From: robmh@aol.com
Date: Mon 11 Apr 1994 - 05:26:17 EEST
I'm not up to date reading the Daily but I'll comment on a few of the things
I've noticed while picking it up. Apologies if I'm Redundant of anyone.
Comments on others' ideas when I've caught up.
I always thought that part of the fun of Trollball was that it was such a successful translation of something that would be ordinarily anachronistic, American football. I wouldn't enjoy placing other earth games into Glorantha unless they were analagously translated.
The Trollball rules themselves are lame. Football simulations aren't easy to engineer. Trollball's blend of skirmish wargaming and would-be sports gaming is fun to read, but it doesn't play very well. Anyone who has greatly enjoyed the game should contradict me, but I think most of the rules for moving the ball (Trollkin) are lame in the extreme, particulary the punting and passing rules.
I doubt anyone really cares about Trollball RQ rules, but if I were going to rewrite them I'd move to a card-based system drawing from Avalon Hill games such as Up Front, Pro Wrestling and Enemy in Sight. Instead of trying to account for every second of the game, skirmish wargame style, I'd use some abstraction and think of the game as capturing the scenes that would fit on the highlight film. That's more playable anyway.
Tangent: I'm much more interested in modelling the Godwar with a system similar to Up Front's mix of counters, unit cards, and the combination action/results deck (with no game map....). In the Gloranthan version, I'd use the actual cards, layed out as tiles, to create an ever-changing game map.
Back to Troll Ball: I've always wondered why female trolls don't seem to play Troll Ball. My favorite answer is that the all-time champion Trollball team is a completely female team, a team of Mistress Race heroines who defeated the male heroes in an all-out match back in the Darktime. Since then, female Trolls don't have to prove themselves by playing Troll Ball, it's the males who have to show they have what it takes to give the Ur-Uz Champions a proper match. My concept is that one particular type of Troll Heroquesting is the Troll Ball path, in which male trolls try to get back into the Darktime and compete against the Champions alongside the male heroes. Often as not these Heroquesters wind up portraying the Ball. If Heroquesting males ever manage to tip the scales in the Heroes favor, maybe females will have to start playing Troll Ball again, but among Mistress Race Trolls the expression "When the males win the Match Game...." to mean a time that will never come. Better jargon for this idea, and a good name for the female champions will be cheerfully accepted.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:33:37 EEST