The Forge Archives

Or something like that.

I didn't get a real look at Hero Wars until just recently, checking out their rule summary together with the first 3 chapters available on their site

It was interesting, because it seemed to a lot of ideas I have been toying with. In HW it seems a lot more unified with the HP currency covering everything.

If you're following my design evolution, you're familiar with me having stuff like "Riskbreakers" for skill increases in mid-adventure, "Inspired actions" to push success margins and "Weird" which is a sort of fate-points.

In addition, I'm thinking of a descriptor mechanic to replace skills.

Hero Wars seem to implement something like that, although all those things more firmly grounded in the system.

However, I dare say that my problem isn't that I don't have those mechanics firmly grounded in my system. I start out with sim after all. The Riskbreakers, Inspired Actions and stuff like that are only narrative stuff I try to put in without breaking the the possiblity to initially play it sim style.

The problem is that I haven't quite managed to unify them. That has already been pointed out to me.

I also had an idea to let some of the initial descriptors ("skills") to be saved and chosen later "in-play".

Those are purely mechanical considerations of course.

There was something else which also struck a chord. For example we are told that "Rollo has amagical rope that can stick to any surface until the command word releases it, and a knife that can open any latch." and the character Kallai who "owns the Sack of Black Winds, in which the Four Collapsing Words have been trapped since the War of the Straw Giants"

Really cool stuff. Although I'm not afraid to go overboard with the magic, I guess I'm locked down by all the AD&D style "Magic Sword +1" and forgot all about the legendary treasures. This also applies to character abilities.

Sim style you start out pretty much with reality, right? So here I was pretty much trying to sim reality with a little magic thrown in for good measure. Despite me introducing m-a and chi powers, I notice I'm really not using heavy artillery yet. Another AD&D style disease, or maybe this actually has it's source in Tolkien.

Anyway, I'm thinking I should really allow the characters to boost into the stratosphere when it comes to powers. That's really a good thing. I don't mean up the power level, but up the unrealism of it. Creating something more ready to tell a story than to simulate it.

However, I'm still not quite ready to abandon sim. In fact I think it can be really cool with sim. However, with sim we have to introduce some way to measure things. And how do we measure the fantastic? Hero Wars has a good answer for their heroes "Hero Points".

There was another thread where it was talked about "protagonizing the setting" if anyone remembers. Here there was also some ideas of giving pools of resources for the setting to "fight back". In essence this was about measuring the challenge of the setting, which is a more narrativist way of looking at it. However, can't this also be introduced into a sim game, by considering it a measure of it's magic or it's myth-power or sentience or some other semi abstract quantity which then has to be grounded into the setting.

You can't have sim and say "well, I have a measurement to say how much these woods are going to dish out at you", then you leave sim pretty much. However, if the forrest actually in the setting is considered to have some measure of power which it actively uses, then it's quite ok.

Anyway, a similar thing could then be created for everthing from heroes to magical abilities to gods to places.

Well, just some thoughts I was playing with. Feel free to comment.