design and resolution

[Mike Holmes]

Ah, I get your point about help now, Marco. And I'd agree there in general terms that if you don't have a canonical version of something that you'll have to work it out yourself.

But given examples, I think it's pretty easy. And all these games have lots of examples. I mean HQ won't help you with machineguns but that's because it's not meant to be generic, but fantasy. In terms of fantasy, however, it gives so many examples that, IMO, adjudicating what somethig "should be" in game terms is nigh scientific.

For example, I learned from the book recently that a troll with a height of 6' 6" and 300 lbs. is mechanically rated as Large 15. From this I can figure out what all my Shadow World races will have as "avgerage" Large Abilities. No, there's no chart or anything, but it's simple math to figure it out.

Hero System 5th has multitudinous examples. It's a simple matter to create that Fire Blast from a near example with a couple of simple modifications (assuming that there's not a perfectly suitable example, which there often is). What the openess of the system does is to allow me to easily alter these things when I have a different vision of them ("Mr. Flamsy has a real narrow flame beam that tends to punch through things so I'll give it Armor Piercing"). I mean, exactly how much damage does a Flame Bolt do in real life? It's all guesses anyhow. For those things that are real, there are, in fact "cannonical" answers. .50 Cal M2 HB MG does 3d6+1 RKA (AP with the right ammo), etc.

So I'm not seeing a downside. I would agree that Hero is complex, however (that'll probably get a big Duh). It's just not that unhelpful, nor does it lack detail, IMO. Further, if you do like to wing it, it's even easier.


Hero Quest, OTOH, is simple to create things, and simple to adjudicate because everything uses the same system for determinations, and you don't have to learn subsystems.

But, I think that we can theorize that the simplest system would be like HQ in that it would use one system for all axes, yet it would give specific rules for their implementation statistically. Some systems I can think of get close, but I can't think of one exactly.

Mike

[ross_winn]

So I should reply, as an aside I stopped getting replies to this some time after the thrid reply. Since I only read the forge about once a week I missed a lot and I apologize. I should also explain a few things about how I design. In the simplest terms I generally do not use the GNS model in my descriptions because I feel that it is flawed. Not wrong, just flawed.

Basically I want something as mechanically diverse as Hero5; a mathematical model that will allow for a wide variation. Along with that a resolution system that is as simple and fast as possible.

[Valamir]

Basically I want something as mechanically diverse as Hero5; a mathematical model that will allow for a wide variation. Along with that a resolution system that is as simple and fast as possible.

Have you looked at Tri-Stat?  I'm not a huge fan of it myself, but this is practically the verbatum design objectives for it.