RE: Re: How do you compare published abilities without numbers?

From: Matthew Cole <matthew.cole_at_...>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:23:25 -0000


Jamie just said something that illustrates the pointless nature of publishing figures for gloranthan characters:  

"who would win? a mortal woman and a halfling or a nazgul witch king?"  

I think this says it all really. We have a standing bet as to whether it will help.  


From: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com [mailto:HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Benedict Adamson Sent: 24 February 2009 21:43
To: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Re: How do you compare published abilities without numbers?  

Chris Lemens wrote:
...
> 4. Through play, the community in the supplement comes into a conflict
where each side has a champion. Let's assume it is a lawmoot. ...
> 6. The players want to be with the winner. (Or, alternatively, need to
figure out whether they need to find a back door and a quick escape route.)
>
> How would you let the players assess who the winner is going to be?
...

The real question is not "Which NPC will win the contest?" It is "Can the PCs accurately predict the winner". The actual abilities of the NPCs are actually irrelevant, it is a contest of the PCs abilities of "Assess Political Support", "Read Mood of Crowd" and so on against a resistance of... well, "The World" as we used to say in HQ1.

And this is how it should be: we shift the focus from the NPCs to the PCs.

> I think that most new-to-Glorantha narrators would be frustrated at not
being able to figure that out from the book

HQ2 provides an explicit mechanism for figuring out what the resistance of the contest would be. This is what the "Pass Fail Cycle" is about.. Your hypothetical novice merely has to use the written rules as is. There is no difficulty here.

The rules can ALWAYS provide a suitable resistance. Without exceptions. There are no corner cases or holes in which it can not provide a resistance.

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