> 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?
No reason whatsoever : player bids 3 APs : opponent loses 3 APs, 3 APs represent his shield. Fine, opponent has no more shield, and must find some other way of defending himself.
This may also have some narrative consequences.
It's up to you to decide in your game whether a 3 AP bid is good enough or not. It's not Issaries' job.
This is a non-problem.
> > 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?
Well I hope so !
> > 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?
Aah, don't mind me, just being a smidgeon provocative as usual.
But anyway, you are told all of the *things* about the setting : what you aren't told, and aren't supposed to gain from a single cursory read of the material, is how to interpret them, what those things mean.
It's for each individual gamer to discover these ...
... but if you want to reply to this particular point, please do so on another ML, because this has nothing whatsoever to do with HW rules ...
> > 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.
That's what roleplaying is, usually.
The difficulty is seeing that there's really not that much difference between the small m mythopoesy of a dungeon crawl (the dungeon crawl is a perfectly good mythical representation) and the capital M Myths of deep Gloranthan cosmology.
... but again, this particular point has nothing whatsoever to do with HW rules ...
> > 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.
Not innovation for innovation's sake, can't you remember the sheer sense of FUN we had in those days when the hobby was new ?
Or weren't you around ?
Rulesmaster, D&D, RQ, whatever stopped being fun for me, personally, several years ago.
> > 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".
No-one requires you to be a Gloranthan scholar.
> > 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).
No, I don't.
> I like conventional systems.
And you feel frustrated because HW fails to satisfy your expectations of what an RPG should be like : many people have at some time or other felt that frustration. Nevertheless, it appears to be the case that the HPs, armour classes, detailed spell descriptions etc etc of other roleplaying systems are just useless paraphernalia that seriously hinder players in their attempts to actually roleplay.
When the only game around was D&D, all of that stuff worked for everyone, because we didn't know there could be easier ways of doing it, so we didn't worry about it. It seemed natural.
Since HW was published, well I personally wouldn't roleplay any other way, although I too want a *small* extra dose of simulationism :but that's just my own house style, and not any serious problem with the game.
> > 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.
Yes, but all myths have different scales, scopes, and perspectives.
The most important level of meaning of ANY myth is the apparently superficial, literal one.
Beowulf is the story of a man who kills one monster, and is killed by another. Curtains.
The fact that it is also a metaphor for our mortality is entirely secondary.
Similarly in HW, the meaning of any Gloranthan elements is entirely secondary to actual roleplaying experiences.
There is, in Gloranthan roleplaying, a certain amount of confusion between these levels, as a deliberate design feature.
You should certainly avoid concluding though that this confusion is meant to extend into your use of the rules.
The rules are basicaly very simple : these are not rules issues you're really complaining about, and I seriously think you should take this thread to the HeroWars list.
> 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.
Hrm, there's actually a whole area of problems here that has been caused by an II policy shift.
When HW was originally published, Feats and stuff were designed so as to be vague, see for ex Ambiguous References on p. 29 of the rules.
Then, surprise surprise, many people made exactly the sort of complaint you're making now about the lack of clarity of, say, the Sunset Leap. II then backtracked, and subsequently published keywords contain Feat names etc. that appear far clearer than it was suggested in the original design.
But, the original design goals remain, as stated in the rules book.
This can only help increase your, and other's, confusion.
HQ will help clear that up, but not perhaps to the extent you might prefer.
> Yeah, once Greg was cured of his paranoia that D20 == loss of control.
Not paranoia : most HW GMs prefer the tight level of control that the rules suggest.
I think what you need is house rules for Augmentations. You need some sort of meta-rule in your head to work out what the scale of representation should be IYG, and work out some sort of meta-scale to be used universally during all AP bids and Augmentation attempts.
HQ should make that easier AFAIK, because it will provide advice on what specific levels of AP bidding should translate as, and AFAIK it also does away with the much reviled Edges system.
Although I still think this is the wrong list for this discussion.
Julian Lord
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