okay I think this is important becuase it is at the hub of a lot of grief. Most of it is carried over from a simulationist way of looking at games. I'm not picking on Graham, but his post is the clearest to respond to.
Graham Robinson wrote:
>Needless to say, I don't agree with Ian on much of this...<
That is okay, though as I am on holiday for two weeks from tomorrow
I do not have much time to convince you all. But I'll try…
Me:
>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.<
Graham:
>Then why give humans and horses 'Run Fast'? They both run, they can
both do it fast, if I can't use the number directly, the number is
WRONG.<
Let's go to AR itself and see what it has to say:
"Hero Wars has no set list of abilities for heroes: one might have Resilient, another Tough. Anaxial's Roster uses a few conventions for describing creatures, so that like can be compared with like. These rules in no way restrict the meanings or uses of abilities for heroes" Anaxial's Roster (p.10-11)
There is no comparison then with hero abilities AR is at best seltconsistent. In addition AR tells us that all horses can run, and have no ability listed for that innate skill, Run Fast is for comparison with other horses or humans with the magical ability `Run As Fast As a Horse.'
Anaxial's again:
"a bird no more needs a Fly skill than a human hero needs a Walk
skill!
Abilities such as Aerobatics reflect excellence at aerial
maneuvering, while those like Fly Fast and Run Fast define speed.
Senses work in the same way. Most natural animals have the same
senses as humans, and many have much better senses. A natural
animal's sense of smell gives it as much information as a human's
sight gives to him. A wolf does not need an Excellent Sense of Smell
ability to sense nearby creatures; this is a natural and automatic
ability."
>In many cases I'll want to compare the horse and the human, if they
use different scales, it makes more work for me. Far better to just
say 'okay the horse has a run fast <make up number> 7W3...' in the
first place.
Think about what you are asking. Can a human being outrun a horse? No, not without magical help. Do you often have contests in your game where a human without magical aid and a horse race each other? How does the human win? Not by running faster with a mundane ability. Perhaps by trickery or cunning. Sometimes in games like Hero Wars no contest occurs. We know that without magical help, luck, or special circumstance a horse will win the race. In that case there is not a contest but a narrative outcome. Don't bother to roll – the human cannot win. Don't compare his Running 17 against the horses Run Fast 2W, the result will create astrange world. The rules don't determine the outcome here, common sense does. However, if you have specific circumstance in which your hero can escape the horse, you have to determine the resistance for that attempt. Do you run across ground riddled with gopher holes that the horse is afraid to cross? The rules just cannot cover enough situations that might happen in your story that would allow the human being to outrun the horse.
Coming up with numbers for these events, sometimes on the fly, is part of the HW narrator's job. Narrativist games don't have rules for a lot of things, because they assume that you know enough about the world. Ever noticed HW has no rules for falling, or the damage caused by fire, like RQ did. Is that an omission. Nope. Rather than only allow you to tell stories about those crises that the system provides rules for, it provides a general system that allows you to decide what happens. But the first rule is that in many cases there is no contest. The outcome is a narrative one. Fall a 100' and what happens. You die. Got magical help - good make a roll. Not got magical help - either you or the narrator needs a 'story' reason for you to survive. Trapped in a burning house and unable to get out - what happens. You die. Unless you have magical help or a story reason exists for you to live. Wiht simulationist games you are bound by the rules, they are the only ideas you can express, with a narrativist game, the rules help you to adjudicate WHEN THERE IS A CONTEST. Now, if my hero has Outrun A Horse as a magical feat, I would give him a resistance of 14 (default magic) to outdistance his pursuer. If he had Run As Fast As a Horse, I might use the Horse's Run Fast as a resistance to see who was the faster.
>Secondly, at high masteries there ARE no mundane abilities. At
climb 10W3 I stand some >chance of climbing Kero Finn and crossing
to the other side. Mundane ability? Not really. >Glorantha
(especially in HW) encourages characters with heroic abilities.
I don't agree. Hero Wars clearly distinguishes Magical and Mundane Abilities (see p.22-23). W2 is a top professional so a W2 runner is pro runner, W3 is renowned so that is Olympic quality, W4 is legendary so that is the Jesse Owens or Carl Lewis's of the world. Sure the difference in distance between them may not be great, but I don't think you need to perceive the scale as linear; it is the regularity with which one will win. Augments from training are possible for all these characters.
Frankly though I don't think heroes with Run10W4 are as common in Glorantha as heroes who use magic instead. I'm not sure that anyone in our game has ever brought up his or her mundane running skill.
>At the end of the day, if I have a new player who says 'I want a
character who can run as >fast as a horse' I'd rather say 'well
horses get run fast 10W2' than 'tough'. If he spends the >hero
points to reach those skill levels, I say let him do it!
If I had a player who wanted a character who could run as fast as a horse I would say, okay take the magical ability `Run As Fast As a Horse', or, in play, here is a quest challenge to get the ability. I would then handle using it as above.
Incidentally players with more experience of narrative games like Orkworld or Sorcerer, say on the Hero Wars forum at the Forge, and a less simulationist background find this far easier, because they have so much less to unlearn. Understanding of the game is paradoxically lower on this list than many other places, because of the RQ baggage being carried here. Try to remember RQ was a great game, but had a different philosophy to HW (which is attested to be a far greater and more revolutionary game, even in its poorly presented 1st edition, on sites like the Forge)
As for rules lawyers - games like Hero Wars don't work for people who don't want to play co-operatively. That is the price of the increased flexibility. They say instead: You are an adult and we will treat you like one. Like John Wick said: Don't be this Guy
While I'm away don't take my lack of input as a suggestion of agreement while I am gone :-P
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