I think a certain amount of "wasteage" was inevitable regardless of the system chosen. Despite the huge success of d&d3E, there are still people playing 1st & 2nd Edition AD&D, for example.
Not every fan of RuneQuest was also a fan of Glorantha. On the other hand, a number of People had been trying to find rules other than RQ for Gloranthan games.
There is also the possibility, (and anecdotal evidence suggests this has happened) that people who were not keen on (or aware of) RQ have been introduced to Glorantha through Hero Wars, so losing 25% of the RQ Player base is not the same thing as reducing the potential market by 25%.
> There is no reason HW/HQ cannot have a mechanical system that is
> consistent, and able to mesh with the more narrative style... well
> at least I dont think there is. Any mechanical system can ALWAYS be
> overridden by a dramatic/narrative event, simply by saying it is.
> You dont have to be a slave to your mechanics/dice, but it is nice
> to have a consistent foundation there.
The problem is that if you have a mechanical system and don't use it then it feels like "cheating" in a way that a more freestyle improvisational system doesn't.
>
> A fair number of people on this list seem to be narrative players,
> where-as I am not, nor are my players, we are simply plods who dont
> want to think too much, eat pizza and swill alcohol. That means we
> need a system that has a reasonable amount of consistancy in
> the "basic" mechanics, which HW doesnt... but intentionally so. The
> reply I get from some people is "the system isnt for you, move on,
> we are narrative players here"... well that is the impression I get
> sometimes... maybe there should be a HW_Mechanics list?
>
It may be down to the type of question - A soccer analogy (someone will have to translate for the Americans...) If you start to ask about picking up the ball and running with it then you are probably in the wrong place to start with - Your house rules may work very well for your game, but if they are too far outside of the HW framework then you are going to start to lose people for whom that framework does actually work.
> When I ask a mechanics question I dont really want to hear "just
> make up something", or four different ways of doing it.
"Just make something up" isn't very helpful... 4 different ways of doing something is much more useful - pick the one that suits you best, or try them all. As Roderick says somewhere, there is no one right answer - which, conveniently means there aren't many wrong ones either!
>Normally I rely on my players to
>understand the game system and resolve a lot of the work for me,
>they know what to roll, when and how and what the results will be...
>at this early stage my players are struggling, which means I am
>under a lot of extra work.
>
Admittedly, the learning curve is slightly steeper than normal,
especially if you are expecting something more in the style of RQ.
Hopefully the effort will pay off for you/your group. If it doesn't,
then the next hope is that the information provided in the HW/HQ
supplements is sufficient to enable you to adapt to a mechanical
system that does suit your prefered style of play (be it RQ/Pendragon
Pass/Rolemaster/D6/D20 etc)
>
>As a final note (my own opinion): if you want HW/HQ to continue and
>prosper you have to make it economically viable in the market place.
I don't think anyone can argue with this! Of course whether one does this best by concentrating on the games strengths or by dilutng them to make it look/work like every other game out there is more open to question (providing you accept that it's not our decision to make anyway!)
>
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