[HQ] Forge education

[droog]

I don't quite know where the best place is to post this, but since it concerns actual play, I'm putting it here. It concerns a long-running Gloranthan game and the relationship between friendship, roleplaying and theory.

Here's the context: we've been playing together with me as GM since 1984, with the same three core players (and their characters) and a shifting but consistent group of secondary PCs. The people are all friends outside roleplaying, and probably always will be. The characters were originally RQ3, apart from a couple that hopped across from an older RQ2 game. The game is iconic and the three core players have always been totally committed to it. But it had gone somewhat stale since the late 90s, and my own GMing attention had turned to other things.

Since I moved interstate five years ago, we've gotten together to play The Game about once a year. During that time HW, then HQ, appeared; and I have tried hard to interest the players in a converted game, as I felt that these rules might help revive it (though I didn't quite know why). But while they went along with me, something was missing--not helped by the long gaps between games. There was a lack of enthusiasm for the new rules, and a general lack of understanding. Or maybe it was just that none of us knew what we wanted out of the game any more.

This Christmas, it was different. A short way into the first session one of the players said "I'm finally beginning to get this game. I understood it before, but now I'm getting it." And the other two shared this epiphany.

Why? I have no hesitation in saying that it's because of this forum and the ideas here promulgated. I have read so many pieces of good advice and interpretation here that I went into that game armed to the teeth. I spent months creating bangs and training myself into a consistent Narrativist approach. I was able to appraise the game as it went and adjust what I was doing, reminding myself of the solid principles the Forge has thrashed out. And it worked! The players engaged like Synchromesh--without doubt one of the best sessions in the past ten years.

Furthermore, the discussions revolving around social relations within the playing group bore ripe fruit. At the second and last session, C, who for one reason or another has not played in the game for many years, showed up to play. He had just lost his parents in a freak accident, and needed some RP therapy. Two years previously one of our original core players, T, died of leukemia, and his character had gone to Prax. I gave the character to C (an old schoolfriend of T's): he was touched and honoured, and he had a wonderful time, made more special by the resonances. I don't think I would have had the insight to do this without some of the discussions I have read here (Mr Edwards, I promise that one day I will get around to buying Sex and Sorcery, since it has inspired me merely by existing).

Thanks, Forge. I don't quite know if there's any discussion to be had from this, but I felt I had to post it.


"The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness [Diesseitigkeit] of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."

[Ron Edwards]

You're welcome!!

And uh, let's not forget about that Sex & Sorcery promise. cough Website order direct cough.

Tell more about the sessions. Especially since there are a lot of people invested in HeroQuest who are active here, including some who really dislike it. Where in Glorantha? What sort of characters? What sort of conflicts? What sort of player interactions?

Best,
Ron

[droog]

It's difficult to write about roleplaying, I think.

The characters are the prototypical RQ wanderers: we did Prax and Pavis, Snakepipe Hollow and other attractions of Dragon Pass, a period of enslavement as gladiators, Oddi's Chaos War from Cults of Terror, and finally they came to roost in Balazar a few years before I left town. They run Soldier Ferry just like the guy before them.

You could call them 'disillusioned Sartarites who hate the Lunars but despair of Sartar ever being free' (or you could call them 'cynical freebooters with an eye for a chance'). Now 'Argrath' is making war down South, they want to get amongst it. So I suppose the central conflict was the attack they planned on the Tarsh Temple of the Reaching Moon. Most of the two sessions were taken up with various contests trying to gain support for their raid (apart from time for people to relearn the system, talk about hero bands, fiddle with their characters etc).

The players' interaction was, I suppose, the point behind my post. We're a bunch of really old friends who used to enjoy this game a hell of a lot, but I don't think anybody was having much fun any more. Now, I can see it going on forever – these things are important. Does system matter that much?



I'm not quite sure how to respond to your questions. Could you possibly break them down for me? I wrote several pages before I decided to ask for clarification.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Well, yeah. System does matter that much, I think. Not everyone agrees.

I'll break down my questions a bit more, into one basic question.

