Failure means conflict

Fred, that would be a far better rule than the current one in which the GM can just decide when the villains have HP. I wonder about the "incest" problem here - can the player spend that HP immediately to bump back? If that's the case, then really what we're talking about here is getting one HP to take a worse result. As opposed to getting one HP when the narrator takes a liberty.

Interestingly, however, the player can't spend it if he already has a crit. Hmmm.

I do have good players, but this isn't luck, either. I don't select people to play entirely randomly - the populations from which I get players tend to share my ideals of play. Or they show themselves to be capable of being open-minded and/or thoughtful players.

Anyhow, I agree with Jane, actually, that players will tend to focus on the setting links presented on the character sheet unless, as you've surmised, a previous RQ background or such has trained them that this stuff is, in fact, fodder for the GM to trap players into situations that they don't want to be in. As I always say, 67.8% of all RPG characters are orphans (and 24.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot). There's a reason for this.

If you do as Jane says ("And she can hit!"), and follow what the players are doing as the source of adventure ideas, then they are informed that play is about these things instead of getting around these things. I can't state that emphatically enough. Play of this sort works best when it's not "about" anything but the characters issues. Oh, there can be things going on in the background - there might even be a war on. But that's not what the stories told are about. We focus on what the character's problems are, and all else is background.

Anyhow, I'm glad I've been able to make clear the way that we play HQ, and why it works for us. And why I think it's problematic for RQ players who haven't "converted." I'd agree with you that there's sort of a learning curve, but if you want to come over and play in my IRC game, or play with anybody else who plays this way, that you'll be done with the learning curve by the end of the session.

Because it's really all about trust. Do you trust that the GM isn't really out to get ya? Or that the other players aren't competing with you to have the Kewlest character? As soon as you feel that trust it's all downhill. That includes trusting yourself, too.

Larry, if I had come up with these ideas on my own, I'd be grinning like a Cheshire Cat with pride. But the fact is that I didn't, I'm just parroting what others have said before me. That said, it is a big thing, and once you start employing this technique, you'll find all sorts of other things fall into place.

That's what I really like about these techniques, in fact, that they're not vague artistic suggestions. "Be a good storyteller..." whatthehell does that mean, and how do I do it? "Figure out a conflict that can emerge from the character's failure," on the other hand, is a clear instruction that I can follow.

Don't get me wrong, this stuff still requires practice. Took me a long time to start putting these things into anything like regular use. You'll note (or at least I did) that I bungled a few of these things on my game when I ran for you guys in Minnesota. I probably give the impression that I use these techniques to great effect constantly, from how I post about them.

The truth is that I'm constantly forgetting to put these principles into play. What tells me that they're really potent is that on the relatively few occasions that I do remember to do everything right, it works out excellently well. That's what's cool about it. Using this stuff, the baseline inexperienced GM can do just fine, and everyone can have fun, without much effort at all. With practice it only gets better and better.

Mike