RPG, High level skills, dwarven organisation

From: Kaervek <3112403_at_A2points.A2points.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 21:26:51 +0200

I love RPG because I think it allows players and GMs to embody other personnailities, in other worlds, with other laws. For me, it's boring to play a simple Conan-like or Xena-like PC (sorry for the fans). In my games (I'm often GM), PC are normal people, with different goals, cooperating for some time to learn, earn money, understand things answer their mystical interrogations, or just try to survive in a hostile world. It's very important to play a farmer afraid from fights, a sorceror who wants all to be clean, and a hunter in high desire of encountering as many people as he can. Starting with a warrior who only fights, and eventually drinks beer, seems boring to me. I love complex personnalities, not movie-like ones.
In RW, fighting is always dangerous, but fighting against 6 or 7 warriors at the same time is nearly impossible. Except for some really big heres. Glorantha is a land of heroes, more than RW, but I think being able to defeat 3 swordsmen with your not-very-very-experienced-PC is nonsense. In this way, RQ III rules are more accurate than HW ones. Of course, everyone to his taste.

On high skills :

IMO, it isn't good to top out, because no one is perfect, and what would a PC with the top skill do? Say ok, I'm the best, I can't do best, so let's say I'm perfect and no one can stop me. If something can stop him, then he'll say : what can I do? I can't be good enough to solve this problem, this is an unpassable obstacle. In my POV, this shouldn't arrive.
As I've read in the Digest (sorry can't remember who told it...), RQ is good til 100%, and OK til 200%. Normal rules are totally nonsense. Each one has to build its own rules like Supercritic success and Megacritic or maybe BIG BIG malus for very impressive actions like, for an iron diamond dwarf, hitting 6 times in a round a 3 inch target at 100 meters with an dwarven crossbow. I do know it looks like movie aciotn, just what I've said I dislike, but in this case, diamond dwarves have trained a thousand years or more, not 3 years in Robin's Hood village.
There should only be, IMHO, one or two iron diamond dwarves on (in?) Genertela, two on Jrustela and five on Slon, directing war projects and establishing defenses.

On dwarven system :

Richard said :

>At one extreme, non-apostate dwarves are just cogs in a machine. If this
>was the case throughout the machine-fixing project then:
>
>1) organisation would probably be fully distributed, rather than
>hierarchical.
>
>2) knowledge dissemination would be free flowing.
>
>The whole thing would work like a giant brain.

In fact, dwarves are just cogs in a machine. Alright. When you're using a tool, he isn't able to think. Dwarves are able to think and develop ideas, which helps them doing what they have to do. But a stone dwarf doesn't need any weapon knowledge to build a stone door for example. Teaching every dwarf every dwarven knowledge would a very, very long task, and it would be very dangerous : humans can be very destructive with a crossbow, imagine with guns. Dwarven secrets have to remain secrets.

Hierchachical organisation is a choice, IMO. With perfect dwarves (each order is followed at the letter) and a good decision center (Dicamonie in french, what's the name in english?), made of the best Mostali, it is very efficient. A fully distributed organisation would create the same problems as in a human structure : concurrence, fights, disorganization, etc...

Apostate dwarves want to be free, so their system isn't very hierarchical, and each dwarf can freely learn what he wants.

Spirit Lord, french My-number-of-english-words-isn't-very-big man

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