Unless there has been criticism of her in some of the threads that I stopped following (i.e. argument overide, implicit & explicit factors...), what I recall were more comments about the examples, not about Kathy, and most specifically about the hero questing examples.
One point was that it seemed harsh to kill off half the heroes that we were becoming attached to through examples!
Beyond that, there was the issue of what the examples said. On the theory that examples are carefully chosen to give you a flavor for the various parts of the game and not simply to illustrate the rules (and certainly the questing examples were light on interpretation of the rules, they didn't even show carryover), then a couple of things come out of the examples that seem perhaps counter to the tone of the rest of the book.
Implicit message 1--"Heroquests are deadly serious, and outright deadly. Don't do them except in extreme necessity. You are as apt to die as to succeed." This message seems odd in the game that is (finally) called Heroquest. A lot of other material suggests that the hero wars will be largely about the effects of hero quests, but the example doesn't exactly encourage you to go on them. Which is probably true 'Gloranthan reality,' but seems a bit odd given the overall focus on being capital H heroes, and given that quite a few pages in the basic rules was applied to it.
Implicit message 2--"Frivolous or fun heroes don't have what it takes to survive the hero wars." Surfer dude dies, and it specifically points out that this was due to his having abandoned his old combat magic to pursue his surfing dream. And note that he never managed to achieve his goal of inventing surfing first either. Origami girl is dismembered and is most likely essentially dead as a hero, possibly a worse fate as a player as it is sometimes better to have your hero die for their glorious sacrifice than linger in lifelong disability. Who survives? The serious warriors. Again, this might reflect 'gloranthan reality,' but given that the rest of the rules tend to encourage you to have fun and be creative, it seems like a contrary message. Sort of a wink and a smile to say "Sure you can create goofy heroes, but if you are serious about the game you should know better.
*shrug* this is probably reading way too much into it. Personally I've taken to tuning out all the examples that aren't in script style (Kathy: "OK, you see...." Rick: "I attack...." is what I call script style) The script style ones seem really excellent to me. The later ones that drift away from that just don't seem as sharp to me.
--Bryan
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