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Hi all

Caveat: I use terms here from the glossary. Reading the three articles relating to aspects of Creative Agenda would also be advisable. (Regulars tell me if this assumption is a given)

I have been trying to think of a very good reason why magic should be so expensive in Heroquest after GM'ing for sometime and seeing how my players have developed their characters. I suggest that non concentrated magic skills cost 2 points to increase and concentrated only 1. Of course, there is a setting requirement for concentration (although that also could be ditched IMHO together with that alien world penalty but thats a whole 'nother thread!!).

My reasoning is founded in the thought that the cost system for experience is a simulationist/ gamist hang up and to redress it somewhat would reduce drift (Changing from one Creative Agenda to another).

Example: For newbies I ask them to spend points during character creation on a 1 for 1 basis. This has yet to be abused as the signal they get is that each skill has the same general utility and they do not therefore minimax (as if I would be bothered anyhow)

Generally the point buying system is fading into just guff in my mind to be dispensed.

Thoughts/shoot me down in flames

Regards
Rob

Hi,

I agree strenuously. I vastly prefer the Hero Wars system in which a point was a point and an ability was an ability, with none of the Currency mod that was encrusted onto HeroQuest.

Best,
Ron

Sorry Rob, I wish I could disagree but I can't, so no lively debate from me either.

I also find it, when I am a player, annoying that I have to fiddle around with these different costs when what I just want to do is do cool stuff. Odd isn't it? In Wushu (if I'm not mistaken), the more cool stuff you do the more likely it is to succeed. In HQ, for magic (kinda, in that 3 points on an affinity may increase five skills), the incentive is rather the other way there.

I don't much like unconcentrated magic costing more either - for me, a concentrated hero can still use the other stuff, just with consequences. I also made relationships cost half as an incentive.

Sam.

I agree.

I used to make characters that bought everything at 1 to 1 in C-Gen. Then the eratta came out saying that some things were more expensive, even in C-Gen. I ignored it.

A player pointed out that this made buying magic cheep in C Gen very attractive. I agreed, and so cut the increased cost for buying stats of any kind. A point is a point is a point.

Having GM'd and played HeroQuest, I am also in complete agreement. My feelings as a player are like Sam's--I want to do cool things, but magic is so expensive (and the conditions for how players are given Hero Points so nebulous--basically, GM whim) compared to any other abilities that I rarely beefed magic up. As a GM, I always have players spend points 1 for 1 for any and all abilities. If there's anything in the rules that says to do otherwise, I've ignored it.

I also think, after playing HQ scads, that "concentration of magic" is all kinds of dumb.

What about the point-cost differential between retainers and sidekicks? Is that still a useful distinction?

Quote from: droog on October 20, 2005, 09:04:42 PM
What about the point-cost differential between retainers and sidekicks? Is that still a useful distinction?

I'd forgotten there was such a thing. I don't know, maybe others find it useful.

Quote from: Brand_Robins on October 20, 2005, 09:11:21 PM
I'd forgotten there was such a thing. I don't know, maybe others find it useful.

It's just that, as written, sidekicks are more useful than retainers (in that they have more abilities).

I agree in principle that eg Concentration tends to gum up the system. But differential point-costs already existed in HW, and I'm wondering if there isn't some bathwater adhering to the baby.

Quote from: droog on October 20, 2005, 09:25:44 PM
It's just that, as written, sidekicks are more useful than retainers (in that they have more abilities).

::shrugs:: Could be worth differentiating -- but in play I rarely find it worth it.

As it stands, you can buy one Sidekick with three abilities or three followers with one ability each for the same cost. There are ways in which having the sidekick is nice and feels cool, but when they get removed from play (injured, left behind, etc) all three abilities go away at once. OTOH, the followers go out one at a time so if you lose access to one ability you don't neccisarily lose access to all abilities. So it's questionable if the cost is worth it one way or the other.

The more important point is that buying a Sidekick or Follower isn't usually a matter of getting lots of abilities or game effect in the actual play of my groups. It has much more to do with the interest and intimacy level of the character and the PC and to story above anything else. I've been playing for a bit now and had people take followers rather than sidekicks repeatedly despite both costing the same.

Of course, not all groups will be mine, so....

OTOH, I'm also not playing with any Animist PCs and there are some issues around animism and ally spirits that can get fugly if they cost the same as everything else. But I don't have any actual play around the issue, so can't say.

Quote from: Brand_Robins on October 20, 2005, 09:44:19 PM

Quote from: droog on October 20, 2005, 09:25:44 PM
It's just that, as written, sidekicks are more useful than retainers (in that they have more abilities).

::shrugs:: Could be worth differentiating -- but in play I rarely find it worth it.

As it stands, you can buy one Sidekick with three abilities or three followers with one ability each for the same cost. There are ways in which having the sidekick is nice and feels cool, but when they get removed from play (injured, left behind, etc) all three abilities go away at once.

I  hadn't considered the retainer sidekick things at all, but I broadly agree with you both, as I think that broadly speaking you agree! A point is a point is a point. Sidekicks get a keyword AND three abilities, retainers get just a keyword.

The reason I stick with 2pts for unconcentrated magic is merely that to become a devotee, or not take higher negative modifier for using, say, theistic feats is that you are not allowed access to other forms of magic (its a religious imperative in the game). Hence you should get something, or, IMHO, you're 'Just Paying To Suck' ('A feature of System in which buying an ability for a character with some sort of Currency .... even worse ..... Widely considered undesirable.')

Maybe an alternative would be to say that only Devotee's can use the feats, and keep the point is a point is a point?

I have an animist practitioner, so thanks for flagging up guys I will have to review that system for advancement when I get my rulebook back from the player I lent it to Monday!

Cheers
Rob

Quote from: Brand_Robins on October 20, 2005, 09:44:19 PM

The more important point is that buying a Sidekick or Follower isn't usually a matter of getting lots of abilities or game effect in the actual play of my groups. It has much more to do with the interest and intimacy level of the character and the PC and to story above anything else. I've been playing for a bit now and had people take followers rather than sidekicks repeatedly despite both costing the same.

This has been my experience. I am always chuffed whatever they go for as it gives another relationship to map to generate potential conflict.

Regards
Rob

I have a point to make below, but first to Brand:

Quote from: Brand_Robins on October 20, 2005, 09:44:19 PM
As it stands, you can buy one Sidekick with three abilities or three followers with one ability each for the same cost....The more important point is that buying a Sidekick or Follower isn't usually a matter of getting lots of abilities or game effect in the actual play of my groups. It has much more to do with the interest and intimacy level of the character and the PC and to story above anything else...

I had forgotten that sidekicks were more expensive but now I remember, I'll not enforce it. I'd hope that a player doesn't really want more than one sidekick, perhaps two at most. Not as an absolute, just because sidekicks can add a whole different dimension to a character and you don't necessarily wish to dilute your character so much (I don't see the concept of sidekick as being very plural anyway). In this vein, another advantage which Brand's players may feel with having followers (i.e. all those categories below sidekick) rather than sidekicks is that they can leave more of the narrative control to the GM; they can be rather more dangerous 'abilities' to have than pretty much any of the others. Perhaps the sidekick is the alternative voice, the follower is the plot device. Different beasts, should have an equal cost therefore (mebbe).

Concentration and Common Magic - for me, those five or so common magics are a grand idea. They really add colour to a character, bring in the mundane and the clan/city or whatever's history, and some of my players have come up with some wonderful ones. I love the idea that a concentrated theist may still have (access to) a local charm he got from his grandma which, say, might get him the girl. Losing that at concentration (or not having it at chargen) is a shame. So, to me, they remain available, developable but may have in-game consequences (you get polluted say) of their use which can bring in fun consequences. They should be active too.

[Sorry if this seems like thread-drift, the point I am aiming for is the paramountcy (?) of the fun over the rules (d'oh!) which is I believe what Rob was getting at]

Concentration and the main magic - I have one player whose character switched from theism to concentration on CM. He keeps those affinities and can try and use them sometime if he wishes - the consequences would be great. I have a hero I play in another game who is not devoted - boy do those feat-less affinities look dull having seen the list of what I don't have! So, how about, with affinities, you have a one-for-one cost, a new feat costs one, if not devoted you have one feat, say, rather than always having improvisation penalties or using it to augment (cf conc. magic being active above)?

Relationships - It costs you a point to increase your relationship with the clan weaver. Likewise with the godtalker. Likewise one of the other pc's in your clan. It gets expensive and it can also get confusing - how does increasing relationship with clan fit with a relationship with the clan weaver? I introduced relationships with groups as mini-keywords in my game. It is a bit of a balancing act, but not overly so. As I hinted above, this can include individuals who cost half to raise. If one wishes to think back to increasing skills in Runequest, increasing relationship skills has to be easier than swordplay, for example, no?


My point:
The reason I have used these different examples is that, as I am sure many here would agree, any cost to increasing a skill should relate more to its importance for the game, the hero etc than a predefined concept. Although HW/HQ is rightly feted for having done  away with combat as a separate rules set, it introduced more complex, case-by-case rules sets for chargen/character development instead. (To me, this has just been a revelatory moment which crystallizes Rob's first post and Ron's response).

So, the way I see it, abilities should be judged on their narrative importance first and foremost and should cost accordingly. As this will vary from game-to-game, player-to player etc, a starting point can be that they all cost one point to raise. Simple. Then, it seems there are two tools (which I have thought of, I am sure there are better ones) which are perhaps more of a positive way to do it than is making things cost more:

1. The 'flaws' - I don't like to classify abilities as flaws per se, but if an ability (e.g. sidekick) brings with it sub-abilities which may seem too much, then ensure that there are the costs (in terms of what is good for the hero specifically) there - the narrative importance of that ability of course makes the consequences of it part of the fun. With thi, for followers at least, is narrative control (GM/player) as another balancer)

2. Keywords - I'm talking mini-keywords in the first instance here, such as the relationships with groups I described above, but also a sidekick with his/her/its abilities, then also to magic at the affinity/grimoire etc level. Although the Keywords (proper) are great for chargen, the 17/13 split between keyword vs. 100-word abilities is an issue which illustrates that what the player thinks is important may not be what comes out in the numbers (at chargen and subsequently). If any ability is of sufficient importance to be divided into sub-categories, then perhaps that ability should be easy to play with (e.g. cost one point to raise) and any sub-categories should be cheaper. I am not sure exactly how this fits with the keywords proper, this is where I would need help, but I do have PC's whose keywords are not very important while one ability (in the 100-words, rated 13 initially) is key to the character concept. What I can imagine is that rather than starting with three keywords and associated magic at 17, you take five abilities from the start to have at 17, subdivided as seems appropriate into specific abilities, and work from there.

Sorry for the rambling, but I feel I am on to something here which fits Rob's OP and the responses. I find that all the sub-rules in HQ, for character development at least, pass me by, versus the central mechanics which are great. The things I have tried, as detailed above, have worked very well and I think, seeing what other people say, that there is a way to redesign the system (not that I've been appointed the task :) .

Sam.

I wanted to let everyone else post first, but I have some comments (I'll be playing Devil's Advocate a bit here):

High Cost of Magic
There is a theoretical prescedent for having magic cost more, and that is the rule that says that magic used against a "passive" resistance, only goes against a 14 TN instead of a normal resistance. Of course, as Ron has pointed out, using conflict resolution there really isn't anything like "Passive Resistance." Worse, even if you're playing as some sort of task resolution, what constitutes passive, and what active. It's not at all clear from the text. So I think that this rule gets chucked in practice as well.

So, yeah, an ability is an ability, and it should cost one HP.

That said, what about groups of abilities?

Affinities
Given that an affinity probably contains 5 feats, or is at least a pretty broad ability, doesn't the triple cost make sense? This is a classic mechanical trade-off invented for the Champions game system way back. Is there a problem with this that I'm not seeing? I'd agree that it's probably not all that important to have in the game system, but I don't really see it as damaging. In any case is the replacement just getting rid of it, or some other associated cost. Note that Hero Wars also had this cost in it (IIRC).

Grimores are pretty much the same case. Note that there are some nuances here, but that they don't seem to affect the value much, and you can play without them quite easily. Like the limitation of not being able to augment more than once from an affinity. Not really an important rule, but doesn't affect the value tremendously, either.

Fetishes and Tradition Charms
These are an odd exception in that they're heavily discounted and you can jump into high level abilities, effectively, but that the ability levels can't be increased. I don't think the rules are too problematic, but I also think that eliminating them as an exception doesn't do much harm to the rules, either. Increasing ability with a fetish ability can be explained not as the spirit getting better, but the character employing the ability better or something (Ron would say it's just metagame anyhow). Much as one can get better with a magic object.

Sidekicks/Retainers
This is really complex. That said, I'm not seeing the objection to the difference in costs between Sidekicks and retainers. I'd agree that you could probably get rid of one or the other without much missing. But you get more than enough "bonus abilities" with the sidekick to make the cost worthwhile. So I'm not seeing the trouble there.

There is a question as to how the general rule works, however. That is, is that keyword that the follower gets a "real" keyword. Do they theoretically get all of the keyword abilities? Can they augment with them all, for instance, if appropriate? Can you use a sidekick's extra points for raising abilities to add to keyword abilities? Or just to the three additional abilities?

