[HeroQuest] Fields of Freedom

[Mike Holmes]

Good point! That is a reason I like for doing the contest. But, I simply said Asheria was hurt-free given the context. It was me applying auto-success, as you suggest. She'd slept through a night and a day, so it made sense at that point in time, which literally was the start of the session.

Sort of a framing thing, then. Like at the beginning of a new episode of a TV show, where we're unlikely to see continuing effects of some injury or something?

Yep. There was much "Aha!" in a secondary rules explanation in the minutes before session 4. And, more successes in session 4 made people seem much more comfortable. Tony especially.

Again, to ram this home, have some contests with vastly disparate ability levels. A couple of masteries or so. Once people see that beings this far apart can compete, they realize how small the gradations of being on the same mastery scale are.

She is THE central figure in the much-alluded-to "shocking moment" in session four. Ron, author of Sex & Sorcery (ahem), should eat it up.

Antici-----say it!------pation.

That is, Gabrielle's strict concern that mom and adoptive parents must not meet was unwarranted; she thought she had Lady Thorel's best interests in mind. And, yet, she made big choices on that assumption. I didn't like that this may have been taken as me railroading so that she'd leave the kid with Old Quint.

Ahh. Got it. Yep, sometimes co-incidence conspires to create events like this. The question is whether to play it "straight" or to alter the situation such that the NPC in question now apprieciates the efforts in question. It's a hard question because, on the one hand, you don't want to invalidate the player's decision in retrospect. OTOH, if you do change it, you lose a bit of natural irony.

Here's what to do. Keep the irony, and then find a way for the character's efforts to have mattered in another way. Make a new conflict based off of that.

Great ideas! I almost opted for No. 2, but hadn't considered the others.

What made you stop and not go #2 (having the player keep the relationship even though the character is dead)? Just didn't seem like just recompense? Did you offer it as an option?

I realized right away that stacking two abilities was a very generous trade off in Dave's favor. But, I also thought it evened out pretty well. In the game, people's relationships are constantly used. By comparison, I reasoned, how often is Dave going to use "Old Man's Eye"? Now, sure, if he's really clever, a LOT.

Well, see, there's this odd technical issue that I refer to as the Hero System Active Point limit phenomenon. That is, in Hero System, if you let players buy up abilities and reduce their cost so that they're affordable by putting limitations on the abilities, soon you get Omegaman, the guy who can blow up the universe, including himself. To prevent that, there's a rule in HS called the Active Point limit, that caps the "height" of the overall ability.

The point here is that you've allowed the player to violate the active point limit. Basically, all abilities are only used "infrequently" if you think about it. Yeah, some seem to come up a lot, but limited abilities come up pretty regularly, because players look for an opportunity to use them. Because they're impressive when they do.

My sense is that the desire to use the ability will become very great as soon as you figure out what the power does. :-)

But, he has not at all abused it,

So you have figured out it's use? In any case, it's not "abuse" to want to use a big power, it's completely natural. The game is telling you that you should use the ability. As such, it's good to try to avoid this kind of stack.

Interestingly, this relates to the "special release" ability of animist practitioners, but I digress...

and we both thought it was too cool to pass up that "old" Baldwin's soul would be inspiring his Old Man's Eye. Very neato. One of my greatest "side effect" delights in HeroQuest is making use of some obscurely worded or arcane title like that.

Ah, I see the link, now. Doesn't seem really clear, however - did he learn the ability from Baldwin? Basically, why that ability, and not some other? For example, why not his swordsmanship (I'm assuiming that Thomas learned from Baldwin). Actually, what would be cool would, again, be something like "Inspired in fights by Baldwin" as a potentially commonly available augment.

We werent' using that rule until session four, alas. In fact, Lisa's remarks about this scene were a major reason why I did implement the rules.

Aha! :-)

Good question. I guess I divided it that way to present challenges to each player. Now that you mention it this way, I can see how it really could have been a more cohesive and rewarding group victory had they all faced off against the Anduren host as one AP pool.

