Relationships as Augmenters

[Ayrizale]

Hello,

    After reading about Hero Wars here on The Forge, I proceeded to purchase a copy and I have read most of it as time has allowed.  One of the things that drew me to the game in the first place was the interesting mechanic that allowed relationships to be used as modifiers to other kinds of rolls.  In reading through the Hero Wars books, I can see how this is done mechanically, but I'm still a little vague on how it is done within the Actual Play of the game.

    I would very much appreciate it if anyone could post some short anecdotes of how they used a Relationship as an Augmenter.

Thanks for your time,

Lael

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Oh my God. This is so common in our play of Hero Wars that I'm almost paralyzed in trying to answer - like seizing at a cloud of snowflakes.

Let's see ...

OK, the shaman is negotiating a tricky point or two with a powerful troll, in troll territory. One issue at stake is what happened to the shaman's troll friend, who was supposed to have come to this place and smoothed a path for our heroes already. Now they're saying, "Azzogk who?"

So the shaman is using his "Self-confidence" as the primary roll, with "Friendly to Uz" and "Relationship: Azzogk" as augmenters. The idea is that the shaman's emotional commitment to finding out what happened to Azzogk is engaged as part of the general points of negotiation going on.

Here's another: a character is dealing with two separate hero bands who are trying to oppose the character's hero band both physically and mystically. Wait, that's vague, isn't it? OK, try again: our heroes are the Gramings, whose hero cult of Gram is devoted to coping with chaos as it arises from Heortling customs or crimes (i.e. not externally), usually involving sexual transgression. The two hero bands are Vingans and Yelornans, respectively, both of which are based on denial of sexuality as a source of power (fertility-denial and virginity, respectively). So here's a character, set upon by members of one of the bands, while trying to get [a McGuffin] that's important to everybody. She has to fight using Close Combat, and does so, but also augments with her Relationship: Gramings, due to the fact that Gram-ideology is centrally involved in this conflict and the character is highly committed to that angle on it.

Hope that helps ... basically, whenever a character cares about a relationship that's involved in a conflict, bring it in as an augmenter. If that seems to you like nearly all conflicts will be bringing in a relationship or two, then so much the better - the players will concentrate on boosting the relationships through experience, hence via role-playing as well. It also means that the occasional, very isolated circumstances in which no relationship is relevant becomes a scary encounter in its own right - the character is literally alienated relative to this conflict, and his or her abilities are somewhat truncated because the relationships can't be used to augment.

I just can't get over how incredibly well these mechanics work over the long haul. Hero Wars is very close to being my all-time favorite RPG.

Best,
Ron