Midnight Heroquest conversion (take 2)

[Janus]

Hi,

I'm looking into running a Midnight game with the HQ system. Midnight is your typical MERP-like fantasy setting, with one plot twist The Evil One, after being beaten up, was exiled on the world  which was then sealed off by the Veil, effectively cutting the world off other planes (the Other Side?). Oh yeah, Midnight is originally a d20 setting. (Probably everyone reading this thread knows about Midnight, still, just in case, this was an intro.)

Converting the races and classes into homelands and professions should be a no brainer.

Two things seem tricky to me:

1) Magic. Magic is rare in Midnight, its usage is scarce and taxing for the body. Only the evil priests have divine magic. Heroes have some innate magic (also elves, hallings and magical beings). The last form of magic is channeling (using the energies from the world) which has three ways: charismatic, spiritual and hermetic.

2) Health. It seems survival is an important aspect of the setting and the rarity of healing magic make it hard to recover (especially when running for your life.) Also using to much magic can tax your body.

In HQ magic is fairly unlimited and health seem to be a non issue given how easy it is to heal mundane wounds (resistance 14 for magic healing.)

Suggestions / comments / ideas are welcome.

Janus

[Janus]

Oh yeah, this thread is a follow up on some PMs with Kerstin which allow me to reproduce some of our conversion, so here it is:

Don't worry about HQ magic being "unlimited". It's not. Just apply the rules stringently: penalties for inherently difficult magic, consequences on a defeat when using a magic ability, limits on the number of magical augments you can use at one time without a ritual, etc. It works beautifully well without introducing any "per day" limitation. There are lots of ways to let casters "tax" their bodies: using physical consequences for defeats in contests with magic is one; using HQ tapping rules is another.

Consider using all three religion/magic systems. It's not just about having a variety of fun magic rules to play with. it's about the cultural implications of each one. To  bring across the loss of religion for everyone but Izrador's followers, have the Other Sides inaccessibly beyond the Veil. Means that most people will have access only to common magic (except animists might still have some ancient fetishes with spirits in them that have never been released - of course once you do release the spirit it's lost because it can't return to the Spirit World and can't be called back).
Note that this makes Legates very, very powerful because they will be teh only ones with a readily accessible "full" range of magic.

Two questions spring to my mind:
a) What are the HQ tapping rules?
b) What would you map channeling to? common magic, sorcery or animism?

[Kerstin Schmidt]

a) What are the HQ tapping rules?

Tapping into other creatures' essences is mentioned on p. 155 (right column), but I can't find actual rules for it. Which is odd because I'm almost certain I was talking about tapping mechanics with people at a rainy bus stop only the other day. I'll try to find out the specifics and post them.  Or maybe others can point you to where those rules exist, if they are official.

b) What would you map channeling to? common magic, sorcery or animism?

I'd make Channeler an occupation. Basically like spirit talkers, priests or wizards. Maybe even use those occupations, depending on what sort of magic/religion the individual channeler follows. Wizards make for almost perfect hermetic channelers, for instance.

It seems survival is an important aspect of the setting

Oh, important point.  Defeinietly something you need to decide (agree with your players) before you start play: wether to focus on survival (how to elude capture/starvation from day to day) or on the heroism (i.e. player choices on the many tricky and difficult choices presented in the setting).  The Survival angle or the Heroism make for very different games and are mutually exclusive to some extent.  You may have seen the netbook that the people on www.againsttheshadow.org put together, for the D&D version of MN. That one's full of day-to-day survival stuff. Scott's conversion OTOH is aimed at the heroic angle, for examples of "heroic" play check out my reports of a few FTF sessions on this forum (search for my author name and Dornish Crown). The related preparation threads contain tons of immensely useful advice from Mike Holmes, especially on how to drive the more form of heroic play (using bangs), and on how to make MN really shine using the HG magic rules.

HQ and the MN setting will support either Survival or Heroism, so it's really your choice - but an important one that needs to be made right at the start.

And let us know which of the two you want to be going for, that'll be important in helping you with your ensuing design decisions on the conversion.



Kerstin

[Brand_Robins]

The Tapping rules were in HeroWars, but not HQ. However, we get the following useful info from the website:

Tapping

Some creatures have abilities similar to Tapping, which is not in HeroQuest. Such creatures can use their tapping ability to drain points from entries on the character sheet that match the description of the tap ability. Generally, the highest ability is targeted. If the tapping creature wins the contest, the target permanently loses an amount from its ability based on the level of defeat. The tapping creature adds these points to its abilities as defined in the creature's description, distributing them as evenly as possible. For example, if a memovore attacks Hogar's Know Local Area ability and drives him to -14 AP in the extended contest, Hogar suffers a minor defeat and loses 10% of his Know Local Area 10W ability, and so loses 3 points. The memovore adds 1 each to its Aura of Confusion, Detect Intruder, and Induce Amnesia abilities. This loss is permanent, but Hogar can spend hero points to increase his rating. If the tapping creature loses the contest, losses from the Consequences Table are applied to its Tap ability. Thus, if the memovore is driven to -14 AP, it suffers a minor defeat and loses 10% from its Tap Memories. If this brings the Tap ability of a memovore, hellion, or kon-kon below zero, the creature ceases to exist. Others suffer the concequences of the Results Table.

[Mike Holmes]

First, a reference to some previous threads where we talked much of this to death:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=13570.0
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14467.0

Some points:

1. I think there's a very simple way to do tapping, without any special rules. When somebody taps somebody else, if the contest is won, then the loser takes the appropriate penalty to represent being tapped (can be pretty broadly applied, IMO, or only to that ability which is tapped), and the winner of the contest gets to essentially force the character to augment him with one of his abilities. The tapped essence is a representation of the ability drained.

