Steve, thanks for posting that character. (It would have been handy if you'd just included it in your email, because I tend to read offline.)
Wesley, thanks for the analysis.
I think that I begin to understand. A keyword in the description will have a (semi-official?) set of skills that it translates to.
So somewhere there is a table that says Lamia means "hypnotize, seduce, drink blood, appear human". And broo means "violent, impregnate, carry disease, etc."
I think there will be far fewer skills than I'm used to. For example, it seems that all the various combat skills of my RQ paladin - in the sense of the idealistic knight, not the D&D class - will fold into a Close Combat skill.
It still leaves me wondering. The thing about D&D that I always felt nostalgic about was quick character and monster generation. HW might well be quicker for characters and definitely seems to be for monsters. I like that, but it also brings back the D&D idea that "an orc is an orc is an orc", something that RQ rejected at a high price. Maybe I just need to get used to the idea that for heroic tales, most of the opposition is faceless and undifferentiated. I guess I can accept a generic broo, and give them chaotic features when they're encountered.
BTW, I'd mentioned:
> > (Having played with people who would completely twist a D&D
character class on the basis of a misplaced
> > comma. I think this is a legitimate concern.)
Actually this wasn't a case of complexity, so much as complete misinterpretation. Back in an old issue of the Dragon there was a write up of the alchemist as a character class. The write up included the sentence "The Alchemist may use any magic items, except staves which contain elementals." Note that there is no comma after the word staves. The player insisted this meant his character could use *any* magic item, except those staves. There was some kind of rationalization about how elementals didn't like him, and so on. I never thought this jibed well with his ability to use other elemental summoning items.
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