If these are meant to be actual keywords, and not just broad abilities, then they're a collossal bargain. 1HP gets you one ability at 13 normally, but with a follower it gets you a whole keyword full of abilities at starting keyword level of 17? The notion is that it's worth a discount because the follower might not be willing or available to do what they do. But that's also Champions thinking, and really not very HQ. That is, if the roll to see if a follower does what he does only comes up when asked to do something against it's nature, how often will that actually happen? Will it actually be more often than the restrictions on when any other ability is useful? I mean, you can only use Strong in certain circumstances - are these any more common, really, than using your porter's Strong ability? I mean, sure he might be out to lunch...

What seems to be implied is that the GM should feel free to muck with the availability. But not for items? It just doesn't wash.

Don't get me started on the problem with the free Species Keyword. That said, I havn't seen anyone try to take a Dragon retainer yet...

Supporting Characters
This is even worse in some ways. Do NPCs have abilities? Abilities that they can use in the stead of the PC? Let's say I have "Friend of Aggar the Strong" can I have Aggar stand in for me for a contest where his tremendous strength would apply? Seems reasonable, though if you read the rules closely, it says that only PCs have contests. So does this mean that in such a case that I just adjudicate success as narrator? Doesn't that void the tension of the contest in question? Or is a player asking to have an NPC do something asking not to have a contest (other than possibly to get them to do it)?

Basically if I take "Friend of Harrek the Berzerk" does that give me some control over an NPC with lots of four mastery abilities or worse? I'm less concerned about this in terms of abuse than in what players are doing in terms of purchasing. That is, if they percieve an NPC to be more powerful than buying a follower would allow, then they're purchasing them as just a relationship to a supporting character, and trusting that I'll stat the thing appropriately. Should this be disallowed? Should I tell them that the level of ability listed for their Harrek sidekick is just metagame? If you catch my drift?

On the other hand, if this can be done without problem, then perhaps all NPC troubles aren't problematic. The way that I've rationalized all this in the past is that any decentralization of ability out from the character should be really cheap because it's taking the focus off of the character, and just giving the player more power. I dunno, though... The best argument for how the rules are designed is that from what I can see, despite these concerns, somehow they work...

Flaws
This seques nicely into flaws, which have much the same problem. That is, for 1 HP I can buy an ability at 13 that can be used for or against my character as situation dictates, or for free I can get an ability at any level I can con the narrator into allowing that can be used for or against my character as situation dictates. Put more simply, there is no mechanical line between what constitutes a flaw, and what constitutes an ability, it's just whether or not the narrator buys the ability as a flaw. In practice I find flaws getting used as bonuses at least as often as they get used as penalties, and other abilities are actually similar. Basically you're being given an incentive to make the character more interesting, but I think that given how they work mechanically, that players would still buy them if they had the normal cost.

Concentration
I've written a lot on this already. But I'll summarize it here again. If, in fact, Concentration represents some sort of trade-off, then I think that an argument can be made for it. That is, if you're really giving up the ability to do magic of other types by concentrating, then somebody might consider not concentrating. But there's only one odd avoidable circumstance in which it might be a trade-off, from what I can tell. That being that the player insists on taking common magic of the "wrong" type, and then has to consider concentration. All the player has to do is not take that sort of common magic, however, and there's absolutely no downside to concentrating.

In practice the only time I've seen people not concentrate (like myself) was when they didn't understand that there was no downside. So I just assume that everyone concentrates these days, which puts us back at the 1HP per ability level for magic. Which kills two birds with one stone, really.

Now, that said, if we posit a universe in which its not next to impossible for characters to pick up specialized magic of more than one otherworldm, then I think it has some legs. The only problem at that point, and this is a problem with the "rapid development" costs, is that "doubling," while the lowest integer increase in cost you can have without going to fractional costs, represents a huge increase in cost. A prohibitive one, really. So the cost increase should be less, or, even better, another way to represent this should be found.

Quoteand I think, seeing what other people say, that there is a way to redesign the system (not that I've been appointed the task :) .

As it happens, I have been assigned this task, at least with respect to being a soldier on the team putting together Quest Worlds. I can't really talk about what'll be in the game, but I can say that I'm listening intently to the discussion here for ideas on what might be the best solution for these things. Just some incentive to come up with some good solutions.

Mike

Quote from: Mike Holmes on October 25, 2005, 05:57:25 PMAs it happens, I have been assigned this task, at least with respect to being a soldier on the team putting together Quest Worlds.

You're on Quest Worlds?

Well then, my excitement about the project just doubled.

And I was already pretty hyped about it, so that's some steep shit for you to live up to.

I'm not heading the team up, note. Though very good people are.

I think it'll live up to expectations.

But...thoughts on costs? :-)

Mike

Quote from: Mike Holmes on October 25, 2005, 05:57:25 PM
I wanted to let everyone else post first, but I have some comments (I'll be playing Devil's Advocate a bit here):

Sidekicks/Retainers

Surely this is covered by the follower reluctance table on pg. 271. Retainers particularly are semi-independent of the PC and will only use their skills to the extent it's part of their job. So the porter will use his strong ability to carry stuff but probably not to wrestle a bear.

I'm not sure about the points costs but then the whole system is so complex that I can't visualise the mathmatical model involved. It wouldn't surprise me that no one has done so, in which case it relies on playtesting to determine balance.

My first thought about the distinction between sidekicks and retainers was that it's unnecessary until I worked out a character who had both. The sidekick should be essential to the PC as an individual and have a personality. Retainers are closer to mere employees hired to do a job and if they're rather two dimensional it doesn't matter.

Quote
Don't get me started on the problem with the free Species Keyword. That said, I havn't seen anyone try to take a Dragon retainer yet...

A retainer with most stats several masteries above the PC? I'd make the PC the Dragon's retainer. Alternatively it has the keyword Dragon at 17 which makes it more of a liability than an asset.

Quote
Supporting Characters

I don't see why this is a problem, if a player has a relationship with someone they could ask them to stand in for him but there's a price to pay. Either a favour, a gift or maybe even a fee. In the extreme example of the PC having a relationship with Harrak the Berserk if they call on it for help there's going to be a high price to pay. So a PC gets him to trash a Lunar outpost and free his friends. If Harrek doesn't ask the PCs for something which gets them into more and probably worse trouble the narrator isn't trying.

I suspect narrators and players tend to see this instinctively about relationships so the problem of abuse becomes theoretical.

Clearly the contest to persuade the NPC to act is the more important but the player still has an interest in the outcome of the main contest so I think that justifies some screen time.

Quote
Flaws

You're right there's an element of uncertainty here but it follows from the assumption that all abilities are equal. Clearly they aren't, yet which are the more valuable depends on the particular game. The assumption implied by the rules is that flaws will never help the PC so should be free. Once players start using flaws to help themselves and the narrator uses abilities against the players that assumption falls apart. Experienced players will realise this can be done but new players won't and will refuse to take flaws if they cost.

Quote from: Mike Holmes on October 26, 2005, 03:00:06 PM

But...thoughts on costs? :-)

A few not fully formed thoughts:

- Even in a game like heroquest, mechanical (or gameist, I suppose?) choices are still good.  They make it that you can decide certain things about your hero that make a real impact on who they are.

- Having different costs is a valid variation between abilities.  Not to say that this particular variation has to be used, but it is one way to make something 'different.'

- Affinities are unique compared to most abilities in that they are very broad.  "Combat," "movement," and "knowledge" are FAR broader than any mundane ability.  They should not be costed the same without some other limitation.  The fact that most people cannot use them actively might be a reasonable balance for their breadth--but then there is the case of devotees.

- For devotees and adepts, affinities and grimoires work rather like key words, but ones which can be raised with HP.  This is almost the only place in the game where mini-maxing options exist.  This does not mean that this is a bad thing, just noting.

- The overwhelming opinion on the HQ-rules list seems to be that it is very difficult to use the "mundane objects have a 14 resistance to magic" rule.  It sounds like most people discard it most of the time, which somewhat weakens magic, probably meaning some of the other limitations on it are not necessary.

- Under current costing rules, and current definition of HQ benefits (where you get a new ability, not an added onto your own ability, if I read them right), starting per the default levels means it is extremely unlikely for theists to learn their cult secrets--something on the order of 200 HP if I recall the calculation properly.  Given how cool secrets are, making them more accesible would be a good thing.

- I like the tension between varied common magic and specialization.  Do you invest in an ability that will help you right now, or do you only invest for the long term?  Look at the society common magic in the Esrolia homeland in the HQ rules, how great are some of they?  but so mixed in type....nice choices to make.

- I think spirit fetishes would be more interesting if they almost always had one ability that was something more like a personality trait.  This would help balance them off, aside from cost--so you might get a great 'run fast' and 'agility' abilities from a strong spirit, but you'd also get its 'nervous' trait "boosting" you. (this would also give a reason to sometimes choose just a charm).

- In general having inherent balance in things other than basic abilities is probably more useful than just having them balanced by cost.  The point cost matters, but to me the fact that devotees have to put 60% time and resources into their devotion is more of a barrier than the cost of being a devotee.  On the one hand these things lend balance, on the other they create new tensions that can lead to interesting play.  Part of why I like spirit allies, the 10% time commitment--think about what sort of activity this implies!  "Oh, there is Bob, off playing fetch with his stick again."

--Bryan

I'd been thinking about this issue for a while when this thread started, so it's been wildly useful to me.  Thanks all.  There are a number of things bout HQ that I don't grok and I think they stem from making the rules fit Glorantha -- largely magic system(s) issues.

Why not, as a generalization, if there really needs to be a more complicated system than one HP per trait, have say three levels of trait-breadth and charge one, two or three HP per trait based on that breadth.  Optionally, you can set stuff like discounts for grouping traits together (grimoires, etc.) and restrictions on the breadth of kinds of traits (like forcing magic to any one of the breadths for the flavor of the particular game).  I may not have covered all the options needed, but I think a few underlying rule-options can create fairly diverse and complex systems while retaining the one-system across games.  Does this make sense?

Quote from: Christopher Weeks on October 29, 2005, 09:43:18 AM
Why not, as a generalization, if there really needs to be a more complicated system than one HP per trait, have say three levels of trait-breadth and charge one, two or three HP per trait based on that breadth.  Optionally, you can set stuff like discounts for grouping traits together (grimoires, etc.) and restrictions on the breadth of kinds of traits (like forcing magic to any one of the breadths for the flavor of the particular game).  I may not have covered all the options needed, but I think a few underlying rule-options can create fairly diverse and complex systems while retaining the one-system across games.  Does this make sense?

It makes sense yes, and Benedict Adamson had this worked out and posted on his website until changing IP policy led him to take it down. If you can track him down, he might email you it.

Some discussion here: http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/heroquest-rules/2001.06/9774.html

Sam.

Wow, thanks Sam.  I've read some staggering number of posts from that thread at this point and I guess I think the breadth idea is a bad one -- causing more problems than it tries to fix.  But, linking abilities in groups (like Grimoires do) with some limitations and some algorithm for discount might still work and allow everyone to customize their games.

Quote from: Mandacaru
Some discussion here: http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/heroquest-rules/2001.06/9774.html

Also:
http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/hw-rules/2001.06/9532.html
http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/heroquest-rules/2002.04/12928.html

As for point buying systems, Big Eyes Small Mouth makes an interesting point when they price skills according to the type of campaign, since obviously a sword skill is more useful in a schwashbuckling campaign than in romantic comedy one. Alternatively to make sure each player get their HP investment worth of fun you could direct the story according to how they spend HPs.

Thanks for those threads, Janus and Mandacaru. V interesting. It drew me out of my self-imposed lurking... ;)

As far as point cost, I'm an advocate of 1-point-for-1-point but I'm familiar with some of the wigginess this can cause in the HQ core rules. Fortunately, I rarely play HQ in Glorantha so this isn't an issue for games in which I run/play. Bryan_T's idea of having fetishes always have a personality trait is a gem, though. Nice touch.

The threads above cover what I would consider the most common answers to our dilemma:

• Adjusting point costs according to a specified price list based on type (i.e. Sidekicks cost 6 HP, Affinities cost 3 HP, Skills cost 1 HP) as exists in HQ now


• Adjusting value per point cost upfront based on effectiveness/applicability in play (i.e. 1 HP gets you a keyword at 6, a normal ability at 13, a narrow ability at 17 or a really-specialized-uber-narrow ability at 2w)


• Adjusting value per point cost during advancment based on effectiveness/applicability in play (i.e. where 1 HP of advancement would get you 5 points in your dragon-slayer sword or 3 HP would boost your Hunter 1w "keyword" by one)

My personal preference is assigning costs based on the anticipated effectiveness of an ability to the campaign in questions. A bastardized version of #2. I'm fast and loose with the ratings, though, so I don't have anything I can say about what determines the starting rating. PM me an ability and I can PM a rating. :)

My rationalization for this approach is that my "Dragon Slayer Sword" shouldn't cost me 2HP per point in a campaign where I'm only going to run into a dragon once for every six months of play. So players pay for it up front and then advance it like any other ability.

