Let me get this straight...

[Owl]

A while back, when it came out actually, I bought Heroquest. I think I preordered it actually. Anyways, I read it, shrugged and then kept running the campaigns I always had. With the rules I always had.
Just the other day I was looking for a system that'd let me come up with supporting cast off the cuff (is that the right way to put it?), handle all sorts of scales and let me do Hornblowerish ship to ship combat.
They all failed. If it wasn't one thing then it was another. Scales, sailing ships and speed, most of the systems could handle two of the required three but alas... none could handle all three.
And then I picked up my Heroquest book and flipped through it.

Now if I was to say Heroquest could handle all three of these, would I be fibbing? In fact, if I was to say that not only could Heroquest handle it but it could do so while still being elegant and not breaking a sweat?
And if so, why aren't there dancing in the streets because of this? I mean, unless I am mistaken, this is the rules I've been looking for?

In short, I was going to use Other Systems to play my Hornbloweresque campaign but am leaning heavily towards Heroquest right now. Have I been a bad boy?


Owl

[Eero Tuovinen]

Welcome to the Forge, Owl!

HeroQuest can indeed handle it, but you should note that the issues you mention are not the only ones. The way HQ handles things is repugnant to some people, so you should make sure that those parts are not a problem for you. I've met people who couldn't after all like HQ, even if they had just the needs you cite.

I'm thinking specifically about the way HQ manages to handle scales, special situations (like ship to ship combat) and the like without becoming clumsy and complex. That way is to outright ignore any and all realistic relationships between the things in the game world rules-wise, and leave that part completely for the players to enforce. So HQ doesn't have separate and realistic rules for ship chases, cannon bombartment or any of that. It just has the single abstracted rule it uses for everything, and trusts the players to police themselves on what they consider realistic and what not.

For example... let's say my character's cutter is chased by a ship-of-the-line. In HQ you could represent the better speed by a higher speed trait, and the lower firepower by a worse firepower trait... but that's it. If you wanted to factor in the difficult maneuvers in between the reefs you couldn't do that, unless one participant specifically had a trait about knowing the local reefs. The reefs would just be color supplied by a player to explain why he wins or loses, not a factor of that win or lose mechanically. If you absolutely wanted to have the local reefs affect the situation somehow, you'd have to rule that one or the other party gets situational bonuses for the reef, or perhaps speed trait can't be used at all, because it's not possible to run for it. The ruling would have to be pretty much case-by-case.

So the HQ rules give generally only just as much realism as the play group is willing to enforce for themselves. For the most part this means exclusively a kind of movie logic, as the rules aren't supporting any complex figuring out of realistic factors. So, yes, you can have sailing ships without breaking a sweat, but those ships are just as detailed as anything else in the game, which is somewhat less than what many systems supply.

If that part doesn't bother you, then HeroQuest might well be the system you seek.

About application... If ships were just another possible component in the game, I could see doing them as followers or sidekicks for the characters. The follower/sidekick traits would then cover the quality of the ship and crew, with traits like "Maneuvers" or "Gunnery", generally pretty high. Then in ship-to-ship interactions the captains would roll for it, using the ship statistics augmented by their own (or vice versa, if it makes sense).

If ships were the absolute centerpiece of the game, I would likely give each ship it's own, small character sheet with even a dozen traits. Then the ship could interact with the characters in many different ways, and the different characters could augment the ship, or ship augment them... the captain would of course roll for the ship.

[Owl]

Welcome to the Forge, Owl!

Thank you!

I'm thinking specifically about the way HQ manages to handle scales, special situations (like ship to ship combat) and the like without becoming clumsy and complex. That way is to outright ignore any and all realistic relationships between the things in the game world rules-wise, and leave that part completely for the players to enforce. So HQ doesn't have separate and realistic rules for ship chases, cannon bombartment or any of that. It just has the single abstracted rule it uses for everything, and trusts the players to police themselves on what they consider realistic and what not.

That was what I identified to be the main sticking point, but I hope my players can get over it.

So the HQ rules give generally only just as much realism as the play group is willing to enforce for themselves. For the most part this means exclusively a kind of movie logic, as the rules aren't supporting any complex figuring out of realistic factors. So, yes, you can have sailing ships without breaking a sweat, but those ships are just as detailed as anything else in the game, which is somewhat less than what many systems supply.

If that part doesn't bother you, then HeroQuest might well be the system you seek.

Well, I adored the GURPS-system for vechicles until I actually had to read them. Ick. Why a "14 Mton Ion Propulsion Goat-powered Jet Engine TL12" when a "Fast 12w2" would suffice? Hopefully the players will see it my way.

