HW as a concept and wealth
As I thought some more about the whole wealth and costrating-
problem,I recognised something that I noticed before,in most of the
rulesdiscussions.HeroWars is a very unique game,in that it uses a
whole new approach to roleplayingrules.
We,as experienced roleplaying gamers are used to games,that try to
simulate,more or less,reality with the help of
numbers,mathematics,quantities and probabilities.This is the approach
to the wealth problem,most participants of the debate shared.
I think they missed the point completely.Herowars uses
images,analogies and „symbols"in an more intuitive way,to generate
rules,as opposed to statistics and numbers.
Maybe you know that the human brain is divided into two hemispaeres.
The left one is used for things
like:logic,language,calculating,analysis,linear thinking and digital
thinking.(this is how all the „old"rpgīs work)
The right hemisphaere is used for holistic stuff like percieving
things as a whole,patterns,analog thinking,symbols,metaphors.(this is
how HW works)
These are two opposed pairs,that do work together but are also
divided.
I think everybody must understand this first,to understand the whole
rulesconcept-that Herowars is a „right brainhemisphaereconcept"game.
That means you can not really apply the techniques we are used from
other roleplayingrules.
In the case of wealth and costratings ,you must understand that
wealth is a symbol for the state of your wealth,not a nominal
indicator of how much money or goods you have.Costratings describe a
quality not a quantity and relates this to your wealthrating.
One of the mainquestions was,how much is my wealth raised if I gain x
cows.The answer to this question can not be answered with a number
that relates x cows into x wealth,but has to be judged as a whole.So
can be different,depending on various factors.The gamemastress has to
decide,summing up many factors into the abstraction of a wealthrating
increase.
As I mentionend in my first mail,contributing to this topic,the
costrating is a composite of many factors,that describes the value of
any item or animal,etc.So you have to ask yourself questions:how
useful is it?,how rare is it?,how difficult is it to manifacture?how
much time to I need to manifacture it?You have to make up the
costrating with your intuition,because you assess the value as a sum
up of many aspects.Take all the factors and make an abstraction-that
will be the costrating.
Actually,this should have been clear all the time,because what is the
wealthrating?It is an abstraction!
Still you have rules,that can help you to assess:if you take a look
at the costtable,you can see many examples what the cost of a certain
thing is.
For example:
Costratings of one to twenty describe things,that are more or less
easy to make,build,achieve,useful
One mastery costratings are things that are complex,but still not to
difficult(to make,to build,to achieve,usefull)
Two mastery costratings are things that are complex and usefull(like
an upperclasshouse,healing a dying charakter)
The whole Herowars concept uses the targetnumberrating and the
mastery as an abstraction to describe
things:skill,usefullness,complexity,size.This is the point where we
can make up a table and I think only one table will be needed.This
table uses words or metaphors/descriptions to abstract something into
gamenumbers/masterylevels.Every number describes various levels of
different things.So if you want to know what the abstractvalue in
gamenumbers of any quality is(skill,size,cost,etc.),you can use this
table.
Actually this is understood as long as we talk about
targetnumbers/skills but why don īt we understand,that itīs the same
with everything else?I guess because we are not used to think like
that,we are all used to simulating roleplaying games.If we want to
understand Herowars we must think differently.
I will try to make up such a table and submit it to our group,maybe
somebody else will try as well.
I hope my english was understandable enough to make the points
clear,I wanted to get to you-if not,please feel free to mail me.
Peace
Christian(Toksickburn_at_...)
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