Admittedly, this has raised some questions about keyword/ability advancement in tandem. But, again, it's just an approach, not a bona fide solution. Kind of a "rules-by-my-gut" thing that always frustrates me as a player. And, yes, I do feel like a hypocrite when I subject players to it.

Although #3 adds a layer of complexity, I'm grooving with it at the moment. It appears to be a synthesis of 1 and 2, while I think it could be grafted onto the existing rules-set fairly easily (even in Glorantha) and has the added benefit of being something I'd never thought of, so my brain thinks it's all new and shiny.

But then there's that extra layer of how-do-we-define-the-cost...

Brain's back to square one now. Poor brain.

Scott

P.S.  About the mundane rating of 14... In the past, I've ruled that magical abilities can only be resisted by other magical abilities, relationships or personality traits. That defined what was and what wasn't "magical". So when a player with "Undead 5w4" was filled full of lead by a SWAT team, he was supposed to roll against a 14 plus the community support bonus of so many SWAT members firing at him at once. I made it an auto-success and allowed him to narrate it. Nasty stuff.

Of course, then we were in the position of figuring out when a relationship or personality trait came into play. But that was more fun than trying to figure out what's mundane or not. And, as GM, I found it beneficial to assume a mundane resistance unless the players were dealing with a well-defined NPC.

Then again, for Freedom City-HQ, my plan was to ditch the 14 default resistance altogether and run off a chart of benchmarked difficulties (ala Bruce Ferrie's Supers-HQ). This gave the added bennie of players having insanely high-rated superpowers (10w8, 15w3, etc.). But, in that game, everything had a resistance. Deep down, I liked the consistency of that idea better but have gone with either approach in play. High ratings make players' eyes light up, though. I don't think that was ever a big mystery.

Quote from: Donald on October 26, 2005, 04:42:03 PM
Surely this is covered by the follower reluctance table on pg. 271. Retainers particularly are semi-independent of the PC and will only use their skills to the extent it's part of their job. So the porter will use his strong ability to carry stuff but probably not to wrestle a bear.

But, again Donald, you're ignoring my point on the other side. That is, if I take the ability "Strong" it won't be much use in a debate. "Orate" won't be much good against the bear. All abilities are limited in use to what they're appropriate to. Yes, in theory a porter's strong has less use than having it in my character. But in practice I haven't noticed a difference in play between the availability of abilities in followers and those attached to the character directly.

It's like the problem with breadth, the applicability all depends always on what stuff the narrator throws out there. So I think you have to simply consider all abilities equal. Now, that said, if you had to roll every single time to get the porter to use his ability, even when it's his job, that would be different. Pretty sure that's a bad idea, too, however.

QuoteI'm not sure about the points costs but then the whole system is so complex that I can't visualise the mathmatical model involved. It wouldn't surprise me that no one has done so, in which case it relies on playtesting to determine balance.

Well I've done both the math and the playtesting. And I'm here to tell you that it doesn't balance.

Now, the interesting thing is that nobody has figured that out yet. So it doesn't seem to matter. That is either it's complicated enough that players haven't figured out the advantages, or the playstyle that the game encourages makes it somewhat a non-factor. But if it's the latter, then I'm not sure why not to work the balance out. Put another way, why in HQ play does (or should) a keyword wrapped up in an NPC equal a single ability in the character?

If you want to consider the math analysis, in Hero System, followers are purchased at a 5:1 savings. HQ seems more like about 10:1 depending on the keyword. Worse, however, part of the follower thing is that if it dies, it's not replaced. HQ states that they are. So that's makes it only about 3:1 in HS. Now, I'm comparing apples and oranges, I understand (the games have very different agendas). But the point is that there is such an analysis that can be done.

I'm thinking lately that the incentive may simply be to counter the fact that it's sometimes a lot of work to track your own NPCs, even if they're somewhat interesting to have as part of the character. Perhaps?

QuoteMy first thought about the distinction between sidekicks and retainers was that it's unnecessary until I worked out a character who had both. The sidekick should be essential to the PC as an individual and have a personality. Retainers are closer to mere employees hired to do a job and if they're rather two dimensional it doesn't matter.

I'll take that on face value, but why doesn't it matter? In any case, the differentiation between retainers and sidekicks are actually pretty closely balanced. So I don't have any real problem with those.

QuoteA retainer with most stats several masteries above the PC? I'd make the PC the Dragon's retainer. Alternatively it has the keyword Dragon at 17 which makes it more of a liability than an asset.

I see, ignore the rules, and the narrator will fix everything. Sorry, wrong answer in terms of system. Same thing with your answer about Harrek. You're trying to balance having Harrek out by making him more interesting (the supposed "costs" of ownership). The "downsides" of having a dragon or Harrek as an NPC are actually attractive to players. Unless your playing gamism with HQ, which I don't get.

QuoteI suspect narrators and players tend to see this instinctively about relationships so the problem of abuse becomes theoretical.

See, you're not getting even what the problem is. It's not one of "abuse" at all. Nobody is buying dragons, despite it being available. What's going on, however, is that players are noting that they could buy a dragon, and are wondering how that makes any sense.

QuoteYou're right there's an element of uncertainty here but it follows from the assumption that all abilities are equal. Clearly they aren't, yet which are the more valuable depends on the particular game.

See, same problem again. You simply can't decide that something is more valueable than something else based on the "it's more likely to come up" argument. The likelihood of something coming up is 100% if the narrator decides that it is. There's no random element in how often an ability can be used. So you can't base cost on suspected percentages.

QuoteThe assumption implied by the rules is that flaws will never help the PC so should be free. Once players start using flaws to help themselves and the narrator uses abilities against the players that assumption falls apart.

Well, the other option is to say that flaws can't ever be used positively. It would interest me to see if people took them at that point. That said, I like using "flaws" positively.

QuoteExperienced players will realise this can be done but new players won't and will refuse to take flaws if they cost.

They would if we just didn't call them flaws and make the implication you note. We'd just have "abilities" and say "consider taking abilities that have potential downsides - it's fun!"

Mike

Had to cut off with only replies to Donald yesterday. On to other posts since then (but don't miss the one above).

Quote from: Bryan_T on October 27, 2005, 06:43:51 PM
- Even in a game like heroquest, mechanical (or gameist, I suppose?) choices are still good.  They make it that you can decide certain things about your hero that make a real impact on who they are.

Sounds like "System Does Matter" to me. So I agree, but it seems like a truism.

Quote- Having different costs is a valid variation between abilities.  Not to say that this particular variation has to be used, but it is one way to make something 'different.'

Quite, but "different" is not enough. Points are the metagame, so we have to have some reason for them other than to differentiate the landscape. Actually in some games, they are not metagame - for example Experience Points are supposed to represent something in-game. But for HQ purposes I'm going to assume that this is not the case. Despite occasional evidence that this may have been some part of the intent.

Quote- Affinities are unique compared to most abilities in that they are very broad.  "Combat," "movement," and "knowledge" are FAR broader than any mundane ability.  They should not be costed the same without some other limitation.  The fact that most people cannot use them actively might be a reasonable balance for their breadth--but then there is the case of devotees.

Well, in theory there is a downside to being a devotee - no worshipping any other cults. But I'd agree that in practice this doesn't constitue a balance to the breadth of affinities.

Quote- For devotees and adepts, affinities and grimoires work rather like key words, but ones which can be raised with HP.  This is almost the only place in the game where mini-maxing options exist.  This does not mean that this is a bad thing, just noting.

"Min-Maxing" Sorry, pet peeve. Refers to the primary work on Game Theory by Von Neumann. Not seeing the min-maxing here, however. That is, there is a balance to buying affinities and grimoires, that being the lost opportunity costs of buying individually. That is, let's say I have 2 HP. I can buy up two abilities right now, or I can wait until I have three and buy up 5 abilities all at once. If I wait, it's the time sans those abilities that balances out the benefit of waiting for the cheaper cost. That and the fact that I can't "stack" abilities. That is, with 3 HP, I can add 3 to one ability (over three buying periods), or I can buy 5 abilities up 1. It can be argued that the one ability up 3 is actually more valueable insome cases.

This is balanced. Generally it's been established that packages are balanced since early Champions.

Quote- The overwhelming opinion on the HQ-rules list seems to be that it is very difficult to use the "mundane objects have a 14 resistance to magic" rule.  It sounds like most people discard it most of the time, which somewhat weakens magic, probably meaning some of the other limitations on it are not necessary.

That's my position. That said, concentrated, most abilities only cost the same as other abilities. It's only the groups that cost extra, and that makes them a bargain.

Quote- Under current costing rules, and current definition of HQ benefits (where you get a new ability, not an added onto your own ability, if I read them right), starting per the default levels means it is extremely unlikely for theists to learn their cult secrets--something on the order of 200 HP if I recall the calculation properly.  Given how cool secrets are, making them more accesible would be a good thing.

Secrets are decisively unbalanced foer several reasons. Basically you get them for free if you buy up other abilities at normal cost. Then they allow you to do special things at what is essentially a reduced cost.

That all said, 200 HP isn't as much as it sounds like if you just give out scads. Rather, it's somewhat unclear what the rate of HP distribution is (though it may seem straightforward). Also while 200 HP sounds like a lot, it's not very much at all. That is, after spending HP on that order, characters tend not to be recognizably more powerful than before spending them. Strangely enough.

Quote- I like the tension between varied common magic and specialization.  Do you invest in an ability that will help you right now, or do you only invest for the long term?  Look at the society common magic in the Esrolia homeland in the HQ rules, how great are some of they?  but so mixed in type....nice choices to make.

Except that the "trade-off" here is illusory. That is you can have your cake and eat it too. That is, let's say that you want a particular common magic ability, Start Fire, but it's a CM spell, and your character is specialized as a theist. Well, you just take the Start Fire Feat instead. Doesn't seem to be listed anywhere? You make it up per the rules describing Common Magic generally. Basically you never have to give up any common magic.

Now, I could force players to take X common magic of a type that's against their specialization. But that seems as artificial as what's going on above, and doesn't really create the stress sought unless they're all the wrong sort. I do have to admit that this is the first time that it's occured to me to do this, however.

This all said, a recent conversation has me starting to believe that inter-otherworld cult accretion is more of a possibility than I'd previously thought. As such, the bite of concentration, at least, may be back in.

Quote- I think spirit fetishes would be more interesting if they almost always had one ability that was something more like a personality trait.  This would help balance them off, aside from cost--so you might get a great 'run fast' and 'agility' abilities from a strong spirit, but you'd also get its 'nervous' trait "boosting" you. (this would also give a reason to sometimes choose just a charm).

You're talking about balancing the uber-power of having them augment with their full ratings? Yeah, I think that just needs to go is all. The theoretical "limitation" on it (spirit leaves for a while) just doesn't balance at all. Much easier than your personality trait idea. Which I have other problems with that I won't get into.

Quote- In general having inherent balance in things other than basic abilities is probably more useful than just having them balanced by cost.  The point cost matters, but to me the fact that devotees have to put 60% time and resources into their devotion is more of a barrier than the cost of being a devotee.  On the one hand these things lend balance, on the other they create new tensions that can lead to interesting play.  Part of why I like spirit allies, the 10% time commitment--think about what sort of activity this implies!  "Oh, there is Bob, off playing fetch with his stick again."

Right, balance should be about in-game matters for things outside abilities. Abilities should balance against themselves.


Sam, Chris, Janus, I cringed when I read BESM and the idea of balancing costs based on frequency. As I've said, above, breadth and frequency are not random things, and have to be discarded in terms of costing abilities out. That is abilities should be about the same in breadth, and they should all cost the same under the assumption that, yes, the player is asking for you as narrator to make the abilties they take for their character interesting in play. And even if you play more simmy, predicting usefulness is tantamount to gamism support.


Scott, don't know about any "wigginess" but generally I'm all for the 1:1 ability cost. For abilities. Affinities or keywords that you can purchase, since they are packages of abilities that all have mechanical ramifications and interest, should cost more. Rather, I'm for a 1:1 cost for abilities if there are only abilities (which is one potential option).

If you were to charge 1:1 for packages of any sort, - kewords, affinities, whatever - then players will probably buy nothing but packages. Interesting idea in some ways, however...

Option #2, or your version of it specifically, I'm against as you can see from the above (the original #2 seems to have balance problems in terms of advancement, too). If you have a dragon-slaying sword, and you aren't encountering dragons a lot, the GM is doing something wrong, IMO. Rather, it should cost precisely as much as your strong, and be used about roughly the same amount.

And there's no way I can advocate a system that uses GM fiat to set costs on a point by point basis. Just too much work.

Mike

Hi Mike:

Good to hear from you.

The wigginess I'm talking about with 1:1 cost in HQ is what you're talking about with Affinities and keywords (extrapolated out to Sidekicks and such). If everything costs 1 HP, then the whole keyword-package thing gets kinda hairy. You point that out and I agree that the best approach for that problem is the "just" abilities approach. No new ground there. I'd be surprised if you didn't already know that's how I felt. ;)

Regarding Option #2 (or 3 or whatnot)...

