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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jpatterson" data-source="post: 5101356" data-attributes="member: 88317">Hello, I know I'm way late, but I haven't frequented this community (for some unknown reason...), but I did a search for an adventure I wrote in Google and was extremely surprised to see it actually come up somewhere besides my own site or RPGHost/Archive where I uploaded it!Jan 26, 2010, jdrakeh kindly mentioned my Winter's Cold Heart scenario, and had positive things to say about it, and I just wanted to say I appreciate it, that someone was ... able to... appreciate it... or something like that.  I don't think even *I* have the other version he talks about, with the "better authorial voice", whatever that is.  I know one thing - the non-game-immediately relevant text was just plain way too long; as you can tell, I tend to core dump when I write or "have a good idea".I'll skip the amusing and interesting anecdotes which all writers have, which are actually neither, and address the point of this thread, which is the systemless design in an adventure.  To be honest, although WCH is systemless, and I didn't really struggle with that decision, I've since reconsidered and now it's a tossup, leaning noticeably toward system specific.   Reason number one is that I read through it the other day and *I* did not know what basis or relatable scale was being used in the generic ratings I gave the creature.  That was a pretty bad oversight on my part, and I think in a way, THIS is probably THE most risky part of a systemless scenario where you use some sort of stats, even pseudo-descriptives like I did.  People (GM's) are used to a stat block for a system, and understand it and the relative "power level" the minimum and maximum scores encompass, and where the ratings fall and how to eyeball that and fairly easily translate that into any other system they want, so systemless scenario design is questionable to me, now.  I originally wrote it for WFRP2, but I think, honestly. I was just lazy and didn't want to put in all the stats, so I just fudged it with the "maverick" idea of systemless ratings.I do feel systemless gives GMs much more elbow room and ability to interpret values, without resorting completely to fiat and just assigning scores, immediately.  The other upside is that the systemless ratings are vague and broad, intentionally crunchy, because the GM has to figure out the most suitable stat block for the current adventure and players, so can feel confident with a potentially higher or lower system score than what he might have imagined on first blush, looking at the scenario.  It is really more of an "optical illusion", giving the GM implicit "permission" to use whatever values he wants to interface appropriately, without feeling wrong or unfair (this is only for those GM's that DO feel like this when they fudge things or don't go "by the book" of course).Anyway, thanks for reading, sorry to interrupt any flow and current theme of the conversation for an old matter, but I am just still floored. -JPPS: I ran... well, attempted to run WCH as a forum game, even using a simple system (basically Dan Bayn's Wushu), and while the freedom of narrative stance was very popular with the players, it was apparently a little TOO open and the pace was apparently much too slow for a play-by-post forum adventure, as the four people playing all just slowly started logging in less and finally just quit - I suppose it might be my own iffy GM skills too though.</blockquote>

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