I believe that Robin's goal for Hero Wars was narrative emulation of your unpublished stories (Morden Defends The Camp being the published example in that game). So I would say that for any new HeroQuest core Gloranthan book a goal should be to narrative emulation of your current fiction.
So a good starting question would be: what does your current writing tell us about how initiates and devotees do magic? If I wanted to emulate the tropes of your writing, how would I do that.
A second question is what works for the game. I would say that the strength of HQ is its simple, universal mechanic approach. So if you want to treat magic as something other than an standard ability, for example by distinguishing between active and passive abilities, you want to do so because that element is important enough to the narrative you are emulating that you need a special mechanic to reflect that.
I do wonder if it would not be simpler if:
All magical abilities are active (i.e. are just abilities)
Theists all learn feats
Animists all use fetishes
Sorcerers all use spells
Innate magicians all use talents
Talents, feats, fetishes, and spells are all just abilities, and their magical nature is color, but they do allow 'unnatural' things like flying, swords turning into flame. No special rules.
Concentration is restricting yourself to one magic type
Concentration gives you insights that allows you to learn special magical abilities for example secrets.
Concentration helps when heroquesting (some sort of bonus for being better able to emulate your god for example)
Concentration helps in rituals (as heroquesting). This is why the priesthood are usually concentrated.
A misapplied religion offers no bonuses for concentration (it has no true insights, its priests find rituals harder, its heroquesting is harder etc.)
Under this approach most people would mix and match from what was locally available. The distinction between common and specialized religions would be that joining a specialized religions would probably give you access only to one type of magic. Of course you could go elsewhere to learn other magic; but advancement in the specialized religion to become a priest or godi, or just even gain community support would be easier, perhaps only possible, to people who had concentrated i.e purified themselves. "You can't become a priest of Orlanth Jonrik, unless you put aside the things of sorcery.." This political motivation applies to misapplied religions too.
IMO removing the mechanical disadvantage for non-concentrated worship, dropping differentiated point costs, helps to emulate your writing, because it makes mixed worship the norm and the optimal option for many and thus obviously more common. The special abilities from concentraion would be a harder road, so offering less mechanical advantage immediately, making such a choice less common.
Whether you need affinities as a devotee ability to allow improvisation at that point becomes debatable, unless it represents some part of your writing we are trying to emulate.
As for willingness to change. As long as we had a simple conversion document on the web: where an initiate has Orlanth's combat affinity replace with Swordhelp, etc. the simplification would be good rather than bad I think.
Hope that helps
Ian Cooper
"Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. " Mark Twain
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