Railroading and Heroquests

[Neil the Wimp]

Nice write ups Neil. I think I see what you're saying. The one choice you mention is a huge bang, yes.

I note with interest on the site that you say not to use the rules. But also that this may have been for RQ. Do you advocate the same for HQ? Or do you like what HQ does for heroquests mechanically? I think this is pretty central to the original topic of the thread.

Thanks.

You're right, I wrote these up in the days of RuneQuest, where the rules were completely unsuited to this kind of thing.  I don't think that HeroQuest (or any other rule set) is much better for this type of quest.  In these initiatory quests, what's important (IMO) is the decisions made by the player.  If the character gains the requisite self-knowledge, understands the duties of the new positions, understands the sacrifices that need to be made, and then makes those sacrifices, I think they should succeed in the quest.  It's purely about player choice, and to force them to make those profound, irrevocable, and probably unrepeatable steps and still fail would be to shortchange the player greatly.

As for the original topic, I thought it was about the predetermined and linear nature of the 'follow the myth' heroquests leading to railroaded players.  My response to that is to take the abstract choices presented in the myth and make them concrete and tied in directly to the character's situation.  This is reiterating what was said by Simon Hibbs  ("heroquests are about moral choices") and Bryan_T (who also showed how the obstacles faced could come from the character's history).  Doing it that way, I think, makes the linear nature of the quest almost irrelevant and retains the focus on the decisions made by the player.

Neil.