http://www.rpg.net/go/esurvey.phtml?vote=-2
Yet at the same time WoTC initial strategy for the D20 line was to drop detailed campaign worlds because the market for them always declined when the barrier to entry, the number or supplements you needed to buy to get into the game increased to the point that fewer people took up a particular world than left it over time.
The same thing happens with a TV series. Buffy or Xena's audience always falls, because a few series in it gets harder and harder to pick up and start watching. All SF/Fantasy TV series are pretty much doomed to short runs because of this. Those that get longer runs like Star Trek benefit from the incoroporation of their memes into popular culture. (Some games will doubtless gain from the further spread of Tolkien into popular culture and there is a part of me that suspects taht describing the Orlanthi as 'like the Riders of Rohan. might be more appreciable to some than 'like Vikings'.)
The problem I suspect is that what gamers want - complex and rich settings - are ultimately self-limited because the same promise of complexity the drives intial purchase and keeps them loyal, keeps new entrants from joining. Now that is fine if you go for a disposable game world strategy - run it for a few years and then dump it in favour of something fresh - but problematic if the product is the world itself.
Compare for example Exalted, which AFAIK has been very successful for White Wolf, and bears a similar pitch to HQ. WW put out 200 page + books for exalted. However I would say that the complexity of that background material is lower than Glorantha. In HQ terms those games contain a lot of short cult write ups, but the background detail is broader, htere is less for the player to adhere to feel that they are playing an x character 'right'. So I am less certain it is the coverage of Glorantha that is at fault, but the depth. Comparing Thunder Rebels to GURPS or RQ Vikings it is obviously more complex. Much of that complexity derives from King of Sartar, which was always seen as a'deep source'. ILH by comparison drops some of that complexity while retaining breadth and may prove to be a more popular approach. If there is 'deep material' then GRoY and FS style publications may be a better place for them. We have at least one player who is less and less interested in the complexity of Glorantha. But we also have newbies so the depth is not completely off-putting.
The only danger with scenarios is that they don't sell as well - because only the GM buys them. Mixing them with scenario material is one way around the problem, but could crippe sales for a source book. For sales, I suspect that a background book should be seen as the information a player wants to play a character from that culture, perhaps at most at the complexity level of GURPS Vikings.
YMMV.
Powered by hypermail