>>> It makes no sense to have the grand oration to sway the clan in >>> council be reduced to one "orate" roll. HW fixes this.
>> Does it fix it for the player who has poor oratory, who is playing >> a character with excellent oratory?
> That's the crux of the matter: Some people who advocate more freeform
> roleplaying don't seem to realise that we're not all Oscar Wilde able
> to drop dry scathing wit off our tongues at a moments notice. However,
> a lot of us play adventurers that can, hence the Oratory skill.
You don't need to be an Orator to roll your Orate skill, any more than you need to be a martial artist to roll your Martial Arts skill.
The *real* crux of the matter is this: Hero Wars has a system for resolving contests, conflicts, combats, and other forms of disputed resolution which can all be run using *exactly* the same mechanics, whatever form the contest may take.
Take an example: in a scenario, the players are meant to force their way into the Malani stead, confront the evil King of the Malani, and browbeat him into freeing their companions.
In RuneQuest, the fight with the Malani guards could take several hours to resolve, using fatigue points and fumble tables and battle magics and lord knows what else. The confrontation itself -- the dramatic focus of the scenario -- would then be either role-played ("We're not all Oscar Wilde") or roll-played ("Whoops! Picked a bad time to fumble").
In Hero Wars, the fight could be treated as an utterly trivial distraction (if desired by the GM: say, simple/unopposed combat skill rolls to succeed) or as a full-blown contested resolution (again, if that's what the GM wants: say, if the Malani Champion was a known personal foe of Our Heroes). The confrontation itself would then be resolved as any other contest: player characters with appropriate abilities, engaging in a full-blown contested resolution.
Do you have to be Wilde (or Shakespeare, or Aeschylus?) to run a rhetorical contest? Not at all: instead of delivering your speech verbatim, you need only say what your character is doing. "I mock the meagre hospitality he has offered our kinsmen" -- "I shame him with accounts of Orlanth's own actions in Godtime" -- "I cite the many ancient laws that he has broken by his actions" -- "I satirise him"
You don't need to be able to actually *do* this, any more than you need to be a burly muscle-bound bruiser wielding a lump of metal with practiced skill to participate in a combat scene. ("I aim at his head" -- "I strike to disarm" -- "I parry the one on the left, and cast Disrupt"). Or do the more combat-intensive gamers on this list dispute that contention too?
Nick
:::: web: <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nick_Brooke>
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