HeroQuest - Testosterone-filled Imperial goodness

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Throw up the devil horns! The Durham 3 are playing HeroQuest and it is crazy wild.

I've wanted to play HeroQuest for a very long time. If you aren't a Glorantha-phile, HeroQuest is not an easy thing to get. The cross-cultural varying interpretations of the same structures, and the ability to re-enact myths - and do it differently than it was - results in a confusing relativism, confusing in comparison to the absolutism of most RPGs, at least. When I tried to explain the very summarized and simplified version of the Lunar-Orlanthi struggle to my game group, I immediately saw that this was going to be hard, and remembered not understanding the least bit about Glorantha and finding it literally incomprehensible for my first year of owning the books.

If you are a Glorantha-head, you will find our game to be high heresy. I have taken the ideas of Glorantha, and some of my favorite things in the myths, and reworked them to fit our free-for-all, player-driven narrative. Anyway, here we go!

The half-game: we made characters and had an introduction to HeroQuest.

My ideal HeroQuest game has been occupied Sartar, where you play barbarians in the thrall of the invading Lunar Empire who try to unite you under a barbarian king that is a boot-licking scumbag, at least in your opinion, and you play freedom fighters. Jason and Remi called me on my super-crazy morally-absolutist anti-imperialist fantasy and decided to play the imperialists, or if you know Glorantha, the Lunar Empire. Jason chose a Tarshite (like the Sartarites, but urbanized and part of the Empire) military intelligence officer named Theyr, and Remi's playing an Imperial diplomat sent to broker the peace named Gilbert. They are in a large hill town called Alda-Chur, which is ruled by a barbarian king, Harvar Ironfist, who sold out his people and their gods to the Empire.

In the introduction, of course, the rebel barbarians tried to kill him as he was out whoring, because that's how we roll. Theyr and Gilbert's manservant and some Tarshite infantry drove off the rebels, but everyone knew trouble was a-brewing. Also, Harvar proved to be totally annoying and not willing to marry Princess Mohana of the Western Province of Deshad, which is what the Empire wants. I positioned the Empire, after reading up on how they took Tarsh, as having a standard mode of operation: finding a stupid king and marrying him to a smart woman who was loyal to the Empire.

Our first game

No one knew what to expect going into this. We all worried about the depth of Glorantha material and the system not being totally familiar. I wrote up a summary of the issues in Alda-Chur for Remi and Jason.

After the attempt on Harvar's life, I wanted to make him paranoid and somewhat emulate the jail of safety that can occur in an occupied city. I was specifically thinking of Baghdad's Green Zone, and this really worked: the difference between Harvar's palisade and the city streets was fun to play with. Life in the fortress was neat: Harvar's right-hand man is sleeping with Princess Mohana, and Gilbert's job was threatened by the arrival of a superior, the Imperial Lunar virgin priestess, Decembra.

Jason found his kicks in Theyr's two wives moving toward each other. He has a Tarshite wife he loves and a local barbarian wife he does not love so much. His daughter appeared and he found his Tarshite wife to be captured by Imperials for collaborating with witches. In one of my favorite scenes, he reluctantly joined up with a rebel gang, the Orax or the Storm Bulls, who wear giant bull horns on their forearms as weapons and have freak-out rituals. They made him travel to the Otherworld and wrestle the Storm Bull to join up, and here was our real problem with the game.

Seriously, what is up with the difficulties?

We couldn't figure out how a hero in this game was supposed to be a hero. I realized I was throwing characters into minor heroquests in the first episode, but we were trying to squeeze maximum awesome from this. With the Storm Bull having an ability of 10w2 and Jason, with all his augments, having about a 8w for Theyr, he had no hope of winning the wrestling match with the Storm Bull. I played it off by having the community not expecting him to win, laughing at his initiation, but I felt like in this, as well as many other contests during the night, Jason was set up to lose. I can set easier difficulties, sure, but the GM advice is telling me not to. What are we missing, I wonder?

