A cynic would say, by turning it into a _series_ of Orate rolls. Now, game-mechanically that is indeed an improvement, and one I applaud, but the real drama of such situations comes from roleplaying it, and rash application of these rules could actually diminish that. In the HW demo game I played in, the "court scene" turned into very much a group melee by means of Law ability and the like, which is of course in the artificial situation of a rules-teaching situation (which should be said too of the bun-fight caused by That Table).
> As for the
> combat... I say get it over with as soon as possible. It serves only
> to slow down the action (plot-wise). There are tons of times in my
> games where the plot was cruising along at an exciting clip, and then
> we bogged down for two weeks while the party whacked on some broos.
Perhaps the point this makes is: each situation should be resolved in an amount of detail appropriate to its (dramatic) importance. Which is what HW tries to do, though doubtless imperfectly, if you think how it treats combat is _not_ sufficiently "dramatic".
Slainte,
Alex.
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