No-BS Heroquest

[Sean]

What attracted me to HQ initially was the character generation and mechanics: description gets turned into open-ended traits with numbers determine opposed die rolls. Beautiful, elegantly simple. I don't like the experience system but that's easily fixable. The magic system is lamentably complex but fits Glorantha; patch rules are possible here too. (Narrowly defined magical abilities with a number plus 'spells' allowing more focused particular effects, rather like Theism with affinities and feats, seems the easiest way to go here.)

But what about keywords? Why do we need keywords? The keywords create most of the work for running and converting Heroquest.

The positive answers to this question are that the keywords get everyone into the same shared imagined space, or at least help to push them there. They also help to define setting: all people of kind x (from country y, of race z, of religion w) are like this. Also, they speed up chargen.

OTOH, they don't seem to be a strictly necessary part of the system. HQ characters generated by the core rules seem to have about 35-45 traits to start the game. So if you didn't want to bother with the keywords what you'd do instead is just start with your one hundred word description and turn the words into about the requisite number of traits. Start traits which were 'core' to the character (devolving from homeland, occupation, etc.) at 17 and traits which are not 'core' at 13. Allow the player to add 8 to any one trait and 6 to any two others at their discretion (this is an HW/HQ compromise solution). Then you're done!

Here's an example of me going through this process for myself:

Kothas Kar is a pale, hulking warrior with ice blond hair from the frozen wastes of the far northest. A berserker prone to fits of murderous rage, he is equally content to fight with sword and axe or his bare hands. Kothas was captured several years ago by a cunning Pictish wizard and sold into slavery to the Atlanteans. Beginning as a galley-slave, his prodigious strength caught the attention of his cruel masters, and he was freed from the lash to serve as a shock warrior against the Lemurian homesteads in the west. One night, during a particularly bloody raid, Kothas escaped. Now he wanders the harsh and mysterious Lemurian landscape, hunted by the Atlanteans and hated by those Lemurians who know of his past exploits. He lusts above all for revenge: on the commander of his old troop, the master of the galley, the Atlanteans who bought him, the Picts who sold him, and the wizard who first captured him from his frozen homeland.

- Okay, so we look this over. What's here? The core parts of this character's concept come from his past and heritage. These include: Barbarian of the Frozen Wastes, Galley Slave, and Shock Trooper.

- We start turning the description and the core concept into abilities.

Barbarian of the Frozen Wastes: Pale-Skinned 17, Resist Cold 17, Survive Frozen Wilderness 17, Speak Ursk 17, Find Shelter 17, Skin & Prepare Hides 17, Make Fire 17, Spot Ambush 17, Vengeful 17, Pragmatic 17, Always Shares Fire 17, Self-Reliant 17, Mistrusts Picts 17. This defines a lot about the character already. The player also thinks that being big and strong are characteristic of these people, and after some thought, the GM agrees: add Strong 17 and Large 15 (this is as big as a human can get, near seven feet tall and 300+ pounds) to the mix.

Galley Slave: Rowing 17, Toil Endlessly 17, as well as a scarred back. Hates Pictish Wizard 17, Hates Atlanteans 17, Hates Slavery 17 all come in here as well. The player also argues that Singing, Seamanship, and Speak Low Atlantean come under this heading, but while galley slaves do sing and are at sea, you don't normally learn these things well chained to the oars. The GM assents to grant these three skills at 13.

Shock Trooper: Axe Fighting 17, Cutlass Fighting 17, Furious Charge 17, Burn Settlement 17, Cut Down Fleeing Foeman 17. The player also lobbies for and gets a +2 to his Speak Low Atlantean here, raising that to 15.

Other Stuff: Berserker would come in at 13, but the player argues that Northern Barbarian and Shock Trooper are both relevant, and the pushover GM lets the player bump it to 17. Speak Lemurian, Two Handed Weapon Fighting, Two Weapon Fighting, and Grapple all come in at 13 as reasonable things the character would know. The player also takes a couple of social traits based on the final twist in the story: Hunted by Atlanteans 13 and Known as the Red Ghost, Butcher of Lemurians 15.

Prime Abilities: The player assigns 8 points to Strong and 6 each to Vengeful and Furious Charge, giving a Strong rating of 5w and Vengeful and Furious Charge ratings of 3w.

