Re: Saga system

From: bankuei <Bankuei_at_...>
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 00:49:35 -0000

Hi Darren,

I wouldn't say it has anything to do with looking at the numbers, and everything to do with looking at the ability names themselves. It's not "what should be a challenge" as much as, "what's going to be an interesting conflict for -this- character?" I mean, assume if you have a character with no combat abilities, so he starts at rating 6. But he's got tons and tons of personality and relationship abilities going on. If those get involved, he can augment up to 17 pretty easy.

But, the focus isn't about how high his numbers can get, or how to get him into a fight, but rather, if the character has enough abilities floating about that he or she can pull 10 or more from augments- you ought to be looking at that as th source of conflict. If we have a Heortling with all kinds of "Hate Lunars" type stuff floating around, odds are, you're going to have the most fun throwing Lunar based conflicts at that character.

As far as the numbers go, we see that everything in Glorantha is working in a universe of heirarchies and conflicts- there are human scale challenges, and there are god scale challenges. Picking a number is easy- choosing a meaningful conflict- that's the art of Narratorship in HQ.

Chris

> On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 17:21:31 -0600, Mike Holmes <homeydont_at_h...>
> wrote:
> >> The problem for me is the variation between ability this produces.
> >
> > Ability level discrepancies simply aren't a problem in HQ. You have them
> > to
> > start, actually. One character is 3W2 with augments for fighting, and
> > another is a 6. Happens in every game. And doesn't matter.
>
> I agree. This isn't a question about discrepancies between players. It's
> about being able to judge just what is going to be a challenge in the
> first place. It's not about power balance, but how to judge what sort of
> power something should be.
> In HQ, it seems, you can't look at someone's stats and make any kind of
> judgement of what kind of challenge this will present, or it gets much
> shakier to do so as the power level increases.
>
> > Another reason this works is because "failure is always an option."
>
> I knew you were going to say that :)
>
> Darren