Another, even cooler, way to handle this, is to make tapping a very small heroquest. Basically you have to cross the 10W3 barrier to get at the subjects essence, and once there, you simply do a heroquest challenge between the two characters gambling the appropriate abilities as normal. BTW, this, of course, explains how vampirism works, too.

Lots of ways to work it.

2. I really have to read channeling to get it. But I can make arguments for any of the modes for it - and all of them. Including theism. The "God" in the case of theism is Aryth. That said, I think this really argues more for a monotheist religion with Aryth being the source of the magic that they all use. Hermetic is, of course, definitely this way (Wizardry). If the setting says that there are no spellbooks that you cast from (though we know there are books), then simply have all schools teach individual spells.

Common magic should also cover this. Basically if a character in Midnight would not have magecraft indicating which sort of channeling he has, then he has it as common magic.

Animism may be problematic if you identify the spirit magic included in the setting as, in fact, animism. That defies the "druidic" version is animist in nature, which seems likely. Ayrth then as Great Spirit, with lesser spirits providing powers.

So, to clarify:
Charismatic = Theist
Hermetic = Wizardry
Spiritual = Animism

That's probably how I'd do it. Turns out that Midnight has everything for the players! I probably wouldn't even make any of them Misapplied Worship, but you could do that if you wanted to make one of these the "right" way to channel Ayrth (or to simulate something from the setting that says that one or more of these is particularly hard to do).

3. On the subject of the "cost" of magic: Kerstin is right. What often happens in such circumstances, however, is that the contest becomes something like "Do I hurt him, or does he hurt me?" If that's the case, then most often a defeat will end up getting described in terms of the other guy hurting you. So there seems to be no risk of getting hurt from casting the spell itself. In practice nobody cares - the fact that there was one potential downside to a conflict is enough. But what you can do to keep in the element of potential damage is to occasionally frame a contest biased towards the character alone. This is cool, because you can make it seem like magic has an advantage (when in actuality it's still balanced).

For instance, you can have a character shoot a lightning bolt at another who is running away. Normally in such a contest, say with an archer, the only downside of losing is that the other guy gets away. But when this sort of thing happens with magic, the downside should be the health ramifications.

Now, what's true about this is that what never happens is that the character never gets his way, and the spell damages him. Every once in a while, when it's dramatically appropriate, when a caster has been using a lot of magic, have him make a separate contest with a TN based on how much magic he's slinging about. If he loses, he's hurt by the expense of using the magic.

You could make this de rigeur with each roll. I fully intended to do that with my game (more for fatigue than for health per se). But know what? I forgot to do it. And nobody noticed. Basically if nobody cares, it's not a conflict worth playing out.

Think of it this way - fighting causes you to be fatigued. One could, after every fight, require a character to make a roll to see if they got tired in a long-term fashion. But one never does. This is a great strength of HQ. If you've ever forgotten to record END loss in a game of Champions, then you know exactly what I mean. Sure, the END rules are cool, and give you a reason why characters just don't go around using their powers all the time. It's just that in HQ, the "threat" of such contests is enough to keep players from doing it. That is, players don't have their characters cast spells all day long for the same sort of reason that they don't have their characters try to dig holes all day long. We all know it would kill them. As long as the narrator could call for a contest of this nature, that's all we need to know.

So simply inform players that they might get bad things happening to them if/when they use magic, but then only have them roll for it, if/when it's fun. I actually had a character in a game recently who I wanted to roll for an endurance contest, because she'd had a very, very long day, and still had a potentially long way to go. The contest punctuated that.

So throw in a contest to see if somebody is injured by their magic when they're doing some casting before a fight or something. Basically where it would have some really interesting effect in the original system, or just strikes you as the right time to do it. But don't make it systemic.

4. For the healing problem, solve this simply by not having any place where magic provides "just healing." Yes, the D20 system probably has "Cure Light Wounds" or the like, and HQ seems to have generic healing abilities. Just chuck all of that. It doesn't match any fantasy world that I know of. Have some healing abilities, but make them very specific. That is, you should have "Close Bleeding Wound" and "Mend Bone" and "Restore Feeling" or whatever. Just don't have any magic that's "Heal Wound." Basically you can expand healers a lot by doing this, and give characters all sorts of little interesting first aid abilities without allowing them to all be the equivalent of surgeons. When you give a wound, just give it some character, and you'll know whether the magic in question applies.

If you then make few to no cults that provide wide ranges of healing magic, then you'll never have a group that's proof against being hurt.

Mike

[Janus]

Thanks a lot for all the suggestions, pointers and food for thought. I will probably look into it in more detail this week end since it seems this week will be hell at work :(

Tapping into other creatures' essences is mentioned on p. 155 (right column), but I can't find actual rules for it. Which is odd because I'm almost certain I was talking about tapping mechanics with people at a rainy bus stop only the other day. I'll try to find out the specifics and post them.  Or maybe others can point you to where those rules exist, if they are official.

Oh yeah, I think the rules for it are on page 173, under Using Essence.
BTW, what would tapping relate to in Midnight?

I'd make Channeler an occupation. Basically like spirit talkers, priests or wizards. Maybe even use those occupations, depending on what sort of magic/religion the individual channeler follows. Wizards make for almost perfect hermetic channelers, for instance.

Reading the old post it seems you were against using Animism and Wizardry, pretty much for the same reason as me (they seem needlessly complicated). What made you change your mind?

Defeinietly something you need to decide (agree with your players) before you start play: wether to focus on survival (how to elude capture/starvation from day to day) or on the heroism (i.e. player choices on the many tricky and difficult choices presented in the setting).

