the Church of Canon. They tend to be grognards, and they need a language they can understand.

Basically, there are a lot of grognards about, and they stem from different periods of sentimental memories. There are those who never forgave Chaosium that there was a newer edition than RQ2, there are grognards for the time when APA-Zines were the outlet for minutiae, there are grognards for the RQ3-Renaissance and the Fanzine culture accompanying it, there are grognards for the shared creativity that stemmed from the RQ-Daily and the successor Digests (raises hand here), there are grognards for the explosion of new deity names and subcults that ramped up in the nineties and erupted in Thunder Rebels subsequent HW/HQ1 products, etc.

And rather than throwing out curmudgeonly rants every time, these grognards calm themselves with this four rune mantra -

-Truth- -Storm- -Mastery- -Beast-

 

10 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

It has similarities with the recurring duck jokes on Facebook. You read it, roll your eyes and go to the next paragraph.
People use it inflationary and way too often. So it lost its bite.

It never was meant to bite. It was (and is) meant to bridle.

The mantra is a coping mechanism.

 

9 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

I have never understood it as permission giving, but rather as Greg's understanding that not all of us enjoyed being Gregged. 

The dilemma that every IP holder for a fictional setting has is that the fans will want a) that all "facts" that they learned remain unshakeably true, b) that their hard won own conclusions from the facts remain unshaken, and c) that there is new material for them to peruse without harming a) or b).

There are settings that have a slightly better track record for a) than Glorantha, and b) is a hopeless endeavor for the publisher as there will be opposing views among the fans.

Point c) is the hard one - the bridle on the creativity of the producers of content.

There is a form of community grognardism, too - the defense of fanon, wide-spread agreement on fan conclusions that were not measured against the collection of "facts" by the IP-holder.

Now here is a problem that exists for Glorantha. There is no single well accessible collection of all the "facts" and sources for Glorantha. Jeff may hold the accumulated paper trail of official Gloranthan design in his vault in Berlin, and a huge load of digital data, but he has to dive into various sources for checking facts.

Greg himself had accumulated some systematic development notes, but there were times when the (only) master copy for a place like Sartar or Tarsh had gone AWOL, and new material could not hold its ground against this lost access to canon.

Then there are earlier starts at fiction or world-building which were later found to be not quite consistent with the development of the world. Ethilrist's mention of the Western Jungle is a very good example of this, as is the map of the Lunar Empire which has a central crater almost as wide as the coast line between Seshnela and Kralorela.

 

9 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Ditto the latest incarnation of 'canon'.  My Glorantha Does Vary in that it retains many items that are no longer canon, but that I treasure from previous visions. I have never needed permission for that👹

Just because a source is no longer deemed canonical doesn't mean that its entire content has become "post-canonical" - that fallacy of e.g. the Glorantha Wikia is a huge waste.

Salvaging does not feel very creative.

Salvaging stuff into canon becomes problematic when the source is "stuff by Greg Stafford and the main author who pushed his pet theory of the week in that fanzine article" (or worse, Hero Wars or HQ1 official release). There have been a number of incidents where the dizzy heights of being main author or editor in chief of a crucial production have gone off on courses which were never intended. And as others would reference those sources for further input, the discrepancies multiply.

The lack of time to do research and fact checking that the Mongoose RQ authors were subject to  led to a presentation of Glorantha that varied very much already in its foundational documents. Some Hero Wars and HQ1 products suffered from injections of ego. Then there was a multitude of "false friends" (used in linguistics to describe words in another language that sound like something from your own, but have a quite different meaning), especially the entire "Malkioni Church" and "Medieval Malkionism" stuff.

One tragic case for this is Jamie Revell's excellent work on "The Book of Glorious Joy" and "Kingdom of the Flame Sword", relying on the terminology that included "knight" and "church" and the look and feel of RQ3 Genertela Box for Loskalm and Tanisor ("Seshnela").

The latest victim is "we don't work derived from this licensed property which was placed in the Chaosium Glorantha campaign here as canonical any more". Details from the Chaosium campaign had "leaked" into the fanon, and had been picked up by creative enthusiasts.

