RuneQuest! Booo! Hisss! etc....

From: Jonas Schiött <jonas.schiott_at_...>
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 19:02:24 +0200


David Cake:
> Yep. Jonas wants RQ attack/defend exchanges.

Quite apart from the fact that this is an oversimplification of my opinions...

It strikes me as odd that there's such a strong anti-RQ sentiment on this list. Did all you people really hate that game so intensely during the years you were forced to endure it? Or is it that you loved it dearly, but now it's gone forever and the separation trauma is causing a reverse reaction?

Perhaps you don't want to pollute this brand new, revolutionary gaming system we call Hero Wars with concepts from other, older gaming systems? Nah, that can't be it. Because the combat resolution that David and others are putting forth is copped directly from Pendragon.

I dunno, maybe Pendragon is regarded as 'in', while RQ is 'out'? ('på' och 'av' för alla er svenskar) Or maybe you've been playing PDP and didn't really want to change systems at all...

BTW, this:
>I find the idea that if the attacker loses in an exchange
>(which happens very often), they stumble etc

is another oversimplification of my views. I've already gone into this in another post, but once more for emphasis: a successful defense means that you've improved your tactical situation, and in describing exactly how this came about this you can exercise your imagination and narrative skills to your heart's content.

But there are good rules-mechanical reasons for not giving the defender his weapon's offensive edge on a defense. For instance, there would actually be more calculations involved than if you did it my way. And if you're attacking multiple opponents who are wielding different weapons and lose, which of their edges do you apply? However you decide, that's another calculation. All of them trivial, to be sure, but they take a couple of seconds each and more importantly require you to make decisions that could take longer. Combats drag on enough as it is. There's also the issue with 'excessive' armor (and an identical one with weapons) that I mentioned in my last post.

Besides, if both parties in every exchange are attacking, why aren't both bidding? Hey, why are there separate exchanges at all? Why not roll for everything as one big contest?

The answer to that last question is of course that you can if you want to. HW provides several levels of detail that you can choose between for each test. In a sense, what David, Henrix and Wulf are doing is putting a limit on how detailed you're allowed to get. They're saying that the subdivision of a contest into manageable chunks can only go so far before it becomes too 'mechanical' (I smell a closet aldryami) or 'RQ-like' (Shock! Horror!).

It's not that I desperately want to describe combat in any particular way. I'm trying to _first_ find an interpretation of the rules that's balanced to my satisfaction and _then_ look at how the numbers can be translated into descriptive language without absurdity arising.



Jonas Schiött
Göteborg

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