DnD Midnight to HeroQuest: The Big Leap

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Now you're seeing the big picture better.

Whew. The maddening thing was that I knew there was a bigger picture out there, but my eyes insisted they couldn't see it.  It's still fragmented, but that's ok, once we play again (which won't be until late January, sigh) things will come together for me more.

Meanwhile, thanks again for staying on this and helping me along step by step.

In narrativism, we only sympathize with the character, we don't empathize with him. And that's freeing to do what we want to do.

Hm, is that where "author stance" comes in? I know that stance and mode are two different things, but what you're saying about sympathising with the character looks like what an author would do.  

But in HQ, if you note that the target character is in armor, you can roll to knock him down first, and use the "half-swording" technique (see TROS) to punch through that armor like a can-opener. There's no rule in HQ that says you can do this, it's simply a real-world technique that we know works.

I used this when we went for a drink after converting characters over on Thursday, and one player said something about not having to fear "a puny little goblin with a pointy stick".  Lights lit up in both players' eyes. (In this case it was of course the goblin kicking out the armored PC's kneecap and hopping on their chest.)

BTW, you can still control "pacing." Let's say that some player gets all hot and bothered to go kill Izrador, and heads straight there. Well, fine, is he going to make it all the way there without running into somebody else first? Course not, that wouldn't be dramatic.

And then again, maybe it would. I can see a game in which they fight Izrador first thing, and he lets them live inexplicably. Then the entire game becomes people avoiding them because they wonder why Izrador would have let them go. Must be some secret curse or something. Maybe he can see through their eyes now, and is using the PCs to see where his opponents lay. Or...who knows what? :-)

Cool. The "who knows what" is the best bit of course.

Think of it this way, Izrador is just another character in the story.
...
Yes, even he exists only to pose bangs for the heroes. He has no more weight this way than does the cook who travels with the rest of he gang. To the extent that he represents a possible goal for the heroes, you keep him away just as long as you keep away the cook's daughter who is the goal for another hero.

Wonderful. What headaches I could have saved my self I I hadn't tried to run my games with DnD for years.

If you give them an option to avoid, and they avoid the stomping, then they miss the lesson. If they fall into the trap then they learn that the game is about making the best tactical decisions.

If you just stomp them, then they learn that the game is about making sure that every character looks as cool as they need to look all of the time.

I would so like to disagree. Unfortunately, I can't. :-)

This would be a big exception obviously, and I'd consider it only as the beginning of a scenario, almost like a prelude to a film, with very brief shots of the PCs in mid-being-stomped. Quite likely without even rolling any contest.  

That works to get them to trust you, but then they don't learn to trust the system.

See, what stomping does is to say, "Look, you got the worst effect for the character that the system can possibly produce. And it was pretty cool, eh? So stop worrying about losing and go out there and kick some ass. Oh, and BTW, now you know what the scale is like."

Ok. Yeah well, what can I say. You're right. Again.  

Yes, it's OK to make fun of cripples in RPGs. Rather, you can't make light of these things such that the character looks less interesting, but you can in such a way as when the character discovers an alternate solution, that the character looks very cool.

Player A: My character is unconscious. Can you pick me up C?
Player B: Wait, you can't carry Big Bill with one arm. Ha ha.
Player C: Damnit Kersten for giving me that! Fine, I kick Big Bill over and over to flip him down the hall.
Player A: Heyyy!
Player C: Whaddaya want? I only got one arm!

LOL.

As long as the player doesn't curl up into a tight ball and pretends he has a shell, I'm happy.

Edit:  (I wouldn't dream of doing this kind of thing if I had a crippled player in the group BTW.  Not unless I knew the player very well and was absolutely certain that they didn't have a problem with it - which is very well possible.  You see, I do think disempowering players isn't the only limit.  Other things that might touch a too personal note in a player's life are limit, too.)  /End edit.

I will try to lop somebody's arm off soon, however, as a practical. :-)

Aha, I'm not the only one...

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Well one of the things I like about HQ is the mechanical penalty. Did the narrator mention one? Or do you assume that he assigned one? Even if not, I'd have assumed there was one, giving me something to "work out" between me and the chief.