Chaosium did have the license to publish those settings at the time, creating a different legal situation from now (more than thirty years later), so it was quite natural for fans of Chaosium to trust the Chaosium sources as near-canonical.
A similar victim are public cooperations of fans creating shared detail from their campaigns, influencing one another. And occasionally entering canon.

 

Freeform games and myths share a few traits - they create intensive memories, and they include a lot of silliness. Freeforms have a history of influencing many peoples' Glorantha by planting memories from freeforming experiences, using the background of those freeform characters and their networking to enrichen peoples' pen-and-paper games, or subsequent freeforms.

The Gloranthan freeforms have influenced a lot of games - especially when details were shared via the internet. Using those fan-created version of a networked background synchronized quite a few Glorantha campaigns. Thus we find names from Monty Python sketches blown up to near canonicity in shared fan background. And grognardism based on this. It was this community which held the Glorantha hobby alive throughout the years of no official gaming content.

YG<M/W>V was meant to honor those communally exchanged and propagated creative works.

 

I can understand that this kind of grognardism may grate if one doesn't have any sentimental ties to those periods in the real world history of Glorantha. If RQG or HQG or 13G is your first contact with the setting, you probably couldn't care less about decades-old fan-created material. And I guess by the time Jeff may pass on the standard to a future chief creative director, those experiences may be forgotten for good.

For now, there are grognards about. With cherished memories (and cash to throw at the new offerings of Gloranthan goodness). Some of them may allow you to feed or pet them.

 

[Joerg]

 

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Me, I like that if I want Scandinavian/Celtic types and my table agrees, well damn it, my game will vary thankyouverymuch and I shan’t invite naysayers to kibitz and decry the horror of my choice. 

You might get away with this in other settings, but over here you first have to endure the lectures why your idea of Scandinavian or Celtic types aren't...

[Bill the barbarian]

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

 

You might get away with this in other settings, but over here you first have to endure the lectures why your idea of Scandinavian or Celtic types aren't...

sigh

[g33k]

Star Wars obviously has a vast galaxy with many planets, including quite a bit of diversity (compare Naboo's greenery & ocean-riddled planetography, with water-Gungans and surface-Humans / Tatooine's desert-world with Humans/Jawas/Sandpeople / Couruscant's governmental world-city of innumerable races / etc; plus the worlds where we only see "colony" or "outpost" presence, like Bespin (the cloud city / mine where we met Lando), Eadu & Scarif (where we only get to see one Imperial Base on each world).

Star Trek "only" has a relatively-small section of the galaxy as "known" territory; but for all practical purposes it has just as much diversity.

Both ST & SW postulate habitable worlds so common, and intelligent life so ubiquitous, that any new movies, novels, TV-shows, etc (in either 'verse) routinely introduce new ones, and/or add to existing ones.  Full worlds, single-colony worlds, etc etc etc.

And of course SW & ST both have RPG's, that can take advantage of all that luscious content!  And frankly, the movies (and even the books) are more accessible than any RPG-supplement.  Not necessarily as readily-gameable (since they lack mechanics), but they give players an avenue in, a kind of grounding in the world & common vision, that Glorantha really lacks.

 

Nevertheless... neither one really has the type of depth that Glorantha does.  There are a few "iconic" places & races -- Kashyyyk & Wookies, or Vulcan & Vulcans, for example -- that get some really deep worldbuilding; but most of that broad ST/SW palette are just "<X> of the week" sorts of places, and races.  Of course, there are equally-shallow parts of Glorantha; but far more of Glorantha that is deeply-delved -- the cults and cultures, in particular; and of course central Genertela, in particular!

This isn't really odd or mysterious -- Greg Stafford was into mythology, and anthropology.  He wanted to explore storytelling as a medium, in itself; Glorantha was a direct outgrowth of his interests and his focus.  SW had a specific, particular story it wanted to tell (and ST a specific type of story), rather than being mytho/anthro storytelling-exploratory methods.  Luke's story -- and now Rey's -- are pretty good (and reasonably deep) explorations of their respective Hero's Journeys.  Greg looked at how different cultures approached the Monomyth, how their different approaches interacted, at how individuals navigated the world where they could enter their own foundational mythology, experience and maybe even alter it.

