Convention demo results

     Hi, folks -
     
     I just ran a demo of Hero Wars at Dundracon over the weekend, and I 
     thought you might want a quick summary of the reaction of the players. 
      I'm sending this to both the glorantha and HW mailing lists, so 
     apologies if you receive it twice.
     
     First, the good points.  As previously noted, the roleplaying was much 
     better than in RQ, particularly as a result of the inclusion of such 
     elements as 'relationship with village' and whatnot.  In addition, the 
     magic is much better than in RQ, in the eyes of the players; 
     particular points would be the fluid nature of Theistic magic, and the 
     fleshing out of rituals.
     
     However, there were some issues.  The major issue is the accessability 
     to new players.  The experienced players generally like the character 
     creation rules; newer players tended to get a bit lost.  This problem 
     carries through into the contest rules, where the experienced 
     Gloranthophiles had a good sense of how their character's abilities 
     could be used, whereas the neophytes tended to find it all a bit 
     murky.
     
     From my viewpoint, if HW and Glorantha are to become more popular, a 
     lot needs to be done to ease this introduction.  I spoke with some 
     people at the convention who said that the intro box will have some 
     premade characters and premade groups that the players can use.  This 
     sort of thing is a good introduction; however, I definitely think that 
     the Issaries publishing schedule should include a good, introductory 
     adventure, that would allow the players to really kick things off 
     after having just bought Deluxe Herowars.  New players can't be 
     expected to buy SGU/Sartar rising in addition to the Deluxe rules 
     without having really played yet.
     
     Regards,
     Theo

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