Think back on the session and isolate one time when you really thought to yourself, hey, this is going way better than I thought. Wow, that guy is really enjoying himself, I haven't seen that in years. And look at that other guy jump right in, I didn't even have to say it was his turn.

Found one? Excellent. Now, think of what rules were in operation, or had been put into operation that got people going. Think also of whether this was about "ignoring the rules" or "using rules that are fun."

In either case, how do those rules compare with the BRP equivalents, or rather, how would you have run those same scenes using BRP? How long would they have taken, and what kind of interactions among the players were you accustomed to when running such things? An example from the past would help a lot as contrast.

When people write pages and pages, it's because they're thinking that I want to experience the role-playing imagination through your words. I don't. I want to talk to you, the person, about how you and the other people interacted, with the imaginative elements just being touchpoints for that topic.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I'm wondering about timing. How far apart were the last three sessions from each other?

Basically, are you playing any more often than you used to? Or do you intend to at all?

Mike

[droog]

I apologise for taking so long to answer this, and I hope that I'm not going against forum etiquette in doing so at this stage.

Basically, the Forge makes me want to ponder questions very carefully before answering. I also started working again... before I know it, the topic is on page 3.


Ron:

Once upon a time we played the Cradle scenario, which is essentially a series of massive combats with some exploration in between. It took us four sessions, perhaps a total of about 40-50 hours of dice-rolling. It was fun at the time, but I'm talking 1987 or thereabouts. There was a certain amount of fudging to keep characters alive.

In the last session of HQ, the players attacked Tarshford as the first stage in their raid on the Temple of the Reaching Moon. We rolled a single simple contest for the overall success, followed by a series of individual simple contests (influenced by the result of the first roll) to see how each character went. Elapsed time: perhaps twenty minutes. No fudging, because the Forge had made me realise that defeat could be fun for the players (though in the event they were highly successful anyway).

Very little character interaction of any sort in the Cradle apart from tactical planning. Lots of laughter and kibbitzing as people built their augments in the Tarshford attack.

Furthermore,  the attack came right at the end of a session devoted more to (in-game) social interaction as the characters tried to gain support. While the attack was the culmination of the session, it was by no means the focus.

So we had build-up and climax all in one session. Whereas the RQ game was all climax in one sense--very wearing. Several years later, I ran another epic combat, and half-way through I found myself wishing it was over. Whereas the HQ contest, while climactic, is only a prelude to later contests I find myself greatly looking forward to. I'm saving the extended contest for the very final battle, and I'm torn between hoping they succeed and hoping they fail.

RQ is unforgiving in defeat. It's highly likely that I would be forced to fudge at some point, or kill characters. Moreover, I'm almost certain that this has contributed to a certain malaise in the game, because people have been scared to risk their characters in such a venture.

As well, characters really began to come to life under the HQ system as my friends understood how flexible it was and how it could accomodate their visions. For example, one of the players decided that his character had 'Guilty About Surviving Starbrow's Rebellion' as an ability. None of us had ever known this before--where is the room for it in RQ, which is all about know-how rather than know-why?

I also want to stress again how important it was that we gave our dead friend's character to his old friend. The system gave us the opportunity to, let's say, pay tribute to our friend by putting some of his own characteristics (eg 'Wicked Humour') into his character.



Mike:

We played two sessions in two weeks. The next session may not be for at least a year, as it will be at least that long before I get back to the old town. Before that, we hadn't got together for two years.

It's a shame, because I see a bright future with HQ, and my favourite people to play with are 3000km away. Is it insane to move back across a continent for roleplaying?

[gorckat]

Is it insane to move back across a continent for roleplaying?

probably not if the word 'roleplaying' can be replaced with 'friendship' and/or 'happiness'. we all have our ways of achieving both...

if you guys removed RP from your interactions, would you still be friends?

just my 2 cents :)

[droog]

if you guys removed RP from your interactions, would you still be friends?

Absolutely. We've been through all the major rites of passage together. In fact, until this very week I have always steadfastedly resisted the notion that I could play with anybody other than people who are already my friends.