>From: "Nick Hollingsworth" <nick.hollingsworth_at_...>
>Mike Holmes:
> > I use concentration in my game
>
>OK I'm suprised. If I had to pick one person who I was confident would
>have thrown it out it would have been you.
>
>The example you give is of out-of-game player musing over how to best
>spend his metagame currency. If considerations about magic types etc
>were simply handled in-character he would be concentrating more on
>questions of his relationships to the sources of his magic, what
>others would think, etc.
I don't see your point. The player should have nothing to muse over out-of-game? I'm rather fond of metagame musings. In fact, I'd say that in FTF games we play, we do about 75% metagame musing, and only about 25% in game play.
Well, depends on your perspective, see.
If you're concerned about something like what concentration means to the character, it has a very real effect on the character in this case. And it's a very thematic choice. The character who concentrates may loose all manner of abilities - this was Josh's case. The character knows this, of course. So there's some decision being made her on the part of the character (being made by the player, of course, but). Again, in Josh's case, it's a question of his character's outlook - does he want to remain loyal to all of the cults that he's currently involved with, or does he want to forsake some of them to concentrate on others?
This couldn't be a more important in-game question for the character. Where are his beliefs strongest in his own religion? Where does he see his place in the religion?
So I'm not seeing at all how this is just some abstraction we're talking about.
Further, one could argue that it's very Gloranthan, per older stuff. Not that I care one whit about the older materials - I could just go off of what I know in the HQ book and say that's fine. But even if I did revere the old stuff and want to be sure that concentration resembled something from that, it's simply a representation of something like the difficulty that is involved in becoming an advanced user of magic. In Glorantha, and in all other fantasy materials, the theme of having to either be broad and weak, or narrow and potent, is a classic one. Sans classes, or somesuch, Concentration serves as just another thing along with Initiation, devotion, becoming a practitioner, whatever, that tells of the sacrifices that one needs to make to attain these hights of (theoretical) power.
So, it's a good theme, has in-game ramifications, and the HP expenditure rules model it well. What's the downside again?
Mike
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