From: Jon S Green (jonsg@harlequin.co.uk)
Date: Mon 03 Aug 1998 - 12:19:05 EEST
Following on from the HW system musings, here's a few random comments...
1. Yep, the Urox pork-sword-waving contest was pretty daft!
2. I like having to have only one die. All you need for a PC is one
die, a pencil and one, uncluttered, sheet of paper. Not just
rules-light, but travelling light, too -- a good thing OMHO. I can see
how things could be changed to make it diceless, which would be even
better for my preferred style of play.
3. Some aspects of how to resolve non-combat conflicts may need more
careful thought, although that may be a failure of the playtest
material, rather than the system as such. My case in point is the
showdown in the Clan Chief's audience hall.
Here's how it worked, for those who didn't play, or couldn't make it.
It's a dispute between two adjacent Orlanthi clans. "Our" Clan Ring
journeys to the other clan's tula and try to win over their Chief to our
own point of view.
The two Clan Rings, theirs and ours, meet in the audience hall to chew
out the issues before the Chief. To be honest, role-playing was
superfluous in that situation. It was simply a matter of picking a
debating skill, picking an opponent in the other Clan Ring, and rolling
for attack and defense. To make it more RP, we'd suggested the
arguments our characters were using, but we could just have rolled the
dice without any RP input at all: no mods were made to the dice rolls
based on the nature or force of the arguments used. Worse still, if you
had two debating-related skills at different skill/points levels, you
could switch skills to "reset" your score if things were going badly --
playing the system, not the game.
Now, in all fairness, this was a play-test. It wasn't a "real"
scenario, and it didn't feel like one. It was constructed in order to
familiarise players with the basic system mechanics, and it's quite
possible that the full HW system allows for more role-playing in these
sorts of situations, and less-intrusive game mechanics, but it left a
slightly sour taste in my mouth. Perhaps the style or content of the
playtest scenario needs tweaking.
I seriously hope that HW doesn't tip the emphasis from role-playing to
roll-playing. I've enough confidence in Robin's work and commitment
that I strongly suspect it won't, but I'm a little worried.
Jon
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Opinions expressed may not be Harlequin's! <*> Junk email utterly reviled
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