Coolness.
> "OK. What about the same story, but instead of bows, spears, and
> daggers, it is Stunners, Ganglia Zappers, and Plasma Blasters? These
> things are fake. No one has the knowledge for assigning relative
> difficulties or credibility tests and no one can look it up. It has to
> be stat'ed out, at least in basic terms, by the GM."
>
> What genre are you playing? If it's Space Opera the credibility test
> is could Han Solo do it? If you don't know watch more Star Wars or
> read more E.E. Smith. Not a lot of need to stat out weapons.
>
And even then, how many games actually stat out these weapons to any degree in a generic play rule book? If you needed stats for these, they would go in a genre pack.
> You can even have multiple genres in the same game world. Characters
> in Glorantha can be low life (read more Oliver Dickinson) without
> super powers at one extreme or scare Gods for lunch (read more Celtic
> myths).
>
In fact, I think one of the problems with coming up with "magic rules" and such for Glorantha is just that - they kind of depend on what genre you are using the world for.
> So the point here is: Does the player's description of what their
> character invoke some emotional response in you? Whether it's "I can
> see that..."
>
And even then, as the main book points out, sometimes you describe what
it does to get the credibility tests. This is something that happens in
other "genreless" books as well. If I have a no-genre rule book, it's
not likely to have Stunners, Ganglia Zappers, and Plasma Blasters. So
you would still need some idea of what they do to that you wouldn't get
in the main book.
LC
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