Where to begin?

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, CharloixBrooKiller said:

1) people build 'authentic' RQ campaigns

Start small and build outward.  Same approach I had back in the RQ3 days.  My current RQG campaign started with the Quickstart scenario The Broken Tower.  They were off to rescue cattle. They did well, got recognized by Queen Leika, so sent off by her on a quest. Added in interactions with other clans, with the Kitori, with Yelmalions and beastmen as they went seeking a magical vision.  They were subsequently at the Battle of the Queens.  Now they're on another quest which has led to Snakepipe Hollow.  

Didn't need any huge amount of history or background. 

1 hour ago, CharloixBrooKiller said:

2) 'learn' Glorantha' history these days.

Since I've been involved with RQ and Glorantha for way too many years, I can't speak as a newcomer. But my suggestions would be: get familiar with the Character Generation background in RQG.  Add in the material in the Glorantha Sourcebook.  You've got plenty with that.  My original RQ3 campaign started with Griffin Mountain and the Redline History of the Lunar Empire (in Glorantha Sourcebook) as the primary "history" materials.

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, CharloixBrooKiller said:

Let me explain.  I was fortunate to be part of RQ when it was created. 

And we eagerly await your recollections and stories of what it was like in the beginning. Please post as many of those as you can.

2 hours ago, CharloixBrooKiller said:

Yet I wonder how RQ GMs and players 'play' in Pavis knowing the cradle is coming, etc.  I'd think it hard to run campaigns and manage to stay 'authentic' yet unfettered by major events that you know WILL appear.

To a certain extent, it doesn't matter.

Unless you are gearing up to do something on the Cradle, what benefit does it give you to know it is coming? Even then it is just an event in the future.

I just run scenarios as they come and try to put them into some sort of timeline. It is always flexible and fits around what the Players/Adventurers are doing.

 

[GAZZA]

7 hours ago, soltakss said:

And we eagerly await your recollections and stories of what it was like in the beginning. Please post as many of those as you can.

To a certain extent, it doesn't matter.

Unless you are gearing up to do something on the Cradle, what benefit does it give you to know it is coming? Even then it is just an event in the future.

I just run scenarios as they come and try to put them into some sort of timeline. It is always flexible and fits around what the Players/Adventurers are doing.

Even if you're gearing up to do something on the Cradle it doesn't really matter. Firstly, the destination isn't as fixed as it seems (once you start play, the PCs can and possibly will throw a wrench into any so-called pre-ordained events). Secondly, even if you do have the destination fixed (a little more rail-roadie than I prefer as a GM, but to each their own) the journey is the fun part, not the ending; to reference the SW prequel trilogy (which were certainly bad, though I would argue we no longer live in a universe where the prequel trilogy are the worst SW movies - but I digress) just because you know where Anakin will end up doesn't mean that the tale of how he gets there isn't worth telling. Nobody really believed the Rebels would eventually lose in the original trilogy, after all - broken down to their most basic elements, most fiction isn't wildly unpredictable. The details matter, and you can still make meaningful choices.

That said there is a lot of Glorantha mythos and history for new players to absorb, no question. Even worse for new GMs.

[Austin]

13 hours ago, soltakss said:

And we eagerly await your recollections and stories of what it was like in the beginning. Please post as many of those as you can.

Seconded!

14 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

You can decide to not feel overwhelmed by "all that needs to happen" or "all the authenticity that I need to infuse in my campaign". The authentic Glorantha will be whatever happens during your games.

Agreed. However, I didn't read Charloix's comments as being about "getting it right," but rather authenticity in the sense of "feeling real." Sort of like how, if you're reading a novel and you already know the twist, the experience of reading it is different than if you've not been spoiled on it. If you don't know the Cradle's supposed to happen in 1621, then you experience a different sort of sense of wonder when an enormous Cradle floats down the river.

That doesn't mean, of course, that if you know the general story of the Hero Wars that there's no point of playing it, or that your experience is lessened. God knows I have some books I return to every few years because I just love those stories. It's not a lessened or "wrong" experience, just a different one. But at the same time, you can't really just "forget" part of a story and re-experience it anew.

[davecake]

On 6/10/2020 at 1:30 PM, Nick Brooke said:

I’m just surprised at people who would rather have nothing to support gaming in particular parts of the lozenge. It strongly reminds me of the Elmal bollocks, when zealots mistakenly tried to bin Sun County, replacing it with... bugger all, frankly.

I’ve always felt this as well. Time enough for a better version later, but why would you want to remove something that is fun and playable and being used by people to have fun and in their actual games? If you don’t like something, replace it with something better - and if you want to make it really better, reuse or incorporate as much as you can of stuff that people find enjoyable about what was there before. Being ‘correct’ by some arbitrary, fallible standard is one of the less important metrics. 

[CharloixBrooKiller]

Hope I didn't create confusion when I asked my question.  was really just curious how folks handled it over the past 40  years.

For example, we were also playing Traveller (I ran the GDW tourney's at Origins one year using the material that became Chamax Plague).  Watching Traveller's Aid come out saying there was some insurgency in whatever sector....only to follow up a year or two later with the actual war was pretty cool to live real time.  My point is that those tidbits were interpretedd and layed differently BEFORE you knew what was going to happen.  FWIIW, I think it one of the problems with running or playing in a 'world' that has a scripted storyline that has major events.

