I didn't get any major negative feedback, not did Scott, (from what I remeber, anyway), so we must have done a passable job.
The opposed success system is used for exerything, including arguing, magic, and combat, which vastly simplifies the mechanics. The basic mechanic is that you you are betting a number of points that you will get a better result than your opponent. Exactly how many points is related to your description of what the character is doing. If it is something daring and dramatic it should have a large number of points bet on it. The contest ends when one opponent is at zero or less. At negative fourty points you have lost in some sort of vastly humilating way (if a contest), or are dead (if in combat).
The number of points gained or loss can be multiplied by the results of the contest, but if everyone is very laid back and just offers up a few points no one will get seriously hurt. But PCs (and major NPCs) can bet more points than they have. For example, if you are losing a drinking contest you can decide to do something outragous (like drink half the keg) in the hopes that you will get lucky and your opponent will fail. If you fail you will end up somewhat humilitated, as you will end up with a negative result.
The contest is also not a zero-sum game. If everyone succeeds equally they both get (or lose) the points, or one can lose twice the points that were wagered. In a major combat this can result in people hauving hundreds of points available, which makes it decribing what they are doing hard for me. (Is spending 60 points [when you have 20 points] and risking your life on one shot similar to doing the same 60 point action when you have 200 points available? But it is the design process for a reason.)
A fundamental idea is that even starting PCs are important people who are very good, so they automatically get an extra level of success over the vast majority of NPCs. (Not the ones who they are supposed to fight, but against average people) The disadvantage of this is that the players need to have a fairly good understanding of the world. That is what the background books are for, so hopefully they will provide enough to make this work.
My preference has always been to build characters as part of a cooperative process between the player and GM, so the Hero Wars cration scheme seems quite acceptable. I also prefer to have characters who are fairly skilled, so the game looks good from that point of view.
Those people who want to run PCs who are basically unskilled can do it with this game, but exactly how well it will work is unclear. People who want highly detailed combat resolution will not really like this system. But, as a basically simple system it can be made more complex without destroying it. Trying to make a basically complex system easy and quick is much harder, at least for me.
Robin said that, as currently conceived, armor and weapons didn't matter. I don't think I could run it that way. But that is fairly easy to fix. Missle combat also seems to be a bit of problem, as it appears nearly impossible to stop someone before they reach hand-to-hand range, no matter what weapon they are using or what weapon you are using.
But the design was going to be worked over right after the con, so it may have been sigificantly changed by now.
But I found that being a demon and helping to destroy the entire Grazer tribe was a blast. "Them horse fed-Grazer people were good eating. . ."
Kevin
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