I too like the way the magic realms have different strengths and weaknesses. It's been a while since I looked at the HQ rules (heresy I know - but all my Glorantha stuff is in storage, which is a long story in itself) but the conclusion I've come to after ruminating on this, is that the comprehension problem lies in the fact that the rules don't ground themselves in the 'routine reality of Glorantha' enough.
IME rulebooks generally follow two patterns - traditional, crunchy games (ie those that have trained most gamers) are very prescriptive and there's a lot of comingling of the mechanics with the setting reality, so that someone reading through the Exalted books for example, comes away with a fairly good idea about the baseline assumptions underpinning the setting; more recent, rules-lite games tend to much less prescriptive and divorce the mechanics from the 'game reality' (modelling a narrative reality perhaps or providing meta-mechanics and leaving it to the GM to come up with a setting-specific implementation).
I think that where the HQ rulebook fails is that it is trying to ride both of these horses at the same time - the mechanics are in fact highly abstracted from Glorantha's underlying reality and this approach is supported with lots of text showing the authors' desire not to 'block' (in the improv theatre sense) GMs and players; yet Glorantha also has a very grounded 'reality' and the rules (particularly the magic rules) are intended to instantiate this reality.
The problem is that this instantiation is done in a scattered, patchy and implicit fashion in the rules (and qualified by all the 'must not block the players' stuff) - so that the concrete 'rules of Glorantha'; the things that give newbs a good, strong steer on what the 'Orlanthi All' is for less well travelled bits of Glorantha (sorcery certainly, spiritism to a lesser extent) just aren't there (or they are there, but not easily comprehended, which is much the same thing). It makes the HQ ruleset a great book for someone with a deep knowledge of Gloranthan details (as it lets take your knowledge of the world and filter it through some simple mechanical templates - you can do it pretty much on the fly if that's what you like), but a poor book if you want to use it to build up your knowledge of the Gloranthan details (and, you know, feel confident about running a Gloranthan game).
So, to my question - has anyone gone through the HQ book and various core supplements to devise some explicit (prescriptive even) notes, preferably with examples, setting out what according to Generally Accepted Glorantha you might expect to see when interacting with the various flavours of magical specialist? 'Cuz something like that would go a long way towards explaining the setting to newbs coming from crunchier, traditional games.
Regards
Luke
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