Hello again,
My apologies to BJM et al who don't have HW access yet, but I just
thought I would give you all the results of my initial playtest.
Since I'm running the same scenario at a con this weekend, any
comments or suggestions would be helpful. If you're not familiar with
the system or not interested in my feeble comments, please skip over
this message.
I ran a modified version of the 'Food Thief' scenario. I adapted it
from a pure Heortling village to a Lunar colony/Lunarized Heortling
town in Tarsh, with attached military outpost. I did this mostly
because all my players are more familiar with Lunar society than
Heortling.
As a first point, the system seems to encourage much more interesting
character creation. The characters were much more fleshed out than
starting RQ characters, and the players invested very little energy in
trying to maximize power (see below for the character descriptions).
So right off the bat things seemed better.
The second positive would be that roleplaying was actually slightly
better than normal. I'm not sure if this is an effect of game
mechanics, or because the characters were better, but in any case
there was more focus on staying in character than normal, and almost
no rules debates.
On the other hand, the final confrontation was flat and fairly
disappointing. Part of the problem was that the character managed to
summon up a 15-person Char-Un cavalry contingent, which meant that I
had to beef up the opposing forces, which led to more of a group
combat than I necessarily wanted. But even aside from that the bid
system, etc, lacked a certain level of flavor.
In sum I'd say: roleplaying good, combat bad. Currently my group is
contemplating grafting RQ combat and HW character creation &
non-combat together; whether this unholy merger would work is another
question.
As said, if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve the flavor of
combat, I'd appreciate it. Perhaps messages could be sent to me
directly to avoid the righteous anger of the RQ-grognards...
Regards,
Theo
PS - brief character descriptions (they were interesting enough to
warrant repitition)
Character A - Military attache to proconsular representative in tower
- an ambitious, politically inclined Yanafali Dara Happan working his
way up the ranks. Diplomatic, persuasive but unfortunately rather
condescending towards Heortlings.
Character B - Quartermaster for the outpost - a greedy arch-scrounger,
a supreme manipulater of the army system, ambitious for further
opportunities.
Character C - A ruthless Char-un horseman, 2nd in command of the
Char-un troop at the outpost. Member of a secret cult that maintains
that Sheng Seleris was the last Yelmic emperor.
Character D - A heavily lunarized Tarshite trader from Furthest.
Member of an extensive grain-trading family with contracts to supply
the lunar forces in Tarsh; the richest man in town, with all of the
slipperiness that this implies.
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