Feat descriptions...

From: Tim Ellis <tim_at_...>
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2000 21:57:05 +0100


Mikko writes
>
>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.
>

Hmm, at the system level, one god's magic *is* pretty much the same as any others, It is at the descriptive level that it differs.

Storm gods, Sun Gods and Darkness Gods could all cause blindness - at the system level, they all do the same thing, but descriptively the Sun God causes a blinding light to appear before you, the darkness god pulls a veil of darkness over your eyes while the storm god sends stinging winds and rain/hail into your face blinding you.

Some games like to build much of the "description" into the "system", but it is largely unnecessary IMO. (Eg, compare and contrast the gun rules in CoC with, say Twilight 2000).

That said, maybe the Ars Magica/Mage route does offer some compromise. In those games magic can be "improvised", yet some "set spells" are also known and learned. While I don't think a complete list of "rules" for feats is a good idea (for all the reasons given by everyone else), and I'm not necessarily sure a complete list of "descriptions" is much better - especially at the cost of other cool information....) I don't think there should be too much problem with providing some descriptions of feats which can be taken as a "standard". Indeed I'm guessing that his will happen as scenarios/adventures get published when the Writer needs to explain how a feat is used by a NPC (or as an example of a way around a problem, even...).

-- 
Tim Ellis

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