Submitted by GianniVacca on Sat, 02/06/2012 – 12:55
I am reading my hard-won copy of Ye Booke Of Tentacles from the auction at the Eternal Con… There’s a long transcript of a campaign review by David Hall and Nick Brooke. The way they talk about their clan is very reminiscent of the HQ and Sartar books– yet the text is from 1996! Is the Lismelder campaign the source of present-day Sartarite gaming?
Greydog campaign
Submitted by Greydog on Sun, 05/08/2012 – 03:51.
Hi,
By 1996 the Greydog/Lismelder campaign was well established.
Jon Quaife conceived and ran the first Greydog campaign in early 1990, soon after Tales of the Reaching Moon was published. His plan was to base a future published Sartarpak around this campaign. The original players included myself, Keary Birch and Mark Hone. However, the campaign ended when Jon headed off around South America.
I started my own version of Jon’s campaign in 1991 and elements of this campaign started appearing in Tales from issue #5 onwards – as well as in the freeform Home of the Bold (1992). My original players included Steve Thomas, David Gordon & Mark Hone, though Nick Brooke soon replaced Mark. Later we were also joined by Dan Barker, Rick Meints, David Scott, Colin Phillips, Carl Pates, Kevin Jacklin, Gwen Mott, Charles Corrigan & others.
The campaign was always designed as clan-based and linked to the events in Sartar from 1610 onwards. Player actions always had a clan impact, both good and very bad. Originally, Branduan was an NPC designed to show the PCs how “normal” clansmen acted. Later on Carl and David played him when they made guest appearances.
Possibly Branduan will return when we re-run Home of the Bold in July 2014!
Cheers,
David Hall
Gloranthan Evolution
Submitted by David on Tue, 05/06/2012 – 06:02.
Hi, to understand why it appears that the Greydog Campaign is reminiscent of the Sartar book, it’s worth looking at what was happening behind the scenes of Glorantha at the time. Please note that this is from my recollections and maybe wrong in places, but the gist is right.
Parts of the Greydog campaign are in the Sartar Book. However I played Branduin later in the Greydog campaign and he was nothing like he is in the Sartar book.
Gloranthan RuneQuest 3 ran 1984-1994 and was loosing steam out well before the last supplement. Already Greg was looking at another system to better play Glorantha other than RuneQuest. By 1992 he was working on what was called the Epic System and not coincidentally, King of Sartar. The former containing a lot of material that’s in the later. Epic contained traits, the clan questionnaire and a lot of stuff you would recognise in the Sartar book, except the system.
Those that were exposed to Epic and Greg started running games based on it’s ideas. Spin offs appeared. David Dunham made Pendragon Pass in about 1993 with some of Epic at it’s heart. The Tales Megacorp (David Hall and Nick Brooke being members) and the Seattle Farmers collective (Jeff and David Dunham being members) being two of them. It’s not a coincidence that the two groups know each other well, and that the Tales Megacorp was at the centre of organising Convulsion 1992-2002.
If you can find copies of Enclosure from 1997/98 you’ll see a similar bent. In 1999 David Dunham’s King of Dragon Pass appeared with lots of Epic and KoS themes in it.
Later as Epic revealed itself as not what Greg wanted, Greg sought writers for Glorantha the Game (1998), this eventually falling to Robin Laws and Hero Wars appearing in 2000.
I’m pretty sure Robin Laws was in some way connected to the Seattle group, Jeff?
—–
David Scott
Seattle Farmers Collective?
Submitted by Charles on Mon, 04/06/2012 – 11:31.
There was also a group in Seattle playing a community based game, though I am not sure was this the same time, earlier or later.
Seattle Farmers
Submitted by Jeff on Tue, 07/08/2012 – 01:11.
That was us – the core was David Dunham, Neil Robinson, Pam Carlson, Dana Schack, Dave Pearton, and myself. Occasional players included Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet, and Robin Laws. We played David’s East Ralios and my Taming of Dragon Pass game using Pendragon Pass, and then various other games using HeroWars and later HeroQuest. A great gaming grup!
Editor-in-Chief, Moon Design Publications