Railroading and Heroquests

[Ian Cooper]

Red Cow is a non-linear game using techniques like relationship maps (a big relationship map admittedly), bangs etc. So it becomes a litte jarring when we try and play out a HeroQuest. Now HeroQuesting is an essential Gloranthan activity and I'm keen that the players are drawn to it as a mechanism for solving problems. But I don't want them to feel that they are just 'on the train ride' when they play one.

Now HeroQuest does give some good advice about trying to avoid a station-to-station feeling to the play, so that stations occur naturally rather than feeling as though the narrator is saying 'now we are at the station make your rolls' and relates this to forcing the players to decide when to use any support that they have prepared for a station. In addition I have tried creating variance by sending npcs with the heroes to make interaction with those npcs as much part of the story as completing the steps of the quest. All pretty standard techniques to reduce the feeling of being railroaded. But this still feels like illusionism, it still feels a little bit as though this is the 'impossible thing before breakfast'.

So I am looking for advice on how to overcome or side-step this problem. One approach I have considered is to allow the players to create the myth as they go along. Not in the sense that this is an experimental HeroQuest, but in the sense that the players reveal the myth that everyone already knew in play: "Ah this is the bit were Ulanin did the Seven Skips Across the Water and Farandar will do that too here, so this is a HeroQuest station and I use my community support for jumping magic". Anyone had any experience of doing this?

[Donald]

First off I'd make sure the players don't know what the stations are. Get them to get details from several sources, all incomplete and contradictory in minor ways. Then when they actually perform it, make it slightly different again. I understand Greg reorders the stations and makes them completely unrecognisable but you may not choose to go that far.

Secondly I'd look to bring NPCs they've encountered on the mundane plane as the opposition to HQs. So if the opposition is a sun worshipper they get to meet the clan Elmali - how's he going to take being dragged into this quest and what effect does it have on their relationship with him. Do they even stop following the quest because he's someone they know?

Thirdly I'd make failure interesting. If they haven't every detail there's a bigger chance of them failing so make sure failure doesn't break the story line and leads to something worth following up.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

My advice is quite different.

I suggest that the stations be rather explicit and that the characters go into the Heroquest with some expectations of what they'll be. They may be surprised by "extra" or "missing" stations, or by the intersection with other Heroquesters on a series of stations of their own. But the characters are going by the myth they know or have doped out, and so they have very clear understanding that "after we talk to the black wolf, we'll have to cross the Sighing River."

The players know all this. This is important. You and they are having the characters embark on ritualized activities.

Railroading is when you dictate the characters' choices by taking them away from the players. Since they can choose how they deal with the stations, and since you and the players are well aware that Heroquesting often changes myths rather than reenacts them (the core of the Hero Wars!!), embarking on the fixed path of the Heroquest is nothing more than an opportunity to enter the grand/weird multitude of possible metaphysical outcomes. You as GM have no idea what they'll do once they get into the Otherworld and realize how much power they have once they're there. That's why it's not railroading.

In our experiences of play, the early Heroquesting was more tentative - the players had their characters try out the myths and stick to them. As play continued, they became very bold and often went into the Otherworld with the intention of altering the myths, making the gods/stories do what they thought was right.

See? The fixed-path model of Otherworld rituals (as understood by most characters in Glorantha) becomes a wide-open opportunity to the active participant in the Hero Wars. That's why sticking to the fixed-path prep on your part is crucial. It means they have the power, and you don't.

Best,
Ron

[Ian Cooper]

Hi Ron,

Very interesting answer, and I appreciate your point that it is not railroading if the stations are clearly flagged beforehand. I will need to mull over your answer for a couple of days before responding. However as an amplification: have you found players author the myths of the HeroQuest beforehand, or have you tended to supply the myth that they enact. What I am pushing at here is that if a player decides to HeroQuest to help end the feud with the neighboring clan and I supply the details of the myth that they can enact to help them do this, am I removing their ability to author their story by telling them what the myth is? Am I still playing bass or have I just picked up lead guitar?

Am I expressing my concern here clearly?

[GB Steve]

I don't think the GM deciding on the HQ structure is any more railroading than the GM, say, building the town in Dogs in the Vineyard.

I think the PCs will likely be better prepared than Dogs, given that the general myth structure is generally well known to the cult and I think you'll probably have to think fast on your feet to incorporate new elements that the players introduce through play but I think that given that the structure of Hero Questing is well understood by most players, that you have a potentially very intesting game ahead.

