>From: "cornponk" <cornponk_at_...>
>
>There is also the gambling element of AP bids which I find can be very
>gamist.
Actually, interestingly, the book lays out the optimal strategies for you. For instance, if you're the underdog it makes sense to bid as large as possible on your turn. Given an optimum strategy, there's no room for the player to show off any tactical acumen. Not much gamism potential there.
Worse, what this leads to is "augment scraping." Meaning trying to augment with any ability available. The talent being shown by the player here comes down to how well they can cajole the narrator into approving the augments. A strong narrator can turn this into good narration, but people largely report it as dull to have huge piles of augments. To whit, a typical rule put in to combat this is to put a hard limit on the number of augments. But then you're back to there being no talent needed to find the three or whatever augments are allowed. So, again, little gamism potential.
I could (and did elswhere) go on about this. Again, that's not to say that it can't be done. Just that I'm not seeing HQ providing any particular support for most gamists in most ways.
>The nature of the infinite ability increase also has a gamist
>appeal (the carrot in front of the donkey thing, or `levelling up').
Except that you tend not to get much actual advancement out of the system as described. What you can get with gamism play, is a player stacking up his points all in one ability. The problem there is that it can seem very odd for the character to get really good at one specific thing in short order, but not at anything else. What this leads to, further, is the player trying to get into one and only one sort of conflict. If they're character is the combat monster, they look only for combat, and try to stay away from any other sort of conflict. Given HQ's contest framing this can be pretty problematic. Again the player can try to cajole the Narrator into allowing everything to be resolved by that one large ability ("He wants to negotiate? I cut him down!")
>Does anyone here go full gamist? Do you think it perverted to play HQ
>in a very gamist way, opposing the author's intentions?
Perverted? Hardly. Gamism is a healthy way to play. I'd say it's more like using a screw driver to pound in nails. You can make it work, but there are better tools. How screw-driver or hammer-like HQ is will depend on your very particular style of play (big categories like gamism aside). For some unusual sort of gamism, HQ might be the perfect tool.
Mike
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