Hero Wars in Random Tactics Shocker. More Inside.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_yeats.ucc.ie>
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 00:52:30 +0100 (BST)


Fresh hostilities break out between the "Sun shines of out of" and "Is a load of old" camps, Hero Wars Arse-wise, in the avatars of Steve Lieb and Mikael Raaterova:
> Some people prefer roleplaying in which their characters actions are
> responses to the real world, versus a storytelling game the randomness of
> the real world is subordinate to dramatic action.

Wot? HW isn't random? I'll go melt down all my d20's, then. I don't get this at all. This sort of distinction seems to me to very much be in the eye of the partisan beholder -- both HW detractors and HW defenders seem to advance the proposition that it's Utterly Different a type of game from (say) RQ. Yes, there's a difference in there someplace, but I don't see how one can paint it in such hideously stark terms as either set of combatents do.

> But that's the point. (He should perhaps have said "numbers-lite vs.
> numbers-heavy".) I personally find plenty of suspense, excitement and
> drama in wondering "I have an 85% chance to hit, he has a pretty good
> parry, and I have to do 17 hp to him NOW, because in 4 SR his buddy's
> Killer-Spell-o-Death is going to hit me, and my POW of 6 won't hold up
> against his which must be at least 16."

That's a less arguable point. De gustibus non disputandum est. However, wondering this would seem quite evidently to be very different from 'roleplaying [...] responses to the real world', wouldn't you agree? Sure, there's a game-world situation in there, struggling to get out, but one would have exactly the same game-world dilemma (as opposed to game-stat dilemma) in a different game system.

> WHOA! Let me requote that: "combat situations shouldn't be an exercise in
> tactics and strategy" - HUH? Yes, I believe that is a /very/ good
> illustration of where we part company. (Shaking head....wow.)

A rather cheap shot, or as I'd more candidly have it in my idiolect, Taking The Piss. Roleplaying games have 'tactics and strategy' in them, sure, but what resemblance is there between (say) RQ3 'combat tactics' and the tactics of actual combat? HW will have rather simpler 'numbers tactics' (or Game Mechanics Attacks, as they're otherwise known), though certainly not none at all. There will certainly be the 'tactics' of determining what one's character does in the game-world, however that happens to be mediated by the game system. (Assuming one doesn't just ignore this side entirely, and simply 'play the game system', as one can do (with equal futility, I might add), in either game.)

Cheers,
Alex.


End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #531


Powered by hypermail