I think our approaches differ with neither being necessarily better or worse. Your approach as I understand it is to put an equal emphasis on the players' important skills through story and contests geared towards those skills. I veer in that direction when I run too but I also tend to think that certain skills just aren't naturally going to come up in a given campaign all that often. Most likely, in my games, a fair amount of combat skills will come up. Map-reading not so much. But when it does...

I think both our positions are based on good and well-earned experience, so I don't know if there's much wiggle room there for either of us.

In my experience, I could have one player with "Sword and Shield Fighting 2w". A pretty general all-around combat skill. And I could have another player with a relatively non-combat character using "Eclipse Bezerk 2w" as his primary combat skill. The fiat would be that "Eclipse Bezerk" is a frenzied magical attack form that can only be activated during an eclipse.

In the interest of not downplaying the other player's "Sword and Shield Fighting" while also not playing up the "Eclipse Bezerk" to an implausible level of one eclipse or multiple eclipses per session, my gut instinct is to let the "Eclipse Bezerk" start at a higher rating so that the player will get some serious mileage out of it when it does come into play. So I'd likely let him buy it as per normal but, where most broadly applicable abilities would start at 13 or 17, I'd let his "Eclipse Bezerk" start at 17 or 2w. Even higher if it was only going to come into play with rarer frequency.

That's generally how I approach it. That's not to say that I've adequately represented/advocated your approach here. I wasn't trying to. I also can't make a value judgement that your/my way is better.

My intent is to give an example of how/why I would do it.

Granted there's a LOT of GM fiat going on. And you surely know by now how much GM fiat makes me cringe. But it's a fairly simple approach that's worked for me in the past. I wasn't advocating it as a codified solution. It obviously isn't. And (to reiterate) I do cringe every time I use it, as should any other card-carrying member of the Anti-Fiat Coalition.

There are things I'd definitely like to see adopted regarding these matters. Even things I'd like to see explored on the forum. But I'm trying to avoid anything that's hush-hush under the QuestWorlds NDA. For that reason, my post was mainly a summary of what I'd read here and a recount of how I had done things in the past.

My intent was to summarize what I saw as the common approaches in those threads and for others to see what worked for me, gauge it for themselves and then use/abuse/discard as they see fit. I was actually stuck on which way was the "best". Still am. I'm not really convinced that anything proposed thus far is much better than anything else (except 1-for-1 sans keywords). I really feel that whichever solution a given person or group adopts should fit their individual style of play. I'm not convinced that this is a one-size-fits-all scenario.

In summary, I'm not covering any new ground (for me) or making groundbreaking 180 degree spins in what I like or how I play. But I am admitting to having used some serious GM fiat in Cthulhupunk-HQ and in Conan-HQ to a lesser degree. Like a junkie, I would probably crawl back to it if I GM'd HQ again. (Be warned!)

Which makes me a hypocrite and quite likely a heathen.

:)

Scott

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 01, 2005, 06:05:51 PM
If you want to consider the math analysis, in Hero System, followers are purchased at a 5:1 savings. HQ seems more like about 10:1 depending on the keyword. Worse, however, part of the follower thing is that if it dies, it's not replaced. HQ states that they are. So that's makes it only about 3:1 in HS. Now, I'm comparing apples and oranges, I understand (the games have very different agendas). But the point is that there is such an analysis that can be done.

I wasn't thinking of the maths analysis of just that one issue but of the game as a whole. Even the progression of one HP increasing an ability by 1 is of different value depending on the the current value of the ability and the augments generally used with it. I tried to get my head round the model for that was but eventually realised it was degree level pure maths. I think most people who recognise that lack of balance switch off at that point and subsequent complications are ignored unless they appear badly askew. Which is why the misapplied worship penalty gets so much attention.

Certainly you can compare the relative costs and benefits with other games but that's only of use if you understand the complete model behind both games and they are sufficently similar for it to have meaning.

Quote
I'm thinking lately that the incentive may simply be to counter the fact that it's sometimes a lot of work to track your own NPCs, even if they're somewhat interesting to have as part of the character. Perhaps?

Could be, or even simpler that players don't use followers unless the concept of the character requires them.

Quote

QuoteMy first thought about the distinction between sidekicks and retainers was that it's unnecessary until I worked out a character who had both. The sidekick should be essential to the PC as an individual and have a personality. Retainers are closer to mere employees hired to do a job and if they're rather two dimensional it doesn't matter.

I'll take that on face value, but why doesn't it matter?

In the same way that in a film the characters of a politican's bodyguards aren't usually defined. They appear in the background, rarely have any lines and are replaced when they get shot. The sidekick is a talking part with an important role.

Quote
I see, ignore the rules, and the narrator will fix everything. Sorry, wrong answer in terms of system. Same thing with your answer about Harrek. You're trying to balance having Harrek out by making him more interesting (the supposed "costs" of ownership). The "downsides" of having a dragon or Harrek as an NPC are actually attractive to players. Unless your playing gamism with HQ, which I don't get.

The very concept of balance is a gamist one, if the players are motivated by which is the best deal for their HPs they are taking the decision on gamist principles. If they are motivated by what makes the most interesting story they are acting on narrativist principles. Now in practice few games are entirely one form or the other and a grossly unbalanced system will upset players who find their narrativist choices put them at a disadvantage in the game that's being played.

So perhaps the question should be "Is the HQ system so unbalanced that it is detering narativist play?" rather than "Is it unbalanced?"

Quote
See, you're not getting even what the problem is. It's not one of "abuse" at all. Nobody is buying dragons, despite it being available. What's going on, however, is that players are noting that they could buy a dragon, and are wondering how that makes any sense.

It makes sense if you apply the rule for followers of one keyword at 17. You get a dragon with attributes at the level of 17 - that would be the size of a pony. Not what is usually meant by dragon in Glorantha but it's within the rules. Remember this is CharGen, in time the dragon could have HPs spent on it to increase its abilities and if the player is spending HPs on followers to that scale there must be a reason.

Quote
See, same problem again. You simply can't decide that something is more valueable than something else based on the "it's more likely to come up" argument. The likelihood of something coming up is 100% if the narrator decides that it is. There's no random element in how often an ability can be used. So you can't base cost on suspected percentages.

Yet players are making that decision all the time based on what they perceive the game is about. If they see the game as political they'll choose characters with high political skills, if combat they'll choose good fighting skills. If there isn't a shared view about the game there's a good chance some players will be at a disadvantage in contests or the narrator will have to struggle to achieve a balance.

I don't think we've any disagreement that a 1:1 cost for abilities is the only practical way to do it. But it is inherently unbalanced particularly if a character will be played with different narrators.

I suppose another way of looking at it would be to regard HP allocation as nothing more than a player's indication of how they want the game to develop and the sort of challanges they expect to face. If so the whole issue of balance becomes moot but this needs spelling out.

Quote
They would if we just didn't call them flaws and make the implication you note. We'd just have "abilities" and say "consider taking abilities that have potential downsides - it's fun!"

I agree.

From the following post:

Quote
Secrets are decisively unbalanced foer several reasons. Basically you get them for free if you buy up other abilities at normal cost. Then they allow you to do special things at what is essentially a reduced cost.

How do PCs get secrets for free? Page 120 of HQ says they cost 3 HP to learn the secret at 13 plus 1 HP per improvement after the character has met all the other requirements. This is the same as an affinity.

Mike,

In actual play how often do you find that the "mundane resistance vs magic is 14" issue comes up?

I ask because I have recently realized that it almost never comes up in my games. I play, though I didn't have the language for it all the time, a very strict "people/furniture" divide when I do HQ -- especially with regards to conflict resolution. Under that paradigm most of the time most things that magic abilities would face a 14 resistance against are not important enough to be rolling against in the first place. If it's a character it will have resistance, if its furniture, I'm not rolling against it anyway – either way, the special resistance rule for magic comes in fairly rarely.

Is your experience different?

Quote from: Brand_Robins on November 03, 2005, 01:16:01 PM
Mike,

In actual play how often do you find that the "mundane resistance vs magic is 14" issue comes up?

I ask because I have recently realized that it almost never comes up in my games. I play, though I didn't have the language for it all the time, a very strict "people/furniture" divide when I do HQ -- especially with regards to conflict resolution. Under that paradigm most of the time most things that magic abilities would face a 14 resistance against are not important enough to be rolling against in the first place. If it's a character it will have resistance, if its furniture, I'm not rolling against it anyway – either way, the special resistance rule for magic comes in fairly rarely.

Is your experience different?

Hi Brand

It omes up in our game a fair bit, we play a broadly Heortling culture based game. Thus for some 'Run Over Mud' is against 14, similarly run up cliffs, and a we have a guy who has a stealth affinity. The player enjoys the fact that his magic gives him an edge, which I am more than happy with. The Animist Practitioner is in a bit of soup though, as she generally only invokes her magic against stuff that generally has a resistance, most not always.

Regards
Rob

QuoteSo perhaps the question should be "Is the HQ system so unbalanced that it is detering narativist play?" rather than "Is it unbalanced?"

Oooooh, thank you for phrasing the question that way!  To me that sums up the issue nicely.  I'd been feeling a bit at sea for a long time in this general discussion, feeling that sometimes we were seeking some platonic ideal.  To me "is it so unbalanced that it is deterring narativist play" seems like a more more functional requirement to aim towards than "perfect balance."

Putting on my engineering hat, after you have determined the requirements, you need to develop the specifications that you will work with to meet that requirement.  A lot of them are probably self-evident, and are things that most succesful designers probably consider automatically.  However sometimes by clearly stating the specifications, and the bounds on the specifications, it can help bring some clarity.

Off the top of my head, I see some of the specifications as being:

- no one style of character improvement should be consistently better than another.  That is to say, a broad array of types of characters, and routes of development, should be able to play together without one overshadowing another.  (They don't have to be exactly equal, mind).  So Jedi Knights shouldn't be better at everything, for example.  All characters do not have to be equally effective for a given number of hero points spent.

- the most effective way to meet in-story goals should not work at cross-purposes to player goals.  So a powerful patron should not be the answer to all of your problems, for example.  However having in-story options for faustian bargains and the like are obviously good things.

- Characters should be able to reflect dramatic in game experiences in an appropriate way.  For an extreme example, handling a 'road to Damascus' type revelatory change.  However numbers should not be seen as the only measure of intensity.

*shrug* anyone else would come up with their own list.  However if you are working on a team deciding these things, it seems to me that deciding what the specifications for the design are should help you decide on what the right solutions are.  Yes this could be seen as being anal, but my experience in (non-game) design suggests that you can probably coordinate better and decide when you are 'done' more easily if you do have clear specifications.

--Bryan

Quote from: Bryan_T on November 03, 2005, 05:22:20 PM

*shrug* anyone else would come up with their own list.  However if you are working on a team deciding these things, it seems to me that deciding what the specifications for the design are should help you decide on what the right solutions are.  Yes this could be seen as being anal, but my experience in (non-game) design suggests that you can probably coordinate better and decide when you are 'done' more easily if you do have clear specifications.

--Bryan

Hi Bryan

Have you read 'System Does Matter'  (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html) and 'The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast'? (http://random.average-bear.com/TheoryTopics/ImpossibleThingBeforeBreakfast)

Regards

Rob

I sketched out some of the implicit currency in the HQ system.

This is the first time I noticed that the general "try something impossible" penalty could be overcome with the expenditure of a hero point, in that burning a hero point during a conflict raises one's results to the same leve that an increase of 1 Mastery in the relevant attribute would do.

I then tried to work out a currency system predicated on the general character improvement rule of 1 hero point = a permanent 1 point increase in an attribute.  To do so I had to ignore the special conditions that make certain kinds of hero points more equal than others (i.e., a concentrated magic user's advantages, a "misapplied" worshipper's disadvantages, etc.).

Note, there is only one tweak to the character improvement rules that I would retain : spending hero points on improvements related to play is significantly more profitable.  When a hero point is spent outside of conflict resolution to create a permanent improvement, it is only one half as profitable.

Instead of having character improvement become cluttered up by a number of special cases, making play-related improvements more effective than unrelated improvements persuades players to seek those situations that will lead to the character improvements they would like to see and to tie character improvement to the development of thematically rich play.  In this way, character improvement becomes a series of out-of-play decisions that further enrich the thematic and narrative web being develped by a play group.


1 Hero Point = +1 to Attribute = new possession = 1 Mastery = improvement of result by one step = 20 TN = +2 TN bonus (lendable or applicable to another Attribute) = 20 AP for extended contest (also lendable) = "Impossible Thing" (beginner using magic feat like a god's devotee, using common magic directly, using a tap dance to win a theological debate, leaping over a mountain, etc.)

Quote from: Lamorak33 on November 04, 2005, 04:11:49 PM
Have you read 'System Does Matter'  (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html) and 'The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast'? (http://random.average-bear.com/TheoryTopics/ImpossibleThingBeforeBreakfast)

Yes. 

*shrug* I'm not quite clear what your point is in this regard, however.  Maybe we are agreeing in part that if you don't have clear criteria, you tend to get a muddle?

