>Damn right! Keep doing the experiment until it gives you the
>right result! That's the scientific method!
ROFL! So much for the primacy of empirical truths. Don't let this get out to the general public, Michael, lest it rock the very foundation of our trust in science and centralized government! ;)
>For what it's worth, I couldn't get any excitement and tension
>out of the mechanic because it didn't relate to anything. There
>were just these damn numbers which one second might relate to
>position and another to wounds and the next to a pretty but not
>very useful magic effect...
It relates to the overall scene at hand. The actions of the characters, viewed against the backdrop of the scene details... nature of the encounter, goals and abilities of supporting cast, etc... are the focus of the HERO WARS rules, not the processes by which those actions occur. The processes are up to the game moderator and the players to explain, as necessary for enjoyment, dramatic appropriateness and suspense.
In theatre and film, the processes are not important to the play though they might be to the actors and audience. Shakespeare does not explain the nuances of each attack MacDuff makes, nor each defense Macbeth puts forth. The "rules" of the play do not require those. Instead, the precise choice of detail is left to interpretation by the director and players to suit their style.
>Over all a total lack of concrete realisation of what was going
>on. I need concrete knowledge about the situation the characters
>find themselves in to allow my players to grasp the scene with
>their minds and become excited by it.
The key is to visualize. RuneQuest's mechanics grew from the authors' experiences in the Society for Creative Anachronism. The processes behind those mechanics *can* be modeled by HERO WARS, not through the rules but via description of the actions and outcomes of those actions. Yes, there is no "one specific blow = one specific wound" paradigm.
Central to HERO WARS is the concept that Status Points represent *any* fluctuation in the capacity of characters to continue in a conflict. Consider these descriptions for specific losses of Status Points in combat:
In RQ3, only the middle two are addressed, and RQ2 only addresses the second. Both do so by modeling the processes in the rules. HERO WARS does not create rules models, but allows you as game moderator to describe the *detail* without worrying about additional rules. How many people know *precisely* to what degree they are wounded or fatigued? Simple adrenaline often carries combatants beyond the point where they would *normally* succumb to exhaustion and/or injury.
Yes, the final results are in flux until the conflict is concluded: that is what I like to describe as the "it-ain't-over-'til-the-fat-lady-sings approach" to suspense.
>I'm going to have to write House Rules when Hero Wars comes out and
>I'm not a rules maven, I'm not, I'm not...
You may discover that you don't need to write additional rules, as long you *visualize* the processes involved in the scene. With your theatre background, I'm surprised that you have found difficulty interpreting HERO WARS contests. Think it through as if you were blocking scenes in a play, and focus on *describing the outcomes* of character actions against the context of the setting, rather than *modeling the processes*.
Michael Schwartz mschwartz_at_mindspring.com Ann Arbor, MI USA
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