>
>
>This brings up a gripe I always had about the Hero Wars magic system. What
>the hell does Magic in HW dom anyway? The feats can work well if you have a
>good working knowledge of the various myths, but most new players won't know
>Orlanth from Blowhole, and there's no way that new players will tolerate
>being made to read something. Any successful game system needs clearly
>described, objective power descriptions. Magic in Hero Wars, for me, is way
>to vague, and the magic system is one great indication of how HW is designed
>with the Gloranthaphile in mind, as opposed to the new gamer.
>
I don't agree with that - you really don't need to know the myth to know
what the magic does. You've got a Storm affinity - well, OK, if you can
think of something that sounds like it could be called 'storm magic',
I'll let you do it. You might get a penalty (especially if you're not a
Devotee), but you sure as heck don't need to know any myths to figure
out what 'storm magic', or 'combat magic' or whatever might mean, at
least in the sort of broad terms necessary to improvise stuff. I'll
agree that some of the feat names are unnecessarily vague, but most of
them are clear enough that new gamers shouldn't have any problems with them.
Now, *old* gamers used to detailed and highly specific spell lists and
descriptions might find an unassailable culture clash here, but whether
or not they're a Gloranthaphile shouldn't have any bearing on the
matter. There *are* successful systems with vague magic systems (e.g.
Mage: the Ascension, although it has specified 'Rotes' as well as the
vaguer system), after all, so I don't think that's a problem in and of
itself. I agree that not everyone will like the relatively freeform
approach to magic in HQ, but I don't think its inherently flawed.
--
Trotsky
Gamer and Skeptic
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Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/