I've run HQs under RQ3 and the Pendragon Pass variant which was a much better system for it. I've never found the structure to be a hindrance to player input and creativity.

I think the issue with HQs and railroading is a bit like the Yellow Brick road in Oz. You know that if you step off the path you're in for interesting and dangerous times, but you can move away from the path if you want. It's interesting to have that temptation and to see what players make of it.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Ian,

I know this is directed at Ron, but here are my 50 öre.

Perhaps you are making it a little bit more difficult than it is. If the outcome of the quest matters to the players I think that the myth itself can easily be a straightforward, linear ritual. Even something as simple as "go into the cave, confront the dragon and free the princess" will work just fine (the heroquest in Well of Souls is exactly like this, btw).

However as an amplification: have you found players author the myths of the HeroQuest beforehand, or have you tended to supply the myth that they enact.

You can always ask the players what they want: "Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this myth, before I prepare the quest?" You will probably find that the players are often quite happy to let you make it up. And if somebody has good ideas, you can always incorporate them.

What I am pushing at here is that if a player decides to HeroQuest to help end the feud with the neighboring clan and I supply the details of the myth that they can enact to help them do this, am I removing their ability to author their story by telling them what the myth is?

No you are not. The myth is as much a part of the setting as all the other great background and conflicts that you've made up for your campaign. The key, I think, has nothing to do with whether a player makes up the myth or not, but whether "a player decides to heroquest". Is not heroquesting a viable option in your game or have have you taken that choice away from them?

Why does Farandar's player want to go on this End the Feud heroquest? Because his character wants to marry a woman from the enemy clan, right? So the stakes for the quest is about something very tangible in the mundane world. Who else cares about the outcome of the quest? What will they do, and how will Farandar deal with it situation? --- Now you have a conflict for the player to deal with. Suddenly the quest becomes about something bigger than the difficult, but straightforward, task of aqcuiring a strand of Roitina's sacred rug.

I hope this makes sense.

Cheers,

[Ian Cooper]

I know this is directed at Ron, but here are my 50 öre.

Although I was responding to Ron's comment, I still welcome everyone's contribution to the topic.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I agree with Peter's and Steve's points, very strongly.

How much the players contribute to the myths that they will be investigating/entering through Heroquests, is a matter of individual play-group approach. Textually, the game doesn't encourage a whole lot of group-creation of setting elements, beyond character creation. It does strike me that when I play again, I'd like more group participation in coming up with clan myths, for instance, but that would definitely be pushing the boundaries a little.

As a more general point, and referring to right-there-in-play rather than prep, I want to stress that Narrativist GMing does not mean "no input, no content, no structure, no constraint." Improv is a technique, but frankly, I find it to be best used secondarily for many games. HeroQuest, Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard ... less, if any. InSpectres, Universalis (by definition), My Life with Master ... more, often maximal.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I agree with everyone, but have to empathize with Ian. It's not precisely that they're railroady - in fact in all cases that I've had in play players have come up with the ideas that lead to the heroquests. And, as everyone points out, they're just setting to interact with.

But what I found a bit disconcerting is that during play of the heroquest itself, it seems like there's little opportunity to throw bangs into play. That is, if we all know largely what's going to happen, and the plan is to stick to the heroquest to get that to happen, well, then it's just a pass/fail sort of situation. Or a string of them. With no really important decisions being made along the way. I sometimes have an urge to make a "simple conflict" out of it, and abstract it to just one roll. Left the way they are, they often feel to me to be very extended contests (using the bad "linked contests" rules drift).

If, in fact, there's only one conflict happening, shouldn't there only be one contest? Or so my brain reasons. This is probably in part because I haven't gotten into so many heroquests in play yet that the players have the notion to start off down the road to doing experimental heroquests (this is, in part, because I tend to do a lot with the idea of being separated from home communities). I'm trying to rectify that.

There is, however, one thing that I've found very interesting about how heroquests are set up in the current rules. Basically when the heroquest moment comes, the character has to risk an abililty to get the reward. That's a fascinating bang with mechanical repercussions that requires the player to make a hard decision in terms of what he thinks the character would wager. All of the other stations can be seen as lead up suspense to that occurance.

Anyhow, throw in the ability that you actually do have to create bangs with unexpected stations, aberrations, or with interference, and I think you have a situation that's just as ripe as any other for play. Again, it's just the notion of having the quest be a series of stations (and attendant contests) to which the player has already committed that make heroquests feel as if they could play out as just a series of rolls with no attendant decisions.

