Author: Erik Sieurin, aka Nightowl (---.swipnet.se)
Date: 03-28-2000 16:49
You stated:
"One has to ask why Chaosium feels it necessary, in its new push to re-invent Glorantha, to invent a sliding scale of payment to ensure up to the minute details and notes on the re-vamped game? Under a new scheme called the "GTA", a mere $1500.00 US dollars will you can automatically be made a "hero" and have all access to the new whisperings and gossips and have your name printed in all the supplements that come out. If in doubt, check the link (http://www.glorantha.com/inc/gta.html) And they make no bones about it either, yup, it's an excuse to make money and they say so. Congratulations guys, nail in the coffin no. 1. "
You have not heard the whole story. Not sure you'll like it more if you hear the whole story, but...
I was one of the people who coughed up the original money to start Issaries, Inc - which aint Chaosium, but an "allied" company. So muche legal fiction perhaps, but anyway - "Chaosium" is nowadays licensing the right to publish their stuff right and left, and those who take the licenses are enthusiasts with money. According to the chaps at big C (who are, of course, speaking for themselves, so why trust them - but I do) this was the only way they could afford to publish anything - to get investors.
Originally, this was what they planned for Issaries, Inc. - that they would sell stock in the company to us drooling fanboys. Usually when you buy stock, it's to make some more money out of your money - here it was pretty obvious that you would buy it because you wanted to see more things Gloranthan. You _would_ get some kind of "favored customer status" in return, but it was not really a return for you money - it was a sort of thank-you-gift.
However, the Law made it impossible. Thus, from pseudo-stock, Issaries Inc. was founded with the help of - charity.
I cannot honestly speak for all GTA members, but frankly, I did not shell out $100 at a time with lousy exhange rates for the Swedish krona and when I did not have a regular income because I wanted silly freebies; I did it because I was sucker enough to think that it would enable a subcreator I admired to produce more material about a world I love. I haven't even used the privileges, except that as one of the original members I got a nice t-shirt. It is of fairly good quality, and some of my pupils have asked strange questions about it.
Even more so for the Heroes who gave up their hard-earned bucks to support it; they aint drooling fanboys who absolutely want the quickest peak at the thing, they see it as charity - or sort-of-creative stock buying. At least the ones I know.
"Chaosium" - for which read "Greg Stafford" - didn't do this to earn more bucks, so they could bathe in champagne. They did it to be able to publish the stuff at all. When mr Stafford wants his champagne bath, he'll probably do it with money from Call of Cthulhu, which pays both its own bills and, until this sub-licensing started, those of their other game lines.
I saw this as a good thing, sort of - things published that would not have seen the light of day, a sort of electronic post-modern variant of people funding their friends' poetry collections being published by small companies. It may be silly, but I frankly don't believe that poetry would have been published, or read, otherwise. Which _might_ be a pity (or maybe not).
Thus, while you _still_ may dislike it - if they wanted to say "thank you" to us, they could perhaps, say, have sent us a life-size replica of a genuine Duck, or one of Greg's hankies, or something equally silly but disoffensive - it is not the way you wrote it. It is known as "misrepresentation" in my book.
Thankyou,
Nightowl, drooling mindless Glorantha fanboy
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