> 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.
I don't think so. We do in fact realise that HW has this approach, thank you very much.
It's just that some of us occasionally need some idea of what Wealth represents
in *abstract* game-world terms, and more rarely, what other HW quantities might
represent in more real ones.
In other words, we see Wealth as an *exception* to the "whole new approach" (Brave New Paradigm ?) of HW.
> Herowars uses
> images,analogies and �symbols"in an more intuitive way,to generate
> rules,as opposed to statistics and numbers.
The Wealth problem is that it is supposed to represent, among other things, one's money. Which is *made* of numbers.
> 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.
Well, I would certainly agree with that, but then again I knew it already thanks !
I am not suggesting that HW magic Abilities could be used to find out how many magic or fatigue points Heroes should have, or some other such nonsense.
And I would disagree with you that HW doesn't use the techniques of other RPGs ; it uses the same basic techniques, but far more intelligently (except for the Wealth rules) (and except for some of the poorer consequences of an overly strong focus on duality).
> 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.
Yes I know : it represents among other things your credit, your social stature,
and basically your ability to obtain what you need and what you want.
However, _some_ players of HW would like the rules let them have a greater degree of simulationism, but *not* I hasten to add to the level of RulesMaster nor indeed RQ.
This isn't a debate about which approach is better, more orthodox, or anything. This is a debate about changing the HW rules _very_slightly_ so that both approaches are possible, instead of just the pure narratavist one. I personally like a little bit of simulationist salt and pepper with my narratavist meat ; the non-existence of coherent Wealth rules (and indeed coherent Ability Addition ones) makes HW a less enjoyable game for me ; I don't see how the presence of such rules (and we're actually talking here about changes to the existing rules, not pages and pages of charts, tables, and mathematical orthodoxy ; for zero net increase to the complexity and number of pages in HW devoted to rules) could possibly ruin the game for people who don't care about such things anyway ("You find a torc : Great ! +1 Wealth !" <move along to more interesting things>)
> 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.
Yes, and that is precisely WHY some of us want the Wealth rules to be coherent, and allow us to do exactlly that !!
The more coherent the Wealth rules are, the more transparent such issues will become, for *everyone* - and not just the pure narrativists among us.
> 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!
Yes, but as has been pointed out several times (and this is in fact what started the discussion, and is indeed its whole POINT) +5 points of Wealth do not mean the same thing at Dubya2 as they do at Dubya3 or Dubya4.
So, you can either :
ignore the whole issue (sensible, narrativist approach)
or :
come up with better rules, bearing in mind that it's a narrativist game and
that these better rules need to be as simple as the previous ones ; indeed, to
be identical, except for one or two minor but profound changes (sensible,
simulationist approach)
or :
stick your head in the sand and pretend there's no problem (narrativist
approach, ignoring those of us in the boat who aren't pure narrativists).
> 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 Wealth numbers given on pp. 38-39 of HW1 are ludicrous.
So BTW are some (not all) of the Sample Resistances on pp. 119-120.
I certainly understand that the narrativists among us couldn't give a damn ; and I appreciate that Issaries was in a publish-or-perish situation when HW1 was released ; but I cannot see that improved mathematical coherence is too much to ask for, especially given the fact that such coherence would actually improve the right-brain spur-of-the-moment HW approach to roleplaying : because some of us don't want any narrative flows interrupted by having to occasionally deal with such _totally_unnecessary_ flaws in the game design, perhaps by hand-waving or head-sticking in the sand...
> 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.
Correct.
> 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.
As far as I can see, the only such abstract value needed for quantification purposes is Money.
Cows ? Mostly, we need to know is : how much Wealth do I get from adding X cows to my Wealth of Y ; and then (unless we're playing with the Seattle Farmers Collective) we can forget about them !
Later in the game : do you have Z cows (N Wealth) for sale ? : <roll dice> Answer : "Sorry, just had a cattle raid !" (lose N Wealth)/No!/Yes!/"Twice that number !"
Julian Lord
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