RE: Charms for friends

From: Mike Holmes <mike_c_holmes_at_...>
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:17:35 -0600

>From: Tony Davis <gallows_brother_at_...>

>I guess IMG I just let people have 'weird powers' and
>My Glorantha is trying to use the rules as I first
>read them and not worry so much about the
>interpretation of the experts.�

...

>It's about MGF right?

My personal opinion on all of this may seem schitzophrenic. I don't even run HQ in Glorantha for my games, so, in fact, I ignore quite a lot of the rulings that we get here on what the official word is. So why am I so concerned with figuring out what the official word is, precisely (other than the fact that I do find myself playing in Glorantha some)? Well, because I find myself using parts of it as they suit. That is, I might like a particular restriction, and not another. But if I don't understand just what the rule is, and the rationale behind it, I really can't make an informed decision.

I mean, if you have your own version of the rules that work for you, and aren't interested in what the intent and meaning of the rules as written are in fact to try to incorporate them in some way, then this list is pretty much useless, no?

I would never tell anyone that they have to follow the rules of a game as written if they don't want to do so. But I would tell people that when you have designers the calibre of Mr. Stafford and Mr. Laws (to say nothing of the various other excellent contributors), then I think it behooves one to look at why the rules are what they are before just discarding them without examination. For my game, the more I look at the intent of the rules, and apply them by that intent, the more I find that, in fact, they work pretty well as written (even for a fantasy world that is not Glorantha, interestingly).

I play Hero Quest not because I want to modify it - I make my own games when I want to do that. I play HQ because it plays pretty well as written from what I've seen.

Not perfectly. I do agree that there probably was an easier way to relate Gloranthan cosmology than the chain of rules that has come out to do so. But I've yet to find any of the rules presented to be there for a frivolous reason. So I consider each in turn. The result has been increasingly more and more interesting play. For me at least. I'm not saying that anyone else need figure any of this out - I can only attest that it's worked for me.

For example, I like the theoretical thematic meaning behind Concetration, and am always looking for ways to give it "teeth" as it were. Lately it seems like it has more meaning than I previously thought. Which has opened up whole vistas of play, as it happens in one game, as a result.

For me, MGF doesn't mean pure freedom for players to just come up with anything. I find that for me and for the players both that playing around with structures is far more interesting than just coming up with things willy-nilly. Often in trying to figure out how to squeeze some idea into some framework you come up with whole new angles on the original idea. As in recently doing character generation with one player who wanted to be a "Bladesinger" which went from something pretty undefined to being an interesting case of misapplied worship (at the player's request) of spirits haunting the blade.

In fact, it's been my experience that when people find a game like HQ that seems to offer a whole lot of freedom as compares other games they've played in the past that they go on a creativity spree, knocking down any barriers that they see. And this is fun for a while (was for me when I was in this period). But then eventually the desire for structure returns for some. I'm one of those people. For me it's a question of which limited set of infinities to look at, rather than just opening up the door to anything. Been there, done that (wrote a whole game about it), and looking for something else now. For me MGF means substantial limits.

Mike

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