Gamers percieved issues with HQ/HW - a sample

From: CJ <chris.romer_at_...>
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 15:37:33 +0100


Tried a little experiment over the last few weeks in asking 12 gamers I know who have owned HQ/HW but no longer play it what they felt were the reasons why... Interesting none own MRQ, and 3 had only seen Hero Wars. Two intend to definitely buy the new HeroQuest edition on principle, and indeed buy everything for HQ though will never run it. Four still play RQ2 or RQ3 "quite often", which I gather is once a year or more.

I made simple notes...

  1. Augments lead to arguments -- 5 votes I think this has been discussed many times - should there be a cap, etc, etc
  2. The Scenarios in the main HQ rule book did not appeal much, and we could not find anyready to run. This one surprised me, especially considering White Wolf products are very successful without scenarios, but maybe people need more ideas on what can be done with the system? 3 people said this, and that was the biggest surprise to me.
  3. We find the Gloranthan community and background too esorteric and ancient lore reliant, and "elitist", and have been made to feel like idiots for rmaking mistakes by players who knew it better than us, or just could not learn enough to feel confident - 2 people, slightly different but I put them together in this category. One of them felt alienated from the lists, and seemed to feel themselves a victim of "Gloranthan politics" - they were quite aggressive in tone, and I narrowly escaped having to hear the whole story.
  4. I could not work out how the magic system works, and it's all way too rules heavy for me. Too much maths.
  5. I could not work out how to write adventures for it.

So I think help in writing adventures may be a major aid. I doubt the results are that representative as most of the people I asked have gamed with each other at some point, and most own MANY rpg systems but play relatively few, so may not be representative in nay way. About half were RQ grognards who never made the transition, and yet none have picked up Mongoose RQ.

I wonder if a larger survey might be interesting, and if the new HQ will address much of this?

cj x

Powered by hypermail