> I love that about your system, and it's why I'd rather throw
>myself into Hero Wars without thinking about all those pages of stats that
>we'd have to deal with for RQ heroes (stats for powerful dudes and dudesses
>in Strangers in Prax and Lords of Terror come to mind)... but it's DIFFICULT
>because I don't know what to do with hundreds of unrelated skills feats etc.
The problem here is that the long form character keywords, the element of the design meant to both address the above concern and make the game accessible to newcomers, have yet to see print. I'm sure Greg has very good reasons for deciding to print the books in a different order than the plan originally called for, but I can't help wishing that we had a player's book and regional book to go with the core rules. I agree that the game would be much more accessible if we had Thunder Rebels now.
To restate something I said earlier, perhaps before you joined the list: I have no objection to slightly lengthier, more obvious descriptions of particular feats do. ("Sunset Leap" takes the cool and ambiguous reference idea a step further than I would have done myself. I originally conceived of it as applying only to ambiguous references invented by the player, not by authors of rules material. Greg's tricksterish cojones are obviously functioning at a higher level than my own.)
What does strike me as fundamentally opposed to what HW is all about is the suggestion that we should have traditional spell descriptions for each feat that nail down a solitary, specific thing that each does. I'd also start to get concerned if more than a handful of them provided special game mechanics.
Nor do I have any objection to expanded examples, either in a hypothetical Hero Wars Companion book or on web sites. (Though it would be good to have non-combat examples as well as stuff on archery, berserking, and so forth.) As to why they aren't in HW itself, well, word count restrictions are a harsh mistress. Speaking in general terms, examples are often the first thing to get the chop when space-hungry editors go looking for easy cuts. Their importance as teaching tools is often underrated. I look forward to the day when gamers will buy core RPG books that are 400 pages long and cost $75. Until then, compromise with reality is a feature of life. (Or so says a guy presently searching for things to cut from the MS for his current project.)
What should have been cut to make room for your hypothetical Chapter Eleven?
Take care >>> Robin
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