Re: Hero Wars system niggles

From: Simon Hibbs <simonh_at_msi-uk.com>
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 17:20:37 +0100


Pete Nash :

>But if you have a lot of rounds of bidding it makes it very difficult
to
>keep on roleplaying it. All of my players as soon as they became
>comfortable with the bidding system switched to doing all_or_nothing
>bids, because they couldn't think up any more fresh ideas for each
round.

I sympathise with this criticism, but I think it can be circumvented. I don't think the action point mechanism is any more grievously mechanical than hit points, MPs, armour points, strike ranks, etc. Once players become familiar with the system to the point where they have an intuitive feel for bidding I think they will naturaly slip back into roleplaying their characters and being descriptive again.

>If Robin is trying to model TV/book fiction how could the system handle
a >disgruntled (inexperienced) wife who simply plunges her fish knife into >her husbands belly and kills him in one shot?

Obviously she got bonuses on her success roll for being armed and surprising him, and she got a much better success than him for trebble or quadruple the action point exchange. In fact, a houswife successfuly killing him in one stab is rather unlikely. She's much more likely to have to chase him round a bit and inflict a series of nasty wounds on him. If she fails her first roll he might well be able to grab her arm, disarm her or even throw her to the ground. HW would have no trouble simulating this kind of situation.

>7) Plot points can easily be abused, especially in mass conflicts.
> .......This becomes horribly abusive if in a battle situation
>where the PC can bet all or nothing bids to kill each NPC without
>worrying about loosing. Very quickly one character can defeat an entire

>regiment...

This is extrapolated from a cut-down version of the full rulers, and limited playtesting. I think you'll find that in actual play the action point betting mechanism doesn't have as much of an effect on the odds of an outcome as you suppose. If I have 50 action points and you only have 15, but our success rolls are similar, then I'm at an advantage, but it's nowehere near as much as you seem to be suggesting. All it takes is for me to bet 20 points on a roll and lose, and you could be at a 35:30, 55:10 or even a 75:-10 action point advantage over me if you crit and I fail.

>Ok, you need to win the roll to have much of a chance, but only one
roll >can totaly change the ballance of power, thus maintaining suspense.
>8) In a similar vein, major NPC's shouldn't bother throwing chaff
>(weaker warriors, debaters etc.) at the players to soften them up,
because >in fact all that they are doing is bumping up the players action points and >making them stronger, rather than weaker.

Action points are not carried over between conflicts, which is evidently the case here if waves of warriors are being sent in. Each time they would be reset to their starting totals. I'd realy much rather field criticisms of the actual rules, rather than missconceptions of them.

>9) Because every conflict uses the same system resolution I think that
>there will be very little difference in the 'feel' of the magic
systems.

You could say exactly the same of skills in runequest, they're all just percentagees after all. It does seem that many of the magical keywords for the different cultures will be distinctive. The writeups of the magical effects in the playtest were practicaly nonexistent, and if there had been more info I wouldn't have had any time to read it anyway.

Simon Hibbs


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