Well, I'm not saying that characters shouldn't have their own conflicts - that's certainly a good idea in the right circumstances. But if that's the case, I highly recommend running them concurrently, and not simultaneously. Is that how it worked? If so, then I was just confused about how you presented it.

Frankly, my "proper" handling of the masses in combat was probably way off base, rules-wise.

It's an area worth re-reading to get all the options straight. Have you tried coming back from failure yet, for instance? Great for villains.

I was likely far too kind to the players, not granting sufficient ratings and AP to the warriors. Robat himself, was, I think, properly "statted", although he may have lacked for support of his warrior community.

Yep, keep in mind that the system takes care of the characters in a lot of ways. Never fear rating things harshly. Makes winning, when it happens, all the more sweet. One of my favorite effects is how a character with a higher rating can often take on multitudes of foes. That is, a high AP total for an enemy isn't neccessarily all that dangerous.

Actually, Flash PAID for his "Craven" abillity, and he uses it postively (i.e. successfully) often. Too often! It isn't a flaw, really. At least, not in practice to date. I SHOULD have penalized him (all of -2) in session 4 when he acted very heroically, though I suspect he'd have still triumphed as he did.

Heh, yep, what's good for the goose... That is, normally positive abilities can be uses negatively, too. That said, if you "miss" one for a non-flaw, no big deal. No imperative to hose the player for those.

Watch for actual flaws, however, and use them whenever possible. Anyone take any flaws?

Since it's slightly fuzzy what our character's magical abilties are (this not being Glorantha, albeit pretty analogous), I'll have to think on it. Most people have Common Magic, it seems clear to me. But, one or two might have a Theist ability -- Bronn's spider abilities for example.

Ooh, can I help?!? I love working these things out (to, perhaps, an inordinate amount). Maybe a thread in the HQ forum?

The place to start is deciding what the religions are all about.

It'll stop that pesky Flash from winning too easily with his Weasel's Luck ability! I've also considered imposing more "improvised" penalties for that ability, specifically.

Sounds like a "broad" ability. Did you read about that on p18? Some good suggestions there.

Mike

[Flash]

It'll stop that pesky Flash from winning too easily with his Weasel's Luck ability!

Heh.  Is "Weasel's Luck" a Trait of the character...or a Trait of Flash himself ;-)

LOL! Funny.

I have to admit that I shamefully stole the character concept from an old Dragonlance novel called, of course, Weasel's Luck. I just happen to have reread the book recently, and when Matt pitched his FoF idea, I knew instantly what I was going to play. The idea of playing an anti-hero really intrigued me. I tend not to play those types of characters generally.

[The GM]

Mike brought up the following:

You're missing the answer that I'm looking for, here. I get that Matt is taking it seriously, and that you're all playing this way because of your respect for him. But, OK, you didn't have a piece of paper. How was this communicated? What I'm looking for was how it was that you all got the idea that he was serious. Was it some change in his expressions? Did he say something? If so, what?

I'm trying to get at the very specific "how" this came about. It's easy to say, "we just decided" but that never happens. There has to be communication first for the change to happen. I'm looking for that communication.

Um, that's a hard thing to answer. I think it has some to do with a critical meltdown the group had last winter. No, I'm not going to go into what happened.  Please don't ask. Point being, that our group seemed to come out of the fracas stronger, more sure of each other, and better friends to boot. So when Matt said he was going to run a game, we were excited, and here's the key part, willing to help him out, Wanting to Help Him Out. By him being successful, so would we be and the fun factor would go up 1000%. Does that make sense? We made (albeit an unspoken) decision to have a blast. I do not recall a specific discussion where we laid out the time we would game, or where, or who was bringing beer and munchies.

Very cool answer. Now, presumably he's not having implausible things happen, right? That is, everything that's going on has some relevance to the characters, not just to the players, no? Given that, how is it that what's a plausible issue for the character ends up being so interesting to the players? Is it co-incidence? Or is something else going on?

Oh certainly. It all has relevance. Please reference my earlier post in the thread about Public conflict vs Personal conflict. That's what Matt is doing.

OK, but, again, digging a bit deeper, was it all characterization? That is, was it simply that Matt improved his acting skills, and was portraying the characters in a more lifelike way? Or was there something about what the NPCs were about that made them so lifelike?