As a side-note, the augmenting is awkward, if only for the conversions from ability score to augment amount over and over. It's not hard, but it is time-consuming. Does any HeroQuest lover have an idea of how to fix this?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Remi's character, Gilbert, met with a local rebel leader practicing non-violent resistance, and found him to be weird, and a member of an organization Gilbert knew. They may well be set up to be enemies or secret allies. (In a major departure from canon, this guy, Mefodi, worships Humakt, the Night Wind, and preaches that all things, even tyranny, will die if one can hold out long enough against them.)

My favorite NPC, Harvar's right-hand man, Eachann, worshipper of Yinkin and all-around awesome guy, is persuading his boss to do crazy stuff as Eachann loves Princess Mohana and is trying to keep Harvar away from her. In our last scene, Harvar proposed to the virgin priestess Decembra. Who knows what'll happen!

Thoughts at this point

This was more fun than we expected, and so far is one of my favorite games we've played. Our two big stumbling blocks are that I had a hard time keeping Remi and Jason's story lines tied together, and failure seems large in HeroQuest. Both of those are on my mind to watch in the next game.

Otherwise, this is fantasy rock-and-roll. Glorantha is totally insano and sometimes feels like hippie Synnibar, but is also massively fun to play around in.

[Brand_Robins]

Well, failure can rock, as we all know. But when you don't want to fail....

One of the things about HeroQuest that's always struck me as similar to many of Greg's other games is that the characters really start off as "pretty much normal" and have to work for a long time to get to the status of heroes. In Pendragon you don't fight Gawain or Lancelot out the gate (well, not with any hope of winning) and similar things seem to go in much of HeroQuest. Things that are heroically hard are difficult to near impossible for starting characters, at least as single contests.

I've had a few smart players who got around heroic issues by doing some of the standard bag of player tricks: targeting weak abilities specifically, going through underlings rather than boss characters and so on. They've also occasionally had luck with chaining together contests and using community support rules to help themselves out. If your boy facing Storm Bull had his lodge backing him up on his initiation, for example, it might have helped. If he'd then gone and had another group (his family or friends) also pulling for him it may have helped even more. By using community support, variable augment contests, and linked contests (undermine their community, then attack in the chaos being a favorite) even starting characters can sometimes get impressive results.

Also, as a player the deeper you can bury a conflict into the personal aspects of the ongoing fiction, the better your chances are. If you just up and challenge the village champion as a starting character, you may well lose. But if you challenge him after he's insulted your wife, your father has told you the whole clan is betting their last dollar on you, and you've prayed to the god of wrestling and stolen a chicken from the crazy old lady that lives down the lane... then you have a better chance. Problem I've had with this is that it often takes time to build up to, and works for things players are working towards, but still can leave them in the lurch with sudden reversals of unexpected developments or GM plot points.

As for converting abilities to augments and back again, these days (when I'm playing with standard augment rules) I mostly just jot the standard augment amounts down on the sheet next to the score. That at least speeds one step up, so that the resultant addition goes faster. I also have started clamping down on the number of augments used, and encouraging more in the area of variable augments rather than allowing more than a small handful of auto-augments, but that's my personal thing and many, many members of the community sharply disagree with it.

Anyway, small issues aside, it sounds like a fun game. I've found that despite the fact I cry at the end of Braveheart that I've always had more fun playing the Lunars than the barbarians. Must be my Rome/Persian love coming out. So I'm glad to see I'm not alone in the world on that one.

[Dirk Ackermann]

We play HeroQuest since two weeks and it is difficult, because of all the details Glorantha has and the learning of a new system.

However, the heroes are not that at the beginning. They are just too weak in nearly every aspect. Do not hesitate though, because you can , or better: have to start small!

