HQG takes the back seat to RQG

[Job]

8 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

A few years ago we focused on HQ because we did not have the license to produce RQ material. We still like HQ. Whether you love it or hate it, HQ has always struggled to have profitable sales numbers. Most of the wonderful HQ books in the works were largely being done by devoted fans writing them for the love of the game. They were/are writing them in their spare time, which is often scarce. RQ books outsell HQ books at least 4-1. While we do not have exact numbers, we know a large portion of the audience for HQ books bought them because they wanted Gloranthan material, even if HQ was not their system of choice. Publishing the same supplement for HQ and also for RQ isn't economically viable. Let's say we sold 1000 copies of the Sartar Companion, which was only available as an HQ book. If we sold it as an RQ book we would have certainly sold much more of it. If we had sold it as an RQ book, and as an HQ book too, the HQ version would have maybe sold 500 copies. The best we can do economically is to publish RQ books (mostly) and provide HQ stats for them in a separate document. That said, if someone only wants to write an awesome HQG book for us, we won't automatically say no to them.

Fully understood. As I said, from the business perspective, it is a reasonable and wise choice for Chaosium. 

Edited April 27, 2019 by Job

[jajagappa]

9 hours ago, JonL said:

I really dug his early stuff

The Blue Book is clearly the best, but so hard to get a hold of! And Sog City University is too difficult to get into!

[Lordabdul]

21 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

While we do not have exact numbers, we know a large portion of the audience for HQ books bought them because they wanted Gloranthan material, even if HQ was not their system of choice.

The few HQ sourcebooks I bought were indeed only because they had "Glorantha" written on the cover. Now I wish I bought more of them because it's hard to find the other ones I didn't buy   (I did buy the first HeroWars but never used it, it's really not my jam)

[jrutila]

On 4/26/2019 at 9:35 PM, Rick Meints said:

The best we can do economically is to publish RQ books (mostly) and provide HQ stats for them in a separate document.

What are these HQ stats? Isn't the beauty of HQ that you don't need any stats? Any material book should work with HQ. So, in that sense publishing RQ books also makes sense (as HQ GMs can use them too) even though the RQ stats eat valuable space from the books 😉.

[Rick Meints]

By HQ stats, I mean coming up with the simplified feats, abilities and such, some of which could involve picking a level of mastery, like 2W5.

[Ian Cooper]

We still have HQG books in the works. The game is thriving. At most UK cons up to a third of the Glorantha tables are HQG games. At some small cons HQG is the only Gloranthan game on offer. I suspect we have a far higher player to reader ratio than the RQ line which seems to have more armchair enthusiasts. Indeed, many of the most enthusiastic RQG GMs I see at cons are also enthusiastic HQG GMs. My Twitter feed is full of gamers playing the 11L with HQG. It has active and enthusiastic fans, despite lower sales numbers. Some folks come for RQG, but stay for HQG.

The existing plan is to continue to focus on the 1625- period for HQG, as opposed to the 1626+ period which is RQG. We will probably put out HQG how-to's for some of the RQG material, to cover of items that are missing. We also still plan to open up the setting to other areas. The Dragonrise book is still forthcoming. This is also primarily pragmatic, it is too hard to co-ordinate across the two lines with regards to plots, characters etc.

We do have less people and lower budgets. As @Rick Meints points out we are more likely to target sales around 1K than 5K with resulting impact on budget. As a result our art budgets etc are going to be lower. We will likely re-use more art etc. Some of you have complained about this in the past, but we don't have choices here. Our throughput will be lower, as we no longer have Jeff beavering away at HQG full-time.

We also see the new generic version of the game as a way to up the overall numbers of players. If we can think of selling 2-3K of the new generic core book, then many of those players may come to HQG.

The two lines may well have slightly differing interpretations over time of Glorantha, much as say KoDP and HQG already do. That becomes inevitable when HQG has twenty years of existing material to work with, but RQG is pretty much a clean slate.

The **best** thing that you can do to support the line is get out there and play. On-line, in clubs, and at conventions. The more we push HQG games, the more noise there is on social media or forums like RPG.NET about them, the more others will play. Talk about it on podcasts. Create actual plays on YouTube. I don't have time to do everything, so a strong fan community promoting the game is invaluable. When HW as young, I and some others, promoted HW a lot of various games forums. It helped lift the game and awareness of it.

Many say that HW kick-started the whole indie games movement, inspiring long-term fan Ron Edwards to write Sorcerer and help start The Forge. It's influence has led to games like Apocalypse World. It's time to put it back where it belongs, in the top of the tree.

[Ian Cooper]

25 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

By HQ stats, I mean coming up with the simplified feats, abilities and such, some of which could involve picking a level of mastery, like 2W5.