Or maybe I did a poor job of expressing my point.  I have a bad habit of posting quickly, with the intent of trying to focus thoughts on some point--call it coffee-shop brainstorming.  Not that this is bad in and of itself, I think, but on a board that seems to prefer a style more akin to academic debate, it seems at best unproductive.  I need to work on keeping my fingers off my keyboard unless I have a developed point of my own to make, and even then only if I make the time to work out what I'm trying to say in a more structured carefully argued form. 

This is not meant as a criticism of Forge style discussion, rather I'm trying to wrap my head around just how different the Forge is.  I suspect that this difference is over-all a good thing, and part of the reason that the Forge develops different ideas. And to some extent, I guess I've just indulged in another coffee-shop type musing.

-Bryan, who is now taking his coffee and stepping away from the keyboard :)

Quote from: Bryan_T on November 06, 2005, 03:32:07 PM
Or maybe I did a poor job of expressing my point.  I have a bad habit of posting quickly, [snip]

Can I, as a user of this forum, just make a request that this sort of thing not become inhibiting to people with good ideas like Bryan? To me, the greatest value of this forum is that academic stuff, as Bryan describes it, being translated - i.e. 'extension' in agricultural terms, to users...so if people like Bryan start to feel inhibited (not that that was the intention of course), then things need reconsidering perhaps?
Just a note as Bryan's tone got me worried...
Sam.

Quote from: Mandacaru on November 06, 2005, 05:02:39 PM

Quote from: Bryan_T on November 06, 2005, 03:32:07 PM
Or maybe I did a poor job of expressing my point.  I have a bad habit of posting quickly, [snip]

Can I, as a user of this forum, just make a request that this sort of thing not become inhibiting to people with good ideas like Bryan? .......[snip]

Just a note as Bryan's tone got me worried...
Sam.

I agree Sam. Bryan, easy tiger! :^D - no offence intended!

I merely asked if you had read those articles as I feel they have a bearing on your post about system and scenario design. I was hoping rather that you might explain in more detail your suggestions with reference to those articles. I thought I sensed a strong component of Simulationism Creative Agenda in your post and I wondered if you could confirm this, and explore your ideas more deeply.

All the best
Rob

Quote from: Lamorak33 on November 06, 2005, 07:23:20 PM

I agree Sam. Bryan, easy tiger! :^D - no offence intended!

No offense taken, sorry if I gave that impression.  When I have time to write up what I was trying to say in my original post in more detail I'll give it a go, but it might be some time.

What I was trying to say in this last post was.....well let me use an analogy.  Let us say you joined a game expecting to play in narrative mode, and the group was deep in sim mode, complete with references to historical analog groups, findings from re-enactement groups, and so on.  They aren't doing a bad thing, and you might even enjoy getting into that space....but if you tried to jump in with narrative style points you wouldn't get very far.  At some point maybe you'd realize the mode mis-match and go "A-ha, that is what is going on!" and you might even be tempted to try to explain to them your epiphany.  Well, that was more or less what just happened to me.  I was trying to have one sort of discussion, in a place where most people are trying to have a different sort of discussion.  I think both types are useful, but _in_this_place_ it makes more sense to try to work with the most common mode.  So what I was expressing was my realization that before I spout off in my normal style, I should sit back and try to develop my thoughts in a way that are more apt to further the discussions here.

So no hard feelings!

--Bryan

Quote from: Bryan_T on November 07, 2005, 05:31:10 PM

What I was trying to say in this last post was.....well let me use an analogy.  Let us say you joined a game expecting to play in narrative mode, and the group was deep in sim mode, complete with references to historical analog groups, findings from re-enactement groups, and so on. 

I have had a similar experience recently, and you are spot on.  Your lucky if you know what your looking at so that you can adjust. What tends to happen is that people end up bugging each other by playing with differing Creative Agendas. I suggest that one of the roles of the GM is to moderate this, and one of the ways he can do this is by presenting a clear Creative Agenda. This is where a coherent game design that is in sync with what the GM is trying to achieve will be a boon.

Its also worth noting that any Creative Agenda can be presented by the GM, whatever the system. Thus you can have narratavist play using AD&D, because Creative Agenda is about people.

Regards
Rob

Well I understood what you were getting at Bryan. Which is why I didn't bother with a follow up but I think there must be a difference in mindset in the approach to writing rules.

For convenience I'll use the words scientific and artistic to describe them.

The scientific mindset starts by defining what they are trying to achieve and then writing rules to reflect that. As more is written the rules are checked against the objective and modified as required to meet the criteria. Playtesting then becomes a matter of spotting loopholes and finding things which weren't covered because the writer didn't think of them.

The artistic mindset starts with an idea and writes a rule which they think will achieve the objective. They then go straight to playtesting and modify as a result of the playtest. In this situation extensive playtesting with many different players is crucial.

In practice I doubt many writers adopt one or other approach exclusively but most show a strong bias one way or the other. There are disadvantages with both - the scientific tends to produce gamist and simulationist games with elaborate rules covering every possibility. The artistic tends to produce a more narrativist result but at the expense of relying on the GM to provide balance and fix loopholes caused by situations unforseen by the writer.

Now when you've an existing system which you are not sure what needs fixing the scientific approach is quicker because it is less likely to break a part that's already working. It does appear to take longer because you only move onto the playtesting stage when you've understood what you are trying to fix and have a reasonable expectation that the modification will do so.

Quote from: Donald on November 08, 2005, 06:26:45 PM

The artistic tends to produce a more narrativist result but at the expense of relying on the GM to provide balance and fix loopholes caused by situations unforeseen by the writer.

Hi Donald

I don't feel that the GM has to fix loopholes as you describe them in a narrative system, because decisions are brought within the social contract to a certain degree, and to quantitative human judgement  and instinct, which with practice I think is a much more fluid and intuitive system, and obviates the appearance of the 'games lawyer' IMO.

The more complex or scientific the rules it seems the more the players switch onto rule manipulation as an end of itself.

Regards
Rob

I'm wondering if we aren't drifting a bit from the original topic.

But...

I'm not so sure that the whole narrativist-loophole theory really holds in this instance. One of the things that drove me to "narrativist" games is that the rules were more concrete and defined than other RPGs. There are a ton more loopholes in D&D 3rd edition than in Sorcerer, My Life with Master or the Pool.

I think DM's in D&D have to do a LOT more tap-dancing than a GM in Sorcerer. I think the same holds true in HeroQuest, once a group gets used to conflict-based resolution (which admittedly can be a difficult hurdle because most traditional RPGs and ALL computer-based rpgs are task-based).

One of the "problems" (as I see it, which means next to not much at all) with HQ is that we have a wonderfully conflict-based system ("narrativist" to some lines of thought) which the authors try to reconcile against traditional Sim or task-based play. Hence, we get the advancement points issue we've been discussing as well as "balancing" of various abilities against each other. And some examples in the book that read remarkably task-based.

The way I look at HeroQuest is that "play" happens in two major steps that exist independently of each other: "getting the numbers" (or chargen, points buy, etc.) and "doing stuff with the numbers" (or Simple/Extended Contests, Augmenting, Lending AP, etc.).

I think there are lots of ways to approach "getting the numbers". A traditional set of skills (ala d20 or WEG d6) with X number of points the player can plug in would work. So would a FATE-like skill pyramid. Or just a narrative method ala the Pool.

I created a d20 to HeroQuest conversion that, while horribly complex thanks to all the fiddly bits in d20, did a fine job of "getting me the numbers" to run a conflict-based D&D game with the HeroQuest system. Sure, the characters weren't as colorful as regular HQ characters (part of the charm, no doubt) but they were entirely functional.

Which leads me to the main point: what we "do with the numbers" works just as well no matter where the numbers come from.

On a meta-level, I see us trying to define the most elegant way to get our numbers so we can do stuff with them. The dichotomy isn't some artistic/scientific distinction but rather a question of whether it's best to workaround the Sim/Balance oriented elements of getting our numbers or to chuck them entirely for something else.

Again, the *game* (or what we do with the numbers) isn't affected either way. There aren't any loopholes there to exploit. And, if there are, they exist independently of the topic at hand.

We're discussing the loopholes introduced by the need to balance Sidekicks against other abilities or keywords and whether equipment should cost more, etc. And the loopholes introduced by the desire to Sim out magic, so that a Devotee can't use Grimoires as well as Adepts can because they presumably spend more time doing other things.

I think the approach we're looking at now is how to workaround these issues to "get numbers" in a way we like better. The three main approaches from the referenced threads are summarized in my earlier post, each with their own merits and flaws.

But we haven't put much thought towards the other side of the coin. What if we chucked HeroQuest chargen and came up with something else? What would that be? How would it work? Would it be better?

Scott

Quote from: Scripty on November 09, 2005, 12:56:18 PM

But we haven't put much thought towards the other side of the coin. What if we chucked HeroQuest chargen and came up with something else? What would that be? How would it work? Would it be better?

Scott

Hi Scott

It would be different, and that is all. You have hit the nail on the head, because of course the Creative Agenda's model player behaviour, not system dynamics. What does hold though is 'System Does Matter'. See the artilce for details.

Regards
Rob

Read the article before. Thanks.

The points in System Matters are directly applicable to this discussion and my post above. I see us bumping up against elements of the HQ character gen/advancement system that don't necessarily support a Narr style of play.

My suggestion in the previous post is that, rather than try and amend a chargen/advancement system that tries to balance elements out in a style common to games that are traditionally associated with Sim or Gam play, why couldn't we come up with a means of chargen/advancement that facilitates exactly what we want?

Rather than amend something broken, why not create something new? It seems we can't make any headway on a means to "fix" hero point expenditure in vanilla HQ, though most of us agree on what's "broken". Everyone seems to either disagree on what the best "fix" is, with every suggestion followed by a counter. This is clouded by contributors who appear to have their favorite fix and will therefore counter pretty well everything that isn't of that ilk.

Leading us nowhere.

Maybe we would have more luck wrapping our heads around a new approach. Less of a "HQ Home Improvement" and more of a "Build a Char-Gen/Advancement System of Your Dreams". I for one am eager to hear what we could put together, if we worked toward a common end.

I think it's possible for us to make the System Matter in terms of facilitating a Narr CA in a manner allowing players to Step on Up while taking into account the variance in SC that is to be expected with any group.

;)

S.

I wasn't talking exclusively about RPGs when I described the mindsets. Indeed the classic example of the scientific approach are the hex board games published by Avalon Hill and in the Strategy & Tactics Magazine.

D&D is an example of the artistic approach - the first version is unplayable as written relying on assumptions by the authors. Later versions fixed some problems but introduced more. Maybe someone at some stage did a proper analysis of the mechanics but I doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised to find that all RPGs have been designed this way.

In any case HQ isn't a purely narrativist game system, I'm sure there are simulationist groups who use the rules and maybe even gamist ones. Unless you intend to produce a purely narrativist set of rules a balanced CharGen and advancement system is needed.

Quote from: Scripty on November 09, 2005, 12:56:18 PM
I think the approach we're looking at now is how to workaround these issues to "get numbers" in a way we like better.

That's exactly what I mean by the artistic approach. "We don't like the results of these particular rules so lets fiddle with them and find something we like better". Some people will think it's better, some worse and the chances are the problem if it actually exists will move to some related area. The scientific approach analyses the whole mechanics of the game, finds the basic anomalies and fixes them. The less central bits then either turn out to be right or obviously wrong. Maybe a sidekick should cost four points rather than three but currently there's no objective way of telling because we don't know what a point is worth.

Let me make it clear, I'm not making out either approach is right or wrong. Just a case of using the best tools for the job. It may be that it is impossible to analyse the model in use in HQ because it's too complex in which case I suggest it be simplified until we can.

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The points in System Matters are directly applicable to this discussion and my post above. I see us bumping up against elements of the HQ character gen/advancement system that don't necessarily support a Narr style of play.

Since HQ isn't a specifically narrativist game system this would hardly be surprising. However I'm not sure what you think the narrativist style of play needs in the way of support from the game system.

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Maybe we would have more luck wrapping our heads around a new approach. Less of a "HQ Home Improvement" and more of a "Build a Char-Gen/Advancement System of Your Dreams". I for one am eager to hear what we could put together, if we worked toward a common end.

OK, lets drop the points system entirely.

A player describes their character and the narrator and other players decide what value to give their abilities based on that description and the scale that already exists in the rulebook. Advancement and disabilities are based entirely on what happens in play with the narrator allocating ability improvements which can only be used on skills or relationships that happened in play. If someone wants to spend time studying something unrelated to their character's actions in the game they get an equivelent penalty (probably to relationships) because they're obviously ignoring something to do that. Again narrator and other players decide what suffers and how much.

This is not a response to the most recent posts, but rather a small idea that I think fits into the general thread topic.

The rules as they stand have a system of increasing costs for each level of ability increase beyond the first in one round of improvement (i.e. if +1 costs 1, +2 costs 1+2=3, +3 costs 1+2+3=6, etc). This serves a purpose in some ways (stops people from shooting up one skill to sky high levels quickly, helps model a 'realistic' rate of learning), however it makes it difficult to handle dramatic character changes. 

