[HQ] Dark Ages - historical narrativism

[droog]

I've been working up to playing a game set in the 'real' 5th century AD for quite some time. It all started with Pendragon, which, while I enjoyed the schlocky mix of epochs, made me think about a more historical version. I read and read and made notes and wrote a conversion for Pendragon, which I then abandoned for HeroQuest. I started a thread here to talk about approaches

I have files full of notes and a small library of books for this game, but this afternoon when I sat down to pull things together for the game I realised that most of the enormous mass of my prep (literally years of work) was still for a Pendragon game.

PD is a game about locations; nodes of pre-programmed adventure that activate when a knight comes near. It's about carefully plotted histories and witnessing great events; about stitching your character into the tapestry of Arthuriana. So my prep was mainly timelines, adventure seeds and lists of locations. It was literally modelled on PD supplements like Pagan Shore.

You could try to run 'PD in HQ', but I don't know how it would go. They're entirely different systems, to say the least. What I wanted to do was full Nar mode as pushed by Mike Holmes and others. So I ditched about 99% of my prep and went with a relationship map I'd made of a novel (name withheld, Claire) and Bankuei's flag framing notation. Thanks for that, Chris. It worked a treat. Tough with five players, though, to enmesh them all. Possibly it was a mistake not to control chargen a bit more to give them stronger reasons to be acting in concert.

I ran a bit of an extended contest to demonstrate the system, but everything else we did tonight was simple contests. I threw them together at a gathering of tribal warriors round Uther Pendragon with various things going on and tried to get them acting while teaching the system. I really think HQ must be one of the easiest and most intuitive systems around, because I'm sure that everybody got it very easily with no trouble at all. We had religious conflict going off, with the Christian clergyman trying to bless and pray (and Speak in Tongues) while the Roman pagan tried to stare him down and the Irish druid sang satires to distract him. Nice stuff that came quite naturally out of the players. Interestingly, religious strife wasn't a major theme in the original novel.

I'm letting the players set the level of magic in the game. Several people have taken 'magical' abilities, and one has fairy blood. I'm thinking that we'll treat it ad hoc and subject to group approval on just how wild we want to get, so essentially I'm removing any special characteristics of magical abilities other than their narrative function. It seems to be working so far, with the haruspex reading entrails and people augmenting with charms.

So a good game tonight, thanks to a bit of story now. Pretty much what I was after when I conceived it, and you can't ask for more than that.

[droog]

And a postscript: two techniques I learnt to use methodically from Dogs and applied liberally in this game were say yes or roll the dice and have the NPCs spill their guts.

[Mike Holmes]

I like this post because, first, it's about using HQ for a non-Gloranthan world (a subject near and dear to me), and second, it's a positive play post.

I think you're very wise to use Vincent's techniques here. I forgot the "spill guts" one last night, and had a scene go too long because of it.

I think that potentially the most interesting thing you cited was that religion became an issue despite it not being an issue in the source material. I have a kneejerk desire to defend HQ against people who might jump on this and say "See, HQ makes everything about religion!" But let's examine it in detail. Was it the mechanical emphasis on religion that got them going, do you think? Or do you think that the players simply found this part of their characters worth extra investigation?

Mike

[droog]

Good question, and one I wondered about too. I set the keywords up as Culture, Religion and Occupation, so it was always my thought that there might be some cultural/religious clash. And we do seem to getting shifting patterns of alliance depending on the two and depending on the conflict.

I left character generation fairly wide open (in my hubris), and we ended up with a Roman pagan, an Irish pagan, and three Britons: Roman Christian, Celtic Christian and pagan. Obviously the seeds are in the keywords, but I think the development came from the players. Several of them took or improved abilities with magical-religious leanings; eg Speak in Tongues, Impose Geas, Know Place of Power, a Relationship with Other Pagans.

It's clear to me that HQ is about whatever you choose to make it about, but that it carries extra oomph when what it's about is something that speaks to people.

By the way, I was gratified that the setting seemed to have sparked the imagination and interest of players. People had gone online to read about the 5th century before the game, and there were mutterings about 'doing some reading' before our next game (in a fortnight). Very cool.

