> There's quite a bit, even within familiar settings. So a man with Run
> Fast 18W shouldn't ever be able to outrace a horse with a mere 8W,
> because it fails a credibility test. So how about a man riding a
> Griffon chasing a moonboat?
>
> Not that it's a new problem of course - we've had this ever since
> Anaxiel's Rooster, which is probably the single best argument in
> favour of never quoting any stats.
Lots of answers to this one already, but here goes...
The way I would resolve this is by pointing out the differences between what a horse does and what a person does. Horses don't Run, they Gallop and this is not a nitpicking distinction. The point is that a human Run ability and a horse's Gallop ability have distinct advantages and disadvantages.
For example, suppose the horse and man are trying to get to the other side of a house. The human may well be at a significant advantage because he can change direction round corners far faster, can move in much closer to the house and round the corners closer as well because he is smaller and so actualy is running a much shorter distance. Similarly the small size of a person means they can duck through shortcuts on routes that a horse can't take. In many other situations the horse will be at a big advantage.
The falacy in the argument is that a horse's movement ability is just the same as a persons, but they are not directly comparable in many situations. Traditional RPGs that simply give different animals different movement distances per round are crude and unrealistic in many situations, I just think this is a problem that needs to be ruled on a case-by-case basis and at least HeroQuest gives to game mechanical tools to allow you to come up with a satisfying way to run such a contest, even though it doesn't give you a pre-canned solution.
For the Griffon vs Moonboat situation, I don't see how Robin's answer can be improved on.
Best regards,
Simon Hibbs
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