We don't need those 🙂

[Ian Cooper]

The biggest problems with using RQG for HQG are:

• Adventures. Whilst you can use HQG adventures for RQG the reverse is often unsatisfying because of the nature of the game. HQG can cover a lot in a 2 hour session, and the average RQG adventure, which tends to be focused on skill challenges and a 'big fight' can be both quickly resolved in HQG. Let's face it, we an do the defense of Gringle's Pawnshop in one roll. As a result RQG adventures don't lend itself the wide range of problem-solving approaches that HQG prefers, nor cover the same amount of ground. You can use them, but they are not the rich fare we prefer. I note this a lot at cons, where the RQG folks spend most of the session on a big fight, with a small amount of role-playing leading up to it. Just look at Masks of Pavis vs. Welcome to the City and the difference is clear.
• Waste: An awful lot of RQG is stat blocks, which are just 'waste' as far as HQG is concerned, as we don't need them.
• Limited Magic. The magic in RQ is necessarily balanced, particularly for combat, but much more limited than the spells in HQG which echo the runes and actions of the gods. Because they take up quite a bit of cult descriptions, they again create waste, but more importantly they encourage players to limit themselves to RQ magic as 'what is available". Greg never used RQ magic in his stories, and HQG is built to model Greg's fiction much more closely.

It's all Glorantha, and so good, but RQG isn't a satisfactory diet for HQG players, it's like junk food when they crave a Michelin starred meal.

[Joerg]

On 4/26/2019 at 11:37 PM, jajagappa said:

The Blue Book is clearly the best, but so hard to get a hold of! And Sog City University is too difficult to get into!

Making a true copy is hard, too, since the writing material is hard to find and to flay.

 

16 minutes ago, Ian Cooper said:

Let's face it, we an do the defense of Gringle's Pawnshop in one roll.

There's no reason not to do the Westfaring plus descent to Hell in one roll, either, if your quest goal is going after Sheng Seleris.

[Ian Cooper]

10 hours ago, jrutila said:

What are these HQ stats? Isn't the beauty of HQ that you don't need any stats? Any material book should work with HQ. So, in that sense publishing RQ books also makes sense (as HQ GMs can use them too) even though the RQ stats eat valuable space from the books 😉.

On the flipside, RQG GMs can use HQG books, as we don't use any space on HQG stats, so they get good value for money 🙂

[7Tigers]

3 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

@Rick MeintsThe Dragonrise book is still forthcoming.

Cool! Can we expect it for 2019?

[jrutila]

3 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

The **best** thing that you can do to support the line is get out there and play. On-line, in clubs, and at conventions.

We are doing our share here in Finland (which, as we know, is one of the big ones when it comes to Glorantha). When it comes to Glorantha games in Ropecon, Finland's biggest roleplaying con, HQ is taking precedence over RQ. During the three years I have now visited Ropecon there has been, yearly, one RQ (old ed.) event against four to six HQ events. In Kalikos (Finnish Glorantha society) meetings I have sensed that RQ is the nice memory from the past (everyone has played RQ in their youth) and Glorantha is explored through HQG.

It might be as @Ian Cooper says that RQ is the gateway drug. I for myself have thought about getting my RQ boots from the closet and run a game of the new shiny RQG. But selling that gateway drug is hard as I am so high on the easiness of sweet HQ gamemastering.

About the visibility of HQ, at Reddit's /r/rpg group I try to always mention "HeroQuest (by Robin D. Laws, not the board game!)" (oh, I hate that I have to make this correction beforehand every time) if someone asks system preferences or something about your favorite system. I have also sent a couple of topics to RPG podcasts about HQ.

[Ian Cooper]

14 minutes ago, 7Tigers said:

Cool! Can we expect it for 2019?

I think its unlikely. Here is why.

I playtested a version, derived from some notes of Greg's at some cons. That v ersion had some unsatisfying elements. It was close, but not right. So I put it to one side to see if I could figure out what was wrong.

Recently I had the flash of inspiration I needed when trying to re-work the game for my group, and reviewing a lot of stellar mythic material in the Stafford Library. Intriguingly, I recently had a conversation with Merlin Cox who had noted the same problems that I had noted with the original idea. That means I now have a clearer idea of what I am trying to show in this book.

One thing I admire about the old RQ2 line was that Chaosium tried to show how to run different types of adventure. Griffin Mountain: wilderness hexcrawl. Borderlands: mission play; Pavis: City Adventure; Big Rubble: megadungeon.

My goal is to riff off that idea, especially as we have less output and do the same. So we have PgTA: urban/noir; S:KoH: epic; TCS & 11L: saga and so I want the 'Dragonrise' book to be different. It's going to focus on heroquesting, and be an example of a high-level heroquesting game.