[Tancred]

Sounds like a great game! I'm working on an Arthurian FATE game at the moment inspired by the Bernard Cornwell 'Warlord' trilogy, and something I'm wondering about is how easy or difficult it will be to make the setting come alive to people unfamiliar with the 5th century setting/history.

By the way, I was gratified that the setting seemed to have sparked the imagination and interest of players. People had gone online to read about the 5th century before the game, and there were mutterings about 'doing some reading' before our next game (in a fortnight). Very cool.

Was this a case of 'wow, interesting setting, wish I knew more about it to enjoy the game better' or 'wow, such a great game that I want more information now'? To what (if any) extent do you feel the players were intimidated by the historical basis of the game? If so, how did you put them at ease, any special techniques or scenes you used to provide colour and context to the setting? If not, any particular reasons for this? Previous player familiarity with the topic?

In my case I'm anticipating bewildered looks and questions of 'what's a geas?' and I'm trying to come up with an elegant way of presenting the richness of the setting to my players without scaring them off or providing information overload. It sounds like this worked very intuitively in your game. Good planning or good luck?

Cheers,

Adrian

[droog]

Hi Adrian

I started a reply to this, but then I realised that I should first ask you what it is you want out of this game. Simply, is it primarily about the setting or the characters?

Pendragon--at least the way I've run it--is a game primarily about the setting. To paraphrase Ron Edwards, we play PD in order to enter into the setting and make our own small contributions to it.

But I decided in running this game that what I wanted was to concentrate on the characters, and to use my knowledge of the setting in a looser way: to provide colour, to generate appropriate conflict for the PCs, to be a source of archetypes and symbols and iconic NPCs.

For instance, I had done masses of research on the 'historical' Arthur and placed him in Cornwall, born at a certain time. Due to player choices and my own last minute (Nar-focused) prep, I shifted him on the spot to Wales and put him a few decades earlier. No problem. He became a colourful and premise-rich NPC.

Thus, in presenting the setting to players I am continually trying to think in terms of literature, and how setting might be presented in a novel--which is to say, in a fragmentary, poetic way; to reinforce character. Never as its own end (when setting is being presented as its own end, you can be sure it's a second-rate novel).

One doesn't get intimidated by historical material in novels. On the contrary, often a historical novel drives people to read further about the period. Why is that?

Does that help at all?

[droog]

Postscript (because I always seem to have later thoughts): you asked about luck. Two things: the group is indeed well-educated as a whole and not disposed towards being intimidated, and we just finished playing Dogs in the Vineyard, so everybody is probably fired up for system-backed narrativism.

[Tancred]

Hi Adrian

I started a reply to this, but then I realised that I should first ask you what it is you want out of this game. Simply, is it primarily about the setting or the characters?

Pendragon--at least the way I've run it--is a game primarily about the setting. To paraphrase Ron Edwards, we play PD in order to enter into the setting and make our own small contributions to it.

But I decided in running this game that what I wanted was to concentrate on the characters, and to use my knowledge of the setting in a looser way: to provide colour, to generate appropriate conflict for the PCs, to be a source of archetypes and symbols and iconic NPCs.

For instance, I had done masses of research on the 'historical' Arthur and placed him in Cornwall, born at a certain time. Due to player choices and my own last minute (Nar-focused) prep, I shifted him on the spot to Wales and put him a few decades earlier. No problem. He became a colourful and premise-rich NPC.

Thus, in presenting the setting to players I am continually trying to think in terms of literature, and how setting might be presented in a novel--which is to say, in a fragmentary, poetic way; to reinforce character. Never as its own end (when setting is being presented as its own end, you can be sure it's a second-rate novel).

I'm with you on using setting knowledge in a looser way, to fuel the characters' actions with colour and appropriate conflict. Basically, I want a setup where the players are part of a diplomatic expedition on behalf of Arthur, with the setting providing issues of oaths of loyalty and clashing religious views - I want Arthur as nominally Christian, but with the PCs choosing whether they follow the old British gods or the Christian one. The situation is designed to put pressure on these loyalties and beliefs and brings in a few elements of Arthurian colour - a Maimed King and a Grail-like regenerative cauldron for example. I'm not too worried about events fitting in with a grand Arthurian story, as the situation I'm planning on is very localised. Arthur, 5th century Britain, etc. will just provide colour and context.