Do not go heroquesting, just discover culture and do some raiding, explore the weird stuff and occasionally throw some adversaries at them, which they can not win, maybe only with luck. Because loosing rocks, as Mike says. And I am on his side, especially with HeroQuest.
In the end, they will grow and become real heroes.

But! The heropoints are tricky. Our group was very quick to learn that they are better used for bumping, then spending on growing and the like! I said to them that I would spend at least one heropoint for advancement, because they will never be the heroes as Harrek or Jar'Eel. We will see...

Augmenting should only be used if it is narrated! But if your players are sparkling with ideas then cut them short, because most of the time they should be on a hurry.

Our games were a little bit slow but very concentrated. Next week we will do our relationship-map and then I can come with some nasty bangs, I hope!

MfG

Dirk

[joshua neff]

Clinton,

That game sounds very cool. I've become a big fan of Glorantha and HeroQuest over the years (and like Brand, I really dig the Lunars). I'm also a fan of making Glorantha your own, changing the setting to suit your own tastes. So...rock on.

Augmenting can be time-consuming until you get used to it. You could maybe make a little chart that shows what range of ratings equals what augment, if you think that would help.

If you create your characters as per the standard HeroQuest rules, they're not really all that powerful. The key to beginning characters succeeding is 1) piling on the augments and 2) using hero points to bump up successes and 3) getting community support. When Theyr went on the hero quest to fight the Storm Bull, did he have any community support backing him? That could make a difference. Personally, I wouldn't throw a hero quest at a beginning character (unless it was a particularly dinky quest), but if you want to jump right into the hero quest-y, mythical weirdness of Glorantha, another alternative is to have the characters start out stronger than the default. But yeah, my HQ characters have failed a lot, even at the end of a long extended contest where I'd built up a huge amount of augments and really got invested in succeeding--and then the final roll went plop and my character totally blew it.

[Neil the Wimp]

As others have said, starting HQ characters are competent but not heroic.  They only way around it is to either adjust all the resistances or increase the PCs' ability ratings.  I'd go for the latter (you've only got to do the fudging once).  Take a look at the sample resistances on p. 274, pick the level you want to be at, and push the PCs' ability ratings up to match.  If they're tribal-level troubleshooters, I'd be thinking of having their best single abilities around the 10W3, their best keyword around 15W2, and the rest at 20W or below.  If you want the PCs to have to find help to achieve things, drop these levels. 

As for keeping track of augments, I've had the same trouble.  I put a handy table of standard augments on pregen character sheets  now.  I also always have my HeroQuest master table summary to hand when I'm running a game.  It's got the simple and extended contest resolution tables, a consolidated list of outcomes, and the standard augments. 

Sounds like you're having a rocking game.  Keep up the good work!

Neil.

[Jason Morningstar]

When Theyr went on the hero quest to fight the Storm Bull, did he have any community support backing him?

Hells yeah, I think the majority of Theyr's dice mojo was coming form the Storm Bull dudes supporting him.  As a player I'm usually OK with losing contests, but winning this one would have been really cool and character-changing and getting utterly trounced stung a bit.  I'm still riding with the Bulls, though, which is going to be problematic and fun. 

I'll cop to not having the slightest idea how the game works - I absolutely don't get masteries or how to chain abilities and game them.  It seems like having one mastery over an opponent in a simple contest ensures victory almost all of the time.  Fact or madness?

I made a character that is heavily tied to people.  I spent almost all my points on relationships, going for a convoluted and complicated family and an ally/sidekick.  Apparently this is a bad idea, because I can't use those relationships the way you can use, say, sword skill to win a conflict.  Is this correct or again, am I gaming the system wrong?  Are you supposed to throw in every last possible skill in every conflict?

