Lords of the West: Update 2

I thought I'd post an update to clarify exactly what is happening with the Lords of the West books. As most of you probably already know, the books will no longer be published by Moon Design, but have been taken up by other publishers. One of those publishers has not made a formal announcement yet (that I know of), although it's probably not desperately hard to work out who it is! So, to summarise what has been announced:

The Book of Glorious Joy
This will be published by d101 Games, and will be a bumper volume including most of the material from both LotW1: Heroes of Malkion and LotW3, the book that would have covered Loskalm. We're working to make it self-contained, although many of the cults from LotW1 will lack detailed descriptions or rules sections, since a "book of cults" wasn't considered very desirable. There is no definite release date for the book as yet, although we're hoping to have it out by the end of the year, and work is already underway on art and layout.

One chapter of LotW3 has, in fact, already been published. It is available in Hearts of Glorantha #4, available from d101 Games via lulu.com. This is the chapter covering Junora (which does, unfortunately, to some extent make reference to the as yet unpublished remaining chapters). It is graced by some wonderful artwork by Peter Town, and, of course, is accompanied by articles by many other great authors - it's well a worth a read. The magazine is available both as a hardcopy, and as a (cheaper) PDF file.

Lords of the West: Update 1

Well, things have been a lot more encouraging than I had feared. I am not going to give specific details here, since I would not want to seem to be making promises on behalf of other people. However, I can say that there has been a fair degree of interest from Gloranthan publishers in getting the material out there.

I should also stress that Moon Design have been helpful in this regard. While they no longer have any interest in publishing my work, they have been supportive in attempts to get it published by other means. For example, material that I did not originally write, but was supplied to me by Issaries has been cleared for publication along with those elements that I did write.

So, without going into specifics of proposed publication dates or issue numbers, here is what has already been agreed since the beginning of the week:

• The Junora chapter of LotW3, which is largely self-contained, has been definitively accepted for publication in one of the Glorantha magazines. It will almost certainly be the first release, and could be considered a "teaser" for the rest.
  
• The remainder of LotW3 (the Loskalm book) has also been accepted for publication, barring some specifically HQ1 rules sections. I would say that things are looking good for a time frame that I think most people will be pleased with.
  
• Most of the material in LotW2 (Kingdom of the Flamesword) has been accepted for publication in principle, and I am confident that this will also see the light of day before too long.
• LotW1 (Heroes of Malkion), ironically may be the last part to be released. An agreement has been made to publish around half of this, although another large section remains unclaimed at this time.
• I have received permission from Moon Design to publish, free of charge, at my own website, any outstanding material that is not picked up by any of the licensed magazine publishers.

Obviously, I would have preferred my writings to be published, as originally intended, in book form. And I would have liked them to become, at least in part "official" or "canonical", neither of which will now happen. However, I do think that we have a very positive outcome here, from a situation that looked quite bleak just one week ago. It is, in fact, highly likely that this material will now be published sooner than would otherwise have been the case - since MD would, naturally enough, have been working on the Pavis Book and other high priority projects.

I would like to say thank you to all of those involved in moving this forward, who hopefully know who they are! I will, of course, give more specific details once the publishers concerned have decided to release it. For everyone who has been giving me words of encouragement over the last week, I would also like to say a big thank you, and I hope you are all pleased with the final result when it appears.

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Further Mini-Update:

I can now reveal, to those who haven't noticed, that the Junora article will be appearing in Hearts in Glorantha #4. Note the expected release date of "March/April 2010"!

Lords of the West cancelled

Or at least, the version(s) of it I produced have been; Moon Design may well decide to produce their own version with a different writer at some point in the future. Obviously, having worked for seven and a half years on this, this is pretty disappointing for me. In the end, Moon Design's vision of what they wanted shifted too far from the original agreement (which was not, of course, made by them) for continuing on the project to be worthwhile, and they chose to pull the plug.

