Re: DnD4e to HQ2 (was Greetings)

From: Jeff <richaje_at_...>
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:59:26 -0000

> You can legitimately say "I don't care where
> we are in the pass-fail cycle, that's going to be difficult" (and
> published scenarios often do exactly this), but that's not the same as
> saying "I don't care how good the characters are, climbing this wall has
> a difficulty of 10W", which the rules do not encourage, or, frankly,
> need to encourage.

In any game, the difficulty of climbing a wall really only matters based on how important an obstacle the Narrator *wants* that wall to be. If the players say, "we want to get into the Big Rubble by climbing over the Wall", the Narrator could decide that it is Very Hard or Nearly Impossible - thereby making the wall a Major Obstacle (and one the players may well fail to overcome). Climbing over the wall may well be the most dramatic element of the sessions.

On the other hand, if the Narrator really doesn't care how the players get into the Rubble since the focus is really all about adventuring in Blind King's Hill, she may just wave her hands and say, "You get into the Rubble and are approaching Blind King's Hill."

Most game systems did this on the sly. We were supposed to roll Climb with all sorts of modifiers a dozen times to get into the Big Rubble. Maybe we did that once, but then it got boring - and the GM just waved his hands and we were in. HQ2 just legitimizes and formalizes what we were already doing.

Jeff