Re: Weapons important to narrative?

From: gamartin_at_...
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 10:45:13 -0000


> > question is more properly posed as, which sorts of narratives
should
> > be more expressly supported in the rules, ones in which there is
> > very little distinction made between different fighting styles,
> > different cultural traditions, and even different weapons, or ones
> > in which this is made more of?

Right, lets tackle it this way.

The kind of narrative in which weapon skill is an important element of the story is usually combat driven, real time or close to, and all or most of the viewpoint characters are combatants. The action centres on the physical conflict they ensure, and relatively minor differences in a combat technique or a piece of euipment are highly important. For example, in a story about the rivalry between two duellists, the intricacies of their individual technique are brought centre stage in order that the audience might be aware of the grounds on which their contest is conducted.

I other stories, for example one which focusses around the plight of a small Heortling village facing Lunar occupation, the detail of the weapon skills of its warriors is probably of little significance, and will not likely be brought to the foreground. Instead, the story is likely to centre around what is narratively significant, probably the realtionships between its Ring and the outside world.

As a rules set, HW needs to permit both possibilities in order to support its narrative audience. This mandates that the level of detail and focus not be mechanically directed toward, say, weaponry. Trad. RPG has concentrated heavily on this aspect, often abstracting other aspects of human interaction into very broad and shallow categories. HW gives all of these aspects much the same weight, and as a consequence there is no default systemic focus on weapon techniques or the like for narrative purposes, as might have appeared in RuneQuest.

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