Equipment: Not much. This character has no real wealth (Wealth 6, the default). He starts with Brigandine Armor +2 (Durable 17), a One Handed Axe +3 (Chop Wood 17), a Cutlass +3 (he can't think of a modifier for this equipment, so he leaves that blank), a pack with a Blanket (Keep Warm 17), bottle of brandy, and a few odd bits of stone, shells, copper, and silver that serve him as barter material with those Lemurians ignorant of his reputation.

-------------------------

This sort of thing will be by far the easiest when all the players understand the implicit setting of the game; otherwise those that do will have either to exercise corrective authority over those who don't (not always a bad thing) or else resign themselves to a lower degree of integrity. But it seems to me that the keywords, strictly speaking, are an unnecessary extra portion of the game, useful to get everyone on the same page but not essential to the brilliant core idea behind the HQ mechanics (of making the descriptions drive the numbers with a universal resolution system applicable to all conflicts lying in the background).

[Mike Holmes]

Uh, Sean, you just created a few keywords for your setting above.

See, you kinda can't help but create the keywords in fleshing out the characters. Do you have to have them up front? Nope, and the normal system doesn't require it at all. That is, the keywords in the book are examples. As such, if you want to be from a homeland other than listed in the book, or have an occupation not listed, then you have to create a new keyword. Just as you've done above.

Keywords aren't unneccessary for several reasons. First, they are defaults, essentially. That is, if you take Barbarian of the Frozen Wastes, not only do you get the abilities that you listed, but everything else not mentioned that a Barbarian can do. So, if you determine that all Barbarians can Track as well, then that's rolled as a 17, too. And if you increase Track, it starts at 17, and goes up from there. As opposed to 13. Basically, Keywords ensure that nothing falls between the cracks. A HQ character is very completely defined because of this.

Also, Keywords mean that characters will have about the same breadth of abilites listed to start, making nobody feel as though they got cheated on their selections.  In your above examples, I see that you followed pretty closely the Homeland template for the "Barbarian" part. That's good, keep it up, and soon you'll have Keywords for the entire world that are all as attractive as the next.

The last advantage of having the keywords, once you've created them, is that you can rate an NPC quickly by just selecting his Keywords, and have a fast notion as to what their abilities are like. A Barbarian 1W is one that's weathered quite a few winters (a keyword of 17 means that you're a youngster, or otherwise just have the basic knowledge of your society that everyone has), and has a really good grasp on the Barbarian way of life, and represent his people strongly. One knows that he has a 1W for this purpose for starting fires, for instance. Or anything else that the narrator thinks a barbarian knows how to do.

This is another thing about Keywords, you can raise them up with Advanced Experience. Which is very cool, because you can use the "saga system" to make characters advance plausibly over long periods of time.

Now, what's cool is that you can come up with keywords on the spot like you have above. You don't have to work them all out before hand if you don't mind the work of doing it as you go. For my Shadow World game, I came up with preliminary notes for about 100 homelands - but not because I had to. Rather I did it because it was fun to do the translation, and now that it's done, it speeds up chargen a bit. If it doesn't sound like fun to you, then just make them only as you need them.

Now, in the character above has what seems to be two occupations. This would make him more than a "starting character". Which is fine, again see Advanced Experience. You'd just want to be sure that all other characters have an additonal keyword as well.


I'm not sure what you see as problematic about the Experience system, but there've been lots of ideas on how to modify it around here. If you could lay it out, perhaps we could give some suggestions.

Also, I'm curious as to what you see as compicated about magic. I mean, other than the religion structures. Basically magic is handled just like everything else, mechanically. Now, making up religious structures is difficult - I have whole posts about just that. But only really as difficult as you want it to be, and very rewarding.

Mike

P.S. As it happens, I'm writing an article on the subject of creating keywords that'll be out some time after GenCon. So it's a topic near and dear to my heart.

[Sean]

Phooey, Mike. I wanted either unrestrained awe and adulation or outright refutation, and here you come in with nuanced disagreement.

Okay - here's a big difference between my claim and your response. With a keyword, it's a template that applies across characters (though not totally - you're allowed to drop personality traits you don't like from your homeland IIRC, though you don't get anything to replace them). The way I'm looking at them as 'unessential', you can expand any given part of your character to the degree that you like. Another guy might have 'barbarian of the frozen wastes' and only take say four abilities out of it.

