Let me jump in to this interesting discussion and...
>A depressing large number - and they end up with "Basic Rules" the size of
>The Sartar Book. GURPS, I'm looking at you. And the Hero System don't
>pretend you can't break a man's wrist by taking you off the shelf.
>Cheers,
>Ash
... just state that the examples chosen are by themselves interesting for two reasons. First, Ash is right, both GURPS and HERO do bring a lot of crunch and details to the table. Second, both systems are quite excellent in my opinion.
Why is this relevant to this discussion? Well maybe it is not but I like Hal, I do find it useful when stuff are stated out but not because I like to over simulate things (I am not a pure simulationist). I actually like to set out difficulties according to how interesting/important tasks are to the story but because I am not a pure narrativist either, I then choose rule elements (range, weapons, slipperiness of slope, weather, whatever) to FIT the chosen difficulty. Having all these useful stats in a book just help me to bring verisimilitude to my games.
I guess I am just saying it is not all black or white, simulationist or narrativist. Shades of gray do exist and every once in a while someone pops up saying "I'd like to play grey with HQ because I like the premises of HQ but I prefer grey as a style. Please help me out". Most of the time a lot of helpful people answer with genuinely interesting answers that might be summed up as "Ah, there is your problem, you should play white!".
That being said, I do find this discussion helpful and interesting.
FF from the DD
Powered by hypermail