There were four players: two were pretty familiar with Glorantha from the RQ2 days and the other two were totally unfamiliar with it. The two familiar players couldn't wait to get into the game, the one unfamiliar player just picked something and seemed to enjoy himself, and the other unfamiliar player was very critical of the confusing nature of the game. He asked a lot of questions that three of us answered about the background and was generally frustrated. (The score is one to one for my theory about the novice unfriendliness of Hero Wars.) To be fair, he rolled poorly during the game, which didn't improve his mood.
I dictated that they would all be Heortlings in Dragon Pass so that I could use the existing keywords and so that I wouldn't need to explain a lot to the two experienced players. As a warm-up, I got two of the players to read Morden Defends the Camp while waiting for the others to show up. Of the two experienced players, one came ready to play a Humakti and the other decided on a healer and then Bevara because this seemed like the most combat-accepting and because it best fit his image of what he wanted to do. The first inexperienced player chose a hunter and then zeroed in on Yinkin. The other chose a Spirit-Talker of Kolat, of course.
Since I was really low on time at this point (and because most of my Glorantha material was 100s of miles away), I stole the introductory adventure out of the Legend of the Five Rings game and adapted it as a Spring King contest. The highlights were the Yinkinite (?) besting the Humakti at wrestling (lots of clawing-and-spitting pantomime; the Yinkinite was very apprehensive and bet low while the Humakti bet high) and the healer besting the Humakti in a confrontation to see who could speak first in the boasting contest (Calm Patient vs. Boastful). It went pretty well, but I have some new questions in light of what the players wanted in their lists of 10 things (they all chose the list method due to time and familiarity constraints). I'll send those questions in a separate email.
I actually let them combine the list method with the quick start method. I think that I'm going to stick with this combination because I'll be running the game mostly for players unfamiliar with Glorantha and I want to be able to start in about an hour so that the action sucks them in quickly. My next Hero Wars session is this Saturday with four new players (one of whom is familiar with Glorantha); two other players are interested but can't make it this time. Wish me luck.
Later,
Andy
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