Certainly if you feel a character is due for a major change you can often do it by mapping over existing personality traits and relationships, but that won't always be enough.  For example take a Heortling farmer who is just trying to get by, in the face of increasing challenges.  Finally some event triggers him to decide that the source of most of his problems is the lunar empire, and that the presence of the lunars is a threat to everything he holds dear.  Now maybe he already has some rating in 'hates lunars,' and maybe some of his other traits can be changed a bit...but his relationships to family and community have not essentially changed, nor have his basic personality traits.  So he buys "wants to drive out lunars: 13."

Now, you can argue that he may feel passionately about the subject, but he just can't channel that passion in a useful way yet.  But still, for a major change in attitude that seems.....underwhelming.

As a player, I often know that my character is building up to some major change, without knowing just exactly what the change will be, what will trigger it, or when it will happen.  This is where it seems to me that buying up an "undefined" passion (or relationship, or ability) might make sense.  The idea is a bit like having undefine abilities off of a starting list of ten, or have vague references in a 100 word narrative.  Basically extend this idea to things bought in play, and allow the undefined thing to be bought up at the normal rate.

That way, if you feel a change coming on, after a few sessions of play you can translate that undefined thing into a named ability, with a rating high enough to matter a little bit more (just three sessions will at least give you a 15, for a +2 augment).

So then that notional farmer builds up tension, until finally he channels it into wanting to drive out the lunars, and starts that ability at a more substantial level.

Yes, I realize that this is an option that might take more words to describe than it is worth :)  All I can say in its defense is that as a player if I saw this option formally offered to me a rule book, I would be very excited by it.

--Bryan

First an admin notice...for some strange reason I'm not getting email announcements on this thread. I'll have to see if I can fix that. But if it seems like I'm not responding, it's because I'm not hearing that there's been any activity on the thread. If I didn't check this forum regularly, I'd miss a lot more, apparently.

Quote from: Scripty on November 02, 2005, 07:47:15 PM
Granted there's a LOT of GM fiat going on. And you surely know by now how much GM fiat makes me cringe. But it's a fairly simple approach that's worked for me in the past. I wasn't advocating it as a codified solution. It obviously isn't. And (to reiterate) I do cringe every time I use it, as should any other card-carrying member of the Anti-Fiat Coalition.

Then there's got to be a better way. To me players will buy abilities that they think will make their character interesting as a whole. So I have no problem in just trusting to the whole thing to "self-balance." That is, sure, the berzerk power won't come up as often, but it's cooler for that when it does. Without having to be higher in points. I'm not sure that having a higher rating does anything to particularly empower a player, truth be told.

QuoteI really feel that whichever solution a given person or group adopts should fit their individual style of play. I'm not convinced that this is a one-size-fits-all scenario.

I disagree there. That is, I think for HQ as an overall system there's going to be a single solution that best fits most people who play. For those who it does not fit, as always in RPGs, they'll either change the rules anyhow (we don't have to tell them they can), or they'll play something else. Put another way, you don't satisfy more groups by saying "do it however you like" or we'd all be playing GURPS, and nobody would ever play Sorcerer.

Quote from: Donald on November 02, 2005, 07:57:12 PM
I wasn't thinking of the maths analysis of just that one issue but of the game as a whole. Even the progression of one HP increasing an ability by 1 is of different value depending on the the current value of the ability and the augments generally used with it. I tried to get my head round the model for that was but eventually realised it was degree level pure maths. I think most people who recognise that lack of balance switch off at that point and subsequent complications are ignored unless they appear badly askew. Which is why the misapplied worship penalty gets so much attention.

Certainly you can compare the relative costs and benefits with other games but that's only of use if you understand the complete model behind both games and they are sufficently similar for it to have meaning.

I said specifically that the idea was not to compare games, but to use the same sort of anylysis in HQ. That is, precisely, to use math to look at it for the game as a whole.

The last couple of sentences I quoted, I'm not understanding. Are you saying that the costing is unblanced? Or hat the value of a point at any point is different than the value of any other point? In actual fact, since you don't know what the resistance is that you're going up against, you can never predict the value of a particular point (though I suppose you could come up with a composite for all resistances possible - still you'll never end up going against all of those). The point being that up is always better with HQ (always, there's no such thing as "typical augments", IME), which is about all the decision making criteria that one needs. In fact, as I've said, in some ways, the level of an ability isn't really all that pertinent to it's level of interest, and as such, the elevation is really more of a value as a pointer to the narrator about what you think is interesting to have come into play. "Narrator, look! I spent a point on this relationship! I'd like it to come into play more!"

In fact, devaluing the level of the ability is pretty important, I've found, in discerning the play value of an expenditure. This leads to some interesting Limit Theorem and asymtotic sorts of results to the analyses.

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I'm thinking lately that the incentive may simply be to counter the fact that it's sometimes a lot of work to track your own NPCs, even if they're somewhat interesting to have as part of the character. Perhaps?

Could be, or even simpler that players don't use followers unless the concept of the character requires them.

Right. That is, the fact that you get a lot for nothing doesn't seem to be as important as the character concept. This is a similar thought to the one above. That even number of abilities doesn't seem to matter much. For instance, there's no attempt made to balance the "narrative method" of chargen in terms of total abilities generated. It would be a simple thing, for instance, to say, "Underline keywords and ten other words in the narrative." But it specifically does not do that.

If you take this math to the logical extent, however, then there's no value to any ability a priori. At which point I point to the "pointer" function of HP that I mentioned as the possible reason to have them. In which case, then whole keywords costing one HP once again make sense. It's still only a one HP pointer made.

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In the same way that in a film the characters of a politican's bodyguards aren't usually defined. They appear in the background, rarely have any lines and are replaced when they get shot. The sidekick is a talking part with an important role.

Yep, I think I agree. That is, the extra HP are really all about indicating this more than the abilities obtained. "Look, I spent 3HP! Really important!"

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The very concept of balance is a gamist one, if the players are motivated by which is the best deal for their HPs they are taking the decision on gamist principles. If they are motivated by what makes the most interesting story they are acting on narrativist principles. Now in practice few games are entirely one form or the other and a grossly unbalanced system will upset players who find their narrativist choices put them at a disadvantage in the game that's being played.

So perhaps the question should be "Is the HQ system so unbalanced that it is detering narativist play?" rather than "Is it unbalanced?"

I sorta agree. First, there are a lot of definitions of balance. What I'm talking about here is what I call "selection balance." Basically I don't want to see players taking any particular thing more often than any other particular thing based on some imbalance (what Bryan's first rule is all about).

But, I agree that if there appears to be a gamism imbalance, that sometimes players will read this as something to exploit - leading to gamism. So that is something to be avoided.

That said, often I find the best way to do this is to simply make gamism imbalance ridiculously easy. Such that the player is informed that the play can't be about gaming the system. For instance, if I said you could take an ability at any level for one HP, what does that tell you? That you should take it high to win? Where's the "Step On Up" there? Any idiot can make that decision. No, it must be that it's not about addressing challenge with this, but instead about setting the level by some other criteria like "what I think is most cool."

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See, you're not getting even what the problem is. It's not one of "abuse" at all. Nobody is buying dragons, despite it being available. What's going on, however, is that players are noting that they could buy a dragon, and are wondering how that makes any sense.

It makes sense if you apply the rule for followers of one keyword at 17. You get a dragon with attributes at the level of 17 - that would be the size of a pony.

Well, I'd go for that. But it's not what the current rule says. The current rule says that you get one keyword at 17, and then a species keyword if it's not human with whatever the species keyword normally has in it. Which for Dragons includes things like Large 10W4, etc, etc. Actually, again, it's not even so much the power level that worries me. It's that dragons are coooool. All those extra abilities to play with, etc.

This is especially true for a dragon retainer. Sidekick, well, you did pay 3 HP for it...

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See, same problem again. You simply can't decide that something is more valueable than something else based on the "it's more likely to come up" argument. The likelihood of something coming up is 100% if the narrator decides that it is. There's no random element in how often an ability can be used. So you can't base cost on suspected percentages.

Yet players are making that decision all the time based on what they perceive the game is about. If they see the game as political they'll choose characters with high political skills, if combat they'll choose good fighting skills. If there isn't a shared view about the game there's a good chance some players will be at a disadvantage in contests or the narrator will have to struggle to achieve a balance.

To the extent that players can tell what's going to come up in play, as I said above, it'll balance by itself. That is, players pretty much take care of making sure that the character is cool. Then it's up to the GM to play to that to some extent.

QuoteI don't think we've any disagreement that a 1:1 cost for abilities is the only practical way to do it. But it is inherently unbalanced particularly if a character will be played with different narrators.

I advocate against that strongly. For just these reasons.

QuoteI suppose another way of looking at it would be to regard HP allocation as nothing more than a player's indication of how they want the game to develop and the sort of challanges they expect to face. If so the whole issue of balance becomes moot but this needs spelling out.

Yes, you're correct. If that's the case, then the game should really make it explicit at some point.

Not an easy thing to get everyone to buy into however. And I'm not even completely convinced myself. :-)

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Secrets are decisively unbalanced foer several reasons. Basically you get them for free if you buy up other abilities at normal cost. Then they allow you to do special things at what is essentially a reduced cost.

How do PCs get secrets for free? Page 120 of HQ says they cost 3 HP to learn the secret at 13 plus 1 HP per improvement after the character has met all the other requirements. This is the same as an affinity.

I should have said without surcharge for the extra effect. Basically the abilities built up to be allowed to take the secret are reward themselves (when creating "starting characters" as Shamans and allowing them to bump up just these abilities, they stick out like a sore thumb - I'm now heavily advising against that).

Quote from: Brand_Robins on November 03, 2005, 01:16:01 PM
Is your experience different?

No, and that's precisely the problem. The theory is that magic has an advantage because it occasionally gets to roll against a 14. Hence it being worth more points. Turns out you never roll against 14 (or we don't at least), so it's no different in value from that POV than any other power. In fact, even if it did roll against a 14 occasionally - I think I have used that TN on occasion - I still don't think that would merit magic costing any more than normal.

Quote from: Bryan_T on November 03, 2005, 05:22:20 PM
- the most effective way to meet in-story goals should not work at cross-purposes to player goals.  So a powerful patron should not be the answer to all of your problems, for example.  However having in-story options for faustian bargains and the like are obviously good things.

I agreed with your point one. This one, not so sure. Rather, I don't think that a powerful patron ends up being at cross goals with the player. There might be a point where the dragon becomes more interesting than the PC to play - being a dragon at all - however. Hmmm.

Quote- Characters should be able to reflect dramatic in game experiences in an appropriate way.  For an extreme example, handling a 'road to Damascus' type revelatory change.  However numbers should not be seen as the only measure of intensity.

This has long been a problem with the system - the glacial rate of number change. After all, if level of ability is not so important, then perhaps one HP should give as many points change as needed? See where I'm headed?

This is precisely the sort of list that I do work off of Bryan, and my list of concerns about goals is not far off from what you have.

Everyone agrees that System Does Matter, as far as I can see, so let's get off that. And the whole Scientific/Artistic thing isn't really all that productive, either. It should suffice to say that we all agree on having goals, and that sometimes hard mechanics are good, and other times the solution is to leave something to narrator authority, etc. Let's just go case by case.


Donald, Jane Williams suggested to me that her group plays sans HP for advancement and that it works fine. I'm almost OK with that - I certainly don't think that people would "abuse" it. The problem is that I like HP to be a dichotomy between being spent on bumping and somthing else. That is, I want there to be some incentive to not bump other than "You might need it later." An excuse, almost. That is, I want players to understand that it's OK to let your character fail, even good play in many cases. To that extent, there has to be a use for HP that is a drain for when they pile up. Otherwise there becomes this sorta "why not bump?" attitude that comes out. Seen it in play, even with the option to advance opposing it. I want there to be a "So I can spend them on this other thing" answer. That's what makes HQ's HP system really cool. IMO.

So at the moment I'm thinking that instead of balanced advancement in terms of points, HP are spent to "change" the character. You spend a HP, and get to alter something. Raise an ability. Lower an ability. Change the name of an ability from Loves Constantine to Hates Constantine. Cement that magic sword at Slay Dragons 10W4 (instead of the "learning to attune to it" crock).

There is another way to do this, however. That's to make all 1:1 as Scotty likes, and then say that breadth, depth and even effectiveness is not at all controlled by anything other than player desire. That is, your 17 Strong might actually indicate a higher strength than another player's 5W Strong. If you decouple from the in-game scale, then ability rating is completely a player indicator of importance and nothing else.

This fixes Bryan's problem. A 13 is no less potent than a 17. But I've argued this method before, and people just don't seem to get it. Rather they'd rather cut off their own arms than play a game like this (or so I've been told).

Bryan, the other method you mention...it more or less already exists as the As You Go method. Well, OK, no, you can't increase these abilities, but I think that it's actually much less interesting to be pushing up numbers of things that I can't see than just bumping them up to where they need to be when the time comes for it. BTW, FATE has something like this already, "Potential Aspects." I kinda like the idea, too, it's just I can't see people spending points on them. Hmmm.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesThere is another way to do this, however. That's to make all 1:1 as Scotty likes, and then say that breadth, depth and even effectiveness is not at all controlled by anything other than player desire. That is, your 17 Strong might actually indicate a higher strength than another player's 5W Strong. If you decouple from the in-game scale, then ability rating is completely a player indicator of importance and nothing else.

