Then we disagree. I'm fine with that.
> But they are well defined - a feat does anything that is
encompassed by its
> title!
And poetic feat names are poor definitions, IMO.
> >My comment about YGMV above means that I want to have the choice to
> >change things, not be forced to change things by having to make
them
> >up (and yes, I consider having to decide what the Wind Above spirit
> >is to be "making it up").
>
> Something that has not been defined cannot be "changed".
Either Greg has some idea of what these things are, or he's padding his game with arbitrarily named abilities. I'm willing to give Greg the benefit of the doubt on being a good designer.
> Deciding what a given spell, spirit, or feat can or can't do is
part of
> roleplaying.
If I'm making them up completely, I'm either making up my own system or my own setting. If I'm using someone else's, then I'm expecting them to explain these things sufficiently so that I can go "Ah! The Wind Below spirit is the the wind that blows from the Underworld. Cool." Please note, for the last time: this does NOT equal "rigidly defined." This is where we're "talking past each other".
> Either the GM does it, or the rule book does.
And where I come from, in GM vs. rulebook, GM wins.
> In the latter
> case, I find the games tend to be prone to rules lawyers, overly
rigid, and
> I end up ignoring all the special cases anyway. YMMV
But, it's nice having those special cases to look at for ideas and as a fallback as necessary.
> I also did not suggest at any point "deciding what the Wind Above
spirit
> is". I specifically do NOT advise this approach. Instead the Wind
Above
> spirit is a spirit with the power to perform actions associated
with "Wind"
> and "Above". I don't see this as a difficult process, although I
can see
> that the concept of the process might be difficult.
You know, this reminds me text adventure games where a puzzle boils down to "guess the right verb or noun".
> ??? Well what we do with the system is definatly what *I* call
roleplaying.
> A large (but not exclusive) element of that envolves creating
shared
> stories. Perhaps the problem is that your definition of roleplaying
varies?
In my experience, people do tend to have different definitions of things.
> I'm beginning to think that we are talking past each other here. I
can't
> see your problems, and you can't see my suggested solutions. Pretty
soon
> I'm going to have to give up...
The problem is that you're trying to convince me why you like Hero Wars. First, I like Hero Wars. I do, however, find parts of where Glorantha and Hero Wars meet, the style conflicts with my preferences. I find Hero Wars emminently usable and enjoyable, which is why I've been running it for two years, as long as I have a firm grasp on the setting. When the setting gets fuzzy, it falls apart rather quickly, for me.
Folks, stop trying to convince me to like/accept Hero Wars as a system. I like it. I recently started a Final Fantasy-styled game that almost used Hero Wars. The only reason I didn't use it (I'm using IronClaw instead) is because a) I had a number of players that really wanted to play IronClaw and b) a friend of mine suggested that running it in a different system would help give it better differentiation. Otherwise, it would've been Hero Wars (in my own setting).
Mike Ryan
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