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

IMHO there are good reasons why it can sometimes be very difficult for questers to know when they are at a parrticular station. The tactic I've seen Greg use several times is to throw in red-herring encounters and situations that look like they might be stations but aren't. I think the reason for doing this is that in actual fact the stations themselves aren't what heroquestign is all about.

Quests are about learning things about yourself (ok, your character). They are about moral dilemas and how to cope with them. They are about what is important and what can be sacrificed. They are about going through experiences that test and reinforce these values.

I've played a heroquest with Greg only once, at the Tentacles convention in Germany. It was part of the Lightbringer's Quest, I was playing Challana Arroy and were lost as to what to do right from the word go even though we knew that part of the quest fairly well. Greg even gave us a rundown of the 'classical' stations for this part of the quest for us in advance.

What I relaised was that I had to forget about what the stations were. I couldn't tell, so that means I had to find another tactic to survive and succeed other than my memory of the quest. What I decided to do was to forget the stations and instead, whenever faced with a dilema, think 'What would Chalana Arroy realy do right now' - and it worked!

Some of the other players tried to second-guess what they should do based on their knowledge of the stations. They tried to 'powergame' the situation and as a result did things that were clearly very much against the natures of their characters. The Orlanth guy launched an unprovoked attack on a passing predator (that we were even told looked feline) because he knew that fighting Canis Chaos was one of the stations. Why would Orlanth attack someting for no reason? Isn't he supposed to be Just? And of course it turned out to be Basmol and not Canis Chaos at all so now the Orlanthi have a completely messed up mythic cockup to deal with WRT to the Lion People when we get back home. The Issaries guy used his trade magic to cheat someone, who's help it turned out we needed later so again we were all cocked up because the god of fair trade went against his nature. And so it went.... I can't remember it all now but it all went very horribly wrong.

What I got out of it wasn't that heroquesting is about doing what you're supposed to do. It's about living up to the values of your culture, and being true to what you believe. The stations are simply a means to that end and in themselves are not what is realy important. I think that's also why 'creative' heroquesting is possible, and even sometimes necessery. It's what happens when the conditions of life change. When society itself must adapt to new circumstances.


Simon Hibbs

[Ian Cooper]

Reflecting on the responses I seem to have a number of issues rather than one. The two most important ones seem to be:

• Worries over the GM's authorship of myth removing choice from the players.
• HeroQuests tending to deteriorate into a pass/fail sequence

I am good with Ron, Peter, and Steve's advice that myths are a setting detail so authorship of them is no different to other setting elements. Thanks for the re-assurance on that one, you have raised my comfort bar on that.

But I have to agree with Mike that too often the play on a heroquest seems to deteriorate to 'paint-by-numbers' play in which the passing of the objective at each station becomes the prime objective. That is the source of my confusion I suspect because in that it begins to feel like the product of railroading, even though I am satisfied by your arguments that it is not railroading. I guess that I saw smoke and assumed fire. So it looks as though it is how I am playing them out that represents the difficulty to overcome. Thanks for crystalizing that for me.

[Ian Cooper]

I want to stress that Narrativist GMing does not mean "no input, no content, no structure, no constraint."

Thanks, I felt that with HeroQuest, but its good to know that somebody else believes that too.

[Mike Holmes]

Simon,

That's an interesting description of how to play heroquests. The problem is that it isn't what's described in the books or in the sample quests. Or, at least it's not what I got from my reading of the material. If what you present is what's intended, then I wonder why we haven't seen more direction towards this.

Because it sounds pretty good to me in some ways. That is, there's a gamism version of it that I can see that doesn't really sound very good, but I think you could avoid that, and make it into a highly narrativism driving experience. The gamism version would be that the players simply have to suss out what they have to do in each spot in order to have the best chance to "win" the quest. This might be interesting for some players, but I think that it's going to be hard to engineer challenges that are fair, challenging, and realistic, given that the players aren't really Heortlings. That is, no, I don't expect players to have read a ton of background on each character in a myth and know "what the god would do" in ambigous situations. If the situations aren't ambiguous, then a real Heortling would have no problem diserning which way to go.

This, actually, is how I see most heroquests right now - the character takes on the challenges, rolling at each station to see if he knows how to best the ambiguity there. Yes this takes the player interaction out of it, but rightly so I feel in this case. The way you portray your version with the implication that the player should know that Orlanth wouldn't do something unjust seems very non-functional to me.

