I
wrote the following excerpt today and will be using it in the
introduction of the Ara Knochen Sourcebook using the HiBRiD gaming
engine:
<begin excerpt here>
What
Kind of Game is HIBRiD?
At
its core, HiBRiD is inteneded to be a cinematic role-playing gaming
engine with an old school feel.
To
get a more full understanding of what the game is trying to
accomplish, a quick and overgeneralized history lesson is in order.
Back
in the beginning days of the role-playing hobby, the games focused
more on strategic combat and were geared toward defeating enemies and
“finding” loot, with the goal of making your character more
powerful. Rules for these “old
school games”
were technical and attempted to directly simulate combat situations
realistically, often leading to the use of numerous die rolls,
charts, or tables to resolve actions. Combat was often lethal for
characters and would last for hours at a time. Furthermore, while the
rules for combat were mechanic-heavy, resolution of the majority of
the other non-combat related tasks characters performed was left up
to the game referee to decide. In these early years, the genres of
role-playing games were strictly relegated to combat in fantasy and
science fiction settings.
As
role-playing games evolved, however, other media evolved as well.
Computer games became more advanced, films became more portable,
and both media began competing for the attention of gamers. Designers
and players realized they could use role-playing games to not only
simulate combat, but to recreate heroes from their favorite media in
any way they saw fit. Newer games were released that created more
abstract flexible, and uniform rules for resolving both combat and
non-combat actions. The focus of these “new
school games”
reduced the lethality of combat and shifted focust away from combat
and more towards heroic stories and themes with genres expanding into
the realms of comics, pulp, literature, and film.
HiBRiD
attempts to capture facets of games from both of these "schools"
and blend them into a single gaming engine. From the old school, the
game attempts to preserve:
- the use of simple, direct dice mechanics
- the lethality of and immersion in the excitement of combat
- character
improvement through experience and obtained loot
From
the new school, the game attempts to adopt:
- fast action resolution
- simplified and integrate combat and non-combat actions
- the flexibility
to reflect or create heroic scenes and stories from any number of
films
<end excerpt here>
From
the above excerpt, it might first appear that the lethality of old
school gaming might preclude any ability to create heroic scenes.
