21 May 2013

Moon Design Seminar

The traditional Moon Design seminar was held on Friday night. Here are my notes.

Guide To Glorantha
This was obviously the 'hot' topic, and first of all the availability of the product. The current ETA is "this year" (i.e., December) — the main reason is that a lot of supplementary art has been commissioned, and the art director has quite an obsession with detail :)

Honestly, we were treated to amazing art (incl. art commissioned by Kickstarter funders), and incredible maps, maps, maps: maps of the mythological ages, of the Sky, of the other worlds, geographical maps of Third Age Glorantha in unbelievable detail, magical maps, ethnic maps, trade maps, political maps... A map of the underwater roads of the Mirrorsea Bay (!!!). A map of the Closing... We can expect 100 pages of maps!
Oh, and did I mention the amazing art? Osprey-like colour plates, portraits of the various Mostali sub-races, Kralorelan art...

The most awesome picture from the seminar was actually one that formed in my head, evoked by Jeff's words: Dinosaur-riding cavemen attacking Dwarves armed with muskets in Slon.
Edit: this picture is now visible on the Gloranthan Google+ community page.

Upcoming products
The Guide To Glorantha was on everyone's minds, but obviously we also wanted to know about other products. So here's the latest from your favourite sleuth:
- There will be Gloranthan RuneQuest 6 products by the Design Mechanism [see the upcoming blog entry]
- Other Moon Design products are on hold until the GtG is out (because authors need it to write canonical stuff)
Status on the upcoming books:
- First one out possibly Gods of Glorantha, to complement GtG
- a Gloranthan bestiary by Pete Nash
- the Coming Storm (a massive Sartarite campaign) by Ian Cooper
The manuscripts of the two previous books are almost finished. The issue, again, is art.
- Big Rubble companion (at the moment, this is only a project)
- King of Sartar re-write by Greg Stafford, good progress

At the end we had a Q&A session; here are mine:
- last year during the con, Moon Design mentioned one or even two Gloranthan boardgames — Jeff & Rick now mention three boardgames in the works.
- Teleos: pirates in the Second Age, peaceful people in the Third Age. What happened? The Closing & the Opening. Same for Loral. This will apparently be mentioned in the historical parts of the Guide.

12 comments:

  1. King of Sartar re-write by Greg Stafford

    How is it possible? Was it not a masterpiece? ;)

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  2. @Rappar : everything that Stafford wrote WILL be rewritten.
    That's a basic law of nature, colloquially known as gregging.
    (and yes, it sucks)

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  3. I think the idea is for King of Sartar to be more consistent with the latest developments in Glorantha, as exemplified by the GtG. BTW 'Gregging' is over, since Moon Design have bought the rights to Glorantha from Greg Stafford. Greg is now a mere author :)

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  4. Anonymous23/5/13 06:58

    Is this official that Moon Design has bought the the rights to Glorantha?

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  5. @Anonymous
    It was clearly stated during the Moon Design panel. Apparently Greg Stafford wants to 'retire'. I have no official announcement, though, and alas the panel wasn't recorded.

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  6. I thought "Gregging" meant... I don't know... "consider Stafford's ugliest draft as the Holly Bible, and doing exegesis on this". 8)

    Once in Barrachach I heard Stafford read one short story he had written. He should focus on writing literature, instead of re-writing KOS, to make it to "canon".

    Rule one of the Glorantha universe is "Your Glorantha May Vary", so nothing should be considered "canon", as the novel King of Sartar shows itself, when he tells the same events from opposite points of view ;)

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  7. Any news about Harrek Saga ?

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  8. The Harreksaga was being written by Loz. Now that he has his own company and his own books to write, he's stopped writing the Harreksaga. Jeff is supposed to take it over from Loz once the GtG is out.

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  9. Anonymous24/5/13 18:33

    As you're the sleuth with the insider angle, can you tell us anything about Wrym's Footnotes issues 16 and onwards? Cheers

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  10. I don't think we'll see Wyrm's Footnotes issue No.16 any time before 2014. I also think it'll feature RuneQuest or game engine-agnostic articles rather than HeroQuest articles, based on what I have understood everyone's schedule to be.

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  11. Anonymous24/5/13 19:25

    Hi Inside Scoop,
    You mentioned:
    The current ETA is "this year" (i.e., December)
    Does this mean the vibe was that the GtG could be out as late as December, rather than August as the last update has it?
    Thanks

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  12. The vibe definitely was that the GtG would be out late this year, 'late' meaning December. As explained in my report, this is because of all the extra art and maps that are going into it.

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