Mythic Russia: call for opinions

[Mark Galeotti]

Comrades!

As people may or may not have noticed, Issaries has licensed the HeroQuest game engine to me to produce a standalone game set in
Mythic Russia, which with startling originality, I am calling Mythic Russia -- the initial press release is @ http://www.heroquest-rpg.com/news/pr_04_01.html and the home of Firebird Productions, which will publish the game, is @ http://www.firebird-productions.com

The reason I'm posting here is that while the basic HQ game engine will be used, there will be some inevitable tweaks to reflect my own preferences and also the different context of Russia and its myths (just after the battle of Kulikovo in 1380, if anyone's interested, as Muscovy begins to assert itself and throw off the Tatar Yoke). I'd be interested in comments on a few which I already intend to include and also would like to hear any suggestions you may have. I posted this (or a very similar message) on the HeroQuest-rules yahoogroup earlier in the month, but this forum appears to have a different active membership and ethos, so I thought it would give me an interesting alternative perspective.

A few quick caveats:

-- tweaks are not the same as rules revisions. MR and HQ will and must remain compatible.

-- just because I plan to do something a little differently in MR, it doesn't mean that I think it's wrong in HQ: Glorantha is not Russia, and different settings and styles of game mean different requirements.

-- please understand and excuse me if I don't get into much discussion myself over suggestions. I will be reading and considering everything people post, but I see the purpose of the exercise to be about seeing what everyone else thinks, not expounding my own views.
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Anyway, here is a first batch of proposals (in many cases framed in the negative, but usually with a positive substitute to follow!):

1.

All abilities taken during chargen start at 17 (not just keyword, also those in narratives -- which will be the default start method, the others being considered options). After all, most characters will come from two basic homelands -- urban Rus, rural Rus, with a modifier for region or city, as in the ILH-1 homelands (although there will also be 'Greeks' [Byzantines], Tatars, 'Germans' [could just as easily be Balts or Scandinavians] etc. Thus, I want to put more of an emphasis not just on occupation but also personal interest.

2. Repeated abilities from overlapping keywords get a +2 per repetition. So if Rural Survival is in all three of your keywords, you get it at 1W.

3. No cap on increasing starting abilities. Mythic Russian heroes are truly larger than life characters. If you want to burn 15 of your starting points to begin with Strong 12W, you can. There will, however, be extensive narrators' notes on how to handle such heroes and ensure that their relative lack of other strengths also acts as a real penalty.

4. Scaling up the envisaged ranges for personality traits and relationships, to give them a greater role (so it is not ridiculous to have Love Family 1W2), again at the same time providing more explicit guidance on when this should and should not be allowed for augments and the penalties/pitfalls, so it is not abused.

5. No common magic as such, but far more scope for using the Natural Magic rules for one-off powers. This is one of the definite differences between Glorantha and Russia: I don't want ordinary peasants having active magic, although they can still pray for protection and even miracles and use their piety as 'magic resistance.' Likewise, odd little knacks such as herbal cures or the like can either be normal abilities or Natural Magic.

6. Remove the options and fix it that initiative in an extended goes to the highest bidder, to encourage high bids and outrageous manouvres.

7. Mooks are dead, KO or otherwise definitely out of action at 0 AP (this is more a clarification than a new rule)

8. The theist rules will be used as standard, even for animists and wizards (although the former will mainly be Mongols etc and the latter Teutonic Knights and the like) rather than the separate magic systems. There will be some rules differences to give the animists and wizards a slightly different feel, but I don't think that at present the different systems are worth the complexity. I would rather create different cultural constructs for different magics rather than rules.

9. No mixed magic penalties. This was an age in which Christianity and paganism were still closely entwined. There may well be cultural problems with a hero worshipping both a saint and a spirit, but no rules ones.

10. No concentration on magic, no specialization.

11. Most gods, saints, etc offer a single affinity, so it is quite usual for a hero to assemble multiples, such as his home city's patron saint, one linked with his profession and a third relating to his personality.

12. No hero bands; this is really a Gloranthan construct, and I'd rather give guidance on how you can get group or individual powers and protectors on a case-by-case basis.

13. No heroquesting; I don't think this really fits the Russian model. Instead, I'd propose that by 'crossing over' instead you come to the parallel otherworlds ('the thrice-ninth kingdom' et al) into which you can adventure, but not necessarily following the 'tramline' approach of a heroquest.

I look forward to seeing what you have to say.

All the best

Mark

[kagemusha]

Sounds interesting.

I'm fairly new to HeroQuest as a system but your tweaks look interesting enough.

I particularly like the No. 2.

I have an old copy of RUS which I read with interest but never got to play.

The system was a bit overwhelming and Russian myth is something I am not too familiar with.

At the time it was the Viking era that got me interested in branching out into Russia.

I'll be on the look out for this.

[Brand_Robins]

Very little specific feedback here Mark -- but I can say that I very much like the idea of every single tweak you suggested. I think they do fit the setting, and will let the game support it more fully.

[BPetroff93]

This sounds great!  I love the Heroquest system and old Russian myth and magic.  Any chance of needing playtesters?

[Mark Galeotti]

This sounds great!  I love the Heroquest system and old Russian myth and magic.  Any chance of needing playtesters?