Indeed, in general, I have a feeling that since the production of HeroQuest 2, the whole Gloranthan project has shifted from something I enjoy to something that's less so. This is not, of course, to blame any of those directly involved in that change. Change does happen, and whenever it does, people get left out in the cold. It happened before with RQ3 with respect to RQ2 fans, and again with HW with respect to RQ2/3 fans. It's inevitable to some extent, and more so when there is a major change in gaming philosophy involved.

It's hard at times like this, when one is on the losing end, not to feel abandoned or rejected by the Gloranthan 'tribe' that they keep talking about. But that's probably largely unfair. I certainly intend to go to Continuum this year, and hopefully have a good time, overcoming the doubtless unavoidable tinge of disappointment and regret. Heck, after seven and a half years of repeating cycles of hard work and frustration, I was hardly on my most diplomatic behaviour by the end. So, if anyone reading this feels that I have offended them over the course of the last year or so, I offer my sincere apologies.

So, enough moping; where do we go from here? Well, the good news is that I am currently negotiating for publication of at least some of the material through other channels. In fact, some of it may even appear earlier than might otherwise have been the case. I can't give further details yet, as nothing has been definitely agreed beyond an expression of interest from one respected source in the Gloranthan community. Stay tuned for updates as they become available.

Women in the Gloranthan West

One of the biggest problems I faced while writing Kingdom of the Flamesword is that we know, from previously published material that the Rokari are a pretty patriarchal lot. The default assumption in role-playing games these days is that your character's gender really doesn't matter. What matters is that you're a paladin, or a wizard, or whatever it may be, and nobody will react in the slightest if you happen to be a female paladin or wizard.

Many cultures in Glorantha follow this principle - it's particularly true of the Heortlings, for example, who perhaps are the best described of all the cultures of the world in the existing publications. But it's not true of the Rokari. Now, granted, the Rokari rationale for this is that women 'are more perfect' than men, so they shouldn't be risked in combat... but that doesn't help much in an RPG, even if we accept it at face value.

There is a section in the book about role playing women in Seshnela, and outlining some of the options open to them - there's even a way for them to lay about themselves with swords, contrary to Rokari norms. One of the tools I used to get across Rokari culture is to have three people talking about what's important to them (if you've read by "Voices of Loskalm" piece in one of the Continuum fund-raisers, you'll know the sort of thing); one of the three is a woman, who at least gets to be quite snide about the men in her life. And, if you're happy to play a power-behind-the-throne sort of character, there should be no problem.

But, let's be honest, women in Seshnela don't get the same sort of equality that they do in Heortling lands. Of the NPCs described in the book, the great majority are male. The only exceptions are two members of the royal family, two healers, and one that's a little harder to describe. Now, all of these characters have potential scenarios around them, and two of them are powerful magicians. But, at the end of the day, Seshnela is a male-dominated land, and that's going to come across in the book.

Given the setting, there isn't a lot I can do about that, although I've tried to alleviate it here and there. I've set things up so that you can play a female character doing anything that a man could do - but not so that they can do so without people remarking on it, or devout Rokari looking askance at her if she oversteps the bounds of "propriety". If that worries you, you might want to use the book as a source of enemies to fight... or you might want to wait for the later books in the Lords of the West series.

Loskalm, for instance, is sexually egalitarian. They have female wizards, female knights, female wizard-knights, women at the highest echelons of government, and so on. In Loskalm, women can be whatever they want to be - which is all part of its utopian nature, of course. Further down the road, my view of Jonatela is that women are more or less in the same situation as men. Which is to say, female peasants are just as thoroughly stuffed as their menfolk, while Nemuzhik women get to be just as obnoxious as their brothers. Which makes sense, given that the Jonatings were Orlanthi not so long ago.

Personally, I like this variety. Glorantha is a big world, and it doesn't all follow exactly the same tropes. If you want to explore the pitfalls of patriarchy, the opportunity is there and, more importantly, so is the opportunity to go somewhere else and not worry about it. There are even parts of the world where being male is a disadvantage, after all...

Brides of Rokar

Hmm... well, I wasn't intending this to become a daily thing, and I don't suppose it will stay that way for long, but here we are again. I'm going to post some thoughts on Loskalm soon (honest), but it struck me today that there's something in what I've already done that's kind of relevant, as it shows my approach to things. I'm referring to Seshnela, and the perennial question of "where do baby wizards come from?"

