For my tuppence worth, when I played in a HW playtest at Convulsion (which Robin Laws ran), what I can remember of the talk between the players (Martin Hawley, Simon Bray, Andrew Barton, Jean Luc and the guy from Germany whose name I can't remember [sorry] during the combats was pretty much in game mechanics terms. I.e. if you try and whittle his AP's down, I've got plenty spare so I'll make a fairly bid to really splat him and even if he wins Simon's beserk Ernalda cultist will still be able to handle him kind of thing. But when it came down to the dice rolling (taking out Robin's explanations of the results table, obviously) people tried to describe what their characters wanted to do. But it was pretty much along the lines of zap him with a spell, twat the guy while he's busy fighting the law speaker etc. In the same way during the demos I did at Gencon along with Martin & Simon the talk was still very games mechanics oriented because it's all down to a 'bidding' system sort of thing. Personally I didn't really get a 'feel' of the combat from it because it was just the same as rolling against any other skill - (in fact I remember using my look tall skill in combat) - and yet I also remember tense times in RQ where I've felt my god, I've got to get at least a slash to a non leg location to put this scorpion man down or I'm dead meat if/when that stinger hits me.
Reading through the above it's probably not too clear what I'm saying, but the point that I'm trying to make is that it is possible to have a dull, 'rulesy' combat situation in HW (or any other 'speaking' game), and a really dramatic and exciting time when you pull out that 01 and critical the Broo Priest to the head. It seems to me that the more you can get involved in the situation the better mental picture you conjure up which is just as much, if not more, down to the quality of the GM & adventure than whatever set of rules you happen to be using.
I can visualise a character desparately parrying while trying to get a disrupt etc past a foe's POW or casting Fireblade or whatever using the RQ rules better than an opposed 'bidding' role of Good with Sword against defeat with spell situation where you gain AP's from your opponent.
All this probably means that I'll end up going back to playing RQ2 (with a few tweaks for the more obvious faults) using the new HW books for background/source material after playing HW for a few times to see whether I can get that same kick out of HW after all.
All that said, however I may feel this way because when I first started playing in Glorantha the magic was in the world rather than the game system and now, all these years later, as I've got to know more & more about that game world, the magic's diminished and diminished and I'm looking back through rose tinted glasses(*).
Danny
One other thing, it being St George's day, how come we can't slag off the Scots, Irish, Americans, French (and everyone else we've lost wars to) like they can on their patron saint days? Mind you, having read Gibbon, St George was a right tosser.
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