What puts me off attempting a Jonstown Compendium article.

[Agentorange]

Well, apart from terminal lazyness that is,

it's the fact that everytime I have an idea  - somebody has already got there first 😃

Even if i arrived at it on my own I'd hate to think that somebody felt I'd poached their idea.

Edited September 14, 2022 by Agentorange

[Cloud64]

Very few ideas are truly original, our inspiration is usually triggered by someone else's work, even if we aren't conscious of it when the light strikes. Why not write it anyway, who knows, you might do a better job.

Says the man who's also sitting on a couple of ideas that have got little further than brainstorming. One day, one day.

Edited September 14, 2022 by Cloud64

[Brian Duguid]

You have the option of joining the Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle (on Facebook), if not already there, and putting your ideas out to check if anyone else is working on the same thing, and either wants to team up or at least avoid treading on each others' toes.

Plus I think it would not be a bad thing to have different takes on the same topic, to be honest. There's scope for very different conceptions of Glorantha to find a home there.

[Nick Brooke]

Excuses...

[Agentorange]

59 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Excuses...

reasons......

 

[Nick Brooke]

I disagree. You're working in a shared world that's been published and discussed for almost half a century. It would be bizarre if other people hadn't had the same ideas as you. But your expression of those ideas -- your words, your context, the art and maps and stories and names you use to present them -- are original, and those are what we'd be buying.

It'd be really unfortunate for all of us if Martin had decided not to write The Armies & Enemies of Dragon Pass, or Brian The Children of Hykim (to name but two), because "bits of it were thought up by other people, or are ideas shared previously that I liked and wanted to build on." And my own Black Spear is self-consciously a palimpsest, building something new and strange by cobbling together other people's ideas with my own.

That leaves terminal laziness. Which is an excuse, 'cos you're not dead yet.

[Godlearner]

I am totally in agreement with what Nick Brooke said above.  then I was started out, I had the same fears that you are experiencing. I was afraid of stepping on ideas of others as well as being over written by other authors and in some respect of being over ruled by "official" material in some future or by posts here and in FB groups. What I found is totally opposite. The people here and in the Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle (on Facebook) are both incredably supportive in bouncing your idea off as well collaboration. In fact I would highly suggest that you perhaps join with someone on your first publication. I know it has worked for me for seven items.

[Steve]

Do it! Do it!

 

[Rick Meints]

If you are fearful of stepping on other people's ideas to the point that you aren't writing for the Jonstown Compendium may I politely suggest you try writing a scenario instead. It would be difficult to step on other people's toes by doing that. 

[Agentorange]

11 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

If you are fearful of stepping on other people's ideas to the point that you aren't writing for the Jonstown Compendium may I politely suggest you try writing a scenario instead. It would be difficult to step on other people's toes by doing that. 

it's not so much i'm fearful, it's more that like Winnie the Pooh I am a bear of very little brain. I don't have much in the way of original ideas. invariably when I do i look in the Book of Doom or The Children of Hykim ( or whatever ) and find out it's actually not all that original after all.😄

it doesn't really matter. There's some great material in the JC and I'm always happy to treat myself to something....

[Joerg]

Scenarios are like four chord pop songs. You describe a setting, the deeds and plans of an antagonist, and provide place descriptions and data on opponents and possible allies or additional hindrances, and a few suggested paths and sequences of hints for the player characters to follow.

Quite a lot of standard situations haven't been described yet. Despite there being a scenario carrying the name "Cattle Raid", there is no scenario giving you game data and GMing details for your player characters to actually go and bring back some cattle from a rival clan or tribe.

Is that too generic? Ok, let's up the Gloranthan ante: your neighboring clan has the best bullocks for a certain type of sacrifice your clan or warband desperately needs to succeed in, one they are preparing themselves. Can your heroes provide such a bullock, possibly the one your neighbors have groomed for this sacrifice? Can they replace that perfectly colored specimen with one whose color results mainly from shoe-shine? Will they find out that the perfect specimen they acquired is wearing as many cosmetics?

Still too simple? So what about those third clan adventurers who pulled that same stunt just before you did? Led by the (current or prospective) husbands of some of your sisters, or a half-brother born into a different clan?

Want more spice? Prevent a small mob of feral broo from fertilizing the target herd with their offspring, pay off trollkin or durulz bandits on the way...

[Brian Duguid]

"There is nothing new under the sun" - the Bright and Illustrious Emperor Khordavu, the Glory of Dara Happa.

Those high-falutin' Solar guys never thought to look in the Darkness. There's plenty that's waiting to be discovered 😉

[Brian Duguid]

PS: for writing a scenario for the Jonstown Compendium, the Storytelling Collective recently ran a "how-to-write-a-scenario-for-publication" course which was very good and had a load of specific writing-for-RuneQuest content from the estimable Nick Brooke. 