This fixes Bryan's problem. A 13 is no less potent than a 17. But I've argued this method before, and people just don't seem to get it.

Could you elaborate (or give me pointers to threads you explained this before)? because I don't understand but it seems interesting.

Thanks in advance,

Janus

Hi Mike:
Glad to see you're back. I'm in agreement with Janus. I don't understand what you mean by Strong 5w being less broad/effective/etc. than a Strong 17, especially as regards making this happen without falling back on a Narrator just willing it so.

Good point about the "single solution that best fits most people" in your last post. But a lot of what I've seen in this thread qualifies as the changing rules that don't fit a particular person's style of play. Hence, my appeal for us to take a fresh approach at the whole matter. While I agree that a game system could/should offer the single solution you speak of, it appears that participants on this thread have been addressing what's in HQ as that single solution and re-swizzeling what's there to suit their preferences.

That led me to my statement that I didn't think we *could* come up with a single solution, at least not with any of the approaches I had seen up to that point.

Scott

P.S. Please refrain from calling me "Scotty". I have deep-seated issues from grade-school around that moniker. It rhymes with too many things that 5 year-olds get far too much glee out of blurting out at random.

Like snotty.

Or potty.

Crap. There goes all that therapy...

;)

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 10, 2005, 04:48:17 PM
Bryan, the other method you mention...it more or less already exists as the As You Go method. Well, OK, no, you can't increase these abilities, but I think that it's actually much less interesting to be pushing up numbers of things that I can't see than just bumping them up to where they need to be when the time comes for it. BTW, FATE has something like this already, "Potential Aspects." I kinda like the idea, too, it's just I can't see people spending points on them. Hmmm.

Mike--well, I know I would go for it, but I might not be typical.

But I do have an argument for it.  Somebody--it might even be you although I honestly don't remember--points out occasionally that part of what is cool about animist fetches is that decision point to release them for a big boost.  That is, it is a sure spotlight moment, and the tension when making the decision is fun.

I think this would operate similarly.  The longer you build up the ability, the more dramatic when you finally "reveal" it.  Lots of options to weigh, decisions to make, and for sure a major spotlight moment which is apt to make everyone remember the ability.

Of course, this idea does not play so well with non 1-for-1 abilities.

--Bryan

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 10, 2005, 04:48:17 PM
The last couple of sentences I quoted, I'm not understanding. Are you saying that the costing is unblanced? Or hat the value of a point at any point is different than the value of any other point?

The latter, an increase of an ability from 19 to 20 has much less effect on the chances of success than an increase from 14 to 15. And if the ability is being used to augment one point from 14 to 15 is equal to 10 points from 15 to 25. This is true within the range of resistances it is worth rolling dice for. What complicates and hides the calculation is that augments vary from contest to contest and can't be predicted.

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So perhaps the question should be "Is the HQ system so unbalanced that it is detering narativist play?" rather than "Is it unbalanced?"

I sorta agree. First, there are a lot of definitions of balance. What I'm talking about here is what I call "selection balance." Basically I don't want to see players taking any particular thing more often than any other particular thing based on some imbalance (what Bryan's first rule is all about).

But, I agree that if there appears to be a gamism imbalance, that sometimes players will read this as something to exploit - leading to gamism. So that is something to be avoided.

That said, often I find the best way to do this is to simply make gamism imbalance ridiculously easy. Such that the player is informed that the play can't be about gaming the system. For instance, if I said you could take an ability at any level for one HP, what does that tell you? That you should take it high to win? Where's the "Step On Up" there? Any idiot can make that decision. No, it must be that it's not about addressing challenge with this, but instead about setting the level by some other criteria like "what I think is most cool."

So you need to write the rule to reflect this. Yes, you can have any level of that ability you like but you have to reflect it in your description of the character and know that the contests you'll face it is as likely to be a hinderance as a help.

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Well, I'd go for that. But it's not what the current rule says. The current rule says that you get one keyword at 17, and then a species keyword if it's not human with whatever the species keyword normally has in it. Which for Dragons includes things like Large 10W4, etc, etc. Actually, again, it's not even so much the power level that worries me. It's that dragons are coooool. All those extra abilities to play with, etc.

This is especially true for a dragon retainer. Sidekick, well, you did pay 3 HP for it...

It actually gives the hero the option of a keyword in addition to the species keyword which is inconsistent with most of the rules where such things are at the narrators discretion. I suspect the authors didn't really think of dragons as followers as in the context of Glorantha it would be as reasonable as having a God as one of your followers. I'd regard this as a rules error which needs fixing somehow by restricting the level of followers.

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QuoteI suppose another way of looking at it would be to regard HP allocation as nothing more than a player's indication of how they want the game to develop and the sort of challanges they expect to face. If so the whole issue of balance becomes moot but this needs spelling out.

Yes, you're correct. If that's the case, then the game should really make it explicit at some point.

Not an easy thing to get everyone to buy into however. And I'm not even completely convinced myself. :-)

It seems right as far as pure narrativist games are concerned but for everyone not playing that way it's going to fail badly. You'll get a circular effect of players putting HPs into one set of skills because they've found the narrator challenges those skills most and the the narrator creating contests which use those skills because they think the players are most interested in that area. I don't think HQ can afford to become an exclusively narrativist game so any rules have got to work for gamists and simulationists as well.

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I should have said without surcharge for the extra effect. Basically the abilities built up to be allowed to take the secret are reward themselves (when creating "starting characters" as Shamans and allowing them to bump up just these abilities, they stick out like a sore thumb - I'm now heavily advising against that).

I'm sorry, I don't follow you. Even when you have the secret you can't have it at better than the lowest rated affinity. So you build up the affinities with HPs and then spend more to bring up your cult secret. If your aim is to build up the secret it's going to cost four times as much as building up an affinity although you get the corresponding increase in the affinities. I'm not sure where Shamans get involved either as they're animist not theistic.

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Donald, Jane Williams suggested to me that her group plays sans HP for advancement and that it works fine. I'm almost OK with that - I certainly don't think that people would "abuse" it. The problem is that I like HP to be a dichotomy between being spent on bumping and somthing else.

But should that "something else" be character advancement? In a narrativist game bumping is a plot control element "I want the contest to go this way." not "I want to win". So the alternative should be another form of plot control - perhaps something like the player spends a HP to narrate the next bit of plot. It might require a reduction in the number of HPs given out but those points could be given less on the basis of achieving things but more on the basis of creating interesting stories.

Quote from: Scripty on November 11, 2005, 12:42:58 PM
I don't understand what you mean by Strong 5w being less broad/effective/etc. than a Strong 17, especially as regards making this happen without falling back on a Narrator just willing it so.

I believe it goes something like this...

Lets say that DeForest wants his character 'Bones' to be "as strong as an Ox" and, for whatever reason, records this as "Strong 2w3". (This is obviously a fairly high-powered game!) Meanwhile James has decided that his character 'Sco', err 'Welshie' is actually as strong as a team of oxen and writes down "Strong w7". Thus we have the stronger character (Welshie) with the lower rating (w7).

Now the game doesn't actually prohibit this and it can be quite playable if one is prepared to accept that a rating in an attribute can be seen as a measure of how much the character is willing or able to use the attribute to their advantage when it really matters rather than just an absolute measurement on some pre-determined scale.

So if the two characters are bored and decide to have an arm-wrestle to see who is the strongest the winner would be Welshie (because no roll is required). If, however, it was to decide who would have the honor of sacrificing themselves in some way that would ensure the suvival of their friends then Bones' higher 'Strong' score is likely to carry the day when the rolls are resolved.

No one is saying that the game has to be played this way and I don't even think that anyone actually does. But some people never seem to 'get' the concept and sometimes see it as a flaw in the HeroQuest system that it could accomodate such an abomination to the laws of common sense. ;)

No doubt the wise sages will correct me if I have mis-represented things but the above description is what I have come to understand after many months of lurking here (and elsewhere).

Thanks,

- John

Thanks for explaining that, John.

My first problem with that approach is that I think it could easily lead to confusion among the players and between the players and Narrator about what player #2's "Strong 7w" represents. Picture this scenario...

Player #1 says he's strong as an ox and buys up the "Strong" ability to the level of 2w3. Player #2 wants to be strong too but spends loads of points on other things and can only buy up "Strong" to 7w. During play they have the obligatory contest of strength to see who's stronger. Player #1 is strong as an ox, as he said. But Player #2 comes back with the caveat that he's strong as a whole team of oxen, negating all of Player #1's focus on that ability.

Granted, a Narrator should have enough sense to step in and call BS here. But circumventing the scale of HQ (one of my favorite aspects of it, btw) undermines the whole ability ranking system. The only way "Strong 7w" will ever be more effective than "Strong 2w3" is if the GM gives the "weaker" player lower resistances. Which leads to all sorts of interesting table discussions of why Player #1 has to beat a 7w3 and why player #2 has to beat a 2w to accomplish the same task.

Sure, we already do that for magical abilities and the default resistance of 14. But when and how the default resistance is applied is already a sticking point on the forums here. Imagine if we applied it to every ability based, not on some setting info or arbitrary rule, but based on what the player defines that ability to mean.

This confusion could be alleviated somewhat by having the players write "Strong as an Ox 2w3" or "Strong as a Team of Oxen 7w" on their character sheets. But what if I write "Stronger than Krishna 13" on my character sheet. Does that mean picking up a mountain is an auto success?

As a follow up to that last statement, a second problem that I see is that this approach undermines the idea that players spend HP on what they want to be important to their character. Why should I pay to build up my "Strong" ability if I can make it even more effective by refining what that ability means?

So if I say my character is "Stronger than Krishna 13" and I go to lift a mountain off the ground and the GM says "Okay, roll against 10w8". Unhappy with the Narrator's response, I clarify that Krishna picked up a mountain and moved it just to impress a couple of girls when he was a teenager.

So the GM gives me a difficulty of 6. Or auto successes it. Right there I've increased the effectiveness of my ability through definition without needing to spend a single Hero Point. Sure, it's a rather extreme example. But can't you see the underlying principles applied to just about any fairly ambiguous ability?

This takes the "Sunset Leap" issue and puts it front and center. I could actually have my character's effectiveness magnified by making his abilities more obscure. In fact, defining my abilities would limit my character's power. So "Strong" is always better than "Strong as 15 men" and "Atomic Fire Force" is always better than, well, anything.

Thanks again for that example, John. I'm not going after you as an advocate of this approach. I honestly don't know if you like or dislike it. These are just some thoughts that occured to me after reading the post and thinking about it for a while. They're directed more at the ether than anyone in particular.

Personally, I don't see how this would be any easier to codify than my off-the-cuff "here's your default rating" approach. Instead, it seems that GM fiat would actually be the engine that fuels it. Can't say that I'm a fan at this point. I'd rather keep the mastery system intact and my resistances consistent for all players.

I've had a hard enough time in the past with default resistance to magic. So much so that I ditched it completely in Freedom City HQ. Besides, if a player wants to be as Strong as Krishna, he/she should put HP into it. It makes it a defining element of that character, rather than some uber-annoying side trait that overpowers everything else.

Scott

Quote from: Scripty on November 13, 2005, 11:17:24 AM

So if I say my character is "Stronger than Krishna 13" and I go to lift a mountain off the ground and the GM says "Okay, roll against 10w8". Unhappy with the Narrator's response, I clarify that Krishna picked up a mountain and moved it just to impress a couple of girls when he was a teenager.

Scott

Hi Scott

The Heroquest are quite specific on this point. You, as a player, can call your 'strong' ability whatever you like, but your ability will be at whatever level it actually is. Thus say lift mountain is more like 10w15 or 10w20 (depending on the mountain of course). Therefore you will have to have a strength ability in this range. You don't? Then you have somewhere to spend your points then don't you!

Say I want to take a character who has the magic ability 'kill with a look'. The rules actually legislate against this sort of ability, but of course such things actually go against the social contract don't they? 5 people get together to play a game, and are asked to create barbarians who live in the hills. If they pick 'pompous' abilities and throw a hissy coz Krishna lifted a mountain in high school and they want their character to be able to do so - well then I guess its better to find new friends to play with isn't it? The social contract says that we will play and have fun within the bounds of a reasonable shared imagining. If people dysfuntionally try to invalidate this aim, there is not a whole lot any bunch of rules will do is there?

Regards
Rob

Quote from: Lamorak33 on November 13, 2005, 12:22:25 PM
The Heroquest are quite specific on this point. You, as a player, can call your 'strong' ability whatever you like, but your ability will be at whatever level it actually is. Thus say lift mountain is more like 10w15 or 10w20 (depending on the mountain of course). Therefore you will have to have a strength ability in this range. You don't? Then you have somewhere to spend your points then don't you!

