Re: game size

From: boris (mabeyke@batman.b11.ingr.com)
Date: Thu 03 Feb 1994 - 17:54:45 EET


  I just want to make a brief comment in reply to some things. A lot of
  people are calling to cut this or that from RQAG. This playtest draft
  is ~210 page, and is still missing a section or two; once these and art
  and maps are added, it will be pushing 300 pages or more. This is, I
  agree, a decent sized game, much larger than RQ2, somewhat more than RQ3.

  But RQ2, despite it's many die hard adherants, did not feature a complete
  game world. It wasn't until the Cults books were released that anything
  other than tantalizing glimpses of Glorantha were given. We want to do
  more with this, to allow players to start playing with *no* supplements.
  Once they're hooked, they will buy all the Gloranthan material they can
  find. But let's hook them first.

  If you look at the game market now, those games which are successful
  contain a game world that is well, if not fully, described in the basic
  rule set; Shadowrun, Vampire/Werewolf/Mage, Cyberpunk. And all of these
  weigh in at or around the 300 page range, or more. This does not seem
  to cost them sales, and I don't think mere size will cost RQAG sales.

  Don't get me wrong, I think we should make RQAG as streamlined as possible.
  But I also think we need to keep the cultural context of Glorantha. The
  religious descriptions with the thumbnail cult writeups, and the shamanic
  traditions (the new shamanism rules are, IMO, the best thing about this
  draft, even if I have problems with their implementation) are examples of
  what's good about RQAG. The sorcerous colleges are not done nearly as
  well, IMO, and should be fixed. And I agree that the text can be
  tightened up in a lot of places. Lets not gut RQAG because we think size
  won't sell. The gaming marketplace suggests otherwise.

----
  Boris

0,,

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Sat 05 Jul 2003 - 20:34:05 EEST