A Cool Idea From Hero Wars

[dunlaing]

Hero Wars (and the revision HeroQuest) has a cool idea for players that don't know what character they want to play yet. You define one keyword and start playing. The rest of your character is nebulous until such time as it comes up. In Hero Wars, you might start out as an Orlanthi (basically a Celt) and not know anything else about him. Later when you're trying to barter with some Durulz (Ducks), you might decide that he is a Duck-Friend, write it on the sheet and bam! he's a Duck-Friend.

I wonder if this would work in With Great Power...

Obviously you'd establish the Struggle first, but what if after that each PC was simply defined by one Aspect? Or even no Aspects? In any Enrichment Scene, the player would be allowed to add any Aspects they wanted until the character sheet was filled up. I think this might be an interesting way to run through it.

Any thoughts?

[Christopher Weeks]

We talked about that at the end of the playtest session I was in.  I thought Michael was friendly to the idea...

Chris

[Michael S. Miller]

i certainly wouldn't be adverse to starting a hero with just one Aspect on each side of the Struggle and going from there. Personally, I'd wouldn't start everyone with a blank sheet, primarily because I, as GM, take my cue as to what the villians look like, and what their motivations are, from the kinds of heroes that the players create. If they were empowered by a corrupt corporation, then that corporation, or at least a  member of it, will be one of my Gm Aspects.

This sort of freeform approach might play into some ideas I have about possible improvements to the Hero Creation system (which, I know, needs streamlining and structure) and the concept of Importance (which will need its own thread--no time now, maybe later in the week). If you get a chance to play it out, Bill, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

[dunlaing]

Unortunately, I don't know when I'd get a cance to play it out.

I was thinking of the GM going somewhat freeform to start with as well, not really knowing what the badguy was up to (or possibly even who the badguy is) until after a few Enrichment scenes.

In my own GMing, I've taken to building scenarios up as the session goes on. I make a little chart with a bubble for each of the PCs on it and any seeds of ideas that I have. As additional elements crop up ingame (or sometimes even from an idea I get from their out of game table talk) I write it on the page, draw a bubble around it and then connect it to one of the other bubbles on the page. By the end of the night, it's real complicated looking but it's easy to relate everything and it's easy to see if someone's being left out of too much stuff going on.

Which is a long way of saying that I can see your point about not knowing their Aspects makes it hard to come up with the GM Aspects, but that I don't think it would be an issue for me since I would just put off defining all of the GM Aspects until later.