I haven't seen mechanical penalties used in the group (except in the religious holiday heroquests).  It may be that they all have the consequences so pat down that thre's no need to ever mention them though, in which case I wouldn't have noticed.

The players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance.  One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull?  he's a herder) and took it in stride.  

Interesting. Allowed by who?

As far as I remember, the narrator said the character was too exhausted to go on beyond this point.

Anyhow, I wouldn't worry too much about HP expenditures - if you're playing the way I think you will, then they'll use the HP "right." Again, the stomping lesson is important, because it teaches them that even if they don't use HP in contests, it's OK.

Yeah... One of my players said that he's played some other system in the past that had "XP and Fate Points" rolled into one, and he hated that - he's announced he's never going to use HPs to bump. Ever.

Of course again I haven't a clue at this point whether some dysfunction may have been involved in that other play experience, the player appears to have had a bunch of them, all of them I'd ever heard of and then some.  (He probably has played in a shut-up game as well... maybe I should ask.)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

I honestly never intended to play the guy.  Seriously.  

He's far too cool not to be played of course. Although in DnD... it kinda spoils the fun for everyone unless everyone is dealing with limitations on a similar scale and is happy to be playing a fairly grotesque game.

Imagine having the same handicap in a game that can support the story elements of it (not the Hero-system disads, but the story elements).  Just makes me hungry to dust that guy off and convert him.

You already have bits for a narrative there if you wanted to convert him to HeroQuest. Also, in HQ you'd have room for about a ton more cool traits than your writeup above contains.

He looks like a wonderful character to me.

[Mike Holmes]

Hm, is that where "author stance" comes in? I know that stance and mode are two different things, but what you're saying about sympathising with the character looks like what an author would do.  

Not really. There may be some correllation, but it's certainly not automatic. Consider - a player has to make a decision between two options, and decides to use actor stance to do so, only considering what the character knows, and what he thinks the character is like. The outcome will still be influenced by the players ideas. So very much he could be doing narrativism, and he may very well only sympathize in this case.

Actor stance is not the same as a player being under some illusion that he is the character. So author stance is not synonymous with making decisions in a way that separates a player from his character. Indeed, a player might empathize more with their character by putting them into a situation that they, themselves had been in.

I used this when we went for a drink after converting characters over on Thursday, and one player said something about not having to fear "a puny little goblin with a pointy stick".  Lights lit up in both players' eyes. (In this case it was of course the goblin kicking out the armored PC's kneecap and hopping on their chest.)

And wedging that stick into their visored helmet, and gouging out their eyes.

One of the things I love about HQ, is that everyone becomes dangerous, potentially. Consider - in real life, and in HQ, what makes someone dangerous is not their training, but their willingness to do harm to somebody else.

Suddenly goblins, the little sociopaths that they are, are quite scary. I'm going to hopefully be using this precise fact in both my IRC and FTF HQ games coming up. Turns out that the same goblin civilization is threatening both sets of PCs...

Goblins as throwaway foes: dull. Goblins as the thematic threats that they are: terrifying.

If you just stomp them, then they learn that the game is about making sure that every character looks as cool as they need to look all of the time.

I would so like to disagree. Unfortunately, I can't. :-)

Well, I'm going to let you wiggle out. That is, there may be other ways to do this. Stomping is simply the most direct that I can think of.

More subtle is to present the players with a situation where they come across a foe who's somewhat stronger than they are, but not tremendously so, but who they'd think would want to do them major harm. They may win these, so do them enough that they eventually fail. When they fail, just make sure that you deliver some really atypical results that are way cool. Even ask them what they think the penalties delivered should mean.

Mike

[Ian Cooper]

I don't want to interrupt, but seeing as the game in question is my 'Red Cow' campaign I might be able to illuminate a few points.

In the third session Marginal Defeat (I think) when boasting of the cattle raid to the locals at our stead.  I spent no HP.  The GM ruled that people wandered away because the story wasn't gripping and had been going on for too long.

This isn't too bad. But did it lead to further conflict? Also the narrator could have been nicer, and made the problem the wind or something instead of you. Sometimes a failure is OK as a simple failure, however. Once in a while.