I think I will start with a focus on survival because I'm interested in the interaction with the common folks and it should give the players a feeling about what state the world of Midnight is in and how it differs from other fantasy settings. As the novelty wear off and survival is not an issue anymore (e.g. if the PCs join a faction that can support them or if they built their own faction), I will switch toward a more heroic game.

2. I really have to read channeling to get it. But I can make arguments for any of the modes for it - and all of them. Including theism. The "God" in the case of theism is Aryth. That said, I think this really argues more for a monotheist religion with Aryth being the source of the magic that they all use. Hermetic is, of course, definitely this way (Wizardry). If the setting says that there are no spellbooks that you cast from (though we know there are books), then simply have all schools teach individual spells.

I would define channeling in HQ term as magic from the mortal world, so common magic of sorts. The tricky thing is that Midnight also has innate magic (heroic paths for the PC, spell-like abilities for various creatures) which is like HQ's innate magic. Personally I see innate magic as something that flows from you and channelling as something you channel/coerce from the world.

So, to clarify:
Charismatic = Theist
Hermetic = Wizardry
Spiritual = Animism

I think I might just go for that as ways of learning magic keywords/spells, but I don't think I will adopt all the mechanism of Wizardy and Animism; all the schools, saints, orders, practices, liturgies, fetch, charms, focus, talismans, etc. etc. etc. seems like a lot of overhead for quick play (and a lot to fit in my tired brain). It probably add a lot of flavor if one is into shamanism or detailed spellcasting, but I'm not sure I want to go into this unless a player is realy enthusiastic about it. The nice thing I guess is even if I streamline it, I can always make it more complex later if a player is interested by more detail.
I guess that's why I like the theism system best: it's simple and straighforward, just affinities and feats (which may or may not be improvised).

For the charismatic I will use the affinity/feat system but it won't be of theist nature, I will use Midnight's explanation of the character extracting the world's power through sheer will. As you said, for   Hermetic and Spiritual traditions, Sorcery and Animism are right on the money (tho all the otherworld stuff goes away.)

I probably wouldn't even make any of them Misapplied Worship, but you could do that if you wanted to make one of these the "right" way to channel Ayrth (or to simulate something from the setting that says that one or more of these is particularly hard to do).

Actually, I will make the three traditions of channeling misapplied worships for several reasons:
1) I don't want players to be able to concentrate them so they are more expensive to raise. Magic is rare and hard to come by in Midnight for the good guys. (The evil priests are using proper theist magic from their god and not channeling.)
2) As mentioned above, I think of channeling as a form of misapplied worship of innate magic, taking by force what was not freely given to you.
3) Astiraxes can detect channeled magic but not innate magic nor divine (theist) magic... so what if the in-game explanation was that they can detect misapplied worship effects? I think it fits nicely.

So simply inform players that they might get bad things happening to them if/when they use magic, but then only have them roll for it, if/when it's fun.

Excellent point, I will do exactly that. Also not having written number of points/usage per day might in fact make players use less magic (rather than 'oh I can use it two more time today, let's not waste it by not using it!').

4. For the healing problem, solve this simply by not having any place where magic provides "just healing." Yes, the D20 system probably has "Cure Light Wounds" or the like, and HQ seems to have generic healing abilities. Just chuck all of that. It doesn't match any fantasy world that I know of. Have some healing abilities, but make them very specific.

Interesting suggestion, though I'm not sure I want fragment things too much. I might just do some wound trait for wounded characters and replace the default 14 resistance with that (and given your level of victory you heal more or less... with risk of backlash if you fail... not to mention the risk of being detected.)

Again, thanks tons for all the suggestions / comments / ideas. It's most helpful.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

I will probably look into it in more detail this week end

Ok, I'll hold most of my comments until you come back and say you've had the time to look at this properly.

Reading the old post it seems you were against using Animism and Wizardry, pretty much for the same reason as me (they seem needlessly complicated). What made you change your mind?

Read the second thread Mike linked to. If you are still not convinced, ask again.

Note that when I made my first post (Mike's first link), I had hardly played any HQ yet (which is the case for you right now, yes?);  and by the time Mike and I had that long discussion (second link), I'd seen only a bit of theism in play and nothing else.

I think I will start with a focus on survival because I'm interested in the interaction with the common folks and it should give the players a feeling about what state the world of Midnight is in and how it differs from other fantasy settings. As the novelty wear off and survival is not an issue anymore (e.g. if the PCs join a faction that can support them or if they built their own faction), I will switch toward a more heroic game.

You're not getting my point. Or perhaps I'm not getting yours. What I'm saying has nothing to do with whether the characters interact with "common folk" or famous rebellion leaders or prestigious Shadow Church prelates or whoever. In HQ you can always have the characters get involved with people of any sort, whatever their social importance or highest ability rating. Also, nothing to do with whether you start the characters out in a comparatively safe position or desperate, hunted and on the run.

It's all about what you want your players to concern themselves with. Do you want them to worry in detail about how long their water will last, how quickly the fish they caught will rot in their backpacks, how many miles they can walk in a day and still fight at the end of it? That's the surivial angle. Or do you want to face them with questions like "Do we go to Izrador Church service to help maintain the cover of our host in this town, even though they'll make us witness a human sacrifice to the evil god? - Do we free those prisoners even though it'll likely trigger cruel retribution against the surrounding villages? - Do we blow up the temple in that town loyal to the Shadow even though it has a school inside it? - Do we stop to help these desperate villagers against this rampaging orc patrol even though it'll slow us down and may mean we don't get to our rendezvous point with another rebellion member on time?"  Stuff like that. See what I'm saying?

