>From: "Jane Williams" <janewilliams20_at_...>
>When I'm struggling with this sort of thing, I try to think of AP as
>modelling your confidence in your ability to win the fight. Where that
>confidence is from could be anything : the knowledge that you're behind a
>hedge, the way bits of your opponent just fell off, blind faith in your
>deity, whatever. But it's confidence, intangible, and not affected by
>changing abilities. When you run out of it, you give up the fight.
I think that if you have to have AP model something, this is the right thing to model. Interstingly, this is extrememly realistic, far moreso than most any other RPGs modeling of conflict from a certain POV. Consider that the Marshall report after WWII discovered that will to fight was 90% of combat effectiveness. RPGs often skip that part entirely assuming absolute control over will, and focus on the 10% that's skill. HQ allows us to look at what's really important in conflicts, the will to win.
The physical act of murder is actually not particularly difficult. But it's still pretty rare. Guns are dangerous precisely because they make it so much more psychologically easy to commit to killing somebody (all ranged weapons have this advantage, guns are just damn easy to learn to use).
Now, that still seems a little odd in a way, when changing goals that this modeling doesn't change, however. That, however, to me is because I think that AP don't model anything much in-game. I think they model dramatic convention. Take for instance your typical kung-fu battle. In these it's quite kosher to say that AP loss represents taking wounds. Because wounds have no real lasting effect in a kung-fu marathon. Often the hero, bloodied as all heck, manages to come back and make his most powerful attack yet to put away the villain. In fact, you could argue that the bloodier a kung-fu fighter gets, the more dangerous he is dramatically.
Make any "realistic" sense? Not a lick of it. But, damn, it's fun!
AP are a measure that says, "You've committed your character to conflict with these opposing forces - something's going to come of that." Which means that you can't get out of the conflict by changing goals in the middle of it. Dramatically you're bound to the opposition until there's some resolution. The rising tension that occurs as you reach the end of that is what AP model to me.
Mike
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