From: Nick Brooke (Nick_Brooke@compuserve.com)
Date: Tue 04 Aug 1998 - 19:34:45 EEST
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Some posters are barking up an increasingly implausible tree:
>>> It makes no sense to have the grand oration to sway the clan in
>>> council be reduced to one "orate" roll. HW fixes this.
>> Does it fix it for the player who has poor oratory, who is playing
>> a character with excellent oratory?
> That's the crux of the matter: Some people who advocate more freeform
> roleplaying don't seem to realise that we're not all Oscar Wilde able
> to drop dry scathing wit off our tongues at a moments notice. However,
> a lot of us play adventurers that can, hence the Oratory skill.
You don't need to be an Orator to roll your Orate skill, any more than you
need to be a martial artist to roll your Martial Arts skill.
The *real* crux of the matter is this: Hero Wars has a system for resolving
contests, conflicts, combats, and other forms of disputed resolution which
can all be run using *exactly* the same mechanics, whatever form the contest
may take.
Take an example: in a scenario, the players are meant to force their way
into the Malani stead, confront the evil King of the Malani, and browbeat
him into freeing their companions.
In RuneQuest, the fight with the Malani guards could take several hours to
resolve, using fatigue points and fumble tables and battle magics and lord
knows what else. The confrontation itself -- the dramatic focus of the
scenario -- would then be either role-played ("We're not all Oscar Wilde")
or roll-played ("Whoops! Picked a bad time to fumble").
In Hero Wars, the fight could be treated as an utterly trivial distraction
(if desired by the GM: say, simple/unopposed combat skill rolls to succeed)
or as a full-blown contested resolution (again, if that's what the GM wants:
say, if the Malani Champion was a known personal foe of Our Heroes). The
confrontation itself would then be resolved as any other contest: player
characters with appropriate abilities, engaging in a full-blown contested
resolution.
Do you have to be Wilde (or Shakespeare, or Aeschylus?) to run a rhetorical
contest? Not at all: instead of delivering your speech verbatim, you need
only say what your character is doing. "I mock the meagre hospitality he has
offered our kinsmen" -- "I shame him with accounts of Orlanth's own actions
in Godtime" -- "I cite the many ancient laws that he has broken by his
actions" -- "I satirise him"
You don't need to be able to actually *do* this, any more than you need to
be a burly muscle-bound bruiser wielding a lump of metal with practiced
skill to participate in a combat scene. ("I aim at his head" -- "I strike to
disarm" -- "I parry the one on the left, and cast Disrupt"). Or do the more
combat-intensive gamers on this list dispute that contention too?
:::: mail: <Nick_Brooke@compuserve.com> or <Nick_Brooke@csi.com>
Nick
:::: web: <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nick_Brooke>
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