Re: Demo advice

From: Thomas McVey <tmcvey_at_...>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2000 10:28:24 -0800

hw-rules_at_egroups.com wrote:

>
>
> Message: 12
> Date: Wed, Apr 19 2000 11:16:21 GMT+1100
> From: Rex Bean <rexabean_at_...>
> Subject: Demo advice
>
> G'day all,
>
> I am about to run the Black Spear demo at a local Convention over Easter. I would welcome any advice on how to ease new people (and old RQ hacks) into Hero Wars.
>

>
> Also, someone also pointed out that Hero Wars should be demoed canonically at conventions. So help me teach a system that in the one go I have given it seemed to be slow and cumbersome (an unfair statement). I would like some advice to help stop people getting bogged down on the maths (as a physicist I find the numbers and probability easy but all my arts & humanities friends get really twisted into knots).

When I demoed the game at Dundracon, I found that the extended contests went pretty smoothly. I didn't allow the players to declare their bids numerically. I insisted they tell me *what* they were doing, and then figured out what their AP bid was based on how heroic/cowardly/smart/dumb their action was.

However, the great thing about HW is that you now have an easy and flexible way of modelling non-combat tests and skills tries. You'll like it. So will your players, after the first few contests when you get used to the system.

But it is heavy on the role-playing element. So I'd advise using the 100-word description character creation system, to get the players into the swing of things.

When I ran a demo of HW, one of the players character histories was that he was a Humakti based by Telmori. So, instead of the "Grain Thief" I ran the "Hound Tower", where the player's are defending a stead against weird hounds (who are shapeshifters). So, when the players find out the Hounds are shapeshifters, the Humakti threatens to kill the rest of the party. So, the Chalana Arroy character tried a "somg of peace", criticaled, and the players got near enough that they were able to persuade the shapeshifters to move on to another place. So everybody was happy.

A rather routine "kill da nasty bad guys" scenario became pretty interesting, all because of the system encourages characters who are more than just numbers on paper.

Tom

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