Now I know how to hook that up, so you can see how to do it.

But that means I have re-written and I am play-testing the new version.

So whilst I hope to have a new first draft of the ms in the next few months, the time for art, review and revision, proofing and layout makes delivering in 2019 a real stretch.

Edited April 28, 2019 by Ian Cooper
hit send to soon

[Ian Cooper]

5 minutes ago, jrutila said:

We are doing our share here in Finland (which, as we know, is one of the big ones when it comes to Glorantha). When it comes to Glorantha games in Ropecon, Finland's biggest roleplaying con, HQ is taking precedence over RQ. During the three years I have now visited Ropecon there has been, yearly, one RQ (old ed.) event against four to six HQ events. In Kalikos (Finnish Glorantha society) meetings I have sensed that RQ is the nice memory from the past (everyone has played RQ in their youth) and Glorantha is explored through HQG.

I really should come back to Ropecon and run some games there.

Thanks for keeping the flame alive!

[Job]

@Ian Cooper Is it possible to have HQG actual session on YouTube? In this age of steaming craze, that would be a nice promotion.

[Ian Cooper]

1 minute ago, Job said:

@Ian Cooper Is it possible to have HQG actual session on YouTube? In this age of steaming craze, that would be a nice promotion.

Great question. We tried to film something at a Kraken, but it didn't really work out. The bar, unfortunately has gotten quite high for this stuff when done officially, so it might be better for some fans to record and upload their actual play.

[jrutila]

2 minutes ago, Ian Cooper said:

I really should come back to Ropecon and run some games there.

Please do! This year's theme is none other than ... mythology! You can say that Kalikos was quite excited about the theme...

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, jrutila said:

We are doing our share here in Finland (which, as we know, is one of the big ones when it comes to Glorantha).

I normally run HeroQuest at conventions, as it is just easier. It also allows me to run in any genre I want, with no changes to the rules.

[Tinkgineer]

5 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

The **best** thing that you can do to support the line is get out there and play. On-line, in clubs, and at conventions. The more we push HQG games, the more noise there is on social media or forums like RPG.NET about them, the more others will play. Talk about it on podcasts. Create actual plays on YouTube. I don't have time to do everything, so a strong fan community promoting the game is invaluable. When HW as young, I and some others, promoted HW a lot of various games forums. It helped lift the game and awareness of it.

I am working on a HQ, podcast but it’s slow going. Not Glorantha though. I do enjoy reading the setting books but without playing it as a PC I don’t think I could bring life to it for my players. 

[Ian Cooper]

2 hours ago, jrutila said:

Please do! This year's theme is none other than ... mythology! You can say that Kalikos was quite excited about the theme...

Alright let me see if I can make the dates work.

[g33k]

9 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

...

We also see the new generic version of the game as a way to up the overall numbers of players. If we can think of selling 2-3K of the new generic core book, then many of those players may come to HQG.

...

I have a few of the HQ/HW sourcebooks, but none of the core rulebooks (HW, HQ, HQ2, HQG).

When the SRD comes out, I'll undoubtedly grab it and give it a good going-over.

After that, I'll buy (or not) a core book (nuHQ or HQG) depending on whether I think I can get my group to play/like it ...

 

[Aprewett]

A visual ‘how to play’ recording would be brilliant.

[Noita]

16 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

Alright let me see if I can make the dates work.

I would come down south for this.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I can’t express how great it is that more books are planned, including the Dragonrise.  I think having HQG books focused on pre-1625 also makes a ton of sense.  Personally that’s great for me as I enjoy the Occupied Sartar setting of the original RQ, so I’m glad it is the focus for HQG.

[daskindt]

I really, really hope we continue to see HeroQuest sourcebooks set in Glorantha.

I was excited about the return of RuneQuest, as it was the game system that introduced me to Glorantha, but the more I interface with the new RuneQuest the more I yearn for the rich mythological and cultural detail of HeroQuest.

I debated between HeroQuest and RuneQuest for my new campaign and we ultimately decided on RuneQuest, but I can’t tell you how often I wish I had pushed harder for HeroQuest. Even so, we’re playing 11 Lights and almost all my prep and research time is spent with HeroQuest materials. Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes is better than anything ever published for any edition of RuneQuest, imo.

The only place where the new RuneQuest material surpasses the HeroQuest sources is in the art and production budget. I would love to see the HeroQuest books with the art budgets of the new RuneQuest line. Still, I prefer the setting as described in HeroQuest and we can apply the updated visuals to the world from the RuneQuest materials.

Thanks again for all the lovely work put into HeroQuest Glorantha. I look forward to any additional books you’re able to produce, even if we have to wait a long time in between.