Anyone who has been in this hobby more than a year can probably name a
half-dozen really, really crummy games that are out there and amazingly
have some popularity because:
1) the release was simultaneous with at least 5+ "major supplements"
2) the artwork on the covers was stunning (it's shallow, but a major reason
games sell!)
3) the games themselves were full of extensive color and b&w artwork (in
many cases to the exclusion of useful rules, for Eurmal's sake!)
4) there was a simultaneous or rapid release of fiction works based in that
game - usually aimed at a early-teen reader.
The days when gamers would eagerly wait months for the next-monocolor-module-in-the-D-series are truly over. The market is past that, and consumers won't wait for a game that comes out in driblets.
Face it, if any of you are like me, we're condemned by our own natures to buying hero wars when it comes out. That's why we're on this list - we're willing to wade through pages and pages of (ahem) navel-contemplation in hopes of another nugget of gloranthan esoterica.
I truly HOPE HW is a great game. I'm not a fan of rules-lite systems, but I truly hope this is a good system, and it pulls in new players. I'm sometimes weary of being the only Gloranthaphile I've met face to face in the last 10 years.
One encouraging point - my local game store hasn't carried RQ stuff for
years, and HE's aware of the AH/Hasbro/Chaosium politics, and will be
getting in copies of HW right away. In a pure cynical sense, it's not a
bad idea that RQ4 dies - less likely to see a vote splitting effect of 2
games "feeding off the same trough" so to speak.
(Although I still want to SEE the rules, if they never see print, as much
as I'd like to see the original RQIV draft, Soldiers of the Red Moon, and
other non-published works...!)
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