The assorted finds of Artefact Publishing
Neel Krishnaswami describes how:
[HeroQuest]’s augment mechanics lets you turn the “flavor text” into completely systematic and rigorous mechanics. All the informal, English-language essays and notes describing the relationships that you want to hold actually become perfectly good mechanics describing the relationships that actually hold.
This is a marvellous notion, and exactly the sort of mechanism I would be happy to play with. Not only does it aid in the descriptive context before the resolution, but it also serves to give some sense of why any particular resolution occurs (or at least a set of plausible possibilities). There are many concerns which interest me when it comes to what factors into a resolution point, and almost never is it simple skill — yet that is what so many resolution systems are based on.
For example, in one Glorantha game I played in briefly, my character engaged in an impromptu (‘desperately spontaneous’ might be more accurate) drum-playing competition with some Uz that the group had disturbed. I had in mind a particular approach that the character took (starting off with the simplest beats, varying them into the accompaniment of a particular ritual, etc), and certain story elements that I wanted to see arise, but after some descriptive back and forth, a dice was rolled and success determined. The point being that the roll was not linked (in my mind at least) with what had preceded it, and so didn’t suggest any reason for the outcome. It sounds as if the HeroQuest mechanics would have helped a great deal here.
Posted by jamie on September 19, 2005 22:27+12:00