Jonstown Compendium sub-forum?

[PhilHibbs]

I would like a JC sub-forum of the RuneQuest page! I think it would be good to group up and encourage discussion of JC publications.

[David Scott]

@Nick Brooke

[Nick Brooke]

I worry we would feel, and perhaps also be, sidelined. The best forum for JC creators is currently the Jonstown Compendium Creators’ Circle on Facebook. The advantage of posting here on the main RQ/Glorantha forums is that our community content titles and any related discussions are visible to casual browsers. I’d hate to lose that.

[PhilHibbs]

Ok

[Nick Brooke]

Please feel free to discuss (and encourage discussion of) Jonstown Compendium  community content titles in the existing RuneQuest and Glorantha forums. (And of Miskatonic Repository titles, in the Call of Cthulhu forum)

Some creators put up their own posts for new releases; if there isn’t a relevant top-level post (or you want to kick off a meta-discussion about themes, products, prices, formats, trends in general), you can always create your own. 

Be sensible about masking spoilers (the 👁 tool is useful here). If you’re going to post a review, why not also copy it to the product page on DriveThruRPG?

Pro tips: if you’ve spotted a small typo or error in a product, send a private message to the creator, rather than crapping on their launch post with what might look like a petty fault-finding quibble. You will be more popular, and it’s probably easily fixed.

If you think someone’s getting Glorantha “wrong” and want to tell everyone about it, that’s frankly your problem, because Your Glorantha Will Vary is the founding ethos of the community content programme.

And if you think you've spotted dozens of blatantly obvious formatting glitches which nobody else seems to have noticed, take time to make sure your PDF reader works!

[g33k]

21 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

I worry we would feel, and perhaps also be, sidelined. The best forum for JC creators is currently the Jonstown Compendium Creators’ Circle on Facebook ...

I wish there was something besides FB serving that purpose!

(a) some people just don't DO the FB thing; they are excluded
(b) sometimes, FB algorithms are decidedly wierd&wonky about what they present (and don't present)
(c) FB frankly sucks when it comes to building "group" / "institutional" knowledge.

Obviously, I don't expect any change based on my own opinion...  Just wanting to say it out loud.

 

21 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

... The advantage of posting here on the main RQ/Glorantha forums is that our community content titles and any related discussions are visible to casual browsers ...

Agreed; but it's IMHO worth considering adding a JC subforum (likely to Glorantha, as JC is multi-system), with explicit notes that JC-related content is still welcome in the main RQ & Glorantha forums, just like it was before.  Having a  don't-need-to-subscribe-to-read-or-search  channel also increases the JC visibility, which I suspect would be a Good Thing.

On the upside, it'd also allow participation from group (a) above:  the non-FB'ing crowd.

On the downside, it splits the information-channel (I'm noticing it's kind of a PITA for the fandom to have Chaosium dropping tidbits far&wee, and trying to keep track of what they've said -- REALLY liking Chaosium's recent engagement in the "Upcoming Glorantha publications" thread!!!).

[Nick Brooke]

Like it says in my sig: email me with any community content queries. If you’re in group (a), that’ll be the best way to get them answered quickly and accurately.

If you start a thread on the RuneQuest or Glorantha forum (I don’t mind which) to talk about community content related stuff, I’ll certainly pay attention, and will probably participate.

I’m always happy to facilitate communications between creators, Chaosium folk and DriveThruRPG, but sometimes thrashing out an authoritative answer takes time, and if they’re pure hypotheticals or major stretches it’s unlikely that anyone will have much bandwidth for them (see the JC FAQ for examples).

(NB: one FAQ not covered there goes something like this: “Q: I’m considering writing a scenario/campaign/magisterial tome set in PLACE, so please share all of Chaosium’s published and unpublished information about PLACE with me?” The answer, hopefully unsurprisingly, is “No.” As I keep saying, Your Glorantha Will Vary, and that’s fine)

[g33k]

26 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

...

(NB: one FAQ not covered there goes something like this: “Q: I’m considering writing a scenario/campaign/magisterial tome set in PLACE, so please share all of Chaosium’s published and unpublished information about PLACE with me?” The answer, hopefully unsurprisingly, is “No.” As I keep saying, Your Glorantha Will Vary, and that’s fine)

I wonder how much work it'd be for Chaosium to create a "master Index to Glorantha" -- all Proper Names (places, entities) across all editions, consisting of just the occurrences in "the canon" of said Names, and entries like "RQG pp. 36,59,177,256; HQG pp 17,21,101; GtG.v1 pp111-112,116; RQ2 pp 88,92,111; KOS.6e pp 19,85-86,99" etc

"Gimme all you got" is obviously an unreasonable request.  "Look it up yourself" is a reasonable -- and even helpful -- response, but can be onerous for anyone who isn't already deeply immersed in the lore *and* possessing a keen memory for which details occur in which volumes...