On a meta level, I'm really struggling with the disparate but equally valid pantheons - my guy doesn't even really believe in the Storm Bull, but the Storm Bull kicked his ass.  Similarly, I chose to make Theyr an "old believer" among the Tarsh, which means I get access to kick-ass magic spells like "dig hole".  That'd be super cool if everybody was limited to digging holes (seriously, I'd love it), but who on earth would not convert to the dudes throwing lightning bolts around, all Gods being otherwise equally legitimate, palpable agents in the world?  If the answer to this question resides deep in thirty years of Heroquest back-story, that's cool.  Otherwise, it is puzzling.  Remi's got all the cool stuff; I'm jealous. 

I'm really looking forward to interacting more with Remi's guy, because we were pulled in different directions last week.  We ended the session with similar goals, but I think that is going to fray pretty fast.

[joshua neff]

I'll cop to not having the slightest idea how the game works - I absolutely don't get masteries or how to chain abilities and game them.  It seems like having one mastery over an opponent in a simple contest ensures victory almost all of the time.  Fact or madness?

Oh, boy, is that ever a Mike Holmes question! Mike, where are you?

I made a character that is heavily tied to people.  I spent almost all my points on relationships, going for a convoluted and complicated family and an ally/sidekick.  Apparently this is a bad idea, because I can't use those relationships the way you can use, say, sword skill to win a conflict.  Is this correct or again, am I gaming the system wrong?  Are you supposed to throw in every last possible skill in every conflict?

I think it's good--in a tactical sense--to have at least one highly rated trait that is geared towards some kind of conflict. It could be fighting, or it could be social. But having lots of relationships shouldn't be any worse, because any trait can be the basis for resolving conflict, and any trait can be used to augment other traits. It just depends on what the conflict is about. In practice, I've found that relationships tend to work better augmenting other traits rather than being the central trait in a conflict, but I have used relationships as the primary trait before.

On a meta level, I'm really struggling with the disparate but equally valid pantheons - my guy doesn't even really believe in the Storm Bull, but the Storm Bull kicked his ass.  Similarly, I chose to make Theyr an "old believer" among the Tarsh, which means I get access to kick-ass magic spells like "dig hole".  That'd be super cool if everybody was limited to digging holes (seriously, I'd love it), but who on earth would not convert to the dudes throwing lightning bolts around, all Gods being otherwise equally legitimate, palpable agents in the world?  If the answer to this question resides deep in thirty years of Heroquest back-story, that's cool.  Otherwise, it is puzzling.  Remi's got all the cool stuff; I'm jealous.

I think it's really easy for us 21st century dudes to fall into Heavy PoMo Attitude when it comes to Glorantha, but I find it helpful to think of it more in terms of this: if you've grown up worshipping Odin and Thor, and then the Romans come in, kill your leader, establish a military and commercial presence, and start building temples to Jupiter and Mercury...well, why wouldn't you see these foreign gods as different but equally valid?

When it comes to religion and magic in Glorantha, I tend to be inspired by the really cool magic, like the cults of Orlanth, Humakt, or Yanafal Tarnils. But I also dig some of the less asskicky magic, the scholar or merchant magic. Since all conflicts are handled the same way, I've found that a debate or seduction is just as exciting as a sword or spear fight. So, magic related to that is just as cool as throwing around lightning bolts or brandishing a "flickering sword." One of the coolest conflicts I've ever played through involved Mike Holmes' animist diplomat trying to deduce who the culprit of a conspiracy of crimes was, while the culprit, our friend Ryan's sneaky scholar, used his "Who? Me?" trait to avoid detection. Mike ended up going into the spirit world and getting a spirit that would help him find the guilty party, and used the released the spirit for a huge augment in a "detective gathers all of the suspects and reveals who the culprit is" scene that brought Ryan's character down. So, I think the trick is just finding what magic you think is cool and using it to your best advantage by engaging in conflicts where your magic is most useful.

Er...does that make sense? Is that helpful at all?