To make things more dramatic you can always include some survival issue when it's dramatically relevant, even in a heroic game. So, let's say they have freed those prisoners and behind them the villages are burning and the orcs are hot on their trail. The prisoners are waekened from maltreatment by orcs and one of them is a scribe and no good at running anyway, so tehy are slowing their rescuers down.
All this is the result of the contest or contests around freeing the prisoners and getting away. You fast-forward from the moment the PCs get away with the prisoners to "Three days later..."
One of the player characters has had a poisoned orc arrow through the leg (again, a result of a previous contest) and now, on the third day of running, he breaks down in a horrible fever no one knows how to treat and has to be either carried or left behind.  They're running out of arrows and now, of course, is the moment when their water runs out. Not because you've been working out how long water should really last or anything, not because you've been mentioning water and not because the players have decided to have their characters take water for two days only, not three (all this would have been important right from the start if you wanted to play with a focus on survival), it comes up only now because it's kind of plausible and very dramatic to happen just now, to bring things to a dramatic climax.
There's a rebellion-friendly NPC in a village to the south, a cousin of one of the player characters. But will they risk going there and drawing pursuit to her?  It's just an example, but do you see what I mean? Present players with a situation like that and you'll get the most awesome things happening. They may go to the village.  They may leave the prisoners (and the wounded PC?) behind to save themselves. Someone may volunteer to stop behind and fight a last-stand action. Or any number of other incredibly cool things, including someone pretending to switch sides and "arresting" his friends just as they are about to be overtaken by the orcs.

Ok, I'm biased. :-) Personally I find the heroic stuff much, much more interesting. You and your group may not be into that.  But if you find this sort of thing inteeresting like me, and your only reason for the survival angle is to give players a taste of what life in MN is like, then you don't need a focus on "survival". You can always have villagers come to the characters entreating them for their aid. Probably some of the characters' relations are common folk, aren't they? Or ever watched Seven Samurai? "Drunk orc deserters are rampaging and killing in our village, please help!" - "They've taken my only daughter away, please help!" - "The legates have taken all our food stores for the winter, we're going to starve unless you raid that caravan for us!" - "Please brother, you must come and revenge our mother and father! We will show you where that legate stays overnightand make sure his guards have more than enough to drink." Or maybe the player characters have to hide in a hole underneath someone's barn until the pursuing orcs give up looking. And the longer they stay the more desperate the situation for the villagers becomes: they don't have enough food to feed rebels as well as themselves, and their very presence may mean a horrible death to many in the village, if they are discovered. 

Any clearer now? The question you need to answer is whether you want to play Midnight because it's hard for characters to survive in that one and because it'll mean thinking a lot aboutday-to-day survival stuff. Or whether you want to play Midnight because being a freedom fighter in Midnight presents you with tough, tough choices and rewards that only come in the form of some people's gratitude (and other people's hatred), and the knowledge that you've done right.  And please don't say "both". You need to choose which of these should take centre stage and which is going to have the supporting role. Only if you do that will you get the most out of the setting and the game.


Kerstin

[Mike Holmes]

BTW, what would tapping relate to in Midnight?

I think a lot of stuff, depending on how closely you want to look at some things. For example, it seems to me that in some ways most magic is about tapping Aryth. That is, it seems to me that, because there is no access to magic from an otherworld, that the only way to get essence for magic is to tear it from something. And the bad guys use all sorts of tapping it seems to me - as I mentioned with vampires, consider all forms of undead draining to be tapping. And I'm sure that the bad guys steeped in magic drain victims to power their magic. Etc, etc.

Broadly speaking, tapping is any sort of magical operation that involves getting energy from some other entity against it's will.

Reading the old post it seems you were against using Animism and Wizardry, pretty much for the same reason as me (they seem needlessly complicated). What made you change your mind?

Like Kerstin says, read the post. You may not be convinced. But here's the salient point. What makes magic "magical" is having some meaning behind the magic. That is, if you can just use it at will without any worry of where it's coming from, or the demands made on you, then it's not very interesting, just another set of abilities. What's important is to have the relationship abilities that come with the various keywords, and relate to each group of magical abilities.

For theism, it's all about not only what god you worship, but what aspect of the god, and subcults, heroes of the god, etc. For each such entity providing one or more affinities or even lone feats (some subcults and hero cults), you have to have a relationship to the entity representing your worship of that entity. For an animist, all you have, really, is relationships with various spirits who then have the power to help the character with their supernatural powers. For wizardry, using a grimoire means understanding the work and, to an extent then, the nature of the person who created it, and how it's linked to essence.

See how these are all subtly different? In point of fact, the mechanics of them work very similarly - each relationship tends to give you one group of magic abilities. The only real difference is what sort of mundane world associations you have to have in order to be taught the magic, and what otherworldly powers you have to understand or relate to in order to be allowed to use the magic (or have it be used on your behalf).

From a very broad template of how to make magic keywords, don't think of it so much as animism, theism, wizardry, but just use those as suggestions if you like. The real questions for a type of magic are:

1. From who do I learn how to get the magic? What religion or culture do I have to belong to in order for it to be available, and then what do I have to join from that? Who are the members of the group that bestow the magic? What do they require of people to get the magic? What will they teach along with the magic?

2. From what do I actually get the magic? What is the nature of these powers? How do they relate to people, or how are they understood? What sort of behavior will make these powers more likely to give me the magic?

3. Given an entity or power that will allow me to use magic, how much magic do I get, and how is it "organized?" What sorts of characteristics do the powers tend to have? What's required to be on hand do the magic?