To re-iterate the problem, the existing published material on Seshnela, and its dominant religion, Rokarism, makes two statements (though not, it has be said, next to each other):

• People always belong to the same caste as their father
• The wizard caste is celibate

The question, obviously enough, is how to reconcile these two statements. A few years back, somebody (and I'm sorry, but I forget who) posted on one of the discussion lists, proposing a solution that ended up being called the 'Brides of Rokar' theory. It seems to have become sufficiently embedded in the thoughts of the fan community as to be what is sometimes called 'GAG', or Generally Accepted Glorantha. I hear it all the time, whenever I discuss Rokarism with other fans. It runs like this:

There are places in Seshnela where women are brought up in more or less closed communities - nunneries, essentially. And, while the great majority of wizards are, indeed, celibate, a small number have the duty of having sex with as many of these women as possible, keeping them pregnant to keep the supply of new baby wizards flowing.

Now, I don't much like this theory, and have used a different one in Heroes of Malkion, with further elaboration and explanation in Kingdom of the Flamesword. I'll not go into it here, since I wouldn't want to give away everything in the book, but what might be useful is an explanation of why I ditched what it seems a large number of people take to be the truth.

Firstly, of course, it's not a retcon, since the 'Brides of Rokar' theory has never been officially published as canon. But that's not reason enough in itself to stamp on GAG, especially if a number of people like the existing explanation - as it seems they do.

But, well... it just doesn't sit right with me. Firstly, what are these places actually going to be like? Quite frankly, they strike me as being rape camps. The women don't get any choice in what they do, because the implication is that they are the daughters of the previous generation of Brides, raised from birth in the closed community, for the sole (or, at least, primary) purpose of making babies. Now, I could see the Fonritians doing that - it's not so different from a harem - and maybe some other cultures, too, but the Rokari?

See, the Rokari place a really big value on celibacy. The wizards, in particular, are not supposed to be corrupted by thoughts of lust. Yet some of them, apparently, get to have sex with dozens of women on a fairly regular basis. Sure, they're probably not supposed to enjoy themselves doing it, but let's be realistic! At the end of the day, what the theory is saying is that, ultimately, the Rokari system is based on hypocrisy. They preach celibacy, while relying for their own survival on its opposite.

Now, you might say, "well, what's wrong with that?" But I wonder if people would propose the same thing for the Heortlings - that Heortling society, for instance, depends upon some of the Storm Voices actively worshipping chaos, or practising secret murder? Not that this happens from time to time (as it surely does), but that Heortling society will literally fall apart if a small minority of the priests don't regularly murder their opponents or bow down to Ragnaglar. I doubt many people would propose such a thing, yet they're happy to have Rokari society based on something directly opposed to what they espouse. (The Rokari, incidentally, have nothing against murdering their opponents; it's a strange sense of priorities they have...)

I think it's a 'familiarity breeds contempt' thing: we find it easier to believe that monotheistic religions are somehow fraudulent or hypocritical than polytheistic ones. But I don't think that this fits. For one thing, the Rokari are rather more scary if they actually believe what they're doing is right (and a lot of it isn't very nice, let's be honest). For another, they're a mainstream - perhaps the mainstream - Malkioni religion. One of the big ones, a major culture, on a par with the Heortlings or the Dara Happans. Of course they practice some hypocritical beliefs, since they're only human, but their whole system shouldn't rely on one. If there are cultures that that's true of, they're probably marginal - Ramalians, Borists, and so on, spring to mind. But for a major culture like this, I think their beliefs should be consistent. If it's important that your wizards be celibate, then, dammit, they should be celibate. Some of them will fall from the path, but, on the whole, they follow their own religion.

Why should they be different, just because they're monotheist?

So, yes, when writing Kingdom of the Flamesword, I have tried to look at things from their perspective, and to make sure that what they do is justifiable in their own eyes. The Rokari religion is not particularly pleasant to 21st century eyes, but it should at least be consistent, and not rely on something that denies its own truth.