Usually I'm an observer in these discussions on the list, but as someone who has been running games at various UK cons, (Gen ConUK, Stabcon in Manchester, Eurolog's Battlemasters), which fall outside the usual Gloratha fan based cons, here's a couple of observations and feedback from players outside the Glorathan community (i.e.GTA members, people who attend Tentacles/Convulsions/Glorantha con, people who post/view the lists). An apology if this is going over old ground but I do think it needs reinstating in light of recent discussions.
When I first started running RQ games at cons in 96 I had allot players who played for nostalgia reasons, or where newcomers looking to try out RQ from the strength of its popularity. The hardcore gloranthaphiles who still played RQ, in some mutated form or another, were a tiny minority.
In 2000 I started to run games in HW, and numbers and mix kept up due to excitement/interest in the new system. Everybody I talked to or played with was off the opinion that RQ had limitations as a rule system and as a vehicle for playing in Glorantha. Herowars was a huge disappointment for these people looking to get back into Glorantha after RQ being out of print for so long. Allot of these people's interest in Glorantha died off after the last of the first batch of Avalon hill supplements, i.e. Troll Gods/Elder Secrets, and never picked up with RQ Renaissance of the early 90s. They remember RQ as a fun game to play which was enhanced by a brilliant background, which "stomped anything TSR released for D&D into the ground" (a quote from a player at Battlemasters 1999, in an excited discussion about the upcoming HW). Another useful viewpoint that these people generally agree with is from "one of Runequest's strengths is that it gets over its world background in the way of playable rules and adventures" (this is from White Dwarf in the early nineties if I remember rightly). From conversations at cons, usually after the game has finished, none of the HW releases has ever lived upto these people's expectations, including Orlanth is Dead. The general consensus is that they bought the books and either put them aside to gather dust, or used them with some RQ/HW hybrid rules. This is because they found the rules poorly explained and hard to work out, and the background too dense. In words of one player HW was an "unplayable mess, why couldn't they have published something like the old RQ2 Pavis and The Big Rubble supplements" Now that HW has been out for some years the only players I get are hardcore Gloranthaphiles, the more casual players that used to play because they loved RQ/Glorantha have been "trying out this new D20 thingee". This fall off in players has been dramatic. Whereas I used to get enough players to run 4 games over a weekend, these days I'm struggling to get one game filled.
On a posisitive note expectation is high for HeroQuest, perhaps even more than it was for HW. Word has got round about the upcoming HQ surprisingly quickly, and they expect the mistakes that made HW difficult to pick up to have been resolved. Already I've had people enquiring when I'll be running HQ games, and even if I've had a bad day at the office and tell them "oh you do know its only a 2nd edition of Herowars which you said was crap" they are still jumping up and down with boundless excitement going "oh no man its HeroQuest, I'm really looking forward to playing in Glorantha again!" The announcements made previously by Greg, and the recent post by Mark Galeotti, about the direction HQ is going to take really do address these expectations head on, and if followed up will see a marked increase in newcomers/returnees to Glorantha.
The question perhaps that people already in the Gloranthan Community need to ask themselves in and then put into action, rather than argue the toss about what format new material should take, in response to all this overwhelming anticipation is "how can I take all these years of Glorathan knowledge and produce something that will be accessible and get new players into the game?".
Regards
;O) Newt
http://www.eurolog.org/games_section.php?section=herowars for more details of Herowars_at_Eurolog
&
http://www.genconuk.com/events/events.asp?Type=32 For details of some of the 12 Herowars adventures we shall be running over the 4 days of GenConUk this Easter (more info to follow :) )
Powered by hypermail