Quote:
Originally Posted by simontmn
Applying a rule from a game's core rulebook is not a 'house rule'. S&S is a supplement to a core rulebook; one would expect when using a supplement that the core rules still apply.
|
Certainly. But when that application requires to be developped with special cases or an interpretation how to it ifts a particular game, or an adaptation to a particular genre, it is suplemented with all that stuff. Note, it is not substituted, it is supplemented. And those supplements are what is expected from a source book like Sorcerer & Sword. In this particular case I don't find them in the book.
Quote:
|
You are wrong about mooks, plenty of good S&S has hero killing lots of mooks. Elric does it, wiping out whole armies; Conan does it; usually in a single line - "He slew them in droves, but at last they bore him down" type lines.
|
Once more you are right but this does not contradict what I said. What I wrote was, "The mook rule may be used but in very special occasions where adversaries are so weak, or unimportant and periferic to the plot that they don't require much consideration." As you said yourself, Howard and other good sword and sorcery writters dispatch mooks situations in short sentences. They reserve this treatment to situations where that particular fight is not central to the plot. In Ron's terms, it all has to do with the Kickers and Bangs of the game, if you mind me using that terminology. If the fight is not a bang, mook it. If it is a bang, don't mook it. Otherwise you end playing 'barbarian jock'.
Now, this may be disputable. You may have a different understanding of the genre. Fine.
But that's not the issue. I didn't write the review to present my personal views on how to handle sword and sorcery, or I would be writing an essay disguised as review, something that makes no sense. The issue is that a game book about sword and sorcery should discuss this and similar issues, take a position, propose ways to handle them that are appropriate to the genre. Sword & Sorcery fails to do it, so it does not fill its purposeo of being a game resource to play sword and sorcery. That was the point I was making in the review, and I stand by it.