Answer these questions, and then you can fill in a Keyword template for the magic in question. Here's a generalized one:

Homeland/Religion: What cultures have this sort of magic (if types are broadly available, then make the types of magic available entries in the homeland/religion entries instead.
Entry Requirements: How do you get into the organization? Who do you have to be in order to be allowed in?
Relationships: Who does one learn from? Who does one learn with? What organization does everybody fall under?
Personality Traits (AKA Virtues): What traits are considered important to either being able to learn the nature of the magic, or are sought by the entities that would give the magic?
Abilities: What are you taught by the organization as you learn the magic? Usually includes knowledge of the powers that will be bestowing the magic on you, and the ability to see the magic in question (not all magic, but just magic from these powers, and those like it).
Source: Where does the magic come from, what sort of mystical place? What sort of powers reside there?
Magic Requirements: What sorts of things must be present with the person seeking to use the magic in order to do it?
Magic: What groups of magic are available, and what do they include? How are individual magic abilities available? What additional relationships does a person get if they expand from the basic knowledge?


Yes, you can use Affinities/Feats for everything, and get away with it. In fact, you can drop the Affinities if you like, and just have the character pick up abilities (paying one HP to improvise a new ability from the keyword if/when appropriate). The structures that HQ provides simply organize the data in a way that give you a feel for what's going on with the use of magic. For instance, with animism, associating the abilities in question with each spirit indicates to the Narrator to consider the being as an NPC, and only use it's abilities to help the PC if/when it's happy with the PC.

Most other RPGs give some sort of lip service to all of this stuff. We understand that druids are talking to nature spirits to get the magic to happen. Priests spend time in worship off stage in order to have the grace that allows them to channel their diety. Wizards spend time reading to better understand their craft, and pay dues to the guild. But the problem is that none of this ever really enters play. It's all assumed background, and in effect, magic abilities have very little context in play.

When you add the mechanical enumerations for the abilities, however, suddenly it all changes. When a character augments his feat with his relationship to the deity, suddenly we understand the importance of those prayers. When a spirit decides it doesn't want to help, we understand the failure of the animist to take into account the will of the spirit in question. When a wizard augements his individual spell with his knowledge of it from a grimoire, we see how his studies affect what he can do.

Chuck those distinctions, and everything starts to blur somewhat. Just make sure that the magic you set up allows the background themes to come through in it's use. So it can remain magical.

I guess that's why I like the theism system best: it's simple and straighforward, just affinities and feats (which may or may not be improvised).

Actually, the others are just as simple taken individually. That is:

Theism
Initiate: Affinities, Improvise Defined Feats at Penalty
Devotee: Affinities, Defined Feats, Improvise Feats

Animism:
Practitioner: Fetishes, Charms
Shaman: Fetch, Fetishes, Charms

Wizardry
Apprentice: Spells
Wizard: Grimoires, Spells

Liturgist: Scriptures
Orderlies: Formularies


All you're saying is that you'd like to have just one method of enumeration to cover them all, which I can understand. And, hey, if the description of a form of magic seems to be like Affinities, then go for it. You can mix and match the elements of a keyword. But the key is to have a structure that informs the players about how the keyword elements all relate to each other.

For the charismatic I will use the affinity/feat system but it won't be of theist nature,

Again, I have no problem with this if it represents things "accurately" to you. That is, "theist nature" is really all about what sort of power you get the magic from. The key with Channeling is that the entity in question that you're getting the power from is Aryth. Just make sure that the character has a relationship with that of some sort. Or, at the very least some skill that makes the character understand what they are doing. This, more than the risk of harm, is what'll bring out the themes behind this sort of magic.

As you said, for Hermetic and Spiritual traditions, Sorcery and Animism are right on the money (tho all the otherworld stuff goes away.)

Sooo...spirits will have affinities? You'll treat grimoires like affinities? Is that what you're getting at? If you feel that, in fact, this matches the themes of the magic, go ahead and use these mechanics. But consider that it's just not hard at all to simply label things somewhat differently with the only slightly different game mechanics.

Actually, I will make the three traditions of channeling misapplied worships for several reasons:
1) I don't want players to be able to concentrate them so they are more expensive to raise. Magic is rare and hard to come by in Midnight for the good guys. (The evil priests are using proper theist magic from their god and not channeling.)
2) As mentioned above, I think of channeling as a form of misapplied worship of innate magic, taking by force what was not freely given to you.

The problem I have with Misapplied Worship, generally, is that HP are supposed to be a completely metagame structure. Yes, this will make the players feel that magic is hard to get. It'll also make them never raise their magical abilities, unless the player is really devoted to them. Why raise your "Strength Spell" when you can raise your Strong for half the cost? They have pretty much exactly the same mechanical effect. What Missapplied Worship does is to penalize players for having interesting character concepts.

If you want this stuff to be thematically presented in the in-game presentation, simply have hard contests to get the abilities. Make hard contests to get into magic organizations. Make the repercussions of casting occasionally dire. These things will more than get the idea across. And still allow players to play the unusual heroes that are fun to play. I think it's really bad form to dangle interesting character ideas in front of players, and then penalize them for taking them. Penalize the characters, not the players.

3) Astiraxes can detect channeled magic but not innate magic nor divine (theist) magic... so what if the in-game explanation was that they can detect misapplied worship effects? I think it fits nicely.

You can still think of it this way. That is, call it missapplied if it makes thematic sense, and apply bonuses and penalties in contests where it makes sense. Just don't charge double the players points for a player who's doing you the favor of asking for trouble for his character.

Excellent point, I will do exactly that. Also not having written number of points/usage per day might in fact make players use less magic (rather than 'oh I can use it two more time today, let's not waste it by not using it!').

