Instead we have a goal: "I want to hurt the spy following me on the streets below and all I have is this billiard ball." And then you have results from Complete Failure to Marginal win/loss to Complete Success.
So you might hit him right on the head, you might miss him directly but cut him with shrapnel as the ball explodes on the sidewalk, or perhaps miss him and hit the windshield of a passing police car.
Trying to break down the action of Heroquest into combat rounds where each action is a resistance roll is only approached in extended contests. Usually you just try to get to the overall result of the interaction and then the GM describes (to the detail level that interests her) the play-by-play that led to that result. The whole interplay of combat is wrapped up in one roll, unless it is the big climatic challenge.
Thus, you usually don't even need the backup of simulation numbers. HQ2 produces results that are broader than the one-action-one-result determination of simulation games.
One challenge in play, especially with players coming from a simulation game background, is to ask "why are you throwing the billiard ball at the spy? What will that eventually accomplish?" This is a great tool for getting out of the round-by-round mindset and up to the narrative level of "how will this scene be resolved?"
--Todd
On Wed, Dec 23, 2009 at 8:46 AM, Hal <hal_bowman1_at_...> wrote:
>
>
> I really like the HQ rules so far, though I have questions. One comment I
> would make, though, is that the mechanics sort of outsource simulation to
> the narrator. If a player finds a luger with a full magazine and wants to
> shoot enemies, it's up to the GM to know how many shots he can take. It's up
> to the GM to know if an archer's attempt to shoot an arrow 400 m straight up
> passes a credibility test, or how nasty it is to be hit with a billiard ball
> dropped from five stories, etc. In simulationist games such things are often
> baked into the rules or into tables of stats. To decide how tough or
> impossible something is, I need to know or look it up myself. This is not a
> bad thing in today's search engine enabled environment.
>
> I often ignored those sorts of stats, but having them as a backup was nice.
>
>
>
>
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