>Val:
>Problem is that I didn't remember reading any descriptions where I
>could get a grip on how central and powerful a city god or tribal
>wyter is in a conflict.
>
>That's because the emphasis these days (in HQ) is on narrativism. At
>Tentacles Robin has been noted for saying that HQ is for story telling
>games and also words to the effect of: if you want gritty then you have
>new RQ. HQ encourages you to put the wyter/guardian in your game as a
>story device and refuses to quantify its power for that reason. It's
>the same for all story entities (except for that troubling Griffin on
>page 110 :)
I'm not sure this is the appropriate place for a debate on narrativism vs. simulation and whether HQ2 is or should be one or the other. I really don't see the two as unable to co-exist. Certainly labelling HQ as narrativist and RQ as simulationist is oversimplifying.
Personally I'm doing more story writing than role-playing in Glorantha these days. In that I use the HQ rules as a test of practicality - can I work out the contest? Are the results within the expected range or a fluke result? To do that I want a rough idea of how powerful different entities are.
Now that's a perfectly valid issue for discussion here and "whatever suits your story" isn't really a useful answer. Because in time you'll write another story involving the same or a similar entity and the story will want a different answer. Do that a few times and you damage the suspension of disbelief which makes for a good story.
>You will get an idea of what resistance to use when the guardian
>comes into a contest - because, hopefully, you will have some kind
>of write-up for your city. Did you see my post in this thread about
>this kind of thing?
I did. An alternative to "Best magical ability at X" as a way of explaining things is a good idea. But I hope there are some good examples with numbers attached. Not in an attempt to reduce the world to a set of numbers but so the results retain the feel of Glorantha.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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