From: Alex Ferguson (abf@yeats.ucc.ie)
Date: Wed 21 Apr 1999 - 22:01:52 EEST
Kevin Rose is a worried man:
> I'm still worried about the expected creative input of the GM. As last I
> saw HW it basically required the GM/characters to make up descriptions of
> how the magic system worked, what the effects were, what the visible
> effects are, and how long it took.
I presume that everything takes 'an action', unless there's some
actual rules reason that means more effort is required. To some
extent you're right, though, as all if this is very much undefined
in game-_world_ terms, though of course it's perfectly well nailed
down in terms of the game-_system_, abstract as that is. I don't
think this is in principle hard, but I agree that one does need to
make sure that the books are thick enough with data on likely such
game-world/game-system correspondances, as well as just giving as
much actual description of the game world effect themselves, to
obviate the risk of 'creative anxiety' on the part of the GM abd
players. "I _think_ I can come up with a 10AP Thunder Magic
effect, but Is It Gloranthically Correct?"
> I suspect your going to get a lot of:
> "Mark, what do you do?"
> "I use my combat magic, 5 points, and score a standard success."
> "Ok, he fails. You get 5, he takes 10 points. OK, Steve, what do you
> do?"
>
> I still don't think that is better than "I hit him with a lightning bolt."
> "You blow his arm off and he falls down." RQ magic laid out a logical
> structure of what the spell did and what it looked like and how long it
> took to do it. More flexability would be nice, but a totally unstructured
> approach does not seem to be the solution that will take the world by
> storm.
Unstructured is potentially cool, for those that are into it, but
Formless is unquestionably bad. I agree with the drift of Kevin's
comments; HW needs to provide, at the thin end, at least Copious
Examples, and at the thick, an actual set of guidelines/subrules
about how one can use particular abilities, so that one _at least_
can instantiate the former example to the level of game-world-ism
as the latter. I'd suggest Ars Magica as a reasonable example of way
of doing this, without having either no framework at all, or one
that's too rigid.
Simon Hibbs:
> I like a good game of RQ3 as much as anyone.
"... except possibly my wife."
Cheers,
Alex.
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