[Jason Morningstar]

Thanks Josh,

I think your Norse/Roman example falls down when both pantheons are quite literally real and you can go talk to them and they will rock you like a hurricane.  But Odin's magic is weak and Zeus' magic is strong.  Odin helps you dig a hole; Zeus shoots your enemy in the face with fireballs and slays his livestock.  Since there is no faith involved, who is going to pick the weak God in this situation? 

My guy has a mastery in hitting people over the head with his axe, which hasn't really come up, and another mastery involving his illegal wife, and another related to his loyal Sergeant.  I think that's it.  I also increased his relationship with his legal wife to like 19, and he has a squad of soldiers under his command that have a number attached to them. 

[joshua neff]

Thanks Josh,

I think your Norse/Roman example falls down when both pantheons are quite literally real and you can go talk to them and they will rock you like a hurricane.  But Odin's magic is weak and Zeus' magic is strong.  Odin helps you dig a hole; Zeus shoots your enemy in the face with fireballs and slays his livestock.  Since there is no faith involved, who is going to pick the weak God in this situation? 

Gareth ("contracycle") has made the same argument before, and I really don't know how to answer that one. I suppose if it makes sense to you to always go with the strongest, coolest magic, regardless of what your character's culture is, that's as valid a statement to make in the game as any.

[Jason Morningstar]

I've enjoyed the game so far and can appreciate the allegory a lot.  I'm not going to say any more about the gods thing, because it's just me bellyaching about a game we're bending in crazy ways to begin with.  We have a good group dynamic and can make each other awesome even if there's some cognitive dissonance on my part. 

I'd still welcome some tactical advice on doing cool things with a relationship-heavy character.

[Brand_Robins]

Jason,

In Glorantha magic exists at all levels, from the biggest to the smallest, and if you're a ditch digger then your ditch digging charm is the shit. If you're a professional mercenary, it's probably just shit.

The problem is that with all the magic to chose from in the book and the unfortunate fact that it isn't always instantly obvious if you're going to be blowing shit up or digging shit down from a quick skim or overview (you have to actually get in and do some digging) it's easy to end up taking farmer and ditch digger magic when you thought you were making the god-stomping hero.

If'n I'm a solider, of course I want the magical lightning. If I'm a farmer, the ability to call lightning isn't as useful as the ability to dig a hole. The problem I see isn't that one pantheon gives only one type of magic (dig hole) and the other gives another (smite all that stand before you) -- but that you ended up getting, basically, farmer magic from your culture.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

This game was totally fun tonight. I'll post more later, but I wanted to share two things:

1) Our solution to the power level issue was 10 bonus building points, and it worked everything out.

2) Jason's character also has the charm "Bash in Face," so the magic is fine. He also got to use "Drive out Vice" and "Start Fire" (to start a forest fire!), so everything's good.

[Brand_Robins]

Awesome.

[Jason Morningstar]

Yeah, we had a great session.  Adding ten extra points made both of our characters a lot more competent.  My guy's magical kit bag is obviously supposed to be prosaic (dig hole is right next to tend cattle and protect from hail), but fuck that - if I can start a fire, I'm starting a fire on somebody's face.

One thing to note - we're playing for, like, five sessions tops.  So there's just no time to build intricate back-story and webs of affiliation and experience, which I get the feeling is the norm for this game.  We just jumped into the crazy, which is why I want to be able to do bad-ass stuff. 

I still feel like I made a mistake by amping up relationships that won't be likely to appear together in scenes.  I now have like six things with masteries and I was reluctant to raise anything but those - my highest is 5M now.  Remi's guy has a 13M or some nonsense, but he's ultra-specialized.

[Brand_Robins]

Jason,

I'd say you're 100% right on all counts.

When I want to drop Heroquest into the crazy, I either start with characters being more heroic or start them in a situation in which every one of their relationships is going fuckety all at once. Or both. But, honestly, it sounds like Clinton is doing quite a similar thing. So the only advice I can give you is to push hard on your relationships and fill the game with possibilities for as many of them happening at once as possible.