Hero Wars takes a different approach to combat than games like RuneQuest, Pendragon, or Star Wars. In these three, each dice roll maps more or less to some real world event. I make a dice roll which represents shooting my blaster, and depending on the results, the enemy is vaporized. (Whether this is a automatic weapons roll or a series of thrusts and feints doesn't really matter, that's an abstraction of detail.) Hero Wars combat doesn't do this. You cannot point to a particular die roll and say that it represents your sword swing, and that because you rolled well the enemy took a wound. It doesn't attempt to simulate, however abstractly, the processes of the modelled world. You are encouraged to map the game's internal states back to the simulated world, but this isn't necessary (or always easy). In traditional games, the game's state does map pretty well to the simulated world (you're down 3 HP in your left arm -> you have been wounded in your left arm). In the current Hero Wars draft, knowing that I have 40 AP and you have 30 does suggest that I have an advantage, but that's all it says. (And we both have an advantage over where we started!)
Every game attempts to simulate a world and a flavor, and are considered more accurate depending on the results. (When they fail to have reasonable outcomes, they end up in Murphy's Rules.) Most games do this by abstracting the processes by which the world works. Hero Wars does not. This takes some getting used to, but I believe it does work.
> I just don't see the value or purpose of characterising its differences
> from RQ, Pendragon (etc) in such jargonified, and apparently considerably
> overstated, terms.
I won't argue terminology, but in the hands of a GM it's a rather different tool than previous games. The distinction is sometimes important -- and most noticable when it comes to combat.
I think this discussion shows the lack of merit of talking about the game system before it's widely available, and will cease with this attempt at a clarification.
Nils Weinander wondered
> Has anyone does any work fleshing out the Wind Children?
I assume you have RQ Vikings (an odd source, I admit!) and that issue of Different Worlds?
David Dunham <mailto:dunham_at_pensee.com> Glorantha/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html> Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein
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