This is sooo true. Deterministic systems always have the "use em or lose em" phenomenon. Leading to the question, "Why, in worlds where a first level MU can cast one Continual Light a day, is not the whole world lit up with permenant light?" When you make the introduction of penalties for magic random such that you can have bad things happen even on the first use - if there's a cost to using magic other than just a day of preparation - then it'll only get used when and where it's truely important.

Interesting suggestion, though I'm not sure I want fragment things too much. I might just do some wound trait for wounded characters and replace the default 14 resistance with that (and given your level of victory you heal more or less... with risk of backlash if you fail... not to mention the risk of being detected.)

Everything else is "fragmented" that much. Consider that the only reason that healing is not more fragmented is the old D&Dish idea that wounds are just some stackable generic "damage" to the character. So you only need a generic spell to fix it, since there's no way of otherwise discriminating between sorts of damage.

Consider that in "fixes" of D&D as early as Rolemaster, where you get specific sorts of wounding, that magic systems suddenly do "fragment" to cover different sorts of wounds. It's thematically relevant. It's so much more fun to have spells like "Stop the Bleeding" than "Heal Wound." Note how with diseases and other maladies than wounds, this is automatically true? Stop Fever. Cure Chills. Heal Frostbite. No Cure Disease.

I'm not saying you can't ever have it, either. Maybe in your vision, the ability of a paladin sort of character can, in fact, heal any wound. So you give that to them. But when looking at what abilities you give what characters simply consider that generalized healing might not be as interesting or thematically potent as having more specific abilities.

The 14 default for magic thing is a whole 'nother story... I'm not sure we want to get into that here.

Mike

[Scripty]

Some Tapping rules are in the back of the Midnight-HeroQuest conversion. The answer I got from the Yahoo HQ-rules group was that HQ rules hadn't covered Tapping yet (at least not in a post-Hero Wars fashion) but would in an upcoming release.

So, some of the participants on that forum shared how they use Tapping and what rules have worked for them. Those posts made it into the conversion, albeit in an appendix.

Kerstin's right about the Survival vs. Heroism thing. It's possible to be heroic in the face of survival and it's possible to do the survival thing for a while in an heroic game, but one of them will eventually have to become the dominant theme.

As far as handling channeling, the implementation I have in Midnight-HQ is functional but complex as hell (Primary Magic?! What was I thinking?). In the revision of Midnight-HQ, magic is a lot simpler. I learned a great deal from running some games and playing in Mike's ShadowWorld game. Much of that is reflected in the revision.

QuestWorlds will also have a major influence on whatever form the revision of Midnight-HQ takes.

Scott

[Scripty]

Regarding the "Is this Animism, Theism or Wizardry?" and the question of misapplied worship in Midnight...

I'm not a big fan of trying to apply Gloranthan cosmology onto the world of Midnight. I think Mike and Kerstin have had very insightful discussions on the matter in the past and have successfully found a middle ground where Glorantha's Otherworlds meet Midnight's setting.

But it's not a route I would choose to go. I view it as a kind of metaphysical rabbit hole. Take that for what it's worth.

If you're going to run Midnight in HQ, my suggestion would be to not worry about misapplied worship, concentrating magic, otherworlds, etc. etc. If those questions come up in play, it's possible to address them at that time if you so choose.

I know that runs completely counter to what's in the conversion, but...

I hate to keep pointing to a revision that no one has access to. It's a total cop-out and I know that. So I found a portion of a post between myself, Bruce Ferrie and Bankuei on a zip drive that served as the foundation for what I've cobbled together in the revision. I don't have a copy of the revision on this computer and, to be honest, it's nowhere near complete. But hopefully, this can be enough to get your thoughts swirling on the matter...

Me:
One of the things I have in my Midnight-HQ conversion was a Spell Drain mechanic, that might help out with what you're talking about.

Basically, the negative consequences of a failed spell attempt were applied to the spellcaster's ability to cast future spells. This "damage" to spellcasting ability worked like any other type of damage and was healed normally too.

To mirror the atypical D&D wizard, you might give him something like a "Cast Arcane Spells 17" ability. Make the spells themselves have ratings too, based on their level. Pick whatever multiplier or rating makes sense to you for a particular level but I'd say the spells themselves should only augment the "Cast Arcane Spells" ability when cast on the fly. You could make some sort of rule where a Wizard with the appropriate components and enough time to cast a full-blown ritual could use the rating of the spell actively. That could be neat.

Spell Drain works like this. If the spell attempt is successful, then the damage or whatnot is applied from the results on the chart as per vanilla HQ. If the spell attempt is a failure, then the consequences come out of the "Cast Arcane Spells" ability. So if our Wizard got a Marginal Failure on an attempt to cast magic missile, his "Cast Arcane Spells" ability would drop to 16. If he got a minor failure, it would drop to 15.

Wizards could "heal" their spellcasting ability through study/meditation/whatever but there'd be no first aid for them or magical healing (unless you want that kind of thing). They'd have to heal through the appropriate ability and the passage of time. A spellcaster that suffered a complete defeat would be pretty ganked for a while.

To power up the magic to your typical D&D fire-and-fawhoom levels, have the default resistance to magic (14) apply to everything except contests resisted by another magical ability, a personality trait or a relationship. Basically, make it so that mundane abilities can't be used to resist magic. So the Half-Orc with "Tough 1w" under his race would be out of luck unless his Toughness was magical in nature. Better yet, make it so that the default resistance applies to everything except contests resisted by another magical ability or a relationship.

That would be quite a tweak. You might also want to increase Spell Drain, such that every casting takes 1 off Spell Drain in addition to any negative consequences of a failed contest. That sort of gives the feel of a fire-and-forget system.