Or let's say your character is a princess, and that's pretty much it. She gets Falconry and Stunning Garb and Ride Like the Wind and a bunch of other stuff at 17, so long as it matches her Princess concept - essentially only one keyword, then - but when she takes stuff like Hurl Spear she only gets it at 13.

So a character might only have one 'keyword' or six the way I'm looking at it, depending on how many parts of the verbal description were relevant to the core concept. This does create less flexibility in the advanced experience rules (you only have one number to raise, the '17' for things which are 'part of the character's core concept') but doesn't eliminate them entirely - your grizzled veteran dude can start at 2w and 13 instead of 17 and 13, e.g., with the same bonuses.

Or to say what I'm saying closer to the core rules, I'd put it like this: let's say two guys make Heortling Warriors who serve Humakt. Playing the game as written, what you get then is the same keywords. Whereas this way you might imagine each as a 'pick and choose' menu with maybe three times the number of traits in the descriptions - anything you might associate with Warriors, Humakt Initiates, or Heortlings - and then each player sort of customizing their character out of that general concept. So the one guy is a HEORTLING warrior initiate of Humakt, with the majority of his traits related to his culture (lots of relationships, cattle skills, and the like, and just a few death rituals), but the other guy is a heortling warrior INITIATE OF HUMAKT, with maybe twenty of his forty traits coming out of the religious/death end of things.

By the way, I don't disagree at all that Keywords are greatly useful for players trying to get the feel of the setting, etc. - I said that up front in my post. It's just that they don't seem to me to be essential to the core mechanics which to my mind drive the system.

-------------

One thing I have in mind here is a situation from when I started playing that maybe isn't as common today. When I started gaming in the seventies I'd be sitting around with a lot of people who had read the same books and wanted to create stories (sometimes temple-looting stories without much theme) in something like the style of those books. Heroquest to my mind is a perfect device for that, but we didn't have it then.

In this case, the shared concepts from the literature etc. replace the 'game world content' which articulated Keywords allow the rules-text to deliver about Glorantha (or about any other setting you're trying to communicate). But you can also just hand the guy the novel, say 'read this', and then move on to the next step.

Keywords create the hated Balance problem too. Let's say you were wanting to run, oh, I don't know, Heroquest Tekumel. (To see what I'll be running instead you can check out my ad at http://www.rpol.net/display.cgi?gi=4738&gn=Wanted+-+Game+Interest&threadnum=81&date=1090943125 ). Then you've got this burden to make sure that your Clan keywords all have roughly the same number of traits. But it may be that the Red Mountain and Green Malachinte clans just don't have as much going on with it as the Tlakotanis or the Itos.

Well, OK, so no-one makes you play an Esrolian Farmer unless you want to.

As for the 'falling between the cracks' argument, I'm not sure. The flexibility of abilities with -5 or -10 mods especially kind of means stuff doesn't really fall between the cracks already. I see what you're saying but I'm not sure it's as important to me as it is to you.

--------------------

Argh. No time to edit this and make myself as clear as I'd like today - I hope this was comprehensible and I appreciate your feedback. The Magic stuff has to be handled in a world-specific way (I think this is true maybe by definition of all fantasy games), but the Gloranthan application in the core rules is too structured for me. My issue with experience has been discussed exhaustively here and on rpg.net (basically I think hero points ought to feed into and come out of heroic actions - you shouldn't be stuck with a 'do I want to get better or do I want to be heroic'? tradeoff. I don't mind having HP being tradeable for XP as in the rules but I'd like to see an improve-through-use system alongside it so it doesn't have to be as black and white as it is there. Though I do have some appreciation for the 'give 'em all the HP up front and see how many they have to use to solve the adventure' gimmick that's become standard now, I still don't think it's how I'd want to play the game). I'll maybe discuss those systemic issues in more detail in future/other threads - let's keep this one for the keyword issue.

[Mike Holmes]

Phooey, Mike. I wanted either unrestrained awe and adulation or outright refutation, and here you come in with nuanced disagreement.

Sorry. But to be clear, I'm refuting you more than you think, apparently. :-)

I'm going to try to get into this without putting my entire article out here.

Okay - here's a big difference between my claim and your response. With a keyword, it's a template that applies across characters (though not totally - you're allowed to drop personality traits you don't like from your homeland IIRC, though you don't get anything to replace them).

This is an ambiguous area in the rules. Let me explain. It seems from the note on personality traits that the rule is that you can either take the keyword as it is, or you can take it sans some of the personality traits. Making it seem as if you can't alter the keyword.

