Fair point. Depends upon what you want from a game. I think HW offers great things, but it's just not clean enough yet to stand on it's own. As I have, you've probably had great games of RQ involving 18 year old green Orlanthi running about Dragon Pass hunting chaos and trying to stay alive, let alone make reputations for themselves as great heroes. HW can't really simulate that well, and vice versa for situations on a grander scale (have you ever run situations with Rune Lord-Priests at 200%+ skills storming a Krarsht temple? it can be very messy, let alone time consuming!...). As well as it's ability to deal with these situations in a clean and exciting way, I personally feel that the core of the HW system is fantastic in having a lot of spirit without the rigidity of a skill for every situation etc. It does run cleanly, but my criticism is the amount of obvious problems that it throws up in many common situations that I feel should be defined with a plethora of examples with Rollo and Kallai in all sorts of situations.
>
> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 12:28:15 +0200
> From: Mikael Raaterova <ginijji_at_telia.com>
> Subject: HW
>
Me:
> >Also when it comes to combat, a brief glance at hw-rules_at_egroups.com
> >shows the immense number of problems players have found with AP
> >interpretation, skirmishing before closing, ranks, edges, etc. (these are
> >just some of the most recent and they are all quite basic situations and
> >not advanced or tricky to interpret by any means annoyingly enough!).
From: Mikael Raaterova <ginijji_at_telia.com>:
> From my reading of same list, it seems that the problem lies not with
> the rules per se, but with people having trouble adjusting from
> simulationist combat to HW combat.
>
> Granted, _that_ is in itself a Big Problem. Could be ameliorated by
> some paragraphs explaining how combat is designed to be handled in HW.
I agree completely.
RQ -> simulationist combat (and other mechanics)
HW -> interpretational combat (and everything else) ie. we could say to a
large extent 'acting'.
The thing about acting I feel is that the best actors are those that watch
Geilgud and Olivier over and over to get a feel for the emotions /
situations that they are trying to portray on stage / screen.
Of course there is only so much that actors can read or watch other
interpretations and then they have to go with their own gut feelings at the
end of the day.
Say you are a Narrator wanting to write up some situations for your Actors. If for instance you say "On a trip to rob Cragspider, there is a chance they are ambushed by a bunch of Great Trolls and with a mob of trollkin who pummel them with slings etc. before closing. How do I deal with this!?". Firstly, you could have your own ideas, or go to hw-rules_at_egroups.com and try and trash it out there, but how much better to have a resource of situations (not just combat, but gambling, or some examples of how to cope with poisons or whatever in various situations) on www.glorantha.com or elsewhere. These need not be *official*, and Narrators/Actors have to work together with their gut instincts on the best way to resolve any given situation, but a system like HW by its very nature IMO needs far more examples of play than a simulationist system like RQ which encapsulates a vastly greater array of situations in the core rules (but at the cost of complexities such as stats and different skill abilities for every situation).
Me:
> >combat seems to be over-simplified leaving considerable confusion for
> >a large number of players.
From: Mikael Raaterova <ginijji_at_telia.com>:
> This has more to do with the fact that the HW mechanics are mainly
> just a flexible resolution system; situational modifiers and tactical
> considerations should be factored in by the Narrator as suitable. The
> mechanics aren't meant to be played 'as is'. If you play HW contests
> only 'as is' you're in for an exercise on boredom.
>
> Some may see this as a bug; i see it as a great feature.
I see it as a promise of great potential in the system. I just don't think that it will be fully realised until people have a handle on how to deal with many common situations with reasonable consensus by way of examples etc. Once that is done, players can feel they have a good grasp on how to deal with most things and then can run wild with the spirit that a free and excellent system like HW offers.
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