Heated ambiguity, and bids.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 05:08:31 +0100 (BST)

David Dunham:
> > I do think we at least need to give some descriptions or
> > guidelines for the feats. If for nothing else then for the people who
> > love Glorantha, but use a different game engine to play with.
>
> That's sure a losing proposition! For my money (and Issaries, Inc.
> does have some of it), they should be supporting their own games, not
> long out of print systems.

No, the real losing proposition would be to make the supplemental material _inaccessible_ to those that aren't going to be using HW, for whatever reason. I'm with Mikko, and last I heard, with Greg, on this. Ain't nobody's money no good, I say.

> > "Sunset Leap enables one to emulate Mastakoses great leap eastward.
>
> I do wonder why people have this interpretation -- I would think if
> anything it leaps in the direction of the sunset, i.e. west.

I thought that too. (See, David and I do occassionally agree!) That level of 'cool ambiguity' I can live with, though. (You can leap west, or teleport east, if one wants to be silly about it...)

> > ones I still have no idea at all about are Snarl Darkness
>
> One of Babeester Gor's Terror feats. Assuming it's written correctly,
> it's not effective *against* darkness, but would be a low snarl that
> makes you so terrified your vision starts closing in.

Ah: as in Snarl _of_ Darkness, as it were. (I kept thinking of darkness getting 'snarled up', which was just _not_ helping...)

> I think overcautious players who keep bidding 3 are probably
> forgetting that this is a "simulation" of adventure movies -- yes,
> they can get killed

I assumed their caution was that they wanted to _win_. That's kinda the point of a 'contest', after all. If I have 40AP, and bid 25 of them, the risk is not so much losing big and suffering bad consequences (though it does that somewhat, too), as decreasing my chance of winning.

> but probably not in the ignominious ways you can
> in RuneQuest (which as I recall has insanely speedy bleeding rules).

Or femorial artery-seeking arrows, perhaps... I always interpreted 'bleeding' as a catch-all for assorted unpleasantness that might kill you in the aftermath of a wound, left unattended to: shock, cardiac arrest, a respiratory blockage, blah-blah. Hey, we've all see e.r., am I not right?

For my money, Pendragon gets the 'ignominy' award. Slow, and not entirely unrealistic, but not so pretty. "537: The Adventure of the Slowly Festering Knight." (One of my favourite games, btw. In my local gaming society, my perceived keyword might be 'Greg groupie'.)

Cheers,
Alex.

Powered by hypermail