But this can't be so. Keywords are all alterable to the extent that everyone is comfortable in altering them. I say this because one can always make up a new keyword. As such, all you have to do is to be able to explain why the keyword needs alteration, and you should be able to have it. For instance, if you define your character from the border between Tarsh and Sartar, do you give him the Heortling Homeland Keyword, or the Tarsh Keyword? Well, what if he's culturally petty much part of a tribe conquered a while back such that they have the Tarshite customs now, but still hold onto their Heortling language?

Well, you create the "Tarsh Borderland Homeland Keyword". Which is simply the Tarshite one, with the Heortling language. This can, and IMO, should, happen all the time. Keywords are, as you put it, archetypes, but nobody has to take them as they are if they don't want to so so. Meaning that if I want to say that instead of Brave, where my character comes from, they are "Cowardly," I can make that change, too.

My feeling is that the "you can drop personality traits" rule was put in as an afterthought to make it so that those people not comfortable with making their own keywords, could alter this quite character-specific area with ease.

The way I'm looking at them as 'unessential', you can expand any given part of your character to the degree that you like. Another guy might have 'barbarian of the frozen wastes' and only take say four abilities out of it.

Well, if you mean that you can change them all you want, then you're agreeing with me that they are alterable. The rules agree with you as well. Or, rather, they say that you can make up new keywords, and don't say what you can make them for. But with a little imagination it could be for any variation that you want to see.

Or let's say your character is a princess, and that's pretty much it. She gets Falconry and Stunning Garb and Ride Like the Wind and a bunch of other stuff at 17, so long as it matches her Princess concept - essentially only one keyword, then - but when she takes stuff like Hurl Spear she only gets it at 13.

So a character might only have one 'keyword' or six the way I'm looking at it, depending on how many parts of the verbal description were relevant to the core concept.

Well, the rules for "starting characters" are very wise in some ways, IMO. That is, while I can see exceptions to the rule, most humans will have a homeland, an occupation, and a religion. In fact, this isn't all that negotiable if you're using the rules for creating a starting character. More importantly, it's very important for play in Glorantha, and worlds like it with similar issues, that you take these things. That is, to make a character that's both complete, and fills in those gaps that I was talking about, and which makes sense in terms of the world as a whole, you have to take those minimum keywords that answer, Where do I come from? What do I do? What do I believe in?

Once you have this base, I think you can add on anything that you like, yes. Don't get me started on species.

This does create less flexibility in the advanced experience rules (you only have one number to raise, the '17' for things which are 'part of the character's core concept') but doesn't eliminate them entirely - your grizzled veteran dude can start at 2w and 13 instead of 17 and 13, e.g., with the same bonuses.

So why limit the flexibility? It makes a lot of sense to me that characters should advance in these areas separately? For instance, if I'm a warrior abroad, I should get more warrior, but no homeland. If I'm farming at home, I should get more homeland, and no warrior? And maybe a Farming 13 keyword.

Or to say what I'm saying closer to the core rules, I'd put it like this: let's say two guys make Heortling Warriors who serve Humakt. Playing the game as written, what you get then is the same keywords. Whereas this way you might imagine each as a 'pick and choose' menu with maybe three times the number of traits in the descriptions - anything you might associate with Warriors, Humakt Initiates, or Heortlings - and then each player sort of customizing their character out of that general concept. So the one guy is a HEORTLING warrior initiate of Humakt, with the majority of his traits related to his culture (lots of relationships, cattle skills, and the like, and just a few death rituals), but the other guy is a heortling warrior INITIATE OF HUMAKT, with maybe twenty of his forty traits coming out of the religious/death end of things.

What I'm telling you is that in the game as written, there are an infinite number of ways to do these characters. Players should feel free to alter keywords all they like. They should just still be keywords when they're done.

By the way, I don't disagree at all that Keywords are greatly useful for players trying to get the feel of the setting, etc. - I said that up front in my post. It's just that they don't seem to me to be essential to the core mechanics which to my mind drive the system.

Essential? Well, let's at least say that in play I've found them so useful that I can't see playing without them. And not for the reasons you state. Again, you're ignoring all of the things that I've said keywords are used for. Defaults, shorthand, advanced experience.

You seem to be saying that you should just freeform the form of keywords. But what I'm saying is that the suggested formats for the types of keywords are crucial to the sort of game you're running.

