Re: Re: Feats and their Descriptions

From: Mikko Rintasaari <mikrin_at_...>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 01:40:09 +0300 (EET DST)


k> > So. I still claim that the authors did have a reason for each of the
> > feats they put in. What puzzles me is why the hell don't we get told the
> > meanings of the feats...
>
> I will give you advance warning then about She Guards Us. We are putting feats in that are
> deliberately designed to be ambiguous.

Doh! Why on earth? How does that increase our understanding of Glorantha?  

> I still see Sunset Leap as being open to interpretation. Does this
> mean that they player
> can leap across the country? ACross the tula? Across the creak? Or
> does it mean he can leap as high as the planet?

Ofcourse it's open to interpretation (and way too much in my opinion) but at least there's some explanation behind the feat aside from "'cause it souns cool"

> > > > Lightning sword:
> > > >
> > > > (What's this supposed to mean... a sword charged with lightning... a
> > > > bolt of lightning wielded as a sword... an enchantment that makes the
> > > > sword move lightning fast...)
> > >
> > > All of those sound plausible to me. The first might give an edge (to
> > > Close Combat), second would allow direct attacks using the feat, the
> > > third gives a bonus.
> >
> > That sucks. We are not playing scrabble. This is no way to run a
> > FRP. Either it's an adjective meaning "swift" or it refers to actual
> > crackling stormfire, and I want to know.
>

: Why does it suck?  Try using some imagination here.  You are FRPing
: so you must have some.
: We have used it in two different ways (the same person).  Yes his
: blade turned into a bolt
: of lightning and chopped things up like a light sabre. (When last we
: met, You were the
: Master.  Now I am the Master..zzzzzz)  He has also thrown it at a
: person light a lightning
: bolt (luckily it killed the person or he would have been without a
: sword).

Well those are both using a lightning bolt like a sword, and in a rather consistent manner. That's ok. It's just that if Hero Wars gives the feats as literary exercizes it won't give my gamer's a feel of belonging to a livin, breathing world, but rather of parcipating in a clever wordplay game.
  I don't like the fact that the feat's flexibility depend's on the ambiquity of the name, and different interpretations of the spesific words of english grammar. I'm all for creative uses of "control wind" and such likes, but the player must have a feeling that the feat deals with some spesific powers.

Knowing that the lightning sword brings down/conjures up a bolt of lightning you can wield as a sword is quite cool, and one can do creative things with it. But if it's all just a play of words and the player can just decide that now I'm using the word lightning to describe how fast the sword moves, and thus the feat makes my sword swings lightning fast, it's going so far as to be silly.

It's making the world into a very hazy and ambiquous place. I like playing in a hard reality, not in a fever dream.

If the same player later decides that he now turns his bronze broadsword into a bolt of lightning with the said feat and proceeds to throw that lightning at somebody...

The feats are reduced into a game of clever interpretations of words. Is this really the view of Glorantha we want to give the new players.  

:If you do not like using your imagination when you FRP then go play
:Rulemonster.  (I hit
:him with my short sword, using my left hand and he has scale
:mail.  Okay, table 14b-4L
:shows...wait!  I have a nick in my blade.  Oh, 14b-4L/5n is the correct
:table then).

Now you are rather nastily putting words into my mouth. If I didn't like using my imagination I wouldn't be playing and running RPG's almost every week for over 12 years. And I royally HATE rulemonster.  

Imagination and ambiquety isn't the same thing. We need at least basic quidelines, to give the players (and narrators) imagination something to work with. Othervice one could just as well go back to the draft versions "I hit him with 30 points of sunmagic)

> > > And it would stifle creativity. If the feat is "Cause Wound" pure and
> > > simple, you can bid what you want, describe it how you want, and use
> > > the contest results to see how well it worked.
> > >
> >
> > I'm afraid David that I feel the overwhelming flexibility that makes
> > all attack magic same as any other to be lessening creativity, not
> > adding to it. It will come down to (I hit him with 20AP of magic)
>
> Only if you elect to describe it that way. You should hear our
> Vingkotling using his movement magic and his spear magic. He has had
> magical earth spears leap out of the ground to impale attackers. He
> has hurled statues at them with ovement magic. He has distracted
> them with auto-fighting spears while teleporting behind them.

My players won't be fooled with just wordplay. If that description is just dressing poured over (I strike him with x AP of magic) they won't fall for it. They wan't their choises to have a real effect in the gameworld (and mechanics). IF any magic is pretty much the same as the other then the apparent richness of HW is just so much chaff to distract them from the reductionistic wiev of our beautiful Glorantha HW gives.

I love Glorantha, and have done so since the first time we met. I hope Hero Wars the best of luck, and have indeed done much here to promote the sales. I just think things may be getting over simplified now. Loosing the richness of the world to simplify gameplay.  

> When my storm voice attacks somebody with wind magic I usually do bid
> 10-20 AP. But I am slamming them into a wall with a gust of wind. I
> am lashing their face with icy wind and pellets, I am throwing them
> into the ceiling with whirlwind or I am sucking the breath out
> of their lungs with a vaccum.
>
> I don't know how you can find that this lessens creativity.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Wesley

As I said, me and my gamers enjoy richness and complexity. They won't be fooled by verbouse descriptions, if at the system level one god's magic becomes pretty much the same as any others.

  ---

To give you some idea how I run things. Me and almost all my fellow GM:s have stopped giving system info and character sheets to our gamers. The player get's as good and rich a description as the GM can give, but doesn't have to use his time worrying over hit % and hitpoints (or edges and AP:s), and at the same time they are getting the benefits of a solid and complex RPG system... hard reality, but the number crunching is hidden, done by the GM.

So... I do think I like creativity. And so do my players.

The gaming system with it's edges and AP:s is very much up front in Hero Wars... and it's so simplified one can't help noticing that the actual descriptions and such aren't important. What counts are the AP:s, edges and hero points.

So... I do think we at least need to give some descriptions or guidelines for the feats. If for nothing else then for the people who love Glorantha, but use a different game engine to play with. And with the old RQ'ers and Pendragon Pass etc. people, there's bound to quite a few of them.

        -Adept

"thinker, dreamer and adventurer"

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