I try to be guided by the level of defeat when deciding how much impact defeat has (or control to take things in a new direction the narrator has). Marginal Defeat shouldn't have any consequences beyond failure (the same is true for victory of course). p.62 of HeroQuest is a my guide here.

I'd have had somebody in the crowd get insulted by some element yor character put in the story, and demand an apollogy in front of the crowd or something. But that's just me.

Nice idea, I'll remember that one for a minor defeat at some point ;-)

Another Marginal or Minor Defeat retelling the story to the clan chief when offering the cattle.  Again, I didn't bump.  The chief expressed mild displeasure at the raid, saying it was politically unwise to have caused more trouble at the border in the current situation. Not sure what other consequences there were, it felt as if there might have been a reward for my character if I'd succeeded on the roll.  

Hmm. Well one of the things I like about HQ is the mechanical penalty. Did the narrator mention one? Or do you assume that he assigned one? Even if not, I'd have assumed there was one, giving me something to "work out" between me and the chief.

IIRC in this context there was a real penalty. Under Heortling tradition the plunder of the raid belongs to the chief. The chief then decides what to hand back to the raiders. In this case the chief kept much of the proceeds, to compensate those damaged by expected reprisals, A victory would have you got you a bigger share of the wealth. In this game wealth equates to political power and influence. I think the raiders did not gain any increase to wealth in this case.

Then two PCs went on Heroquests for One Day.  Each went through their Heroquest's stations. There were a number of Defeats, each of which gave penalties for the next station.  

Again, what's neat is that the penalties automatically mean something in the later context. Just makes things more challenging.

The players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance.  One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull?  he's a herder) and took it in stride.  

Interesting. Allowed by who?

The other player went through everything (the wifely rug of peace thing) and learnt some new magic ability but seemed exasperated, not sure why.  

Interesting, too.

So what happened here. Well my players are also reacting to learned habits around defeat/failure and cost/reward. Farandar's player is more trusting that I will turn a defeat into an interesting story line. with rolls or without rolls. When he missed the session with the raid I ruled that his character also missed the raid, leading some to question his courage. Farandar's player quickly accepted that as a good challenge for his character (whose father sees him as a failure) and it led to a good story development when Farandar moved out of his father's house and into his uncle's. I think that Orsta's player may still be more of the fun equals my character succeeds at their goal viewpoint, seeing defeat as failure. That is the reason why Orsta's player is more concerned with game fairness, reflecting their desire to 'win', and hence can react negatively when they are faced with overwhelmeing opponents or generous, giving the benefit of the doubt on augments or game unbalanced rewards from heroquests. No idea whether that will change.

It probably is worth raising the 'defeat is not bad point' in the future. As always your perscapicity as to these issues is welcomed.

Anyhow, I wouldn't worry too much about HP expenditures - if you're playing the way I think you will, then they'll use the HP "right." Again, the stomping lesson is important, because it teaches them that even if they don't use HP in contests, it's OK.

I think the issue here is that players dislike the 'whiff factor'. They do not like to be stomped too often because they like to be heroes not zeroes. Again it is coupled to their notion that to be a hero you need to 'win', not to feel like a zero. But my experience is that you have to be careful about showing players that defeat is not a disaster by deliberately stomping them. It is just too easy for them to feel crushed by the whole thing.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Thanks for dropping by Ian, & for answering Mike's questions.

But my experience is that you have to be careful about showing players that defeat is not a disaster by deliberately stomping them. It is just too easy for them to feel crushed by the whole thing.

That's my concern, yes;  especially because any creative Consequences to a stomping will make serious, long-term changes to the character that the player has had no control over happening and that may well turn the character into something the player wouldn't want to play anymore.  Mike's examples of the loss of a limb or a curse or mark that makes people distrustful are very cool and creative, but they may still destroy the character for the player if they alter what the player perceives as the core of the character concept.  I guess I'll just have to feel my way and take some risks. :-)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

And it's looking as if the original topic has run its course, so let's call this thread closed.  Thanks very much everyone, again, there has been some brilliant advice.  

We converted characters last week.  Once the players let me have their writeups of the finished characters I'll post them to a new thread.