Now, if your world is significantly different than Glorantha, for instance, say that everybody in the world is from one big tribe or something, then you should alter the types. But in the example, I'd replace them with, oh, say, clan or something. Again, the reason for this is that it creates an instant link of the character to the setting. If this doesn't fit your game, then I'd suggest you find a type that does.

But it seems to me that the homeland/occupation/religion layout is key to making good characters. Consider homeland for instance. This allows you to avoid what I call the GURPS Math Syndrome. In GURPS you forget to take math every time when creating an educated American character. Unless you take the template. Now, in GURPS, if you want a player to roll to see if he knows what the TV show CSI is, there's no skill. You roll against the default IQ. But that's problematic, because the GM then has to come up with a modifier for the German character (or bonus for the American). In HQ, it's simple, roll agains their Homeland Keyword. Not against their banker keyword - no German banker would have the same chance to know CSI as the American banker. It's a homeland default. This is very cool, and very handy. Characters are never left with holes because the method of defining them has ensured that the character has everything they need. Including the cultural default which is missing in most games.

Keywords create the hated Balance problem too. Let's say you were wanting to run, oh, I don't know, Heroquest Tekumel. (To see what I'll be running instead you can check out my ad at http://www.rpol.net/display.cgi?gi=4738&gn=Wanted+-+Game+Interest&threadnum=81&date=1090943125 ).

Was it you that posted about this previously? Somebody had a thread on the subject.

Then you've got this burden to make sure that your Clan keywords all have roughly the same number of traits. But it may be that the Red Mountain and Green Malachinte clans just don't have as much going on with it as the Tlakotanis or the Itos.

Well, OK, so no-one makes you play an Esrolian Farmer unless you want to.

This is so not hard it's not worth commenting on. For homelands, mostly it's changing the name of the region, culture, language, etc. And mining out the few personality traits listed in the books. I did it for 100 cultures, and it only took a couple of days. Again, it was fun.

And you did it in your example. Again, I'm not saying that you have to do this all up front, not at all. My point is precisely that you can do all of this on the fly. Again, even with 100 cultures, I had to make up half of the eywords, because the players presented me with odd backgrounds. Had to come up with keywords for a half-demon, for instance.

If you did it above, in your example, why do you think it'll be hard to do in play? The only difference in our methods is that I think you should stick to some sort of template, and you want to make it freeform.

As for the 'falling between the cracks' argument, I'm not sure. The flexibility of abilities with -5 or -10 mods especially kind of means stuff doesn't really fall between the cracks already. I see what you're saying but I'm not sure it's as important to me as it is to you.

I hate modifiers. I'd much rather just have the player roll on a ready ability. And, since its so easy to have the distinction already laid out...

The Magic stuff has to be handled in a world-specific way (I think this is true maybe by definition of all fantasy games), but the Gloranthan application in the core rules is too structured for me.

You mean the religions are too structured, right? The magic rules, again, are really simple. No different than any other contest.

basically I think hero points ought to feed into and come out of heroic actions - you shouldn't be stuck with a 'do I want to get better or do I want to be heroic'? tradeoff. I don't mind having HP being tradeable for XP as in the rules but I'd like to see an improve-through-use system alongside it so it doesn't have to be as black and white as it is there.

Oh, that. Well you've heard enough from me on the subject. I think you're missing out on something you don't understand, but it's your game.

Mike

[Sean]

Hi Mike -

The only way I can make sense out of what you are saying renders the disagreement between us mostly verbal. You like flexible keywords, I say that when you push the flexibility far enough they're no longer 'keywords' in the relevant sense, which is relatively narrow and inflexible. Let's just skip that whole thing because we both understand it.

'Essential' is a funny word too. When I use it I mean 'not having anything to do with practicality, usefulness, human comprehensibility, or enjoyment, but solely and strictly related to the underlying structural features of the entity under discussion'. By saying that keywords are inessential what I'm saying is that that level of structure is not an essential one for the underlying Heroquest mechanic, but only one which is practically useful in many but perhaps not all applications. Just as decimal notation happens to be useful for human calculation but is not essential to it. On the other hand, there are those who think that every aspect of a thing is essential, and their views are not entirely without merit. Let's save that argument for a philosophy discussion board instead.

