Ah! I remember now a point I was to make! In the review, Skyrock said:

"This one leaves me a bit puzzled. In the former IHW installments, where the subject was to lead the officer of an actual army to renown and glory, I can see the reasoning behind this mechanic; in a game about mercs (who should be less involved with the consideration between honor and necessary evils), it looks a bit tacked on."

Actually, I considered removing it from the game, but one of my alpha players brought up a very neat point. He said mercs actually need to be MORE concerned with Honor and Practicality than people in national service because there is no support structure, no tradition, no social reinforcement of honor in a mercenary company. It is exactly this point that causes the merc to get a bad name. In the short term, it's practical to slaughter prisoners. It's practical to kill suspected terrorists without trial. It's practical to do whatever it takes to get the job done. It's only in the long term that honor pays off.

-clash

Mercenaries do not (usually) have a long tradition or custom to fall back on. They have each other- the "Band of Brothers" thing. While national units can talk about the "Honor of the Regiment", Mercs compete for bonuses.

On the other hand, if a mercenary company can last long enough, it will have its own traditions. And, if the merc outfit is a 'descendant' of a regular military outfit (ala Jerry Pournelle's Falkenburg's 42nd stories), they have their old traditions to draw upon.

I'm sure there are plenty of mercenaries who just fight for money, but I believe that the good ones fight for the pure adrenalin thrill and for their fellow mercs.

Yeah, that's my long-winded way of saying that I agree with you, clash!:)

If you've read Lone Survivor - the true story of the four SEALS in Afghanistan who were ambushed by a large Taliban/Al Qaida force - there's a point at which the four Seals encounter and capture some goatherds in the mountains. They consult each other about what to do. The practical choice is, of course, to kill them. The honorable choice is to let them go. They know the goatherds will pass on the information about them to the local al Qaida. After each laying out their reasoning, the leader chose to let them go. It led to three of them dying, one of them barely surviving, a helo full of other Seals dying in an RPG ambush, and a Medal of Honor for the leader, who died. In the game, I call being Honorable "Doing the Stupid Thing," yet it is vital for non-obvious reasons.

That's Honor and Practicality in a nutshell. In the SEALs, and in any unit with cohesion and history, the obvious choice of Practicality is balanced by a non-obvious choice of Honor, because in the long run, Honor works wonders. In a mercenary company, particularly a new one, there is no support built into the unit history. No heroes. No one honored for doing the right thing, no matter the cost. No medals for gallantry. It falls to the individual. Therefore the importance of Honor and Practicality to each individual in the game.

-clash

While I'd agree that mercs that fight for more than money are better soldiers, I'd guess they are in the minority, and even those who believe in the Band of Brothers thing should be more knaves with the advantage for themselves and their comrades in mind, than with thought for the well-being of their employer.
I think "Il Principe" is still spot on when it comes to mercs and their motivations:

QuoteFor such troops [as mercenaries] are disunited, ambitious, insubordinate, treacherous, insolent among friends, cowardly before foes, and without fear of God or faith with man. Whenever they are attacked defeat follows; so that in peace you are plundered by them, in war by your enemies. And this because they have no tie or motive to keep them in the field beyond their paltry pay, in return for which it would be too much to expect them to give their lives. They are ready enough, therefore, to be your soldiers while you are at peace, but when war is declared they make off and disappear.

QuoteCaptains of mercenaries are either able men or they are not. If they are, you cannot trust them, since they will always seek their own aggrandizement, either by overthrowing you who are their master, or by the overthrow of others contrary to your desire.

That being said, back to the game mechanics and their effects.
I can see that Honor could be used as an incentive to don't just follow the cruel choices everytime, but the problem with that is the Conflicted Gauge pattern that's used for Honor/Practicality. With it, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs - gaining Honor isn't a pure improvement, it also demands sacrifices on the Practicality frontier.
With a merc character, I'd see Practicality as clearly advantaged, as I'd expect to have more often to deal with shady black-marketeers, politicians with a J.R. Ewing attitude and El Presidente, than with benign development aid volunteer, politicians with a The Lone Ranger attitude and Mister President.
Looking purely at the mechanical advantages and ignoring for a moment the personality of the PC, it would probably be more effective to try to improve Practicality and to go for the easy, immoral way, as killing POWs, torture and betrayal. What could actually lead to a pretty gritty and depressing game.
On the other hand, the occasional moral and hard decision would look even more noble and hard-won, as the player in addition to the hardships of the honorable way actually sacrifices his efficiency as a knave to make it.

It should here also be noted that this is where the loose interconnection between the tacked-on rules and the rest of the system (and the rest of the tacked-on rules) comes in handy. If you deem them inappropriate for your game, they are very easy to get rid off or to get modified, as the rest of the system still works well without them. This way of design leads to less convincing whole packages when played RAW, but it makes it extremely easy to customize the game due to preferences.

Yes, I agree - there is a clear advantage playing Practical over honorable. If that's the way the player approaches the game, go for it. That's what choice is all about. As I stated in the Skill List thread, I prefer flexibility over precision every time.

-clash

I should point out here that I always look at the game as written when I evaluate it, not "how I could turn this into an awesome game with just a few minor houserules/using this and that optional rule".
I certainly note when quirks are _easy_ to fix (like the range problems in the air combat system), but for the overall rating, the major influence is the whole package as written, as this is a fix-point and a base that's the same for everyone.

With just the minor fixes that I suggested in the review and in the discussion, IHW:WB could easily be a 7/10 game, instead of a 6/10 game, if it had already come that way as written.

(My way might seem unfair for more modular approaches as most of Clashs games, but OTOH I've seen too many reviews that were based on "what my great GM Willy made with this game" or "the crime that GM Ylliw commited with this game once at a convention game where I participated in" that didn't help much to get a feel for the book itself, rather than what Willy and his evil twin could create out of this raw material.
Somewhere every review has to draw the line to come to any judgemental conclusion.)

Quote from: SkyrockI should point out here that I always look at the game as written when I evaluate it, not "how I could turn this into an awesome game with just a few minor houserules/using this and that optional rule".
I certainly note when quirks are _easy_ to fix (like the range problems in the air combat system), but for the overall rating, the major influence is the whole package as written, as this is a fix-point and a base that's the same for everyone.

With just the minor fixes that I suggested in the review and in the discussion, IHW:WB could easily be a 7/10 game, instead of a 6/10 game, if it had already come that way as written.

(My way might seem unfair for more modular approaches as most of Clashs games, but OTOH I've seen too many reviews that were based on "what my great GM Willy made with this game" or "the crime that GM Ylliw commited with this game once at a convention game where I participated in" that didn't help much to get a feel for the book itself, rather than what Willy and his evil twin could create out of this raw material.
Somewhere every review has to draw the line to come to any judgemental conclusion.)

I have no problems with this approach, Skyrock. My notes here have been informational only - as in "this is where I was coming from, and why the rules are as they are" and not meant as corrections.

-clash

I haven't assumed otherwise - after all, I've _never_ seen you shilling, advertising your stuff with qualities they don't have, or any of the other misbehaviours that too many designers show when it comes to online discussions about their products, and I could hardly imagine you to do so.

I just thought it might be confusing that I admit the easy fixability and rate the game at the same time average, and should therefore clear that approach up - what actually created confusion about a topic about which there was apparently no confusion at all before I started to fight the non-existing confusion

Ah, the joys of written communication.