Re: Dealing with Talents (was Re: Three Worlds Headaches)

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 15:22:34 +0100

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 01:53:33PM -0000, Charles Corrigan wrote:
> I asked Stephen Martin about this area during the review/playtest. I
> made it a bit more pointed by reminding him of the sources (Thunder
> Rebels?) that say Heortlings are occasionally born with the innate
> ability to fly. His answer was along the lines of "Hmmm, we will have
> to deal with that at some point in the future but it is too obscure to
> deal with it in the main rules" - obviously this paraphrased heavily
> from my faulty memory.

*mutters something about armchair developers*

OK, I don't want to be too unfair to Steve, esp. on the basis of hearsay, but I think your pointed example is very much to the point. And really, in HW/Q dealing with this is simplicity itself -- you write down what your character can do, and it becomes an ability tag, at some rating. Done, and furthermore done. What's so obscure or difficult about that? The fact that this isn't specifically covered in the HQ rules as they stand need hardly be interpretted as proscriptive, surely, unless you're looking for a grand cosmological gloss on everything by way of licence to do what you want to do.

The nice thing about common magic is that it opens up vistas explicitly to the idea that not all magic need come from well-defined otherworld sources. (If you'll pardon that last oxymoron.) An apparent danger is that for one reason or another, that still somewhat mystifies me, some people want to interpret it as somehow *restricting* the unique or distinctive magical attributes your character can have.

Cheers,
Alex.