> LC:
> Hmm.. I suppose by your description I play grey, then.
The terms simulationist and narrativist will just confuse this issue because they are not really what is being discussed - see my footnote.
I think the real heart of this discussion is related to matching genre to crunch in a game that is not 'Crunchy'. If you want to play HQ2 with lots of statted out detail then you pretty much have to do the hard work yourself, similar to the direction HQ1 went.
But, bear in mind that gritty realism as a genre consideration does not necessarily need a mass of stats, you could easily play Hard SF without them, because the stories themselves don't have a mass of stats or physics, instead they have just enough scientific detail to sit the story on.
Where HQ2 differs to Heroes or Gurps is in the idea that you can build up a satisfying RPG experience by first modelling the world and then building upwards, such that any questions regarding feasibility can be answered lower down the abstraction scale. HQ just isn't that kind of game, BUT with careful attention to detail and a genre pack that irons out some of the issues it can be played in a similar way, again you just need enough detail for the kind of story you want.
A Robin Hood game would be a grand sweeping epic but at some point your going to want some solid bow & arrow guidance because its such a big part of the story, but conversely you might not need guidance on rope swinging or castle wall scaling. These are a part of the genre but they will only need more detail if you really want to model that Errol Flynn castle storming scene on a tactical level, and the film sees it as a plan coming to fruition not a big tactical balance point.
Jamie
Footnote
Simulationism is not related to modelling a world through rules and has nothing to do with how crunchy the game system is. It is perfectly possible to play both Gurps and Heroes narrativistically. Worrying about the range of a bow says more about the level of tactics the players prefer than the agenda.
You can find a sweet spot between crunch and abstraction, and between granular story detail and grand sweeping scene framing and call it 'playing grey' but that's not a style between Narr & Sim, indeed in itself it wouldn't help us define the agenda of play at all.
If anyone wants to discuss the distinctions it would probably need a different forum, but if you find somewhere more suitable to post the questions I'm there.
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