> However, I now have the chance of an evening slot
> without this player, but his complaints have reached
> the ears of several potential players. One
> actually looked up augments in HeroQuest to
> understand L's point, and inform me the issue is a
> widely percieved one, with some people favouring a
> cap, others not???
>
> We all
> like simulationism/crunch, and so games which
> feature those sort of rules are fine.
>
> What si an issue is how to introduce people so they
> enjoy, and thansk very much for all the good advice.
Part of the problem, I think, is that HQ as presented in the book hovers uneasily between gamism (I'm not going to call it "powergaming", because that's slightly different) and story-telling. I've run into this before, and had problems with it.
When we meet a new game, we tend to play the "game" that's presented to us. HQ starts off saying it's about storytelling: fine. But the first challenge presented to us is "given a limit of 100 words and this many points, build a character". OK. Given that those limits exist, it seems obvious that the challenge we're intended to concentrate on is how to make most effective use of those points and words. This isn't the game I thought we were here to play, but fine, if it's a prerequisite, I'll play it, and play to win. Likewise in contests, the challenge presented by the rules is "choose the right skills and augments to get a higher total number than the opposition". Again, not the game I wanted to play, but if that's what's required, I'll switch out of storytelling mode (with a painful jolt, in my case), play it to win, then switch back.
Now, if you're playing the numbers game to win, HQ is ridiculously easy to wreck. Your player is quite right there. That's why some people recommend a limit of 3 augments, and so on: you still get the numbers game to play, as it seems all your group are used to and one actively enjoys, but the constraints are tighter, and pushing the boundaries gives more reasonable results. Tighten up those constraints, and you may well be able to have your player join in with the rest.
The other way of changing things is to set things up so that "beat the numbers" is NOT the game you're playing, and no-one's likely to be misled into thinking it is. Greg's comment about presenting them with a blank piece of paper as a character sheet is amove in that direction. The Swords character generation "system", where they describe the character they want in terms of how much better or worse it is at things compared to others, and I assign numbers based on that, is another. I say the numbers on the sheet are "descriptive rather than prescriptive" - there are no limits, the numbers are just there for purposes of comparison.
When it comes to contests, and you still need the dice, what I do is make it clear from the start that the opposition number is "whatever you lot can get from normal boring skills and augments, plus a mastery". Or minus a mastery: but it's always comparitive. If they want to spend hours adding boring numbers, that's fine (and less disruptive PBeM than F2F), but it has no effect at all on their chances of winning, and they know it. If they come up with a radically new approach, or dramatically interesting augments, that's another matter. So, the game is not "beat the numbers", but "be inventive and dramatic", and I'm explicit about it. Watching them and their magical swords try to fight gorp (immune to sharp edges and most magic) was rather fun, and involved the promotion of Nameless Guard 6 to an interesting nomad with fire magic.
It's worth your while thinking about this, and discussing it with your existing players, because it sounds as if they'll very easily be sucked into the "beat the numbers" game simply because that's what they're used to.
Incidentally, if you do have any real powergamers, the ones who want to start by running a kingdom or an army, HQ is GOOD at that!
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