RE: Re: Increasing abilities [was: Wealth]

From: bernuetz.oliver_at_...
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 12:39:14 -0400


Alex said :

>Well, it is handwaving, but I'm all in favour of a bit of that, in
>its place... My sympathies lie, in case there should be any doubt,
>not with the "victims" of handwaving, but with the perpetrators.
>If a Narrator is _comfortable_ with handwaving her way around the
>assorted HW means of increasing abilities (the triangular numbers
>method, the cementing cost method, the HQ contest method... -- which of
>these is the "standard", btw?), then all power to her. My concern
>is with those people who do _not_ , especially initially, feel happy
>fudging around these numbers, based on experience they may not have
>yet.

Exactly, put yourself in the place of some poor newbie who's barely role played and never run before and imagine what she would feel when someone tells her, "Oh, well you have to wing that." or "You'll have to decide on that." (Or my favourite, "It's all culturally determined.")

Easy enough for some experienced GMs/narrators but not that easy for a newbie (or even some experienced narrators. (If you only want to sell HeroWars to narrative, experienced GMs, well fine but what if you want to expand it's appeal).

I consider myself to be experienced. I've been role-playing for twenty years and running campaigns for at 15 or so and I find HW to be incredibly frustrating to run because of the lack of structure and examples. Cultural determinism's all good and fine but I'm curious if the rules will start needing patches when their used for other locales.

Oliver

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