I was really surprised about the comments to my suggestions.If
everybody knows the things I said,why do so many questions occur,that
deal with this special misunderstanding?And beside,there are some
more people in this group,than the two,who made a response to my
thoughts....(393 to be precise)
I for myself think,that the wealth rules are good and very elegant-
only need a little more guideline,how to generate costratings.
So if you have a problem with them,why donīt you just use cash
rules,taking the pricelists from Runequest?Thatīs by far the simplest
solution,and you can happily add up all of your cows and
lunars.Either you understand,that everything is an abstraction and
then you do just that or you donīt and then you want mathematics to
add wealth,which will not work.
I still believe that you canīt add wealth and that there is no
exception to the HW concept.And beside that is not wanted,I would
say,forgive me if Iīm egocentric.
Itīs the same with adding skillevels,you are stressing to much the
numberside of the game,which is again „leftbrained"and thus not
aproppiate.Also it makes gaming a lot less fun.Ihn all of my sessions
in the past,all the players hated fighting because it was boring and
timeconsuming and a lot of calculating(and also frustrating when you
got wounded because you werenīt able anymore to participate in the
gameplay)
How can you add up experience in real life?Itīs an absurd question,I
would say.You can only describe skill,before and after,so itīs an
abstraction again.
What I see,is that this very long discussion brought many flawed
tries to generate some kind of mathematics,that do not work and in
the end,resulted in something we all already knew:that you have to
spend heropoints to cement new gained wealth,thank you.But it brought
no inspiration for the existing rules.And this is still the point,Iīm
working at.
So again I tried to find patterns and levels in the abstraction of
(target)numbers/costratings.So that you can generate a rating for
anything with just these little hints (the rules are obviously
already there).If you compare the costtable and the mundane
resistances with one another,you see that they follow similar rules
(okay,I know,you knew that already...)
-Every Mastery is an abstraction for a certain threshold of
usefulness or size.or skill needed,that is allready quite
good
explained with the metaphor of journeyman,master,hero and godlike
power.
-Also I see another pattern of concept levels in each increment of 5:
- 5 is for simple things
-10 is for things,that need a certain time to do,but are still
moderately fast to accomplish(like one week) OR
basics in their category....(building a hut)
-15 is for more complex or useful things(a cow can be used for
meat,milk,fat and skin/leather-so has many possibilities of
being used and is thus more useful than a pig)
-20 is for things that are at the threshold of transcending into
another category(wealthy clothing)
Okay,I admit that this is still a bit vague,and I think that is
because the whole rightbrainconcept hasnīt got a broad stand in our
culture.The eskimos are said to have about 80 words for snow,we have
only a few...So whats a bit missing,is the experience to express
different levels of quality,verbally.Still I think you can do it,if
you analyze the tables I mentionend,and try to find the levels in
them,I found/or see....Maybe itīs just a matter of practice.....
In the end,this concept is much more versatile,than having a
costtable for every culture.Also,you can better abstract any kind of
game value into the whole Herowars ratingsystem,as it is found in
size,skill,resistance and powerlevel of characters.
peace
Christian