Absolutely! Any interested playtesters and readers should head along to the Firebird site and drop me a line through the form on the Contacts page, telling me a little about yourself, the opportunities you'll have to playtest (eg, do you have an active gaming group eager to try it, etc) and anything else you think relevant. Do be honest: after all, I'm also looking for blind-readers to send drafts to just to see if they make sense on a read-through, not just actve playesters, but I do need to get some sense of who you are and what you can do with the opportunity.

All the best

Mark

[Invain]

1. All abilities taken during chargen start at 17

This sounds a bit bland to me, but I can see the advantage of doing so. From my perspective, the 13 vs 17 break should depend on how much time a character spent performing the ability pre-game. It seems reasonable to me that a person might be less skillful at their hobby or basic cultural abilities than their profession. If they want to devote an extreme amount of time to the hobby, then this is reflected in the spending of starting points. In the long run it really doesn't make much difference one way or the other.

2. Repeated abilities from overlapping keywords get a +2 per repetition. So if Rural Survival is in all three of your keywords, you get it at 1W.

I am currently playing in a HQ game where this is a house rule, although our narrator said +1 per repetition instead of +2. It was very well received by the players, myself included.

4. Scaling up the envisaged ranges for personality traits and relationships, to give them a greater role (so it is not ridiculous to have Love Family 1W2), again at the same time providing more explicit guidance on when this should and should not be allowed for augments and the penalties/pitfalls, so it is not abused.

I love this idea, and am very interested to see how it works out. I have always thought that the personality based abilities in HQ were underutilized. I am thinking of giveing out extra HP earmarked for personality traits/relationships in the next game I run.

Actually, although this is not directly related to the topic, I plan to make greater use of the house rule I employed on my last run at narrating HQ: the ability cap. Since I want my game to run until the fall of the Red Moon, I imposed a cap on raising abililities (starging at the highest ability rating possible in character creation) that increased by one point every game year. This prevented characters from raising their primary abilility to absurd levels, and as a pleasant side effect encouraged them to spend points on secondary things.

The next time I run the game, I am going to be more liberal in handing out HP, and see where the points wind up. I am hoping that it will be in things that make the characters more interesting (rather than bland power-gaming attempts).

6. Remove the options and fix it that initiative in an extended goes to the highest bidder, to encourage high bids and outrageous manouvres.

I have a hard time wraping my brain around this one. I agree that encouraging dramatic actions is a good thing, but I worry that this rule might be awkward to implement in play. I would have to have everyone declare their action at the start of the round, not knowing what the other characters are doing, and then execute in bid order.

Our group either goes around the table clockwise (the "no math" option), or bases initiave on the highest current AP total at the start of the round. The "A" in AP is Advantage, after all.

8. The theist rules will be used as standard, even for animists and wizards (although the former will mainly be Mongols etc and the latter Teutonic Knights and the like) rather than the separate magic systems. There will be some rules differences to give the animists and wizards a slightly different feel, but I don't think that at present the different systems are worth the complexity. I would rather create different cultural constructs for different magics rather than rules.

I hate to agree with you, because I think having different magic systems makes things more interesting - but I do. Before I run my next game I am going to attempt to distill the other magic systems down a bit in a "cheat sheet" so that players can pick them up easily. Most of my players avoid the other magic systems because they either don't want to spend the time/effort to figure out the rules, or are afraid that the other systems are not as powerful. Your idea disposes of both problems, and non-HQ players won't miss what they have never seen.

9. No mixed magic penalties. This was an age in which Christianity and paganism were still closely entwined. There may well be cultural problems with a hero worshipping both a saint and a spirit, but no rules ones.

Do the worshipped entities have preferences that show up in the rules?

10. No concentration on magic, no specialization.

Good idea. In my games (as player or narrator) everyone specializes. Why have a choice if every right-thinking individual is going to make the same descision?

Good luck on the game! I can't wait to see it.

~Kevin McD

[BPetroff93]

Well, after a long an harrowing audition process (j/k)  I got the okay from Mark to be an offical playtester.  So I will let you all know as soon as he sends me something.  I will now go and stare at my mailbox in anticipation.

[NickHollingsworth]

Mark:
6. Remove the options and fix it that initiative in an extended goes to the highest bidder, to encourage high bids and outrageous manouvres.

Invain:
... I worry that this rule might be awkward to implement in play. I would have to have everyone declare their action at the start of the round, not knowing what the other characters are doing, and then execute in bid order.

I agree with Invain. I dont care for declaration of intent before a round is resolved because it interupts the flow by forcing players to discuss what characters are probably going to do in a moment. It also slows things down.

It would be nicer to dispense with any sort of statement of intent and:

1. Use a simple approach to decide who goes first (round the table, most AP or even GM dictates would be all fine) but

2. Provide a way that players and named npcs can interupt actions with their own for a cost. The cost might be an actual cost, extra risk or whatever and its design aim would be to allow interuption to happen but make it cost enough that its not overused.

Rather than pollute mark's thread with alternate suggestions I have split off an Ordering Actions thread http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11054
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[BPetroff93]

I actually like the statement of intent as it allows a more sorcerer esk round. I think this is more in keeping the narritive, heroic larger than life feel of the source material.