So on those grounds, if you're right that in the game as written there are an infinite (large but finite?) number of ways to do those characters, then I'm right that Keywords are an inessential layer of structure between Description and Trait Enumeration. If you play with the kind of crack-filling over time that you advocate than they're no longer inessential, but I don't think I prefer that, myself. But that's the main argument I've discerned in your text here.

I could go on and pick various nits. E.g. "Keywords are all alterable to the extent that everyone is comfortable in altering them" - is that democracy-comfortable or consensus-comfortable, and where is this printed in the rules-text? But that would be silly.

On the other hand this is good stuff:

"Where do I come from? What do I do? What do I believe in?"

Many players in many games will want answers to all three of these questions about their character. In Glorantha homeland provides the first answer, occupation the second, and religion the third for most people, so it makes sense that this structure of keywords is used. (Though all three keywords actually go to answer the third question in HQ.) On the other hand, if you don't like using religion as your primary tool for answering the third question, or if you want multiple answers to the second question a la Burning Wheel lifepaths, or if you want the first question to have varying answers depending on species as well as culture a la some versions of D&D, then you're going to need to cut things up differently.

You may also thus decide that you don't need a regimented answer about how you're going to cut them up for a particular world or game, but are content to let it get split up as seems appropriate for the character, while capping the total number of traits at about 40, which is near the average for homeland + occupation + religion + free choice ones in Glorantha.

I don't see how all of this is dictated by anything other than preference. I'm not saying 'you should freeform keywords' at all - I'm not saying 'you should' anything. I'm just saying that the core mechanics of HQ don't force keywords on you in quite the same way that they force opposed d20 rolls or hero points on you.

I'm going to stick with my previous plan of discussing magic elsewhere, but I actually didn't realize you were in favor of the hero point rules as written. Can you post a link to a thread where you defend this?

[Mike Holmes]

What I see as flexible is what goes into each keyword specifically, but not what sort of thing goes into a keyword. That is, it's OK to change the language, but not OK to me not to have a language. Or to have two languages unless the populace really is bilingual. That is, I basically advocate swapping out abilities one for one when altering, or creating a new keyword. So, for a homeland, that means that everyone gets a language, everyone gets a Know Customs of X, everyone gets a Know Y Area, etc. About the same number of other abilities. About three or four personality traits associated with the people. Etc.

What these are can be altered no problem. But they should all be there.

Many players in many games will want answers to all three of these questions about their character. In Glorantha homeland provides the first answer, occupation the second, and religion the third for most people, so it makes sense that this structure of keywords is used. (Though all three keywords actually go to answer the third question in HQ.) On the other hand, if you don't like using religion as your primary tool for answering the third question, or if you want multiple answers to the second question a la Burning Wheel lifepaths, or if you want the first question to have varying answers depending on species as well as culture a la some versions of D&D, then you're going to need to cut things up differently.

That's precisely what I said in the preceeding post. If your world is different, it might need different kinds of keywords. So make them up, and make sure everybody has one, whatever it is.

I don't care what you mean by essential. That's why I avoided using the term myself. As I said, I wouldn't play without keywords, no matter how "essential" they are or not. They are key to good HQ play, IME. The game wouldn't work as well without them.

Mike

[Thor Olavsrud]

Hi Sean,

It seems to me that your character has three keywords (you even identify them): Barbarian of the Frozen Wastes, Galley Slave, Shock Trooper.

Sure, you gave him two Occupation Keywords instead of one Occupation and one Religion, but I'm not really seeing much of a difference. It even seems to me that this is more or less the process that everyone should go through to decide what exactly their Keywords mean.

But let's say these aren't Keywords. The only thing that says to me is that when Kothas is captured and tortured, you won't be able to point to his Galley Slave keyword and say, "He endured years of whipping and forced labor. I think Galley Slave covers Resist Torture."

To which your narrator can say, "Hmmm...not quite. Let's say Tough 17, okay? So you can roll that with a -3 modifier."

[Sean]

Thanks, Thor. I think Mike hit that point already. I'm mulling it over. It's another kind of flexibility the rules have to offer, I think. The keywords do offer certain kinds of flexibility, but I also find them limiting in certain ways. After championing the flexibility earlier, Mike now appears to be endorsing the limits. It's all good with me. I'm just flexible and inflexible at different points than others, I guess.

I am interested in the hero point/experience issue, though. Did you have that link, Mike?