I"ve mentioned in some other places (an example of what I mean) that while it's my character that became Daine in Borderlands, the irony is Daine wasn't my runequest character that played in what became the Five Eyes Temple part of Borderlands.  Daine was actually a D&D character, like Tarnak, that the author kindly wove into the story line as our moment of immortality!  LOL

I have NO idea how the following turned out.  I know Greg have certain people 'license' (as opposed to an actual license) to write up new material in fanzines and such.  It seems some of those topics/areas later got 'official' coverage and I just wonder how it got woven together.

FWIIW, If I were running a RQ campaign today, I think you'd be better off setting it "off the beaten" track and let the script timeline touchy you briefly.  i.e.  set the campaign in say Alone, or Hendriki areas SE of Dragon Pass, etc.   The truth is, all RPGs hang MUCH more on the quality of GM than the particular game system (D&D, RQ, Trav, etc.) or even the history (Glorantha or Tekumel).

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, CharloixBrooKiller said:

For example, we were also playing Traveller (I ran the GDW tourney's at Origins one year using the material that became Chamax Plague).  Watching Traveller's Aid come out saying there was some insurgency in whatever sector....only to follow up a year or two later with the actual war was pretty cool to live real time.  My point is that those tidbits were interpretedd and layed differently BEFORE you knew what was going to happen.  FWIIW, I think it one of the problems with running or playing in a 'world' that has a scripted storyline that has major events.

What you describe is now colloquially known as a "metaplot". This kind of stuff happened in a variety of games, so the problems you're mentioning are not new but, really, have no good solution. When a game setting has been ongoing for years, it needs to be expanded. The publisher can expand it spatially (i.e. release books with new regions and areas to explore), or temporally (i.e. release books that "advance" the setting along a given timeline) or something else (like for example by only releasing new adventures, like what 90% of Call of Cthulhu books are about).

Vampire: The Masquerade ran into this problem in the late 90s and early 2000s. They expanded in various directions (spatially, with city books, and lore-wise, with the highly successful clanbooks), but with politics being such a big part of the game, they also wanted to make relationships evolve, and so they started a metaplot that unfolded over a few years. Funnily enough, while you say that it was pretty cool to live in real time, some Vampire players were definitely not happy about it, because somehow their game went a different way... for example, maybe in your Traveller game the players actually stopped the war! And now you're kinda stuck, looking at new books that can't be directly applied to your game.

Now it might be important to note that the kind of problem you're talking about isn't as bad if only the GM "knows" about the events. Other people note that nobody has any problem playing in 1939 Europe or during Julius Caesar's reign or whatever -- the focus might not even be on the "historical events" anyway because that happens in the background. If it's not in the background, however, then you might be playing in an alternate timeline, which some people find cool too. So really, like I said, there's no unique answer to this... it depends.

[ffilz]

19 hours ago, lordabdul said:

What you describe is now colloquially known as a "metaplot". This kind of stuff happened in a variety of games, so the problems you're mentioning are not new but, really, have no good solution. When a game setting has been ongoing for years, it needs to be expanded. The publisher can expand it spatially (i.e. release books with new regions and areas to explore), or temporally (i.e. release books that "advance" the setting along a given timeline) or something else (like for example by only releasing new adventures, like what 90% of Call of Cthulhu books are about).

Vampire: The Masquerade ran into this problem in the late 90s and early 2000s. They expanded in various directions (spatially, with city books, and lore-wise, with the highly successful clanbooks), but with politics being such a big part of the game, they also wanted to make relationships evolve, and so they started a metaplot that unfolded over a few years. Funnily enough, while you say that it was pretty cool to live in real time, some Vampire players were definitely not happy about it, because somehow their game went a different way... for example, maybe in your Traveller game the players actually stopped the war! And now you're kinda stuck, looking at new books that can't be directly applied to your game.

Now it might be important to note that the kind of problem you're talking about isn't as bad if only the GM "knows" about the events. Other people note that nobody has any problem playing in 1939 Europe or during Julius Caesar's reign or whatever -- the focus might not even be on the "historical events" anyway because that happens in the background. If it's not in the background, however, then you might be playing in an alternate timeline, which some people find cool too. So really, like I said, there's no unique answer to this... it depends.

That's one reason I like "done" settings if I'm going to use a commercial setting. With no new material coming out, there's no future meta-plot to clash with how my campaign has run. Up until recently I was able to compartmentalize Glorantha as a "done" setting by sticking to the RQ2/RQ3 material (and not even incorporating all that's implied in those scenarios). But now there's temptation. I COULD make use of some of the RQG material in my RQ1.5 campaign... Fortunately, I can still hold to the "done" setting by considering ANYTHING newer as stuff that has high potential to be ported in, but it need not be any more canon that the D&D module I'm currently using to run some adventures (said D&D module making my Tada's High Tumulus definitely non-canon - the module is UK5 - Eye of the Serpent and I'm using it as an adventure of getting down from the top of Tada's High Tumulus).

[Lordabdul]

1 hour ago, ffilz said:

Fortunately, I can still hold to the "done" setting by considering ANYTHING newer as stuff that has high potential to be ported in, but it need not be any more canon that the D&D module I'm currently using to run some adventures

Yes exactly -- anybody can stick to a subset of the lore and do what they want with it. Usually when I see people complain, they complain more along the lines of "the new books are not useful to me and I want new books to be what I want!", so it's more of push-back against the editorial choices.

A few long running settings have avoided any metaplot. Harn, for instance, has been slowly but steadily expanded upon for 40 years, but it has all been always frozen in time at year 720 TR. They mostly extended the setting geographically, both by going out of the Harn islands and to the rest of Lythia, and in terms of resolution, by famously meticulously describing an increasing amount of villages, keeps, and places of interest inside Harn itself.

(I have no strong opinion either way myself...)

Edited July 9, 2020 by lordabdul