RE: Digest Number 595

From: Steve Lieb <steve_at_...>
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 12:22:58 -0500

> >> Which plans I am happy to oppose, as being clearly contrary to the
> >> game's core design philosophy ("write down any ability
> and a rating:
> >> that's your ability, and how good you are at it, too.").
> >...
> >
> >Except the concept of 'keywords' being different from 'abilities',
> >which you support, breaks with that.
>
> Keywords is just a shorthand for common combinations. You
> could easily remove them from the core rules and the game would be
> the same, just more cumbersome ie instead of writing 'he is a
> warrior', you could write 'she is a warrior skilled in spear and
> shield fighting, in riding horses, and in recognising foes of the
> clan. She is brave and boastful like all heortling warriors.' and so
> on.

IMO I understand this in the sense you mean it, but in the larger scale, I'd disagree with this statement entirely.
Keywords are a handy gamerule tool for 'guiding' characters along Glorantha-realistic channels in terms of culture, weapons, skills, knowledge, etc. It rewards players for being culturally 'correct', meaning theoretically that the larger percentage of players will choose the "skill maximizing route" of getting a pile of skills for a couple of character essay words, than players who will eschew the efficiency of the mechanism in favor of complete freedom in skill set selection. Hopefully this will mimic (or seem to) the ratio of culturally-normal people to aberrent Ulerian were-hobbits wielding arbalests.