[Tim Ellis]

Don't forget that you never *have* to take all the abilities given (or implied) by the keyword, if it doesn't match your concept of the character.  Just as you can say "I think Galley slave covers 'Resist Torture' as he was whipped every day, and tied to the mast and lashed witht he cat o' nine tails if he missed a stroke" you can say "just because I have the "sailor" keyword, I'm still only resisting seasickness with a default 6.  Nelson was always seasick you know..."

[Sean]

Hi Mike -

With some more thought, I think you've basically persuaded me that the game runs better with keywords as part of the character. The issue is the 'cracks' one I already acknowledged. I don't like the open-ended stacking of new abilities onto a keyword, but I do appreciate that broader descriptors of character type can and should be relevant to play. (e.g. applying "Barbarian of the Frozen Wastes" to "Tracking" with a -5 modifier and letting people start Tracking at 17 instead of 13 if they later invest a hero point in it). Where I still think I prefer more flexibility than apparently you do is in

(a) what has to come out of any given keyword for a particular character (though some of your comments suggest we're not really so far apart here either)

(b) how many keywords a character needs to have (I have no issue with one character having only 1 or 2 and another having 5, for instance)

(c) whether certain types of keyword are represented or not (e.g. magic and religion).

In Glorantha it's pretty vital that both magic and religion are part of all characters, but this is not true for all settings to which the HQ mechanics might profitably be applied.

All of this, again, relates to the thing I like best about the HQ core mechanics: a relatively 'straight' methodology for turning imagination into verbal description into game-relevant detail, and adjudicating same. I like this because (a) I come into gaming through an interest in fiction and storytelling and (b) because I'm keen on role-playing games which emphasize the 'human', spontaneous, fully linguistic, and non-reducible aspects of human cognition. Without these aspects significantly emphasized (as they were in early RPGs mostly due to the endless lacunae) I tend to prefer games like chess and go as 'purer' computational exercises to algorithm-driven RPGs.

[Mike Holmes]

You're making us disagree again where we don't. I've said repeatedly that they types of keywords that you should use for a particular world should match the needs of that world (really the overall game that you're playing and what it's about). I think that the Gloranthan model is actually pretty broadly applicable to many fantasy worlds, personally, but that doesn't mean it fits everything, certainly. I had to adjust a few things for Shadow World to make them fit, for instance ( http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8054 ). I suggest that you do whatever you think it takes to make up the appropriate categories of keywords, to assure that all characters are automatically given everything they need to funciton properly within the scope of the game in question.

In terms of flexibility, I've often said that a smaller infinity is preferable to a larger one. They're both still infinite, meaning that your creativity isn't limited, really, but the smaller space of that infinity gives you inspiration that more complete freedom does not. Meaning that stucture is good as long as it doesn't actually reduce choices from an infinity to a set number. Given that HQ abilities can be anything, no matter how structured you are with kewords in terms of types, you'll still have an infinite number of possibilities as outcomes.

As for the thread on HP spending, it's here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9207

I seem to have made the mistake of assuming that you were involved in several previous discussions here, stemming in part from the Tekumel comments. Turns out I've been thinking of other people. Here's a thread on doing up Tekumel that I thought was yours.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8024

Turns out that more than one person has now had this idea. That thread has exactly the sort of ideas that I would suggest for implementation in terms of keywords. What lead to that thread was my comment that I thought that HQ was great for use in worlds like Tekumel, Shadow World, Jorune, Talislanta, etc.

Mike

[Nick Brooke]

Here's a thread on doing up Tekumel that I thought was yours.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8024

Here's part of an earlier thread, that fleshes out some of the stuff which gets taken for granted in the subsequent discussion:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=83304&highlight=#83304

Cheers, Nick

[buserian]

Greetings All,

My usual bi-weekly trawl.

I saw a lot of great info in this thread, but wanted to make some additions and some comments. Forgive me if I don't post who said what. And thanks to the miracle of how The Forge lists things in a Postreply, they will be in reverse order.

As far as number of keywords, it is definitely true that the homeland/occupation/religion or magic paradigm works well for Glorantha, but not so well in other areas. But, it can be seen to be something of a paradigm. For Superheroes, it can easily be replaced with homeland/civilian occupation/superhero archetype. Thus, there might be a Brick keyword, an Energy Projecter keyword, a Spider-Man/Batman archetype, etc. That replaces religion, and shows how superpowers really are the magic of Superhero games.

For your game, Sean, you might want homeland/original occupation/current occupation.

