Robin,
Yes, "Siver-tongue vs Great Big Club" and Missile Combat are two issues that
need to be spelled out clearly in the book. More examples can only be good
(as long as they match the RAW).
It would be nice to explain Augments better as well. For instance, what is
the difference between augmenting with an "inherent" ability like "Muscular"
or "Agile" and augmenting with an "active" ability like "The Seven Maneuvers
of Demetrios" or "Speak Crap to Confuse Enemy"?
>From an entry level point of view, I guess it is quite important to help
newcomers to get in the system. HeroQuest breaks quite a few paradigms so
it might help to bring some of them back as options. HeroQuest doesn't need
them to function but some people need them to understand or accept the HQ
paradigm. Examples are :
- Measurable abilities : Some abilities are measurable in real life and it
would help to translate them from HQ abilities to real life values. The
obvious one I see are Strong, Large, Fast, Wealth. In other world, how much
can you lift if you are "Unbelievably Strong" 5W or how fast can you run
with "Running like the wind" 17? Obviously Wealth is heavily dependent on
the setting but the other three are not.
- Wounds : AP measure how well you fare in a situation and at the end of the
contest translate in situational modifiers. The way it is set up, it always
mean that the winner ends up unharmed which is quite unsatisfying for a lot
of people. I would help to set-up a way to accumulate "wounds" for both
contestant. Options could be Mythic Russia's Pyrrhic Victories (except both
the winner and the loser should look at how much they lost during the
contest not just the winner) or simply accumulating "wounds" (-1 modifiers)
every time you lose x% of your total AP. A similar way can be devised for
Simple Contests.
The following two I am less sure about.
- Maneuvers : Explaining what a bid is (see table at the end of page 68) is
nice but what would help newcomers quite a bit would be to list optional
maneuvers. A list of Social maneuvers or Combat maneuvers (Retreating
parry, Engage enemy, Test defense, All-Out Attack)...
- Equipment : A full weapon and armor table (both low and high tech) would
be nice (see Mythic Russia). A list of vehicles or other devices as well.