> Bryan is happy, and writes:
>
> > In no way am I suggesting you abandon common sense,
>
> OK, I won't do that, then. (Lucky you pointed this out to me!).
Sorry if I was belabouring the obvious, but the post to which I was
replying suggested that with my view of the world it was impossible
to play the game, which implied a rather extremist interpretation of
what I was trying to say. Hence, I thought it actually worth stating
this.
>
> > In no way do I suggest that... this concept be printed in a rule
> > book. To do so would of course get people confused, offended,
> > and annoyed by it...
>
> The problem is that prominent posters, including yourself, have
from
> time to time defended the (IMO clearly wrong) ratings in "Anaxial's
> Rooster" using this 'concept', despite the weight of internal (e.g.
> comparison of Big and Small ratings across species in AR), external
> (e.g. Hero Wars rules which allow ability ratings to be compared),
> auctorial (e.g. Robin Laws' posts) and above all *practical*
reasons
> that show this is *not* how they were meant to be interpreted.
>
> Isn't it easier to say "Oops, got that one wrong!", rather than
build
> this monstrous edifice of complexity and unnecessary second-
guessing?
Hmmm, I could ramble on for far too long regarding this, so I'll try
to keep this as short as I can in the face of my "lonwinded 1W"
disability. If anyone wants to discuss any points at greater length,
let me know.
- I do think the numbers in Anaxial's are flawed, and I'd frankly use
my own numbers in anything I wrote (in fact, I did just that in my
submission for the four scrolls of revelation). If it were feasible
to re-print the book sometime, including something more like a HQ
cultural key word for the sentient species, and to re-do the numbers,
I'd be all for it. Until then, I think it is still usable without
taking a red pen and scribbling all over it.
- I don't provide this idea specifically as a fix for Anaxial's,
although it does help make it usable with much patching (and
the 'much patching' part is where it becomes clear that the Anaxial
numbers could use adjustment). I think an implied "in your usual way"
keeps ability names shorter and prevents the need for two many
special case rules. I think this is always how I've interpreted
ability values, although I hadn't thought it through at first.
- HW/HQ ratings seem to be me to be almost logarithmic in nature,
which is why both specifying a zero, and strapping two scales
together (big/small) is very awkward. Obviously the desire was to
use humans as the origin for both big and small, on the "no modifiers
in the usual case" line of thinking. Personally I would have
prefered a single scale, with extremely small creatures probably
hitting negative values, and strict instructions only to use the size
ratings in a relative, not absolute, way. But that would have
created an extra rule and confused people who don't like math, so I'm
not sure that there is really a better solution (although I think
some of the numbers under the existing solution are a bit dodgy. A
large deer is bigger than the average human?).
- To use non-relative ability scores, you have to abandon
the "everything starts around 13, and defaults to 6" plan, or else
normalize the whole world to humans, and have many, many, exceptions
for all other species.
- If you use "big 6" for humans, and assume people can have "big 13
or even big 17" without being bigger than a horse, then truly large
creatures would have to "big" ratings in the same order as the
abilities of demi-gods. Maybe this is good, perhaps an elephant
should be able to use its "big" to have a fair fight versus
Harrek...but I don't think that is the intention of the system.
- The concept of me as a prominent poster alternately amuses and
worries me. I'd say that people who write chunks of the game I view
as prominent, because they have a view of what was intended, and can
affect what will come. It amuses me that a diletante such as myself
would ever be refered to as prominent, but it also worries me that it
means people get treated far too seriously just because they can, and
frequently do, string a few sentences together.
--Bryan
>
> Cheers, Nick