*nod* It's a design choice.
>
> The Core HeroQuest rules are capable of telling a wide variety of
> stories without resorting to adding rules for specific instances.
>
> However, there is a narrow branch of stories that it will always
> struggle with, and it just so happens that this category of stories
> greatly overlaps with the stories told by roleplaying games.
>
> This particular type of story has been variously and mostly
> unsatisfactorily described as 'simulation', 'genre', 'emulation',
> 'gritty realism', etc. In this style, there is a great deal of focus
> placed on relative competency, specific skill sets and tightly defined
> archetypes that help to delineate character. This is not so much a
> hangover from more traditional games as an expression of a style of
> play (** see important note below). For the sake of this discussion we
> will call this Style X.
>
(Thanks for the asterisk by the way, or this conversation would be wildly off track. *grin*)
>
> Contrast with Style Y, where we are mainly concerned with an
> internally consistent logic, which can be malleable and even undefined.
>
While I do think Style X and Style Y are good groupings, I do tend to think that most people bleed over from one to the other a fair amount.
>
> I think the best way to describe the situation is thus:
>
> The core rules express all types of story BUT the core rules are
> non-specific, so when we move into a specific genre should we narrow
> down or expand on the rules to help define the genre?
>
> Early on in the development of HQ2 Robin seemed to take great pains to
> suggest the answer should be no, BUT at that point he wasn't really
> working with genre packs AFAIK.
>
And I happen to agree with him. I think we explain how the rules address the genre, rather than adding on rules whenever possible. Obviously, HQ2 can have other rules grafted onto it, but I find that tends to get in the way.
>
> Gloranthan specific material has answered the question with a
> qualified yes, and may move further down this avenue with things like
> animism and other cultural magic examples, and it seems Robin was
> involved in this choice.
>
IT may. No one's talking. It seems that my problem with the re-introduction of "augment only" stats was primarily a misunderstanding. The idea seems to have been that rune affinities are stats that do things (which are still somewhat undefined to me except in the case of the divine affinity) and are also legitimate augments for mundane activities, where they represent a small magical boost to those abilities, and NOT an ability that can only be used as an augment. The animism situation is unclear since whether or not the appendix in the book is just supposed to be a quick and dirty way of handling things or not.
>
> There is clearly a purist argument that says no, and suggests that
> genre can be defined purely by guidance, and this works well if you
> are using style Y, because specific stories are not overly concerned
> with relative competency.
>
> We could argue that a high priest of Orlanth has equal weight in our
> narrative as a lay member of Yin Kin, and that the comparative skill
> levels of the two are numerically identical and only differ in
> description and credibility. (I am in this camp most of the time but
> it can cause a lot of cognitive dissonance when everyone isn't on
> exactly the same page.)
>
Agreed. I am clearly in the Style Y camp as well. (With strong support for what actually can be done by these people. I happen to think tightly defined archetypes and specific skill sets are very important.)
>
> I think the answer that any particular group arrives at will depend
> strongly on how the question is asked, or what the group is trying to
> achieve.
>
Agreed. As said, it's a design choice.
>
> The three most common expressions of this in Gloranthan games are:
>
> 1: We want a game that matches Greg's Fiction.
>
> 2: We want a game that feels compatible with our pre HQ2 games.
>
> 3: We want to take advantage of the more open style of HQ2 and tell
> Greg-like stories but have it feel compatible with our pre HQ2 games.
>
> I think the published Glorantha material will most naturally slide
> towards 3 if only for pragmatic publishing based reasons. This means
> that for the group that wishes to maintain a purist stance there will
> inevitably be a bit of extra work, but luckily those groups tend to
> ignore all of the mechanical additions and just read the descriptions
> anyway.
>
I agree. At first guess, it seems it is sliding towards 3, maybe one day we'll know. Note, too, that there are two types of "pre-HQ2 games", the RuneQuest ones and the HW/HQ1 games, which are pretty different and don't seem to be easily compatible one to the other.
Anyway, assuming my job hunt and the play don't eat my brain, I'm submitting a magic system to Rule One that is more "style Y", with the design choices explained, for those who want it.
LC
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