I'm not arguing about the problem with novices coming in to a very developed game world, my point is that:
Due to Glorantha being such a complex game world, it is not novice-friendly to have ambiguous abilities like "Sunset Leap" when you could have had a sentence of explanation--just for the complicated ones--without adding a lot of bulk to the game book. A website is only a partial fix; not everyone who can purchase a book has convenient (or any) web access.
Having such ambiguous abilities can be seen as stemming from: encouraging the imagination, oversight, lack of desire for novice players, thoughtlessness, lack of concern, exclusiveness, smugness, etc. (I'm not saying that it indicates any of these.) Of all of these "encouraging the imagination" is the only positive spin and Hero Wars already encourages the imagination without needing to fall back on ambiguous abilities. Further, a brief explanation or example doesn't hamper the reader's imagination.
I think that the problem is a lack of perspective regarding novices. I have heard several success stories about groups that already gamed in Glorantha or that had a Narrator who was steeped in Glorantha lore. None of this satisfies my question about accessibility for newcomers. Anecdotes about RQ gaming groups may be enjoyable reads but they don't address this problem.
To restate my request: Please explain to me how Hero Wars can be considered more novice-friendly than other new games. (The handicap of a complex world has been noted, but I still don't see an excuse for ambiguity.)
My hypothesis: Hero Wars is not as clear as it should and could be to novices to the setting and to the system which is tied to the setting.
My qualifications for this criticism:
Disclaimer: I like Hero Wars and will be enthusiastically running it at home and at cons. I just want it to succeed and I don't see how being obscure is a survival trait in a game that isn't backed by a ton of money.
Roderick: Will the Introduction to Glorantha clear up all of the ambiguous abilities? (If it does, that is a partial solution, though it requires the purchase of another book just to have the core rules.)
Thanks,
Andy
P.S. I'm willing to place Tekumel on the same level of world complexity and it is much less accessible to newcomers than Glorantha at the moment.
Powered by hypermail