Chasing Heroquest

[Joel P. Shempert]

I had a couple of delightful moments in my (non-HQ) roleplaying recently, that made me feel good about running Heroquest in the near future.

Last week, I was playing with my brother and his girlfriend, for a D&D game that she DMs. We were playing a side adventure for a trio of characters that we had been running in someone else's (very shitty) D&D game, now defunct. We're salvaging the characters which we all rather like, by integrating them into the main game. Anyway, following a pretty dramatic scene with my char thrown in a pit with the GM's char, trying to basically talk her down from turning Vampire and making me her firstmeal, and my bro's char coming to the rescue. . .I hauled the GM char's now lifeless body out of the pit and reunited with my bro, and then we heard the hoofbeats of the minions of the Vampire who had thrown us there, and we needed to escape. I was weaponless, so we concocted a plan to ambush them and acquire a weapon. The Gm said, "well, if you want we can play it out roll by roll by the book, or if you like we can just make a couple of rolls and move on to the next scene, and save the round-by-round for the really important conflicts."

We agreed that this would be the best way to go. She then went on to say that she wouldn't dare do this with the whole group, lest she be branded a D&D heretic. I just smiled, and said "just wait until I start running Heroquest."



Then, just tonight, our main group got together and we played a BESM campaign also run by the same GM. And as we dispersed in the wee hours, everyone walking out to their cars, a couple of other players clumped with the GM and I, and one of them remarked that, while it's no secret that he likes to play powerful characters, and he likes to succeed (he was basking in the glow of double-criticals on a round of multiple attacks), it has occurred to him that it can actually be "really awesome" to FAIL. I talked a little bit about Heroquest, and basically plagiarized in brief  Mike Holmes' thoughts on "Failure Means conflict" and how removing character death as a stake except when appropriate means contests can be about what's interesting and GMs don't have to worry about hosing the players when the hose the characters. We talked a little more, each citing an example from tonight's session where our respective characters got a chance to have cool scenes because of "interesting failure."

Man, this has got me fucking EXCITED to run this game. I'm currently slogging through the magic/religion section of the book, which is slow going for me, plus a lot of other demands on my time, both generally and reading time specifically. But I WILL finish and I WILL run Heroquest. It is my DESTINY.

Peace,
-Joel

[Vaxalon]

Slogging through the magic/religion section is.... a slog.  Personally, I'm inclined to simplify it considerably.

[Mark Galeotti]

Man, this has got me fucking EXCITED to run this game. I'm currently slogging through the magic/religion section of the book, which is slow going for me, plus a lot of other demands on my time, both generally and reading time specifically. But I WILL finish and I WILL run Heroquest. It is my DESTINY.

It's a shame to see your exciting destiny bogged down! It all depends on whether you want to use HQ for play in Glorantha (and official, canonical-until-it-changes-again Glorantha, at that); if not, then you can ignore most of those chapters!

All the best

Mark

[Joel P. Shempert]

Hmm. I am in fact NOT planning on playing in Glorantha for my first HQ run (in fact, there are a lot of kind and patient folks on here interested in helping me adapt HQ to Middle Earth once I've read the sucker). But I still felt I needed to read through the whole thing (except probably the History of Glorantha section) so I'd have an idea of how to adapt it. For instance, ME isn't anything like so magic-intensive as Glorantha, but how DO I handle the magic that exists in Middle Earth? To answer this, I thik I need to understand the default approach, even if I end up working it WAY different.

Peace,
-Joel

[Vaxalon]

I've decided to jump in and run my own world using the Heroquest system.

http://www.thesmerf.com/vaxalon/RegainTheStars.html

(by the way, if you're interested, send me an email)

[rstites]

Hmm. I am in fact NOT planning on playing in Glorantha for my first HQ run (in fact, there are a lot of kind and patient folks on here interested in helping me adapt HQ to Middle Earth once I've read the sucker). But I still felt I needed to read through the whole thing (except probably the History of Glorantha section) so I'd have an idea of how to adapt it. For instance, ME isn't anything like so magic-intensive as Glorantha, but how DO I handle the magic that exists in Middle Earth? To answer this, I thik I need to understand the default approach, even if I end up working it WAY different.