Frankly, NPCs were always a weak link in Matt's games. They were cardboard cut outs of what people might be like. He's shored up this issue immensely by giving NPCs motives, personalities, etc...

Spectacular answer. What was it that was different this time that caused this to happen? Was it the dedication to playing per #1 above? Was it just all the time you've spent together? Did the setting or system have anything to do with it?

I can't really answer to the system question. I've personally run games that were as tight using WWGS. Ton has come damn close using SR and RoS, (definitely in RoS.) For the rest, refer to question 1.

Yer not going to tell me, are ya? What it was that Matt said? Too personal? I'm really curious as to the actual in-game event. Just waiting for Matt to lay it out?

Naw, I'm gonna let Matt delve into that. Trust me, it was a beaut.

I think I've just been called immature! ;-)

And your father smelled of elderberries! :)

[The GM]

Cool, Matt.

Got any room for an online participant?

Let's see, Mapquest says that it's only 375 miles from me to Carlisle, slightly less than 6 hours travel time. Bet I could do it in 5. Hmmm.

;-)

Sure, that'd be great! 'Course, you'll have to fill out an application and take a gaming profficiency test. We'll need to do ink blots and an MMPI to make sure you're compatible. Oh, and you'll have to bring the beer. No cheap $#!+ please, we're connoisseurs. ;^D

edit: tags

[Mike Holmes]

Um, that's a hard thing to answer. I think it has some to do with a critical meltdown the group had last winter. No, I'm not going to go into what happened.  Please don't ask. Point being, that our group seemed to come out of the fracas stronger, more sure of each other, and better friends to boot. So when Matt said he was going to run a game, we were excited, and here's the key part, willing to help him out, Wanting to Help Him Out. By him being successful, so would we be and the fun factor would go up 1000%. Does that make sense? We made (albeit an unspoken) decision to have a blast. I do not recall a specific discussion where we laid out the time we would game, or where, or who was bringing beer and munchies.

The way this reads, it sounds like previously you weren't willing to help him out or wanting to help him out. Somehow that seems unlikely to me - y'all seem too nice. What I'm guessing is that at some point it became known somehow that Matt wanted help, and that it was OK to give him that help. And so the potential willingness became actual help at that point. Or am I way off.

And then the question I have is how this could have been "unspoken." That is, at some point somebody must have said something that made the change occur. No, I don't need the specific details, but I'm just curious as to whether my supposition is correct.

Basically, it seems to me that somebody simply at some point has to make it understood, through some communication channel, that the whole thing can be a group effort that can be cool if everyone participates wholeheartedly.

I remember your posts way back, the original ones about "playing on purpose." Any chance that's what communicated to everyone that this was a way to go?

Very cool answer. Now, presumably he's not having implausible things happen, right? That is, everything that's going on has some relevance to the characters, not just to the players, no? Given that, how is it that what's a plausible issue for the character ends up being so interesting to the players? Is it co-incidence? Or is something else going on?

Oh certainly. It all has relevance. Please reference my earlier post in the thread about Public conflict vs Personal conflict. That's what Matt is doing.

Again you're giving me symptoms, but not the cause. The Public and Personal thing means that the resultant themes are interesting to everyone - that's awesome. The question is, when Matt is looking at what he has to work with in terms of setting, characters, NPCs, etc. what do you think he's doing to "discover" how to use these in-game elements plausibly in order to create action that engages you on the Public and Private levels.

You may not be aware, and if that's the case, that's fine. At that point I'll turn it over to Matt. The reason I'm asking you first, is so that I can see if you have any idea of how it's going on before I get Matt to spill the beans. I have some guesses as to how he does it (I know how it is that I attempt to do this), but I may be surprised. We all might.

OK, but, again, digging a bit deeper, was it all characterization? That is, was it simply that Matt improved his acting skills, and was portraying the characters in a more lifelike way? Or was there something about what the NPCs were about that made them so lifelike?

Frankly, NPCs were always a weak link in Matt's games. They were cardboard cut outs of what people might be like. He's shored up this issue immensely by giving NPCs motives, personalities, etc...