Here's a link to what they did in July 2022*: https://www.storytellingcollective.com/courses/write-your-first-adventure-s2022

I believe they'll run it again at some point near the end of this year. Well worth considering as an entry point for anyone who is nervous about their own abilities.

*Note that despite their attempts to be incredibly inclusive they called that July course their "summer" course. Yeah, screw you, southern hemisphere!

[Nick Brooke]

The Storytelling Collective front page mentions a "Fall Cohort" (gah!) in November 2022. I can't yet say whether there'll be another Chaosium stream (covering CoC & RQ), but I certainly hope so!

Also, credit where due: any RuneQuest-specific course content was just my glosses on Paul Fricker's excellent teaching materials. For "investigations into Lovecraftian cosmic horror" read "heroic Bronze Age mythical adventures" throughout, kinda thing.

[soltakss]

On 9/14/2022 at 10:08 AM, Agentorange said:

it's the fact that everytime I have an idea  - somebody has already got there first 😃

Even if i arrived at it on my own I'd hate to think that somebody felt I'd poached their idea.

Poach away!

I wouldn't complain if someone wrote things about Dorastor, for example. I am sure that others who have written about certain areas wouldn't complain if you wrote about those areas, either.

On 9/14/2022 at 11:22 AM, Brian Duguid said:

You have the option of joining the Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle (on Facebook), if not already there, and putting your ideas out to check if anyone else is working on the same thing, and either wants to team up or at least avoid treading on each others' toes.

They are really helpful.

21 hours ago, Agentorange said:

it's not so much i'm fearful, it's more that like Winnie the Pooh I am a bear of very little brain. I don't have much in the way of original ideas. invariably when I do i look in the Book of Doom or The Children of Hykim ( or whatever ) and find out it's actually not all that original after all.😄

We got our retaliation in first! 

Things don't have to be original.

My Secrets of Dorastor was essentially an expanded writeup of my Dorastor Campaign, and Secrets of HeroQuesting was just getting all my HeroQuesting ideas into one coherent supplement. The Book of Doom was essentially a writeup of all the spells I had made up in my campaigns.

So, if you have written a scenario for a game, or a new monster, or a magic item, write it up for the Jonstown Compendium.

We would all be very grateful.

 

[Nick Brooke]

It's probably worth mentioning that all Jonstown Compendium works are published by Chaosium, so you can incorporate any of the Gloranthan characters, places, themes, ideas, setting info, etc. you find in them into your own Jonstown Compendium books, in exactly the same way you could if you'd found them in a Chaosium, Issaries or Moon Design Gloranthan book or game.

Which is to say: you can't simply cut'n'paste, plagiarise or rewrite chunks of text without permission, but you can certainly use it as raw materials for your own original creative output. And who knows: if you ask nicely, Jonstown Compendium creators might be happy to let you reuse their work in your own community content. (So you want to set a scenario in our version of Glamour? Knock yourself out! We'd love to see what you come up with!)

[Darius West]

On 9/14/2022 at 7:08 PM, Agentorange said:

it's the fact that every time I have an idea  - somebody has already got there first 😃

Even if i arrived at it on my own I'd hate to think that somebody felt I'd poached their idea.

There are literally a billion or more stories you can tell in Glorantha.  If you want some easy ideas that haven't been covered, think about the potential for telling stories with Lunars as heroes/protagonists.  There are a pitiful number of scenarios that are even notably Lunar compatible, and plenty of room in Tarsh to fill in.

[PhilHibbs]

On 9/22/2022 at 4:27 AM, Darius West said:

There are literally a billion or more stories you can tell in Glorantha.

Actually, there are only a billion. Exactly that number. It's been proved. So hurry up and get yours told before we run out.

[Darius West]

On 9/28/2022 at 6:51 AM, PhilHibbs said:

Actually, there are only a billion. Exactly that number. It's been proved. So hurry up and get yours told before we run out.

I say a billion stories, because I figure there's about a billion sentients in Glorantha.  But you're right.  Scarcity is a problem.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

9 billion Glorantha stories, then follows

"overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

[Agentorange]

13 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

9 billion Glorantha stories, then follows

"overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."

Arthur C Dangerduck......

[Brian Duguid]

The Storytelling Collective's "Write Your First Adventure" programme is now inviting people to join their November 2022 cohort*, including lessons for potential Jonstown Compendium authors courtesy of @Nick Brooke. If anyone is in two minds about "attempting a Jonstown Compendium article", this is perhaps as good a time as you'll get! And if, like me, you don't finish within a month, I'm sure you'll still learn something valuable (I did, last time).

https://www.storytellingcollective.com/courses/write-your-first-adventure-gen-nov2022

* They took my suggestion to stop calling them "winter" and "summer", I see!