Alex F says:
>That HW won't appeal much to the Wargamer-aspected
>chap on the four-fold roleplayer scheme seems quite likely;
To paraphrase Slartibartfast, "I know nothing of this fourfold role-player scheme of which you speak, Earthman" and little more of Hero Wars I might add, but as a roleplayer who is more often a wargamer these days (when the kids allow) I think wargamers will accept more abstraction than you might expect!
Take for example Wargames Research Group (if you can get past the, usually insufferably conceited, designers' notes) who are best known for their rules for ancient battles:
The typical WRG mechanism for resolving a round of combat has gone from "cross-index-attackers'-weapon- type-with-defenders'-troop-type-and-get-a-factor-apply-
half-a-dozen-tactical-factors-and-a-random-factor- derived-from-a-die-roll-then-go-to-a-table-and-cross- index-the-resulting-factor-with-the-number-of-figures-attacking-and-the-result-is-the-number-of-men-(note-men-not-figures!)- killed" to something more like "roll-a-die-for-each-side- add-a-couple of factors-highest-wins"! The art is to appreciate what "wins" means in a particular case!
The Status Point mechanism sounds very like the "D" marker used in many modern wargames rules to reflect all the imponderable causes of disruption to a military unit - casualties, ammunition supply, loss of cohesion, and the fog of war!
Dragging this back to the case in point - I think Hero Wars may be less of a leap for "wargamer-role-players" than for others - if HW combats are simpler and quicker you can have more combats in a given session!
Richard Crawley
(look - still no full stops!)
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