My initial response when I played in the demo was; what an interesting and innovative conflict resolution system. It looks like Robin really has come up with a way to deal with the universal problem of how do you deal with skill levels that grow too big for the game. It very much had a nice feel to it and I like the way the detail is being abstracted out.
However I'm beginning to worry about some aspects of the rest of the system. Two things (possibly related); rules light and infinitely reusable magic.
The way rules light is being discussed in the context of HW makes me seriously wonder how useful the rules are actually going to be. Are they going to be yet another of those rule systems that says "here's the general idea of how things work" and then goes on to say "you now fill in the details for your game". I regard this as a serious cop out on the part of rules writers. Thankfully such games seem to die the death they deserve. Is this the way HW is going to be? People who don't want rules can easily throw them out. It's infinitely harder for us mundanes to invent rules to fill in the holes. Not all GMs are creative geniuses. You build a game that mundanes can play and you'll sell more of them.
When I GM a game I want to concentrate on the plot and characterisation. I don't want to waste what feeble creative juices I have inventing rules as well. I expect the rules to supply me with 90% of what I will ever need to use in the game. When I'm a player I want rules that are consistent every time they are needed rather than invented to suit the situation by the GM. It's often difficult to remember exactly how something was resolved last time but is is dead easy to spot it's different this time around.
RQ2 gave us this breadth of rules and made things consistently played. RQ3 failed in that it invented loads of new and unneccessary rule detail for some things then dropped some of the more broadly useful rules to make room for the detail.
Which way is HW moving. Is it dropping the detail AND the breadth?
My other concern is infinitely reusable magic. Since Convulsion I have finally remembered a scenario I would have liked to describe to Robin to see how HW would resolve it. The group I play with frequently finds themselves in situations where they must make a painful decision about whether to carry on with a course of action with ever decreasing magic resources or retreat and recover those precious resources.
An easy to describe example is a closely fought combat where no side seems to have the edge. The ability to heal those involved often determines how intensely the players can pursue their foes. Players suddenly realising they have to retreat because they can no longer heal themselves is something I would not like to lose from a game system. HW however seems to regard magic as something you can keep doing pretty much as long as you wish. Doesn't this mean that if players get themselves into this equal conflict situation the fight will now last until boredom sets in. Any one who goes down can be pulled out, healed, and thrown back in.
Am I miss-representing HW here?
Ross
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