As one of the 'D&Ders', I'd just like to point out that we weren't total neophytes with the engine. I've used HQ as my default rules-lite engine whenever I needed to run a one-off or pickup game. So the example isn't entirely supportive of the 'newb friendly' point Benedict is making here.
Personally, I think the mechanical aspects of the game are piss-easy (and it seems like they will get a little easier once HQ2 hits the shelves) but how you translate those mechanical aspects into a plausible rendering of the game universe were less well explained (especially so in the case of the magic chapter). Although I have high hopes of HQ2 based on the ToC I saw in the preview.
My (largely evidence-free) suspicion is that HQ is/was a great game in the hands of ref who is thoroughly versed in the 'matter' of a game universe. They know their stuff inside and out and, because HQ is a nice clean design without many moving parts or fiddly bits to document, they can 'project' their knowledge of the world into mechanical representations without really thinking about it. It is much more challenging however, for a ref who is not very familiar with the background fluff. This is because in trad games a lot of the fluff is, paradoxically, actually transmitted to refs by the crunch; that is, a 'habit to be unlearned' by most refs is 'learning the world' by spending a lot of time with the all the tables, stat blocks and whatnot that are to be found in the equivalent of the MM, DMG and sundry splat books that traditional games provide for you.
Take common magic frex, HQ corebook says that a hero gets five CM doohickies and that's pretty much it. The trad ref/rules 'conversation' goes something like:
Ref: "So, what sort of stuff should CM be?"
Rules: "It can be anything. Glorantha is made of magic."
Ref: "Uh... OK. Can you tell me what would be typical?"
Rules: "Well you know it varies a lot, depending upon who you are, what
you do, where you live - stuff like that. What do you want your player's
heroes to have?"
Ref: "I don't know, that's why I'm asking. OK, if we're talking
Heortlings who I understand are pure theists, should they only have
divine CM?"
Rules: "They can have, if you want them to. They don't have to mind."
Ref: "But would it be normal to only have divine CM?"
Rules: "What's normal? Your heroes aren't normal or they wouldn't be
heroes."
Ref: "You know what? I think I'll run Exalted instead."
If my suspicion is correct then the flexibility and simplicity of the game actually counted as a negative when old-school refs (or at least refs with old-school reflexes) sat down and tried to use the crunch as a framework for getting a handle on Glorantha. They had comparatively little material to work with when compared to other games and what material did exist was often inconsistent or extensively hedged around with caveats and YGWV.
Regards
Luke
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