>You did notice my paraphrase of Robin Laws statement whilst he was at
>Tentacles? (referring to HQ being designed to be used for story games?)
Yes.
>Yes, "whatever suits your story" is not useful but from a Sim point
>of view but to story game people it is of vital use. It is underpinning
>the necessity to move away from concrete definitions and allow story to
>come out of play, not the other way around. I'm sorry if this is a poor
>explanation - it's always a struggle to get these ideas laid out clearly
>without spending more time than I have available.
The point you're making is clear enough. My disagreement is with the idea that simulation and narrative gaming are so different that a rules system has to be one thing or another. While I have some preferance for a narrative style I don't take it to the extreme of distorting the world for a single story. The world is a constraint on the story but that makes it more interesting.
>"the story will want a different answer" means (I think) that there
>is a problem with the story, not the target numbers created for it.
With one of the stories - it may be the first one.
>Consistency in a game world is very like (making love to a beautiful
>woman. NO!) consistency in TV series. I hope that is self-explanitory.
I agree it's possible to get too hungup on consistancy and I'll happily explain away a lot of apparent inconsistancies. But there comes a point where the discrepancy is just too big to explain away and attempts to do so get silly. I appreciate there are several TV series which have become cults precisely because of this happening.
>Taking story into account when writing and running a game is not
>the same as running a story game. As far as I understand, Glorantha
>has always yearned for a story game system so that people can _use
>that system_ to _make story_. The HQ game system is _intended_ to
>directly make story (that's not to claim that it can't be moulded
>for other use).
I am not sure I understand this paragraph. I don't think a game system can "make story". At best it can facilitate the creative process.Certainly HQ is better than RQ at that and it may be that HQ2 is even better but from what I've seen it isn't that big an improvement.
>This is not intended to be judgemental or to harp on; it's just that
>when people from the two camps (sim/nar) discuss certain points it's
>a good idea to review certain areas of assumption.
I'm sorry I just don't think the academic split between sim/nar (not to forget gamist) styles is anything like as clear cut in reality.
>As David and Jeff have been saying: HQ2 (or, more specifically,
>the Gloranthan supplement to follow) is not designed to have stats
>printed in it (despite that troublesome Griffin on page 110 of HQ2!)
>- *everything* is supposed to be relative to the heroes ability
>ratings. A Gloranthan feel is not obtained from the numbers but from
>the setting itself.
I'm absolutely with you on not having detailed numbers for everything. Pages of stats are a waste of space unless you are going to run a game based exactly on a scenario.
However it is a lot easier to get over concepts of scale with numbers than words. And with magical abilities it is particularly important because we have no real world comparator. With Glorantha this applies even more because it doesn't follow the standard western fantasy model.
>Everyone's G will V and so numbers are always a really big bone
>of contention.
And they will vary even more if no numbers are published. Making it more difficult for GMs and players from different groups to reconcile their ideas.
To illustrate the problem. If the first story a group starts is about how a trollkin overthrew the Emperor of Dara Happa and a bunch of starting characters rescue the day. That story defines that group's Glorantha and immediately creates a problem of what next?
I know that's an extreme example but unfamiliarity with the world will create that sort of problem.
>I can say that in all my years of running games I
>have relied on and pined after numbers published by Chaosium-Issaries-
>.... Up until the release of HQ/W... after that, I've never been able
>to use any of them. I think I can say with some confidence that we will
>be seeing greatly fewer numbers in Gloranthan publications (although I
>hope we will still have indexes and contents!! :P )
>Finally, the narrative approach to creating a guardian isn't meant
>as an alternative to the "best magical ability" as a way of explaining
>things. That would be like saying the narrative approach to _hero_
>creation is an alternative to having only broad abilities (sneak, scan,
>dirty tricks). Alternative is not the word, honestly. The narrative
>approach is intended to give the narrator a way to come up with the
>thing's abilities etc without having to wing it and that fits nicely
>with the use of the pass/fail cycle which is so central and crucial to
>HQ2.
I wasn't seeing it as an alternative way of explaining anything. Just as an alternative way of determining it's abilities and thereby how to calculate the resistance to the PCs actions. It's the way I would do it under HQ1 but having done the narrative I would apply numbers based on the scale in the rulebook. The story would then be how the heros exploited the weaknesses of the guardian to beat it. Not how they took on its strongest ability and won.
As you might have gathered I've only glanced through the version released at Continuum so I haven't a clear understanding of how different it is.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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