Finding myth

[nellist]

This might be very naive, but do the GM or players make up the myths for a HeroQuest, or is it supposed to be something published.  In other words, when the situation arises for a group of characters to need a HeroQuest (say the land is in a drought and they want to bring rain), does one have to scour the source material for a proper Orlanthi myth

I just wanted to say, since no one had yet been emphatic enough, that the answer should be a big NO! to the scouring of source material. Even though I am a terrible offender in the 'scouring the source material' that is because I am a setting-monkey and enjoy looking up all the details from various ancient publications and being inspired by them. The whole YGWV thing is, I believe, there to stop things freexing up in 'canon' rigidity. There is a good place for us Glorantha-masons to quibble about Jaldon's dental mysticism but that place is not during Heroquest  - make up the details and they are true - no need to explain why they are contradicted by a footnote in Gorp 2.

As to advice for how to make up myths - I usually use the sources for inspiration. They are a lot of one sentence references in Storm Tribe that cry out to be developed by enterprising players.

Keith

[Bryan_T]

An additional question:  This might be very naive, but do the GM or players make up the myths for a HeroQuest, or is it supposed to be something published.  In other words, when the situation arises for a group of characters to need a HeroQuest (say the land is in a drought and they want to bring rain), does one have to scour the source material for a proper Orlanthi myth about rain-making, or does everyone get together and create such a myth, weaving it into the history of the world, or both?

Yes, and then some.  You can take the source of the myth from anywhere, a heroquest book, the King of Dragon Pass computer game, a real world myth, a TV show, a weird dream you had last night, a nursery rhyme....or yes, a creative story telling session.  But I think you need to be just a little careful about that last one, for the reasons that I mention in the next paragraph.

There is one big issue that you have to deal with when it comes to heroquests: almost always the heroes (and players) know the myth when they start the quest, yet you don't want play to be predictable.  Fortunately cannon Glorantha gives a solution to that: almost all myths have many, many, versions, and you never know exactly how it will play out for you.  Therefore the events of the myth that you know are only guideposts, not an exact telling.

To use an analogy, say I want to go to the store that is two blocks north and one block west from me.  On the way there I have to cross a street.  I might wait for the light, and walk across when there is no traffic, or dodge between cars, or the light could be out and traffic backed up and I cross between parked cars.  When I get to the corner I might cut through the parking lot there, which may or may not mean I have to dodge someone backing up without looking, I might just stay on the sidewalk, which may or may not be blocked by people waiting for the bus.  There might be construction on the sidewalk before I get to the store, so that I have to cross to the other side of the road and back again.  It could be raining, or snowing, or there could be ice on the ground.  There could be someone on the way begging for change, or a group of high school students monopolizing the sidewalk.....

Likewise for your myth.  In the story the hero crossed the river on the back of an otter.  You can be pretty sure that there will be a barrier related to water, be it river, lake, ocean, or group of water worshippers.  There will probably be some being that you can persuade to help you bypass this barrier.  But who/what that being is and what the nature of the obstacle will be, you can't be positive.  There may be encounters that are not in the myth you know at all.  Some parts of the myth may end up being easy: where the myth goes on and on about how they survived crossing the parched desert, the heroes may cross a dry land without challenge (or station).  Some may end up being more critical than they realize, so that when they say good-bye to their chieftan, it is actually a station, and if they do well enough she will pass along secret wisdom that will help them later on in the quest--even though the version of the myth which they know does not mention this at all.

Therefore the players don't know exactly what to expect, even though they know the outlines of the story.

And that is even without talking about having people they know pulled into the quest, their quest crossing over with somebody else's quest, or getting experimental!

Having said that, a disclaimer: while I've read and thought about this a lot, I've played only a little HQ, and run it not at all.  So take that into consideration when deciding how seriously to take my advice :-O

--Bryan

Regards;

[Chew]

Hi Tony

On the subject of myth construction, one avenue to explore (along the lines of what Ian suggested about cooperative efforts) would be the elegant method invented (I think) by David Dunham.

His system uses cards given to players (at the start of a heroquest) to be played in a similar way as with a card game. Briefly explained, the cards have names of quest obstacles, characters, artifacts and suchlike on them (e.g. an impassive guardian, the dark forest, the cloak invisible, trickster) and are played at the stations on the quest. As many players can lay a card as is desired and the narrator picks the one(s) that suits. This is then what inspires that heroquest station.

I suggest you entreat Mr Dunham for his latest ideas and/or a better description. We played a game of his at Tentacles and we so impressed we bought the company, er(!), idea. :)

It works magnificently, in my humble opinion. Thanks again, David, for revealing this to us.

Matthew

[Mike Holmes]

To expand on Bryan's idea, I take this one step further, actually. That is, I look at what the game needs, and then work back to the myth. For instance, in the current IRC game, I mentioned that it might be cool to have some heroquests come up, and people started thinking about it. One player, Adrienne, has a character who's trying to establish a city, essentially. So we figured out what one of the big needs for that was - gaining some guardians for the city. Not some rinky-dink starting level guardian for a hero band, but she had in mind these two majestic spirit level beings that they'd just discovered.

So the need was to have a quest where they could bring these spirits into their tradition. So we invented a quest that fit that bill.

Now, of course in play it's presented as, "Oh, great luck, there happens to be a quest that fits the bill here!" That is, even though it was created by the neccessity of the players, it's presented as having always existed like any myth. Too convenient? Well, when creating the details of the myth, we took into account what we did know about the setting information, and such, and created a myth that seemed to make sense to us - including, in fact, it not being maybe the most perfect of fits quite. Actually, from one POV, it's a heroquest that's quite problematic in many ways aside from the difficulty.

Which is to say that in making it "realistic" we also made it more dramatic at the same time. Killing three birds with the one stone.

So I can only recommend this method. Get your players thinking in terms of what they'd like for their characters to do, and then invent myths to fit their goals. Given that there are so many myths, it always comes out plausible. And you don't have to worry about finding a muth with that is desirable due to some character motivation, or even about inspiration. The characters, and the situation of play become the inspiration and motivations.

Mike