« Reply #6289 on: August 10, 2012, 03:58:30 pm »
For several reasons, though I can assure you this isn't some personal crusade. If it's clear in my year of playtesting that people prefer the poems over ribbons, I'll drop it. If it's more popular/more fun for the majority of people, why not? Here are my personal reasons for not much liking healing poems:
-I've always felt a little silly listening to someone auction off a healing poem that is often chanting one line, or counting to 86 or whatever the magical number is. Yes people find ways to cheese all aspects of the rules, and they'll find a way to cheese the ribbons too. Lesser of two evils, I say.
-I like the realism of bandages over a magical poem. I know a strip of white cloth is little more than a tourniquet when used for the wounds we simulate, but I think most people can agree a simulated bandage is at least in some part, a facet closer to realistic than simply reciting a poem
-My aim is to get healing to happen more often in woods battles, if not fields battles because of the unlimited res games we so often play. I've been to a lot of woods battle events, and often when someone's injured, the call goes out for a healer. Sometimes someone comes running and does what really anyone could have done, recite a poem, or sometimes no one comes at all. What if there were designated healers with limited supplies and an actual, tangible way to see a wound healed?
-It's been my experience at events I go to that most people either care little for healing poems, or outright ignore that section of the MoA. Of course there are always exceptions to prove the rule, and I've met a handful of people with neat poems and the characterization to use them. But on the whole, and again, this has been my experience, that same majority of people who don't much care for poems seem to really like the idea of ribbons.
-Poems are fun for exactly one person, the healer, and only if that person is good at doing it in the first place, unless of course the poem is fun to listen to and delivered well, which let's be honest, the overwhelming majority of the time it isn't. Ribbons on the other hand invite characterization and fun for both the healer and the healee. I know I'd have more fun if I had to tell the healer which wound to heal, watch them tie a ribbon on me and communicate if it's too tight, not secure, etc.
I'll say this again because too often people on these boards are hostile. This is not my personal crusade. You know what is? PD and increased weight minimums. No, this is something I see a lot of people in favor of, can be more fun than the poems, and may invite more healing as a whole. Maybe more healing will lead heralds at larger events to run more limited rez battles, since more healing keeps players in longer. Maybe people will actually develop designated healers for their units. I'm unsure of the outcome or if even my perception of majority is in fact majority. At this point I only have my personal experience, lot's of recommendations from people I've spoken with, and a creative idea. We'll see how it pans out. I'm trying to approach this objectively and report my playtesting findings here instead of just posting a topic titled, "Changing Healing From Poems to Ribbons Proposal," based on my limited perception.
And hey, if it turns out that most people hate any sort of ribbon system I come up with and much prefer poems instead? No skin off my back.