OK, I'm probably getting annoying with this. I like your answer again (I like some of these because you're giving me independent verification of some things that I think are true, BTW), but I still need to ask the deeper question. How does Matt know what motives or personalities to give the characters. Is just any motive or personality that makes the NPCs interesting? Or is there something that makes the motives such that the NPCs become more engaging.

Let's say that I ran the game, and an NPC arrived, and I played him to a T as a jackass who wanted to steal everything in town. Would that be an engaging NPC? If not, then what is Matt doing differently to make the NPC motives better than this?

Again, if it's not clear, and it might not be, I'll ask Matt afterwards.


I think that I've probably already filled out the appropriate forms (perhaps just as a random occurence of my post count here), I actually have posted my MMPI in a thread that tried to link that to gaming mode preference - search it if neccessary - and Cell Gamma is my personal inkblot test given to the world to see.

But...I'm a tee-totaler (yeah, the one from Wisconsin that proves the rule about Wisconsinites and drinking). So I think I'll probably fail the beer qualification. Ah well. ;-)

Mike

[Matt Snyder]

Lisa's claim that the agreement was unspoken is not quite right. We did have a very open discussion among myself, Tony, Flash and Lisa in late winter / early spring of this year. In it, we discussed, literally, the "gaming on purpose" idea, openly discussed everyone's gaming preferences. I arranged the meeting, which was cordial and enjoyable. It lasted a few hours. I specifically wanted to meet (and said so vocally) for two main reasons. The first was to get people to acknowledge openly and verbally whether or not gaming was important to them (it was, universally), and to agree (or not -- we did agree) that when we game we would literally be more attentive and engaged.

The second reason was to discover what game or idea they wanted me to GM on a longer term basis.

Fields of Freedom grew very specifically from that meeting, but it took a long time to happen. And, I worked on and proposed other games in that duration. It was not too long after that meeting that I met with Flash and Lisa to explain HeroQuest. (I explained that meeting in my first post in this thread.) Again, it would be some time (several months) before we did anything at all with HeroQuest, and we played other games (Shadowrun only, perhaps) in the meantime.

That meeting was, as I recall and from my perspective, utterly crucial. And, I believe everyone involved walked away very excited about gaming and openly espousing more attentive, more engaged sessions.

The group knows each other very well. My experience with our gaming sessions, and I think others will generally agree, is that they had a very casual attitude. We started when we did. The games were hit and miss successes, with a better-than-average "fun factor." Sessions often involved lots of people getting up and going to check email or tending kids or reading some magazine, or knitting (no joke!), or something else, or whatever. No one seemed bothered by this, including myself, often. I certainly did not have a bad time gaming. But, I also think this engendered a too-casual attitude about the activity itself. "We're all friends, so we're having a good time gaming." Not always true. I found that the sessions could be disjointed, and any dysfunction, however slight or severe, was dismissed as "We're friends so it doesn't matter. We're having fun."

Over time, I think it mattered. Hence more discussion on it, and the meeting I allude to above. We realized that our gaming suffered about as much as it soared with that too-casual attitude. I believe we showed each other how we could have ten times the fun when we dedicated ourselves to the game. And, of course, there would be times when that dedication lacked. So, we enjoy each other's companionship and do something other than game at those times.

[Mike Holmes]

Lisa's claim that the agreement was unspoken is not quite right.

Well, to be clear, I think she meant the "have a blast" concept. I was intentionally misreading her using the patented MJ Young "gets me required info through clarification" method. :-)

We did have a very open discussion among myself, Tony, Flash and Lisa in late winter / early spring of this year. In it, we discussed, literally, the "gaming on purpose" idea, openly discussed everyone's gaming preferences.[/quote]Cool, so it was Lisa's initial observation that got it going? Yay for Lisa! :-)

Mike

[The GM]

Hey Mike, sorry I won't be able to respond to this thread for awhile due to RL events. It may be awhile before I'm back. If Matt wants to field some of your points, that's cool w/ me.
Thanks.

[Mike Holmes]

No problem. Matt?

Mike