Yeah, everyone knows that tactical thinking is anathema in HW. RQ mechanics
OTOH did a wonderful job in portraying what tactics works best in
*Glorantha*.
In fact, the sheer blandness of HW combats is a design feature. Players are
supposed to be so bored by combats that they resolve to resolve the
situation socially instead. Without tactical deliberation of course.
>In HW, a scorpion man will just have a "fight with sword and stinger"
>ability that will be piched against the character's bland "fight (with
>sword)" ability. If the scorpion man is better, he will likely win.
Actually, scorpion men have only a 'combat' ability, since you don't need any information about how they fight to resolve combats. You just roll your dice and whoever rolls better, wins. You can make statements of intent and plans and describe your action and stuff if you really want to, but that would be a waste of time since it really doesn't matter for the outcome of the contest.
>Unusual
>approaches are (AFAIK) limited to finding a skill that you can bring to bear
>in an unusual way, such as setting a booby trap with your "build things"
>ability. But that can be no better than using ranged combat, whereas in RQ a
>well-thought-out booby trap can flatten a runelord.
HW does indeed take a strong stand against unusual approaches. Mainly by limiting the choices of action available to characters. Booby traps are almost useless; they can at best do slight injury, but only if it's dramatically important.
Phillip has presented a quite accurate description of HW without even actually reading the game, not a mean feat at all.
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