There are other approaches, of course, and Mike touches on a couple of them. You can have spell failure directly affect the health (or some other status) of the caster. You can also enforce the -1 to Health (or whatnot) even if the spell is successful. Either model (draining a Spell casting ability or directly draining health) serves the Channeling paradigm fairly well, IMO.

As far as Tapping goes, I think it has a limited application to Midnight. Either an evil Channeler who heals his casting ability by Tapping others or a good Channeler who can heal her casting ability by Tapping her own health or her memory, etc. Another idea is for a character to have a magical artifact whose ability depletion can only be corrected by Tapping someone other than its owner. Bad talisman! No doughnut!

Some of the suggestions for Tapping in the Midnight-HQ conversion might work well too. I can't remember them all. There are a couple of suggestions. I'd rather not try to paraphrase and come up completely wrong. I've done that before. It causes me pain.

Also, if you limit access to healing spells, HQ can be very, very gritty. I'm not so sure I'd try to add more grit until I'd run with a group of players in a rough-and-tumble setting with no access to magical healing. You can always add grit through "realism" as Mike points out with his mention of adding a "battle fatigue" check.

There's no reason you can't run an "Infection" check on a serious wound, for that matter. Or a "Find food and water check" at the start of each day (that of course affects all the players actions during the course of that day).

Don't be too hard on the players though. When most people hear the pitch of "Middle-Earth where Sauron won" they reflexively want to play Aragorn or Legolas, not some poor schmuck who's simultaneously being hunted by Orcs, pursued by Astiraxes and starving to death with a tree-branch for a weapon and a bad case of herpes.

Eww.

I went there so you didn't have to...

Scott

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, on the survival matters, what I'd do is intersperse contests in there. Basically do it for tone. That is, don't worry about the in-game logic of "Well today is just like yesterday when we rolled, so we must have to roll again." Instead just be arbitrary about it, "Hey, let's have a check to see how well you guys are doing food-wise! We haven't done something like that in a while."

And...I have to protest. I have not, nor have I ever said that one should project Gloranthan metaphysics on the Midnight setting. I completely agree. Where we disagree is in that you see thesim, animism and wizardry as somehow being Glorantha-only structures, whereas I see them in every setting. I can point to very specific things in Midnight that match these things. Starting grossly with the fact that even some of the terms match up. I'm really not extrapolating as far as you apparently think I am.

Further, I've gone to great lengths to talk about how even these particular structures are unneccessary, and how to replace them. So please don't paint me as the guy who wants to make Glorantha out of everything. It's not remotely accurate.

Mike

[Scripty]

And...I have to protest. I have not, nor have I ever said that one should project Gloranthan metaphysics on the Midnight setting. I completely agree. Where we disagree is in that you see thesim, animism and wizardry as somehow being Glorantha-only structures, whereas I see them in every setting. I can point to very specific things in Midnight that match these things. Starting grossly with the fact that even some of the terms match up. I'm really not extrapolating as far as you apparently think I am.

Sorry, Mike. I didn't mean to upset you. But I think my original summary remains fairly accurate. It certainly wasn't intended to paint you in any negative light and I don't really see how it does.

I'm not a big fan of trying to apply Gloranthan cosmology onto the world of Midnight. I think Mike and Kerstin have had very insightful discussions on the matter in the past and have successfully found a middle ground where Glorantha's Otherworlds meet Midnight's setting.

I was merely stating that you and Kerstin had very interesting discussions about Gloranthan cosmology and Midnight, which is true as far as I know. I was a participant in those discussions and, while I was a bit of a curmudgeon throughout, I did think that you two came up with some interesting applications of Theism, Animism and Wizardry (as well as their Otherworlds) to the Midnight setting.

I tend to call the division of magic into Theism, Animism and Wizardry and the concept of power being granted through these means from some Otherworld (and all the related bits like misapplied worship) by the term, Gloranthan Cosmology. Perhaps it was my terminology that caused the misunderstanding? Otherwise, I'm not seeing how I placed you in the role you described.

In either case, the statement I made was not intended in the manner which your protest protests. Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I tried to be very clear with my summary. It was actually a compliment to the work you and Kerstin had done. Though I didn't (and don't) agree with the application of Otherworlds and Gloranthan magical methodologies to the setting of Midnight, I can certainly note good ideas when I see them. And those conversations between you two were a well-spring of good ideas.

The fact that my statement did not effectively convey my admiration for those brainstorming exercises is likely my fault. I'll make every effort to be clearer. Sorry if you felt my own feelings on the matter colored you in a bad light.

Scott

Here's the thread I'm referencing... Great ideas here... And I pop in once in a while to play Oscar the Grouch...

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14467.0

And, for the record, I do think Animism works for Midnight. Everything else I'd treat according to the model for Theism (Affinities/Feats) but I'd drop all the rest. If a Narrator does not feel so inclined, then the link I supplied will lead to a thread that does an exceptional job of taking another route, thanks in no small part to the contributions of Mike Holmes and Kerstin.

Not saying that either of them advocates applying Gloranthan Magic and Otherworlds across all settings, I can't speak for that. But in this instance, in this setting, I think they do a bang-up job. And, if you don't agree with what I say about Magic in Midnight, the least I can do is point you to the very best opposing position known to the Forge. And there it is.

No insult, defamation or misrepresentation intended.

[Mike Holmes]

Scott, you're putting me in a tough position. Is it possible for you to try to ignore any emotional content that you might percieve in the next section? And just focus on what I'm saying?

What I object to, very specifically, is, in fact:

I tend to call the division of magic into Theism, Animism and Wizardry and the concept of power being granted through these means from some Otherworld (and all the related bits like misapplied worship) by the term, Gloranthan Cosmology.