But I can imagine that creating such a "master index" might, itself, be an unreasonable chore.  Maybe as a paid product?

Edited September 27, 2022 by g33k

[Joerg]

8 minutes ago, g33k said:

I wonder how much work it'd be for Chaosium to create a "master Index to Glorantha" -- all Proper Names (places, entities) across all editions, consisting of just the occurrences in "the canon" of said Names, and entries like "RQG pp. 36,59,177,256; HQG pp 17,21,101; GtG.v1 pp111-112,116; RQ2 pp 88,92,111; KOS.6e pp 19,85-86,99" etc

Given past experience with such a project, several thousand man-hours if done manually. The 2005 version had about 20k keywords.

A data-mining application might be the manageable alternative.

 

Canonicity can be assigned to the source rather than the entry, at least for starters. My old index did, at the request of Greg.

 

8 minutes ago, g33k said:

"Gimme all you got" is obviously an unreasonable request.  "Look it up yourself" is a reasonable -- and even helpful -- response, but can be onerous for anyone who isn't already deeply immersed in the lore *and* possessing a keen memory for which details occur in which volumes...

Searchable pdfs have made this a lot less onerous, but require you to use the correctly spelled search entry, or a rather complicated search string.

 

8 minutes ago, g33k said:

But I can imagine that creating such a "master index" might, itself, be an unreasonable chore.  Maybe as a paid product?

As a pdf? Unwieldy. As an app with a database? Then add a good entry description or possibly link directly to the pdf positions (with the option of adding the pdfs you bought to the database somehow, and assuming that all those pdfs are available for sale, at least as add-ons to the search tool), and you will have a useful product. Outside the scope of the Jonstown Compendium, and not pretty enough for the current presentation of Glorantha, though.

[g33k]

40 minutes ago, Joerg said:

 ...Searchable pdfs have made this a lot less onerous, but require you to use the correctly spelled search entry, or a rather complicated search string.

...

For the (very many) who do not have complete libraries, it's also worth being able to figure out what exists in PDF's they don't own (and thjus cannot search).

"Oh, 26 distinct references in GRoY??!?  I guess my project needs me to buy that one, next!"

Edited September 27, 2022 by g33k

[g33k]

41 minutes ago, Joerg said:

... As an app with a database? Then add a good entry description or possibly link directly to the pdf positions (with the option of adding the pdfs you bought to the database somehow, and assuming that all those pdfs are available for sale, at least as add-ons to the search tool), and you will have a useful product. Outside the scope of the Jonstown Compendium, and not pretty enough for the current presentation of Glorantha, though.

Ooooh, yes.

A web-interface to a db-driven searchable Master Index of Chaosium's own product catalogue.  Maybe a config-file listing titles/file-locations for the stuff you own, but links to the Chaosium sales-page for titles you don't own.

[Nick Brooke]

I'll leave you to it.

[David Scott]

You can of course use the well of Daliath for some of that. Most products that have an index, have their index on the site and is searchable (even the guide).

[g33k]

5 hours ago, David Scott said:

You can of course use the well of Daliath for some of that. Most products that have an index, have their index on the site and is searchable (even the guide).

Oooooh, I did not know that!
TYVM!

[soltakss]

On 9/26/2022 at 8:48 PM, Nick Brooke said:

I worry we would feel, and perhaps also be, sidelined. The best forum for JC creators is currently the Jonstown Compendium Creators’ Circle on Facebook. The advantage of posting here on the main RQ/Glorantha forums is that our community content titles and any related discussions are visible to casual browsers. I’d hate to lose that.

Some people here do not have Facebook accounts, for various reasons, so they would find a subforum useful.

[Nick Brooke]

MOB and I warmly encourage those people to make community content related posts on the main BRP Central forums, and to post in the existing community content related threads on the main BRP Central forums. If anyone wants to copy interesting files across from the JC or MR CC Facebook groups to this site (in a thread or as file downloads), that’s absolutely fine by us. But we aren’t going to attempt to mirror everything on those groups here: that’s a crazy idea!