 

But I've got to return to & reemphasize ST's and SW's broadly-common vision and accessibility, particularly from the films.  A starting Glorantha campaign -- unless all the players are grognards (or obsessive deep-lore nerds with a year or more of OCD-OD'ing on Glorantha) -- simply lacks the kind of depth that ST/SW has easily available to the players via common cultural experiences.

Depending on how you approach the questions of "depth" and "lore," you can argue either approach as the "deeper" one, lore-wise.

 

[g33k]

YGMV / YGWV

Historically (for those who don't know) these derive from "YMMV" (Your Mileage May Vary) -- old internet shorthand meaning your experience / preference / taste / results / etc may be different from mine, and/or from what is written where the YMMV is placed.

That derived in turn from the literal "Your Mileage May Vary" notices posted by law in the USA, whenever posting gas-mileage claims on cars:  personal driving style, altitude, temperature, terrain, all notoriously made the laboratory-perfect EPA ratings notably inexact.

Here amongst Glorantha's Grognardia, though, it has other meanings.  Please note:  meanings. 

• t can be a simple allowance as above, "I wrote my own thing, which may differ from your thing; my experience may not be your experience."
• It may acknowledge the altering of "canon," as documented above & elsewhere, or specifically "Gregging" (where Greg Stafford altered his own expression of Glorantha, and thus others' who followed his "official" lead).
• It allows differing (often competing) visions to peacefully(!?) coexist in the same social sphere (forum, mailing-list, etc).
• It may be a prescriptive exhortation to not be limited by "canon," nor intimidated by it.
• Probably other meanings I'm not calling to mind at the moment.

Note the preferred "W" over "M" -- your Glorantha WILL vary.  It's inevitable:  canon is static / play is dynamic; canon is pan-Gloranthan / campaigns are play-specific; etc...  I'd be curious to know if even any of the Chaosium staff are willing to allege that they have ever played a 100%-canonical campaign ?

 

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Shawn Carpenter said:

...

Frankly, I think YGWV doesn't grant a GM permission to monkey with the world, it places a restriction on would be Pharisees who try to use "canon" to control the GM, other players, and the game world itself.

... 

I think it does both!  "How do I even get started!?!?" is a recurrent wail of despair I hear read online from new GM's.  The permission (to not know it all) is HUGE.

Start small -- a single tribe of Nomads in Prax, a plucky band from Pavis, a small group of exiles from Sartar, a single Cult, etc.   Grow Your Glorantha from there, organically as your campaign and your PC's grow... but even in the beginning, don't worry about the limits of canon.

Yes, it also is an excellent way to keep the Canon Lawyers from running roughshod over a campaign... but honestly:  how many people run Gloranthan games for players who know the world better than the GMs do, or even as well?

The third leg of the tripod, of course -- and IMHO the most-used one -- is online rather than at the table, where Gloranthan Variance is intrinsic lubrication to allow crusty rusty grognards to grind together without everything going up in flames.  🤡

Edited December 5, 2019 by g33k

[Qizilbashwoman]

15 minutes ago, g33k said:

I'd be curious to know if even any of the Chaosium staff are willing to allege that they have ever played a 100%-canonical campaign ?

i'm unclear if it's possible, because the game wasn't written coherently by a tight group in short order, but is a long and messy trail like real life mythology. (If you think the common depiction of Zeus and the Olympians is a good representation of ancient Greek religion, I have an ugly surprise for you in that almost zero part of that is accurate.)

[Shawn Carpenter]

28 minutes ago, g33k said:

Yes, it also is an excellent way to keep the Canon Lawyers from running roughshod over a campaign... but honestly:  how many people run Gloranthan games for players who know the world better than the GMs do, or even as well?

A Canon Lawyer doesn't have to know the world better than their GM, they only need to know enough to whine, "But that's not what it says in The Glorantha Sourcebook!" 

But I think you're right, permission for the GM to run a game without a degree in Heortling Studies is also a very big deal.