The problem is that the process is what the character experiences directly, and *from* the processes are derived the nature of the encounter, etc. If I want to experience what the character experiences (and that indeed is the focus of much roleplaying, rather than the creation of stories), Hero Wars does not allow that, but rather requires me to consciously author those experiences to retroactively justify the results given to me by the rules.
>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.
I resist limiting my roleplaying to the narrow constraints of standard narrative forms, since it is precisely those aspects of roleplaying that are unlike drama and film that inspire me to roleplay, rather than, say, rent "Wing Chun" or "Peking Opera Blues". It is also worth noting that pretty much every roleplaying game that consciously emulates film has been a marginal success at best, if not a complete failure, commercially at least.
>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:
>
> -- lingering pain from a firm blow or a wrenched muscle;
> -- poor position due to knockback or uncertain footing;
> -- growing fatigue from the unrelenting press of combat;
> -- morale loss due to self-doubt or opponent's prowess.
>
>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.
Unfortunately, I see this as going from describinig one or two of these to describing none of them, and rather than allowing description (which has of course never been forbidden), it instead offers no concrete foundation on which to base description other than numbers that have no specific meaning (status points). Moreover, the justification for limiting player knowledge of the precise degree of woundedness or fatigue does not in my mind overcome the consideration that limited bandwidth already gives the player far less knowledge of the character's situation than the character would have, and that it is desirable to give the player as much knowledge from which to work as is feasible in order to compensate for the limited bandwidth. Further abstraction further removes the player from the character's situation, and diminishes the ability of the player to identify with the character's state of mind (I draw this conclusion from my own experiences with game systems of varying degrees of abstraction).
>Michael Schwartz mschwartz_at_mindspring.com Ann Arbor, MI USA
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Doesn't the fact that there are *exactly* 50 states seem a little suspicious?
George W. Harris gharris_at_mindspring.com ------------------------------
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