> It's great to hear that David Hall has been given responsibility
> for the development of G:tG.
Indeed it is.
> Game design has advanced a lot since Pendragon appeared,
> never mind RQ.
I would say quite the opposite, actually, at least from the standpoint of game mechanics. Games like Storyteller suffer from an appalling lack of consistency where mechanics are involved, and each new supplement adds yet another layer of needless complexity to an already confusing jumble of ideas appropriated from other games.
As far as the atmosphere invoked, however, they have improved since the early days of RQ. Pendragon has always been state-of-the-art in that respect, and G:tG shouldl inherit that.
> I hope G:tG retains Pendragon's elegant simplicity and neat
> bells & whistles like quick, descriptive combat and personality
> traits.
Judging from what I have heard from Greg himself, this is what Chaosium will be striving for. Of course, I fully expect David Hall will add nuances that go beyond a mere port of Pendragon mechanics to a Gloranthan setting.
> OTOH it would be nice if G:tG's mechanics were state oif the
> art. [snip] As a fan of powerful minimalist rules I would favour
> some sort of open-ended, difficulty based mechanic a la
> Shadowrun/Vampire.
Please God, no! I was involved in the original playtests of Vampire, and few, if any, of the original problems concerning the probability skews inherent in the system have ever been acknowledged by White Wolf, let alone changed. If you are going to mention a difficulty-based system, at least pick one that has been marginally well thought-out, like ARIA.
> The GM chooses the die with which the player makes the test,
> any die. A really easy test would be made using a d3 or d4. An
> extremely challenging action might require a success on a d20,
> d30 or d100.
I hate to point this out, but that is the exact mechanic used by Avalon Hill's incredible flop, Tales From The Floating Vagabond. Being cutesy and catering to the "weird dice" craze did nothing except doom what might have otherwise been an amusing game. I think, as an approach to serious rules design, consistency in the dice used and the protocols and probability curves involved with dice-rolling are one of the first sign of a solid and playable game system.
'Nuff said!
Michael Schwartz
gbaji_at_aol.com
End of Glorantha Digest V3 #174
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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