Just to look at, its a lot better than Hero Wars was. The larger format and the clearer layout - whch looks very much like those in the recent supplements - are both huge improvements. The artwork is more varied and inspirational, too. But what you really want to know, I guess, is what's in it.
After a general introduction to the concepts of the game, we move straight to character generation. We know have a set of 13 generic occupations that work with a range of different cultures, which I think makes things rather easier than it used to be. Ten cultures each get a 2-page homeland splash like those in ILH-1, allowing a wider range of characters than basic HW did, and taking about the same space to do them. Good to see some of the less explored cultures getting a look in here - the Teshnans being an obvious example.
The core rules have been somewhat streamlined and simplified - edges and handicaps have now been relegated to a minor optional rule tucked away in the GM's advice chapter, for insance. The Community Support tables now make sense, too, so that's a gaffe from HW that's been fixed.
The much-heralded Common Magic looks great to me; it's perhaps a little difficult to find the list of standard spells (each religion has its own set of non-standard spells too, but they're easy to find), which might have been better in a table or a text-box or something. I was a bit surprised to see the Misapplied Worship rules still hanging around, but I guess I shouldn't have been, what with the Aeolians being one of the ten standard cultures. Misapplied Worship is, I suspect, very much rarer in My Glorantha than in the canonical one, but, hey, it's only one page...
I didn't notice any great change to the Theism rules, although ideas from Thunder Rebels seem to have been incorporated into the main text, which I'd regard as a generally Good Thing. Animism I've never looked at before in enough depth to have much of an opinion on.
Sorcery (which we now call 'wizardry') is much improved, though. In HW, it seemed that if you weren't actually a wizard or a liturgist, you just had to have magic cast on you by someone else, and didn't get to do anything yourself. Now, of course, you could have Common Magic, but there's also proper wizardry spells for holy knights, sanctified rulers and, well, just about anyone else who wants them. This to me, is a very welcome improvement. OTOH, there was one of those strong 'Not In My Glorantha' moments reading one particular bit of the wizardry rules describing the Western religions. Others may not feel the same about it, though...
Each of the three magic styles also has a section on how their magic manifests in the world, as well as on the Other Side, which are nice and atmospheric. The Sorcery World looks a lot more like the way I envisaged it, too, rather the the relatively stale and flat (if not technically inaccurate) description given in HW.
Any experienced GM reading almost any chapter on GMing advice is likely to find something, somewhere, that doesn't suit their particular style being promoted as a clearly Good Thing. Within that constraint, the Narrating chapter does as good a job as one could realistically want, setting out the 'default' gaming style for HQ in a way that should be very helpful for newer Narrators. And there are plenty of tips on how to handle the somewhat unusual game mechanics for those who haven't done it before. The First Rule and the Final Rule in this chapter are especially worth bearing in mind, IMO...
I've never been that thrilled by HeroQuesting and, I must admit, just skimmed that chapter. The chapter describing Glorantha is short on detail compared with similar chapters in many modern RPGs, but I guess that's a space consideration - its difficult to see what else could be cut, and you *do* get ten cultures described in some detail earlier on, which certainly mitigates.
The Creatures chapter (largely by the author of Anaxial's Roster) is a perfect in every way and clearly the work of a consummate genius who deserves lots of free beer at the next convention. Mmmm...
We get four new adventures near the end of the book. I only really liked one and a half of the adventures in HW, but I'd up that to three-and-a-half of these ones (as I said earlier, I'm not that keen on HeroQuesting). Chasing Kites is probably my favourite of the four.
Finally, there are three Hero Bands. Although they're all rather nifty, two of them look to me to be more suitable for NPCs than for PCs. Arshkuveth's Own is the best of the bunch IMO.
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
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