About application... If ships were just another possible component in the game, I could see doing them as followers or sidekicks for the characters. The follower/sidekick traits would then cover the quality of the ship and crew, with traits like "Maneuvers" or "Gunnery", generally pretty high. Then in ship-to-ship interactions the captains would roll for it, using the ship statistics augmented by their own (or vice versa, if it makes sense).

If ships were the absolute centerpiece of the game, I would likely give each ship it's own, small character sheet with even a dozen traits. Then the ship could interact with the characters in many different ways, and the different characters could augment the ship, or ship augment them... the captain would of course roll for the ship.

I was thinking one ship - one sheet. Thus making every ship somewhat unique, and since I dont plan on letting the characters do a lot of ship-swapping (the crown is somewhat fuzzy about that kind of thing I think) I think I could get away with maybe... two ships. The rest would be made up on the spot.
Previously my players have shown themselves to be somewhat tolerant of rules-lite systems since they know I make most of the events up as I go along. And they seem to like it, so... :)

[CCW]

And if so, why aren't there dancing in the streets because of this? I mean, unless I am mistaken, this is the rules I've been looking for?

I feel like dancing in the streets on hearing your idea for a campaign.  Given all my players are Napoleonic naval fans (more Aubrey/ Maturin than Hornblower perhaps, but no matter) and we're enthusiastic converts to Heroquest I don't know why none of us has thought of this.

That said I agree with Eero that HQ is different enough from traditional games that it can be difficult for some people to get their heads around.  In my group there has been an issue around the fact that a simple contest should resolve the whole conflict, that a marginal defeat doesn't just mean you've got a scratch and can hit your opponent again, it means you've lost the fight, but only marginally.  It would help in identifying possible problems if we knew what sytems you were used to using.

The problem Eero mentioned though, I've found that in the end it has turned into a great advantage.  My players say that the game world now corresponds much more closely to their imaginations because the system doesn't get in the way and because it allows anything to be important.

Imagine that conflict between the cutter and the ship of the line.  The SOL has been doing well in an extended contest, firing chain shot to destroy the rigging of the cutter's single mast.  The cutter is reduced to -20AP, her sails full of holes, and the SOL turns its attention to the small shore battery (commanded by a PC) that was trying to cover the cutter's retreat.  Fortunately one of the player characters on the cutter has Mend Sails 10W2, he leads the crew up the lines and using the Final Action rules is able to patch the mainsail while the SOL is distracted, bringing the cutter back up to positive APs.  The captain of the cutter (another player character) realizing that the cutter's speed, while better than than the SOL's,  hasn't worked too well so far, switches abilities to the cutter's Shallow Draft ability (which may have been made up on the spot as something a cutter would obviously have).  Then, with a desperation stake of all the cutter's original AP total, sails right over the reefs and (with the help of a hero point perhaps) leaves the SOL foundering on the rocks, while his small vessel finds safety under the guns of the main battery.

Welcome to the Forge.

Charles Wotton

[Gelasma]

And if so, why aren't there dancing in the streets because of this?

I feel like dancing in the streets since I first encountered HQ. It's exactly the system I've been looking for since years.

We played a large campaign in a caribbean-like fantasy setting. In the beginning the players just had a small boat a sidekick, then a ship and in the end a whole fleet. The same with other sidekicks, for example one hero had in the beginning "a guard" as follower and in the end "half a million elvish revolutionaiers", all subsumed under a single follwer ability. The system did scale perfectly over the course of the campaign: from man-to-man conflict in the beginnung to fleet-to-fleet or fleet-to-city conflicts in the end.

By the way, one of the most rememorable moments of the campaign was when they used the "fortune telling" ability of one of the player heros against the "defence" ability of a town to conquer a strategically important port. Just one simple roll, the players won and it was played out that the players heroin foretold the best moment to attack the port, and so they did and caught the port defendless since the whole defence fleet of the port was hunting some pirates at that moment... As you can see, with HQ you can tell the story the way you want it to be told, and not the way some nitpicking rules force you to tell it as with other systems.

More see the dairy of the campaign: http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~akuhn/narravo.cgi?Elfchenbefreiung/Tagebuch (in German)

[Jane]

Just the other day I was looking for a system that'd let me come up with supporting cast off the cuff (is that the right way to put it?), handle all sorts of scales and let me do Hornblowerish ship to ship combat. ...Now if I was to say Heroquest could handle all three of these, would I be fibbing? In fact, if I was to say that not only could Heroquest handle it but it could do so while still being elegant and not breaking a sweat?...

