I'm going to disagree. Take (I forget whose) the recent example involving Shield Destroyer. Player wants to destroy his opponent's shield, not as the goal of the extended contest but as an intermediate goal to achieve beating the snot out of the mouthy Lunar. Based on everything that I've seen, this is supposed to be just another AP bid. I don't find a good tie between trying to destroy the shield, winning the contest and level of risk by the player. I would think that it would be an related action, but all examples seem to point at a normal action. How does the AP bid tie into this? Why shouldn't the player just bid 3 AP?
> HQ AFAIK will have advice for handling this.
>
> In a nutshell, attempting to decapitate a foe requires an
> appropriate AP bid.
I assume there's going to be more help in determining what's appropriate?
> Heler mythology and Aroka mythology are both insanely complicated.
>
> Fact is, no you're not really supposed to know that.
You do realize that I have issue with being told that, as the narrator, I'm not supposed to know things about the setting?
> You are supposed to discover these things through
> intensive transcendental medita^h^h^h roleplaying experiences
> or active participation to the GD and/or fanzines.
Sometimes I feel this is the truth.
> But, that's the whole point of this game : it's recreational
> mythology and storytelling. You are given
> core elements and procedures to encourage your
> independent use and development of them IYG.
As I indicated elsewhere, I'm not in this for the recreational mythology and storytelling. That's where I'm at odds with things.
> Another point of this game is to take us back into the mindframe
> we had back in the late 70s when RPGs were new and fresh.
I'm not a big fan of innovation for innovation's sake.
> Anyway, Gloranthan knowledge is growing at an exponential rate,
> so I hardly think it's fair to complain of a dearth of it.
It's not a dearth, it's a mushiness.
> > I'm not
> > having trouble grasping it, I'm simply not finding it to my
liking for
> > a casual game.
>
> I don't understand. You obviously have a completely non-casual
> approach to playing Hero Wars, seeing that you wish Feats etc.
> and their use in the game to be quite rigidly defined.
I'm not looking for rigid definitions. By "casual" I mean "not requiring me to be a Gloranthan scholar". Remember, I'm not interested in doing my own mythmaking and storytelling.
> OTOH I sympathise, because you seem to be having the
> usual sort of trouble accepting the system that most
> roleplayers used to more conventional systems have had.
Folks need to be careful about statements like this; it's pretty close to "you're not playing the right way" (I don't think you mean this, though). I like conventional systems.
> Depends how you do it. Just remember that every RPG scenario
> you've ever played in was an exercise in mythmaking as it
> should be done in a HW game.
It's a difference in scale, scope, and perspective. It's an important difference.
> Well, another statement that could be made is YHWMV.
> The game can be adapted very easily to a wide variety of
> house styles. But it's each individual group's responsibility
> to do the adapting, not the game company's.
>
> Their responsibility lies in providing the widest possible
> usefulness for the widest target audience possible.
I agree, but I'm finding the foundation is getting spread a bit thin.
> This logically precludes the kind of hardness or crunchiness
> that you appear to be asking for.
I'm not asking for hardness or crunchiness in the rules. I'm looking for better definition in the implementation of the setting in the rules. I'm not asking for "Feat X does <insert game mechanics>". I'm looking for enough information to determine what is reasonable for Feat X.
> If most people wanted what you're asking for, well,
> we'd probably have Glorantha D20 being released soon
> instead of HQ.
Yeah, once Greg was cured of his paranoia that D20 == loss of control.
Mike Ryan
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