So I guess I could rip the situation away from the Arthurian setting and use generic fantasy without too much trouble - I'm not too concerned with where events occur (somewhere in South Wales I was thinking) or their point in an Arthurian timeline beyond it being when Arthur is trying to consolidate the Britons and unite them.

However, in order to fit their characters into an Arthurian setting the players are going to need some conception of the social setup - the role of the Celtic Church versus the druidic beliefs, notions of oath-giving and honour, etc. Just wondering on the best manner of conveying this kind of background info without intimidating or overwhelming the players.

One doesn't get intimidated by historical material in novels. On the contrary, often a historical novel drives people to read further about the period. Why is that?

Does that help at all?

Yeah, it does I think. As long as I keep things grounded in the concerns of the characters (and by extension, their players), the rest should follow along.

[beingfrank]

Ok, I'll be good and not ask which novel.  :-)

I thought it was interesting that at least two of the players came to the game with ideas for characters with strong religious connections even before we knew anything of the system, so I don't think the it's the system that inspired us.  Rafe came wanting to play a Roman omen reader/priest, and I came wanting to play a character who was a tool of other people/powers, and religion seemed a handy way to do that from the setting notes Jeff gave us all.  Maybe having just placed DitV, we're still keen on the idea of playing religious authorities?

I had a lot of fun, but I think we're still casting about to decide what it's going to be all about.  I think the religious conflict could get boring in time, since what is really is is the PCs politiking for their own ideologies.

Claire

[droog]

I was hoping a player or two might show up. I shall make a note of your comments, and act upon them in due course (hopefully before the next session).

You're right to say we don't really know what it's about yet. At the moment I'm in the stage of throwing things at you to see what sticks. Dogs is a hard act to follow, I realised, because the game is so focused on getting straight to the heart of the action. Many other games seem to meander by comparison. I'm conscious of having a limited amount of sessions to play with, however, so I'm trying to use all the techniques at my disposal to move things along.

[droog]

However, in order to fit their characters into an Arthurian setting the players are going to need some conception of the social setup - the role of the Celtic Church versus the druidic beliefs, notions of oath-giving and honour, etc. Just wondering on the best manner of conveying this kind of background info without intimidating or overwhelming the players.

The system helped me here. Keywords in HQ are a form of packaged information about the setting. I don't know if FATE has anything similar.

Otherwise, it's like teaching. Be on top of your material, present things in digestible chunks, try and relate your explanations to the players, use pictures. Handouts may help, but people don't always read them.

There's a tendency I've seen for people who are very familiar with a given setting to go on at great length when introducing a newb to it (which is intimidating and overwhelming). I try and do the opposite and let information out in smaller doses than the player wants. Then they keep asking.

If, instead of explaining how something works, you can demonstrate it, so much the better. How does a geas work? Slap one on a character and see.

[Nigel Evans]

This game sounds quite similar to one I've started with TSOY, albeit more historical.  Just after some Dogs too...

Details here:  http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19970.0

Religious conflict has been flagged up by my players too: the PCs include 2 druids and a pagan religious champion.  This is interesting to me, as I'm more familiar with the older arthurian literature, where religious conflict is there as a subtext but not often dealt with directly.  I'll be interested to see how it plays out.

As my game isn't paticularly historical, I have the easy option of making it up as we go along.  I have to keep my copy of Morte D'Arthur and my Pendragon stuff in a vault until the game's done, though, as not dictating setting details is quite a habit to break in running games, and I don't need any handy references helping out.

[Tancred]

The system helped me here. Keywords in HQ are a form of packaged information about the setting. I don't know if FATE has anything similar.

Otherwise, it's like teaching. Be on top of your material, present things in digestible chunks, try and relate your explanations to the players, use pictures. Handouts may help, but people don't always read them.

There's a tendency I've seen for people who are very familiar with a given setting to go on at great length when introducing a newb to it (which is intimidating and overwhelming). I try and do the opposite and let information out in smaller doses than the player wants. Then they keep asking.

If, instead of explaining how something works, you can demonstrate it, so much the better. How does a geas work? Slap one on a character and see.

FATE doesn't have the keywords, but aspects should serve a similar role. The advice to explain through demonstration is solid, I'll try and keep it to the forefront when we play/prepare.

Thanks for the inspiring actual play post!

Adrian