I'd actually suggest against getting bogged down by the Glorantha magic and just start your own game.  I'm a long time Glorantha GM and still found the HQ magic chapters to be a real pain to wade through (in a vaccuum).  In fact, I still haven't bothered with much of it.  In Glorantha, most regions only have one prevalent type of magic used, so I only bother with the magics that come into play for the region I'm interested in.  Btw, most of the "bogged down" parts went away as soon as I just decided to play it.  I think most of the confusion comes from all the terminology, which doesn't really come up in play much.

Ross

[Vaxalon]

If someone who knows what they're talking about were to write up a "how to digest Heroquest's magic system" article, I'd be interested.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm of a couple of minds on the subject of HQ magic systems.

Firstly, I agree that it's a completely viable option to simplify the system. The really simple thing to do is to just say that magic abilities are just like any other abilities. That is, if you have a magic keyword, then you get the abilities you "should" get from that magic keyword just like any other keyword. This works fine. So does doing what Mr. Galeotti does in Mythic Russia, and just using one magic system to fit everything. This can leave a little magical structure, without having to learn how all of the various systems work.

In fact, a strong argument can (and has been) made for people who play like I do that all of the structures for magic run somewhat contradictory to what we see as an otherwise metagame set of rules. And, indeed, the mixing of the rules as metagame and demonstrative of in-game structures seems to be problematic.

But, as it turns out, it's not so bad in play, once you get to know the rules. Now, that's easy for me to say, I've got a pretty good handle on how it all works. But for players who may not have the investment in all of this that I do, I can understand that, in a system that's otherwise quite simple to memorize, the magic stuff can make it all more complex than need be.

But I like the magic rules. And not, actually, only as simulative of the in-game magical structures. I like them because they represent choices that the player makes in ability selection for the player. This is what these structures do, in fact, is to provide distinct choices for the player to make regarding his character's magic. With the completely open system for purchasing magic, you can pretty much tailor your character as you like, selecting this magic here, or that magic there, and ignoring anything in which the character is not interested.

One thing that I dislike about pure selection magic systems, is that you often get what they call in GURPs "One Shot Johnny" (or something like that). A one trick pony, in any case. That is, the player simply is aiming for one ability that he can get. GURPs tries to ameliorate this with having pre-requisite spells. In Rolemaster, you have to learn all of the lower spells on the list as you go up. These are all ways in which these systems try to make a character have breadth in learning spells to represent a more cogent seeming "field" of magic.

HQ solves the "problem" of narrow users of magic in several good ways. First, it actually allows narrow users - one can always take magic abilities outside of a keyword (Natural Magic). So, for a player who deliberately wants this sort of concept, it's available. But for those who want their character to seem to come from a school or temple, etc, there is the specialized magic keyword, which includes "everything" that the character would have, including any magic that represents "depth" of learning. This works even if you use the simple magic system above.

This is so key, I cannot overstate the importance. In a point buy system, a player may, in fact, have the option to purchase a spell like "clean house." But few players will buy such, because they're constantly trying to get the most out of the system in terms of making their character able to throw a good fireball or something. That is, they feel "guilty" about spending points on what may seem to be color in some ways. Not so in HQ. The player gets these abilities "for free" along for the ride with others.

So in HQ you don't see any trained user of magic having just a fireball spell. If he's learned magic from some organization, he'll have the sort of "breadth" magic abilities that I'm talking about. Adepts still remember their "Aid My Master" ability from when they were an apprentice. The Darjiini practitioner has a fetish with a spirit that has Keep Eating as an ability. A member of the order of St. Gerlant may have a "Surprise Ghost" spell. The sorts of abilities you just wouldn't see if players had to pay for each ability individually.

Now, when you design a keyword, if you pay attention to this, you should end up with this sort of abilities. But they're not often easy to come up with. One of the advantages of the magical structures is that they aid a person in figuring out where the more colorful abilities should be. Even if you use Mark's system where all abilities are affinities, you get this effect. That is, it's much easier to look at a chunk of a magic structure like a "Wind Affinity" and figure out what should go underneath it as feats. Much like filling out a spell list for RM. By the time you have six abilities related to wind, you'll probably have precisely the sort of breadth that's fun.


