From: danny bourne (d.bourne@dial.pipex.com)
Date: Fri 23 Apr 1999 - 21:45:43 EEST
>>Finally, purely descriptive systems have a big drawback: a lot of players
>>doesn't know enough about what they're trying to do, so they can't have
>>enough variety and deepeness in their descriptions.
For my tuppence worth, when I played in a HW playtest at Convulsion (which
Robin Laws ran), what I can remember of the talk between the players
(Martin Hawley, Simon Bray, Andrew Barton, Jean Luc and the guy from
Germany whose name I can't remember [sorry] during the combats was pretty
much in game mechanics terms. I.e. if you try and whittle his AP's down,
I've got plenty spare so I'll make a fairly bid to really splat him and
even if he wins Simon's beserk Ernalda cultist will still be able to handle
him kind of thing. But when it came down to the dice rolling (taking out
Robin's explanations of the results table, obviously) people tried to
describe what their characters wanted to do. But it was pretty much along
the lines of zap him with a spell, twat the guy while he's busy fighting
the law speaker etc. In the same way during the demos I did at Gencon along
with Martin & Simon the talk was still very games mechanics oriented
because it's all down to a 'bidding' system sort of thing. Personally I
didn't really get a 'feel' of the combat from it because it was just the
same as rolling against any other skill - (in fact I remember using my look
tall skill in combat) - and yet I also remember tense times in RQ where
I've felt my god, I've got to get at least a slash to a non leg location to
put this scorpion man down or I'm dead meat if/when that stinger hits me.
Reading through the above it's probably not too clear what I'm saying, but
the point that I'm trying to make is that it is possible to have a dull,
'rulesy' combat situation in HW (or any other 'speaking' game), and a
really dramatic and exciting time when you pull out that 01 and critical
the Broo Priest to the head. It seems to me that the more you can get
involved in the situation the better mental picture you conjure up which is
just as much, if not more, down to the quality of the GM & adventure than
whatever set of rules you happen to be using.
I can visualise a character desparately parrying while trying to get a
disrupt etc past a foe's POW or casting Fireblade or whatever using the RQ
rules better than an opposed 'bidding' role of Good with Sword against
defeat with spell situation where you gain AP's from your opponent.
All this probably means that I'll end up going back to playing RQ2 (with a
few tweaks for the more obvious faults) using the new HW books for
background/source material after playing HW for a few times to see whether
I can get that same kick out of HW after all.
All that said, however I may feel this way because when I first started
playing in Glorantha the magic was in the world rather than the game system
and now, all these years later, as I've got to know more & more about that
game world, the magic's diminished and diminished and I'm looking back
through rose tinted glasses(*).
Danny
* Being a member of the Hinglish Hempire I obviously empathise with the
poorly understood & unjustly hated Lunar empire & look down on those damned
Orlanthi who just won't allow themselves to be civilised. Bloody Celts.
One other thing, it being St George's day, how come we can't slag off the
Scots, Irish, Americans, French (and everyone else we've lost wars to) like
they can on their patron saint days? Mind you, having read Gibbon, St
George was a right tosser.
------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 13 Jun 2003 - 19:54:16 EEST