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Thursday, 11 June 2026

And talking of waste...


It's been a very long time since I played in the world of Glorantha but, like Tekumel, it's another of roleplaying's famously detailed subcreations, and the way you present that so as to hook players is not by giving them the anthropology textbook or even the tourist's guide, but by immersing them in what it's like to live in that world.

The mistake there lies in telling, not showing. Bad writing is the cause of the rot in the case of much bigger IPs than Glorantha. Star Trek, Star Wars, and Marvel, for instance. Wokeness often gets blamed, but that's not the problem. Star Trek always espoused a liberal humanist ideology. The difference was that the writers used to know that if you want to embed ideas in a story, you have to explore those ideas through drama, not lecture the audience while trying to distract them with characters who talk like they're in a high school comedy. Author David R. Low explains all about that here.

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