Had you seen the latest HQ book? It's called "Men of the Sea". And while it's set in Glorantha, and hence aimed at earlier tech/history levels than Hornblower (no cannon!) the sections on Ship keywords may be useful to you, as may the encounters with natural hazards (fog, icebergs, currents..)

[Owl]

I feel like dancing in the streets on hearing your idea for a campaign.  Given all my players are Napoleonic naval fans (more Aubrey/ Maturin than Hornblower perhaps, but no matter) and we're enthusiastic converts to Heroquest I don't know why none of us has thought of this.

Don't feel bad, I had to watch the entire Hornblower dvd set, read the line of books ovr again and then take a gander at GURPS Age of Napoleon before realising what a sweet era it is to game in...

That said I agree with Eero that HQ is different enough from traditional games that it can be difficult for some people to get their heads around.  In my group there has been an issue around the fact that a simple contest should resolve the whole conflict, that a marginal defeat doesn't just mean you've got a scratch and can hit your opponent again, it means you've lost the fight, but only marginally.  It would help in identifying possible problems if we knew what sytems you were used to using.

Well, perhaps it'd help if I said which rules I prefered so far, as to shorten the list greatly. And then I'd have to end up with Pendragon, Over the Edge and L5R. Oh, and Dying Earth RPG, for the charm.
And OTE does have some similarities with HQ, or so I have dreamed up in a fit of fever.

Welcome to the Forge.

Athankyouverymuch.

We played a large campaign in a caribbean-like fantasy setting. In the beginning the players just had a small boat a sidekick, then a ship and in the end a whole fleet. The same with other sidekicks, for example one hero had in the beginning "a guard" as follower and in the end "half a million elvish revolutionaiers", all subsumed under a single follwer ability.

As a single sidekick? Really? I would have given a ship it's own sheet to make it... more personal. With its own many quirks and abilities to reflect the uniqueness of the craft and crew. But then again, I had planned to fuse the Ars Magica troupe play with HQ and make the ship the magicians homestead, the officers into the magicians and the crew into the grogs. This to avoid the odd Star Trek feel when the captain and all of the command crew goes ashore on a hostile planet... but then I feel that I am making more work for myself. Argh.

Had you seen the latest HQ book? It's called "Men of the Sea".

I saw it at my FLGS. Didn't pick it up, since I wasn't planning anything remotely nautical at the time. And now it's sold out. Guess that proves that old carpe diem thing.

[Bryan_T]

My local game store was sold out of Men of the Sea when I finally went in to buy it a couple of weeks ago.  But they put it on order, and when I went in the weekend I picked up the second of two copies they'd ordered.

So your store should be able to get it in for you (or you could order directly from Warehouse23).  

You might want to make an effort to get it, as it appears to have quite a discussion on how to treat ships, giving a variety of answers in some depth.  Note that in Glorantha at least, each ship has its own wyter or spirit, so you quite literally have a relationship with it.

--Bryan

[Jane]

"Owl

We played a large campaign in a caribbean-like fantasy setting. In the beginning the players just had a small boat a sidekick, then a ship and in the end a whole fleet. The same with other sidekicks, for example one hero had in the beginning "a guard" as follower and in the end "half a million elvish revolutionaiers", all subsumed under a single follwer ability.

As a single sidekick? Really? I would have given a ship it's own sheet to make it... more personal.

So does "Men of the Sea". With the captain and crew as its followers. If you've seen the sheets done for the major NPCs in "Orlanth is Dead" and so on, this uses the same format.

[Gelasma]

As a single sidekick? Really? I would have given a ship it's own sheet to make it... more personal.

Well, our focus was on the players heroes being the leaders of the revolution, not an the sheeps, fleets or armies. They were just used as tools, as the means by which the heroes reach their goals. But sure, if you want to shift the focus more to the ship and its crew give it it's own character sheets. It just depends on what kind of story you want to tell.

[Valamir]

, this is the rules I've been looking for?

In short, I was going to use Other Systems to play my Hornbloweresque campaign but am leaning heavily towards Heroquest right now. Have I been a bad boy?
Owl

HQ should do Hornblower just fine.  After all, while Forster's books are full of rich nautical flavor, a naval historian can punch them full of holes anyway.  O'Briens a little better but still not perfect.

But what the real key in those books comes down to is the personal relationship between the the characters and who has the chutzpah to out "chicken" their opponent.  All the "set the main stays" and "back the fors'ls" is just so much color for what is essentially a study in The Will of Man.

Which makes it perfect for HQ.