Hi Rob:
You are correct that the HeroQuest rules are very specific about how this works. My response was to John's explanation of Mike's earlier statement:

Quote from: Mike_Holmes
There is another way to do this, however. That's to make all 1:1 as Scotty likes, and then say that breadth, depth and even effectiveness is not at all controlled by anything other than player desire. That is, your 17 Strong might actually indicate a higher strength than another player's 5W Strong. If you decouple from the in-game scale, then ability rating is completely a player indicator of importance and nothing else.

But your response gives a great example of the kind of discussions a solution like this could initiate. Mainly, explaining to players exactly why a 17 Strong is more powerful than a 5w Strong. My example (with the Krishna strength above) was a hypothetical situation that I was using to point out what I felt might be a flaw in the approach.

I could be wrong, though. Based on how Mike feels this situation could be handled, it may not be a flaw at all. His approach may run completely counter to my line of thought. I'm still not sold on it though. But that's not really a requirement for an idea to be innovative or effective. I would, however, like to see how the approach would reconcile itself to terribly linear minds like mine.

Again, not a requirement for the idea to be valid, useful, innovative or good, but it would be nice. Sorta like when you buy a flashlight and it comes with batteries included. Not truly necessary but nice.

Scott

Sorry for the line by line...lots of people to respond to.

Quote from: Scripty on November 11, 2005, 12:42:58 PM
Glad to see you're back. I'm in agreement with Janus. I don't understand what you mean by Strong 5w being less broad/effective/etc. than a Strong 17, especially as regards making this happen without falling back on a Narrator just willing it so.

I know, this is extremely hard to explain, and I rarely do it well. I'll try again. John's explanation is actually sort of right, and sort of wrong.

The ratings, indeed the abilities on the character sheet are for the players, right? The characters don't know that they have ratings, much less what they are. Right? Well, what I'm proposing is not telling the characters. As it were. Rather, not linking the ability rating with the character's in-game description at all. That is, a character who is Tall 17 is not taller than one that is Tall 13. Er, my character is 7 feet tall, and has Tall 13. Your character is 6 Feet tall and has Tall 17. Simply don't link them with each other at all?

Now, you say, how does that make any sense? Well, what is Tall good for mechanically? It gives an augment to some conflicts, and in others it might be used as a primary ability - say to resist being leapt over. But in this case, the mechanics are not a representation of in-game physics either. They're the propensity in the story for the character to come out ahead when this ability is relevant. Right? In point of fact, in a conflict between your character and my character, where Strong Vs Strong for arm wrestling is being compared, it may occur that my character with the lower Strong rating wins. I have to be able to explain that as a HQ narrator, right (this is what John is doing, coming up with an explanation in-game for the disparity)? So I say that you got distracted, or something to explain how the less strong character won. Or, if my character is described as being stronger, despite the ratings not matching, then I can explain it that way. There is no need for these things to match in HQ.

The only thing that will not match is simulation. That is, if your character is Strong 17, and weaker than my Strong 13 character, then if we do 100 contests, your character will win an inordinate amount of them. Fortunately HQ's system is not meant to be a simulation of anything, so this is just not important.

Using this "decoupling" reasoning, abilities do not represent the character at all, but merely the player's desire to have the character tend to come out on top in the sort of situations in which the ability is relevant. In which case, only going up incrementally is just fine.

The current system is clearly meant to be coupled, don't get me wrong. That is, from the scales that are implied in the text, there is an implied correllation between ability levels and the intended nature of the character's existence in the game world. All I'm saying is that this can theoretically be dropped. It's a huge cognative leap for players to make, so I usually don't propose this for use in actual play, and leave it as an exercise to get people to understand that the game is not neccessarily simulative. That the rules can be used to serve the player's interests directly and solely (as opposed to catering to them through the means of simulation).

Does this make any more sense to you Scott? Yes, it will confuse the traditional gamers, and yes, you have to chuck the fun HQ scale. No, however, you can use any resistance you want, because the resistances are merely dramatic gauges. I'd use the same ones for the same contests tried by two characters in most cases, because there is no in-game contradiction becasue it's not linked at all to the in-game situation. Again, largely I'm proposing this to show the other side of a particular coin. Though I could play this way without a problem myself.

As it happens, Rob brings up the "Pompous Magic" rule, which actually supports this POV. As does the "Magic Item" rule. Basically if I take the "Ring of Universal Destruction 13" yes, in theory, in-game, the ring can destroy the universe. It'll just do that rather infrequently as I believe that the resistance for that should be about 10W20 or so. So, again, you'll merely have to come up with some explanation like "He's not so good with it yet" or "The spell just didn't work this time."

QuoteWhile I agree that a game system could/should offer the single solution you speak of, it appears that participants on this thread have been addressing what's in HQ as that single solution and re-swizzeling what's there to suit their preferences.

OK, but unfortunately for my purposes I have to discard preferences, and look only at that which will make for the best overall design. So I'll try to discriminate between the two in the future, and not reply to those comments that are merely statements of preference.

In any case, I know that there is an "optimal" solution to the problem out there (ontologically if nothing else). It may not work for everybody, but I can only make the best game possible, not one to please everyone.

QuoteP.S. Please refrain from calling me "Scotty".

Sorry, I have a player who everyone calls Scotty, so I've just gotten used to it.


Bryan, I find the argument compelling, personally. And, heck, I'd suggest the inclusion of the idea based on the sheer level of interest I think it could have - and it certainly couldn't hurt to have it. I'm just not seeing it as a solution to the overall problem. (And, worse, I don't think that such a change without being able to prove that it's neccessary is in the scope of my current project. I'll allow you to use it in our game if you like, however.) :-)



Donald,

QuoteWhat complicates and hides the calculation is that augments vary from contest to contest and can't be predicted.

I could argue this point with you, but we agree that nobody worries about it, so it's a moot point.

QuoteSo you need to write the rule to reflect this. Yes, you can have any level of that ability you like but you have to reflect it in your description of the character and know that the contests you'll face it is as likely to be a hinderance as a help.

Well, yes. That is I always try to write rules so that the player gets them. Rather, let's criticize the text after it's been written, OK? :-)

QuoteIt actually gives the hero the option of a keyword in addition to the species keyword which is inconsistent with most of the rules where such things are at the narrators discretion.

I agree. That was my point that it's inconsistant. Again, I don't think it would be abused. It's just the opening makes it seem like a very strange rule.

QuoteI suspect the authors didn't really think of dragons as followers as in the context of Glorantha it would be as reasonable as having a God as one of your followers.

Well, to be clear, I was thinking of Shadow Dragons, and I could point out Giants, or the mega-trolls...this is moot as well, we both agree that...

QuoteI'd regard this as a rules error which needs fixing somehow by restricting the level of followers.

This was my point to begin with. My personal rule would be simply to only allow the species keyword if it were separately paid for. My argument is that if I don't get the homeland keyword for a porter, then why should I get the species for a Troll, unless I pay for it separately? That is, a follower is not a complete character, so any logic that says that you must also get the other parts of the character is incorrect. OTOH, I'd also accept entire characters for followers as a balanced interpretation. Just not one where you can have species optionally where some beings don't get a species keyword.

QuoteI don't think HQ can afford to become an exclusively narrativist game so any rules have got to work for gamists and simulationists as well.

Well this is a very sticky point that's well outside the scope of this conversation.

QuoteI'm sorry, I don't follow you.

I'm saying that if you buy three abilities to 1W2 to get a secret, any secret, these are pretty good abilities, and are worth every HP paid for them. To give a bonus of any sort for getting there is unbalancing. Many secrets then further break the normal rules of the game giving out quarter augments instead of tenth augments. Or allow cool stuff like traveling in the Spirit World (the secret for all Shamans) for only the cost of the surcharge. There's no really good reason for any of this. The normal system can handle it all fine.

QuoteBut should that "something else" be character advancement? In a narrativist game bumping is a plot control element "I want the contest to go this way." not "I want to win". So the alternative should be another form of plot control

Again, from one POV (above) character advancement is plot control. Especially if it's really more about Character "Development" than "advancement." Not that I don't like your narrative control idea or others. That might simply be out of scope for what I'm looking at now. Anyhow, I'm not adverse to something other than advancement - but I'd also like there to be a mechanism for characters changing in terms of abilities in any case.



Mike

Quote from: Scripty on November 02, 2005, 07:47:15 PM

In my experience, I could have one player with "Sword and Shield Fighting 2w". A pretty general all-around combat skill. And I could have another player with a relatively non-combat character using "Eclipse Bezerk 2w" as his primary combat skill. The fiat would be that "Eclipse Bezerk" is a frenzied magical attack form that can only be activated during an eclipse.

In the interest of not downplaying the other player's "Sword and Shield Fighting" while also not playing up the "Eclipse Bezerk" to an implausible level of one eclipse or multiple eclipses per session, my gut instinct is to let the "Eclipse Bezerk" start at a higher rating so that the player will get some serious mileage out of it when it does come into play. So I'd likely let him buy it as per normal but, where most broadly applicable abilities would start at 13 or 17, I'd let his "Eclipse Bezerk" start at 17 or 2w. Even higher if it was only going to come into play with rarer frequency.

The way I handle things like that is by situational modifiers. Any time two abilities face off, the one that's most appropriate to the current situation, most specialised while still being applicable, gets a made-up-on-the-fly bonus.

If it's an eclipse, and beserking seems tactically plausible, then 'Eclipse Bezerk' facing 'sword and shield combat' gets +15 or so. Ouside an eclipse, -20, and would need some excuse to be allowed at all. Now, if a healer has 'Calm Eclipse Bezerker', then that's an even more specialised ability, so that would gets the bonus instead.

As an aside, this automatically gets rid of weapon bonuses and all that junk, as 'unarmed fighting' is considerably less specialised than 'rhinoback lance charge'...

soru

I handle these things pretty much like Soru does. I'm actually probably stingy on bonuses, but I'm open to use of abilities is a wide variety of situations. For example, Eclipse Berzerk I'd allow a player to use without an eclipse going on at a penalty. Heck, you could explain that the character merely remembered what it was like to be berzerk last time the eclipse happened, and tried to emulate that non-magically. Or any other explanation people would like to proffer.

Basically in my game, any ability can be used at any time in any conflict limited only to the imagination of the player. The only limits on the breadth of any ability is if the player is willing to put in the energy to make an explanation that everyone can enjoy. Yes that includes plausibility, but not the "this ability is limited to use in X circumstances" plausibility, but "OK, that's an interesting way to look at the ability" plausiblity.

To whit, Origami has been one of the most used abilities in my IRC game, because Thomas Robertson goes out of his way to ensure that it comes into play as often as possible.

The fact that the ability is penalized actually favors that ability, IMO. That is, as we've been saying, actual ability level isn't really important. In coming up with the explanation for it's use, and getting the narrator to apply an improv mod, this acutally makes the ability more interesting than less. My players have taken to taking oddly named abilities just to see how often they can get them into play as a result. Take Charles who took "Fond of My Body" recently when his character had, as the result of some "switch soul" spells and his original body being killed, and then having a ritual in which his soul was reattached to his body, had become very attached to his original body. He used it in the very next scene when under attack my zombie-creating demons arguing that now that he was back in his body, there was no way that he was going to let come demon make him a zombie. He'd come too far for that.

So...
A. Giving a higher level doesn't seem to do anything to counteract any potential discrepancy between usablility. And
B. Usability is a non-issue, because the extent to which something is hard to use merely makes it an interesting challenge to use. In fact, the odd abilities are what's incentivized under this model.

Now, I realize that not everyone plays this way. But I think in terms of a coherent rule set, it's a good way to play.

Mike

Quote from: Mike Holmes on November 21, 2005, 11:36:12 AM
Now, I realize that not everyone plays this way. But I think in terms of a coherent rule set, it's a good way to play.

Mike

I think I understand but you are correct about the cognitive disconnect from the current scaling system. I think this idea would work best if removed entirely from the idea of scaling and, instead, made all difficulties relative to the character's rating. Such that a difficulty or resistance of "easy" would be equivalent to the character's rating -10. "Moderate" would equal the character's rating and "Difficult" might be the character's rating +5 or higher.

The proposal needs something like that, I think, to single it out from vanilla HeroQuest. Otherwise, it requires far too much explanation with far too little concrete instruction of how it should be used in play. The current model appears to be sustained by fiat and fudging to explain why the ability didn't work better than one with a lower rating. An understanding that difficulties are derived from the rating (and not some crunchy, objective scale) and a guidepost as to how to set those ratings by what would (or would not) be considered easy/difficult for the character could at least reduce the amount of fiat involved.

That said, one of the things I like most about HeroQuest is its scaling. When running, I have a chart I keep near me that gives me ratings to benchmark off of. Either approach requires some fudging on the GM's part. I like using the chart because I get my conflict resolution and my crunch. For me, HQ runs a bit like the old Marvel Supers game from TSR. I like that. So, I'm naturally going to feel a little uneasy about abandoning the scale.

Treating everything like Pompous Magic would be consistent and would solve the HP issues raised thus far. But it's hard to wrap one's head around at present. I think explicitly stating that difficulty is derived from a character's ability rating and doing so using some sort of gauge would help with this. I'd miss my chart though and HQ would lose some of its appeal for me by moving in this direction. Not saying that it's a bad direction, just that I have a strong affinity (pun intended) for the way HQ scales.

Scott