The number of keywords can be important for balance -- precisely because of the "improvising from a keyword" issue. A player with a single Princess keyword has very few options for improvising new appropriate abilities to write on their character sheet. A hero with two homelands, a religion, and three occupations has no cracks visible, and the occasional one that is found can be covered completely. For some players, this imbalance won't be an issue, because it is their hero's capabilities and concept that are key. But the player who wanted to play "A princess" now sees Thrud the Barbarian with six keywords, and all of a sudden she is not happy.

Easy solution -- let the player add a keyword during play! "I'm not _just_ a princess, you know -- I come from the Queendom of Thrid, and I am the High Priestess of Churgania the Devourer! Bet you lugs didn't know _that_, did you?" Now she has three keywords (maybe four), and she doesn't feel bad any more. And now the story will progress in new and unforeseen ways, hopefully to the enjoyment of all.

And if the guy with six keywords abuses things, and makes all of the other players upset, there is always the magical mindwipe that removes all memory of his homeland or childhood, or those seven years spent as a galley slave. Now he has only five keywords. And look, he remembers what he has lost (as it were), and, you guessed it, the story will progress in new and unforeseen ways, hopefully to the enjoyment of all.

Or maybe everyone wonders why they all picked 3 and he has 6 -- maybe he isn't really superhuman, and now they can all go searching for his true origins. And again, you get the idea -- more story ideas.

So, keywords are to an extent a self-correcting phenomenon.


I agree with Mike that a player ought to be able at any time to drop an ability, replace it with something else, or add it, if the narrator agrees. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create a new specialty for Thief, Warrior, or Sage. This helps keep it structured, and gives the narrator an easy tool for evaluating the changes. Not required, but it also is a quick way for another player to later say, hey I want to be like him!


I really like the idea of "expanded keywords" where there are 2-3 times as many abilities listed, and the player picks the ones he or she wants. But, I can see many players having some trouble with, and thus wanting some specific specialties pre-defined. Which takes you back to the more structured keywords in heroquest itself.

Finally, Sean said:

So the one guy is a HEORTLING warrior initiate of Humakt, with the majority of his traits related to his culture (lots of relationships, cattle skills, and the like, and just a few death rituals), but the other guy is a heortling warrior INITIATE OF HUMAKT, with maybe twenty of his forty traits coming out of the religious/death end of things.

May I suggest that HQ covers this more than adequately? Either allow the hero say, 3 years of advanced experience, or just leave this to the 20 points heroquest allots anyway. The player then decides which concept is more important, or if they want to have a bunch of other abilities.

In other words, if you want greater flexibility, part of that can be built in. Instead of 3 keywords at 17, give the heroes 3 keywords at 13, 12 years of advanced experience, and the option to buy extra keywords at 13 for the equivalent of 3 years of advanced experience. Balance between players is retained (if that is important to the players), and the heroes then have some concrete guidelines for how to do things.

Just an idea.

Gotta run, lunch is ready.

buserian

[Mike Holmes]

Interestingly, over the last four days, I had the opportunity to convert one of my ancient fantasy games (started in 1986) for continued play. Looking at the characters from the previous system, the most important of them didn't have a homeland listed. That is, he's a mercenary, and though we know what race he is, we're not sure where, precisely he comes from. Play just picked up with him entering the game region (as so many games do), and messing around in it.

So I was wracking my brain trying to think of how I was going to fill in the gap. I left a blank keyword template on the character sheet, and started filling other things in. At one point, I wanted to put down that he spoke a couple of different languages, and it dawned on me that he ouoght to have the Traveler Keyword to simulate this. Then it occured to me that he's probably be on the road so long that he probably doesn't have too much connection with his original homeland.

So I decided to just leave the homeland unstated. Basically, per the Develop in Play rules. This is just an, as yet, unstated part of the character. Instead, I'd give him the Traveler keyword at 17, and if he ever comes up with where he's from, he can have that at a run down 13.

From another POV, it's like the Metallica song "wherever I may roam." That is, the character's home is the road. Which becomes very cool as we move on to exploring the idea of him becoming politically involved in the current area that he's in, and the potential of him "settling down."

Because, again, it's not so much a matter of homeland, as to the people and places to which the character is attached. That's a key part of Hero Quest, IMO. It's hard to really see the entire character if you don't know this information - even if the answer is "nowhere."

Mike