My difficulty with world backgrounds as expansive as Glorantha (for example, Tékumel, and Harn) is "not knowing where to being".
This often manifests as seeming like completism, but that's mostly because I feel unsure about what's good to include and what can afford to be left out as optional.
For example, which of the Heortling gods is a "must include" and which can afford to be ignored?
The more reading and talking about Glorantha, the more clear it becomes where one can comfortably draw the line, but a learning curve still exists.
Long-time Gloranthaphiles have enough unconscious domain knowledge about the place to be able to make quick and easy decisions about what to keep and what to shelve for any particular adventure, and even better, if they don't know, they at least know where to look.
That being said, what I saw of the HeroQuest draft, and the Lunar Handbook, encouraged me that the presentation of the material would now go a long way to addressing this difficulty of "discrimination" that newbies have. One can feel pretty assured that what's in the "two page spread" for a Homeland is what's "essential" and progress from there.
-- Viktor
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