Don't be this guy

From: ian_hammond_cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 13:11:57 -0000


Worldscale

Okay. Let us try this one again as the fact that we are now generating tables of ability potential ability ranges seems to be another attempt to weld a simulationist paradigm over the narrative concepts of Hero Wars.

Try to forget everything you know about rpgs from simulationist games like RQ and GURPS. They won't help you here. In fact they will just confuse you. Everything you know is wrong.

  1. There are no pre-defined skills in Hero Wars. A skill is a description of an attribute of significance about a person or creature. Keywords (including those given for creatures in AR) are just a package of suggested abilities to save time and effort. But they are not fixed in stone. I might call it Run Fast on my character sheet, but it has no relation to Run Fast on a horse's character sheet or a mouse's. It may have far more relation to Sprint on another humans. Understand what is being implied.

The easiest way to design a `monster' in HW is to list the abilities they have, which are important to the story, and then assign ratings to them dependent. Imagine I aw writing an episode in which a tiger appears. I list characteristics that are important in my story to a tiger: Pounce, Sharp Teeth, Raking Claws, Skulk in Jungle, Fearful Symmetry. Then I assign the tiger ability ratings based on how much of challenge I want the tiger to be. Is my tiger any less valid because I did not use the AR package? Nope. Is my tiger any less valid, because I did not use the AR numbers? Nope. AR is just a convenience. Any set of attributes I want to show in the story are important. The names don't refer to anything defined elsewhere.

2: Mundane abilities are just that. Consider running. I am a normal if unfit human male and probably have Run 6. My brother plays a lot of sport and probably has Run 17. Some of my friends run every morning, they might have Run 5W. I don't know any full-time athletes but if I did they might have Run 10W2. Olympic sprinters might have Run 10W3. Once in a generation one of the sprinters might be so good as to be Run 10W4.

This does not mean that any of them could outrun a horse!

Horses run faster than people. It is a marker of how good they are at running against other people. If you want to outrun a horse you are going to need a magical ability (or perhaps some story reason why). If it was a feat, outrunning a horse might well have a resistance of 14 – depending on the narrator and players interpretation of the feat.

Don't know how fast a mythical creature runs from AR, then make it up. What does your story need?

Why do all those horses have different Run Fast abilities – for horse races?

Mundane abilities are just that – things that are humanly possible and how good you are at them. Magical abilities are just things that are impossible and how good you are at them. If you want to have pregnant women winning races with horses and cursing the local menfolk after, look to magic.

If AR has a problem it is that absolute scale for large and the restriction that a human cannot have large because they cannot grow to those sizes except by magic. It confuses the issue for whilst it implies that mundane abilites cannot be increased to do the impossible, it suggests that an absolute scale is needed.

HW was bad at presenting these concepts, but the lack of advice is not an excuse for overwriting the gaps with a simulationist approach. Charts of comparable ability ratings miss the point.



This approach to creating skills is designed to liberate you from the restrictions of lists of allowable skills, each with their own special rules. It is agreat creative freedom, but it comes at the expense that it is much more open to willfull abuse. I'm reminded of a quote from Orkworld by John Wick, which also uses a make-up-the- skill approach

"...The guy who chooses to destroy drama by having an `I do everything!' skill at everyone else expense.

Don't be this guy.'

It is possible to abuse HW - the fix is not simulationist rules but the exhortation - 'Don't be this guy'.

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