Not because you're being innaccurate (that is, in fact, the Gloranthan Cosmology), but what it implies. That using these structures in another world is somehow imposing Gloranthan standards on that other world.

1. Scott needs water.
2. Trees need water.
3. Therefore Scott is a tree.

See the fallacy involved? Just because a good general description of religion happens to apply to Glorantha, applying it to another world does not mean that this makes the other place in any way Gloranthan. No moreso than the fact that both you and a tree need water makes you a tree.

I think this is critically important because I see many people rejecting this good overall description of religion because they see it as being specific to Glorantha. Which it is simply not.

So I don't find "a middle ground where Glorantha's Otherworlds meet Midnight's setting." I find where the very cool general description of how magic works as described in the Hero Quest rules system applies to Midnight. Until that's the rhetoric that gets used, I'm going to constantly get the "Well, but I don't want the Glorantha stuff in my world" when I'm showing somebody how to use wizardry to emulate their D&D spell system.

In fact, what I've found is that when you take away the Glorantha assumptions that are not built into the HQ system, but imposed over the system by what we know of the in-game setting, I find that the HQ magic system works even better as written than it does for Glorantha.

For instance, let's look at misapplied worship. We both dislike it, but it's there because Greg has made some statements about the "reality" of the beings worshiped in Glorantha. If we state that another setting has no such hard rules about such reality, then suddenly there is never any reason to use misapplied worship.

But that's just about ignoring a particular rule - I can give you a direct positive benefit. As it stands all of the interpretations that I get about Glorantha say that you largely should never be able to get magic from more than one otherworld type of specialized magic (even the "exception" the Lunar Way is being "fixed" with regards to this as we speak). Which is really problematic, since it means that the Concentration rule is pointless. If we can't actually get magic from another otherworld (or never need it in the case of Common Magic), then why would anyone fail to concentrate? Why penalize yourself for having an ability you can't use?

If I put the system in another world where there are no such in-game restrictions against characters gaining specialized magic from otherworlds other than their own, suddenly concentration has thematic weight to it again, and becomes a consideration.

The more I apply the general magic rules of Hero Quest to settings other than Glorantha, the more I realize how well they describe the magic of any setting. So the system is only "Gloranthan" in that it happens in the rules to be applied to Glorantha. An accident of coincidence. Yes that was the intent to emulate Glorantha, but what they got was something more.

Now, you may disagree with me, or maybe you agree. I'm not sure. But I don't think that we disagree that there is some use in using these magic descriptions for other settings in some cases. All I'm trying to do is put out a bit of propaganda to say that people shouldn't fear the "Gloranthaness," because it's irrelevant. That is, I'm not even trying to correct you on anything, Scott. I'm just trying to get the idea across to other folks who might be reading.

Mike

[Scripty]

Mike:

I think that whether or not brainstorming on how the magic systems in HeroQuest might apply to a setting constitutes applying Gloranthan Cosmology to a given setting is a bit out of scope for this topic. Also, whether using the term, "Glorantha", when referring to such a process is a good or a bad thing is really a value judgement that far exceeds the intent and wording of either of my posts.

I use the term, "Gloranthan Cosmology", to describe exactly what I said. Nowhere do I imply, much less actually state, that using this framework makes a setting more or less "Gloranthan" anymore than eating Italian food makes me more or less Italian.

What I do see happening here, though, is that you're setting me up as a Straw Man. Basically, you're implying, assuming or outright saying that I'm of a certain opinion based on your desire to have a dissenting opinion to strike down.

For example, where I say "apply", you say I meant "impose". Where I say "apply Gloranthan cosmology onto the world of Midnight", you further assume I'm painting you as a person who applies "Gloranthan cosmology" to all settings. Even though I specifically mention only one setting. And making such a statement about you would be so patently and obviously false that my nose would grow an inch for every letter I typed trying to make it.

While I'm not in agreement with everything you're saying in your last post, I can state that your opinions are valid enough without having to resort to this sort of argumentative prestidigitation. I would be upset about you casting your inferences, assumptions and opinions about what I'm saying as my actual position if the whole thing wasn't so ludicrous.

I've been made into this sort of blow-up, debate punching doll. Assign me whatever opinion strikes your fancy.

My whole point, in it's abridged, blunt and truthful entirety was this...

"I don't agree with trying to figure out where the magic systems in HeroQuest (Gloranthan Cosmology, if you will) can or should fit into the Midnight setting. But Mike and Kerstin did a brainstorm on that a while back and had some great ideas on the topic."

The only value judgements I'm making are:

A) I don't agree with this approach
B) Others have good ideas about it

My agreement or disagreement is irrelevant to the merit of your opinions, insomuch as your opinions are valid and truthful (which they are).

My position on your last post is the same mixture of agreement and disagreement, as might be considered healthy between two lucid individuals capable of critical thought. But I think both topics exceed the purpose of this thread (a Midnight/Heroquest conversion). I'd be willing to join you on another thread, if you like. But I don't have much to say on either topic.

I don't see labelling a cosmology as "Gloranthan Cosmology" as slandering or somehow tainting either the cosmology or the magic system therein. And my disagreement on the topic of "find(ing) where the very cool general description of how magic works as described in the Hero Quest rules system applies to Midnight (or another setting)" is so minor as to be hardly worth posting.

Sorry for the let down but I can't be expected to take up every banner that's thrown into my hand.

Scott

[Scripty]

Hi Mike:
Rereading my last post, I came to the conclusion that my choice of wording comes across a bit harsh. That's not my intent. I'm really not upset or anything and I don't want to get you in an emotional state either. But I do think that your correspondence with me has moved beyond the topic and content of my original post.

I think that the issues you raise in your post deserve their own threads. Perhaps three.

Scott