Eric Rowe:
>I currently expect (and could easily be wrong) that
>there will be no Pure scenario products for HW. They don't sell for
>exactly the problem that not everyone plays at the same level that you
>mention. What will work is background books with scenario ideas and
>example scenarios. It is a lot less time consuming to put together a HW
>scenario than a RQ one.
While I imagine it will be just as difficult to write good scenarios for HW
as it was for RQ, surely the main difference is the amount of space
required in a publication, with HW stats able to convey characters and NPCs
vividly with a minimum of space and effort (ie. 3 pages of someone like
'Onslaught' in RQ distilled down to a keyword or three in HW). So surely
this adds up to *more* room for scenario-type material in the proposed
products? Like Mike Mittmann sez:
>It's not that I need the character sheets for everyone, What I need are
>all of the little quirks that are not related to the main story line,
>for instance in "Melisande's Hand" the information on who
>grabbed extra apples, who attempted to cheat on the horse race, that
>the ogre showed up to the wrestling match naked, all of the little
>gems that make the scenario not just a plot outline.
Saying all this is going to go up on the web site "for free" sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me. To my mind, it was the scenarios in such great packs as 'Borderlands' and 'Griffin Mountain' that made them so great, complementing the source material beautifully and making them so evocative, so memorable, so playable (and so collectable!), even today.
However, Eric confidently envisages:
>I also expect to see loads and loads of free
>scenarios available from Issaries off their web site covering any
>power level people wish to write them at.
So Issaries assumes they'll be inundated with submissions! But writing high quality scenario material is damn difficult, which is why we see so few of 'em here on the the Digest, why 'Heroes' magazine ended up publishing such abominations as "The Black Sorceror" and why in the ten years of Tales, we received fewer submissions in this area than any other (except our ill-fated "match the subscribers' faces to their arses" competition, but that's another story). "Loads and loads" of "free" scenarios on the web page? I'd rather have quality than quantity thanks very much, and I'd rather have at least a few of them alongside the source material in the official publications where they belong.
Mike again:
>Can I at least put in a request for more detailed scenario hooks
>than in the Elder Secrets book.
Eric:
>>Yes you can, but I don't know how much good it will do. The whole point
>>is to cover the level of detail in a scenario you want for free on
>>the web site.
I'd be really disappointed if the HW books went no deeper than the rather perfunctory scenario hooks of 'Elder Secrets'. Compare Ian Gorlick's wonderful scenario "All at Sea Ashore" in Tales #10 to the insipid Waertagi plot hook in ES that inspired it.
Cheers,
MOB
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