But I like wizardry and animism, too. Why? Well, in addition to giving breadth, the alternate structures say something different about the sorts of decisions that the character has in terms of aquiring magic as I mentioned before. A lot of this has to do with what magical associations a character has to have in order to get the magic. For instance, with theism, you have a character associating themselves with just one god of a panetheon, in order to get magic more extensive than simply calling out the god's name for help. This is the first, critical choice. But it doesn't stop there. Initiates can initiate to more than one god, and get affinities from all of them. One of the biggest parts of the choice to leap to devotee is in limiting oneself to one and only one god. But even then, the choices are still present to take affinities from sub-cults and hero cults and which.

Each of these choices has, attendant with it, the question of who the character got the magic from. Often inlcuding the mechanical addition of relationships to the NPCs involved. I often go on about how important this is, because it gives magic traditions a moral context based on the rules of those who give the magic - both the otherworldly entities, and the people who teach it directly.

Animism has a very different set of choices. With animism the first choice is that of which practice to follow, which itself is not much different than initiating. But the next question, that of which spirits one can have is much wider open than the question of affinities in theism. Presumably there are far more spirits available than affinities to learn. Each spirit, then, is an otherworld individual as well that has to be dealt with on a one-to-one basis. So instead of being linked to one god and a priesthood, for instance to get new magic abilities, the practitioner can get more abilities by dealing more directly with the spirits he encounters.

The choice to become a shaman is critical because the character will only ever have one fetch to guide him to the otherworlds.

Wizardry is even more complex, with three essentially separate paths one can follow, each with it's own limits on what magic one can get from what. Adepts have to choose to learn abilities by learning grimoires as a whole, or to separate them out as individual spells (or both). Which grimoires, then, and who teaches them becomes important, then.

The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list by any means, but simply to show how the differing structures serve to give the player different decisions in play about what magic the character persues.

I and others worked up what I think is a good resource for explaining the HQ magic styles can be found here: http://random.average-bear.com/Heroquest/MagicNotes

It includes, for those who are more graphically inclined, a link to this chart: http://random.average-bear.com/Heroquest/MagicSummaryChart

One way to simplify this, I think, is to look at the commonalities between the specialized magic types. Each of them has the following things in common:
1. You start out with the religion keyword. It's theoretically possible, I suppose, for some sorts of people to know magic without being exposed to the religion (a sorcerer raised in seclusion by another sorcerer, for instance), but it would likely be rare. Religion keywords all have a "Piety Ability" which is crucial to a lot of the character's ability with magic even as they advance to more dedicated forms of worship. The keyword also includes a level of knowledge about the religion. These are not the same - it's possible to have a highly impious member of the religion who happens to know it's myths very well, and a very pious member who is not well versed in the myths. Virtues for the overall religion, and associations. Also, this level includes...

2. The magic you get as a basic member. I think this gets forgotten. So a Spiritist gets Tradition Charms (5 by standard chargen), but so does a Practitioner, having been a Spiritist at one point. This is sorta tricky, because these abilities are often not listed directly as abilities in the religion keyword. For many, in fact, it involves simply using the Piety Ability to call on the otherworldly being directly for aid in a non-specific way (AKA Divine Intervention). Blessings for Lay Worshippers also are likely to be forgotten, and in any case, can be relatively difficult to adjudicate.

3. The first level of advancement always involves narrowing down into some sub-organization, and tend to include a few important things. The ability to see the effects of the chosen otherworld on the mundane world (and to see in the otherworld well when there). The ability to open a path to the otherworld. Knowledge of the specific myths and such associated with the sub-group, and something like a mini- Piety Ability for the sub-cult in question.

4. As a character goes beyond this level, pretty much the only change is in terms of how deep the magic is which they can learn. Devotees get feats. Shamans get fetches. All can, theoretically, learn special secrets. The other abilities don't change much though (although it's likely that they're much higher). That is, the devotee is still initiated, the shaman is still a practitioner for his shamanic practice, and possibly others.

Once you understand the basic structure, then understanding each sort of keyword is simpler:
- Common Member of Belief System
- Sub-organization Member
- Advanced Sub-organization Member


Mike

[Tim Ellis]

If someone who knows what they're talking about were to write up a "how to digest Heroquest's magic system" article, I'd be interested.

Not quite an article, but maybe a help are some "examples with discussion" I originally posted to the Heroquest-rules list, and subsequently archived in the files section of that group
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/files/Animism/
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/files/Wizardry/