Now, the non-gamism version that you also seem to imply is what interests me. If we assume that Orlanth attacking the beastie is a player decision based not on what Orlanth's values are, but on what the player wants to see, that sounds like fun to me. That is, what I would do is always just tell the player what Orlanth would do (or have the player make a roll for the character to see if the character knows). Then, that knowledge in hand, the player makes up his mind - do I have the character stick to the right path, and make it easy on the character? Or does the player have the character alter the path, accepting that it's going to be hard to do so, in order to change the myth?

Now that's interesting. And what I think we're talking about with experimental heroquesting (or even it just being an option) being narrativism play. What you're portraying, Simon, is superior for this, because instead of being a series of contests, it's a series of bangs the decisions which are made from them affect the subsequent contests. Decisions with mechanical impact - narrativism with teeth.

I'm going to propose that, perhaps, the reason that heroquests aren't displayed this way, is because they're displayed like the vast majority of adventures to date. That is, the adventures are all linear railroads from one contest to the next, too. Which I think is a function less of wanting the adventures to be railroads than not understanding how to write an adventure such that it is not one.

This would apply to the heroquests we've seen, too, the mistake again being to place contests in the text for each station where Bangs should be. Those bangs all largely conforming to the general form, do I stick to the path, or do I forge a new meaning here? It's a pretty simple difference in presentation, I think, just remind players that they aren't constrained to following the path of the myth.

How does this change the reward, however? That is, if all this does is to mechanically make it more difficult to get the normal reward at the end, then I think that, again, this promotes gamism, and sticking to the path. Ron, when your players went off the path, what outcome did they get that was different than what they'd have gotten if they stayed on the path? What was the reward for forging new paths? Just the satisfaction of having done it a "better" way? Or did the outcomes change to match their choices such that they forged a new reward for themselves?

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

Mike,

HeroQuest characters have plenty of abilities that can help them figure out what their god would do in various situations - or at least get hints. There are 'Mythology of the Cult' abilities, 'Relationship' abilities with the god, and of course abilities directly related to the thing being tests. An Orlanthi character might have a 'Just' ability. So there is plenty of mechanical support for the gamist approach.

I also agree that Bangs make a very good substitute for stations. When I wrote my post I realy wasn't sure if what I was saying could realy be of any use, or was even explained well enough to be comprehensible to anyone else, but I think you're very close to a practical aproach. You're right about published heroquests being limited by the state of the adventure-writing art. I think Greg is well aware that he hasn't found a truly effective way to write them yet. He's probably never even heard the term Bang, but in retrospect the way the stations and encounters in the quest were presented was very Bang-ish.

I don't think stickign to the path is gamism. If a quest is about Justice and Truth and Fair Play, and actualy most quests are about moral values and testing personal qualities, then why would you want your character to go off on a tangent? HeroQuesting isn't about experimentation, it's about finding out if you are Just enough for the Rulership of your people, Cold Blooded enough to wield True Death, Determined enough to earn Immortality, etc. Most people (characters) will want to complete the quest because they believe in the values of their culture. People who deliberately go off at a tangent do so either because they couldn't give a fig about the values of their society, or because they've seen that their societies values ren't adequate in some way and want to fix that.

I think there often are rewards for doing the 'wrong thing' in many quests, and these are why some quests are so hard - the temptation is very real. However there should always be a down side for betraying the principles you're supposed to be upholding.

Simon Hibbs

[Jane]

Secondly I'd look to bring NPCs they've encountered on the mundane plane as the opposition to HQs. So if the opposition is a sun worshipper they get to meet the clan Elmali - how's he going to take being dragged into this quest and what effect does it have on their relationship with him. Do they even stop following the quest because he's someone they know?

It's perhaps worth pointing out that according to Canon, they won't recognise the mundane person playing the opposition role, they'll see Elmal. Personally I much prefer to have him semi-recognisable, depending on abilities and rolls, but I believe that's the canon position.

Of course, that may depend on the "depth" of the HQ. A practice-level quest takes place on the mundane, so of course people are recognisable. The Sky Ship, in Gathering Thunder, is full God World, and explicitly gives the PCs an opportunity to get the extremely rare ability to recognise mundane identities while there. So the "ordinary" HeroPlane should be rights be somewhere in between?

It may help to think of HQing as being the characters role-playing parts? And even if you do recognise who's playing what part, reacting to their out-of-game identity is in some ways "bad play"? If you're being Orlanth, he's never heard of your local clan elmali, he just knows Elmal. So if your PC reacts to Elmal as the local guy, he's doing less well at "being" Orlanth, and should perhaps get penalties for his bad roleplay? Just a thought.