Heroquesting -- The Larger Picture

[bluegargantua]

From an older thread...

However, it is definitely not, "Which side are you on?" The sides in the various political conflicts in Glorantha are deconstructed through playing the game. The Lunars are not and cannot be totally right; neither can the Heortlings (to pick the most famous and central of the many political and religious clashes across the world). It is embedded in every one of the sourcebooks, every one of the recently-published adventures, that relying on your temple, or your clan, or your culturally-constructed place in the world is not good enough.

Sooner or later, you will be part of, maybe even form your own, Hero Band. Sooner or later, you'll be HeroQuesting. Both of these are political and magical statements that cannot help but override, redefine, and retool-in-practice everything you thought you believed and represented. By entering deeper into the Otherworldly side of reality, you alter it - you create and become myth, and your ethical choices in doing so replace, eventually, the old-school assumptions about good and evil, chaos, political boundaries, and everything else.

OK, so I think this is the key piece that I still don't understand (along with the 500-volume Encylopedia Glorantha):

I understand that the Heroquesting is a cool deal that ties the physical gameworld and the mystical gameworld together.  And the players can use it to custom-build the mythical past of their world (i.e. We need a magic tent.  Let's go Heroquesting for Olanth's Tent of Water-Repelling!  Olanth had a magic tent?  He does now, let me tell you the myth.)

My question is how (in the gameworld) do these quests re-define anything?  How do the quests change?  My understanding suggests that these Heroquests follow a set script and only make a god's story stronger the more often they are performed.  At worst, the character's fail or bail on the story at one of the stations and in some metaphysical way this degrades the god's power a bit.  And this isn't always a strict failure -- you may choose to leave the quest early becaue you weren't really looking for the mgaic tent, you just wanted the Iron Sword from Station 3 for something else altogether.  I suppose I can see that if people only ever went on a given Heroquest to pick up that Iron Sword, that might change the Heroquest into the "Olanth Gives us an Iron Sword" quest.  But it seems like that would be a long, slow process and the implications are that Heroquests can cause serious, dramatic shifts.

So can someone toss me a bone on this?  This round of re-reading the core books has really clarified a lot of stuff for me.  It's obvious that Heroquesting is more than just a Mythic dungeon crawl, it's something Important.  I just don't see how it ever transcends its "Do This, Do That, Now You Get This" formula.

Thanks
Tom

[sben]

My question is how (in the gameworld) do these quests re-define anything? How do the quests change? My understanding suggests that these Heroquests follow a set script and only make a god's story stronger the more often they are performed.

Here's my interpretation, and take it with the following very large grains of salt: (1) I was introduced to Glorantha via Hero Wars, and have no RuneQuest-era products. (2) I have never played Hero Wars; this is all armchair philosophizing.

What you're describing is the "standard" heroquest, where the participants reenact known, established myths. (Note that these are known and established within the gameworld; it may be a quest that the GM created the night before in prep for the current session.)

Real heroes, the really mythic ones like the Lunar Seven Mothers (or, presumably, your players' characters!), take the big gamble: They actively try to change the mythology, deliberately and with a goal in mind. This is sort of like mythic "hacking", and it's dangerous, because you never know quite how it's going to turn out, even if you make the change you were trying to.

As a hypothetical example, you might try to heroquest to "discover" that (i.e., change the myths in such a way that) the Red Goddess (head of the Lunar pantheon) was actually the love-child of Eurmal (the Orlanthi trickster) and a diseased billy-goat. This would be a Very Hard thing to do, as the myths involved are already well-known and have some strong backers. However, if done, it would almost certainly weaken the (mythological importance of the) Red Goddess.

(I'd love it if someone points out if/how I'm wrong, 'cause I'd love to have a more-correct understanding!)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

S. Ben, you're absolutely right. The good news is that there are several possible intermediate stages between the "follow the script" and "hacking" versions of heroquesting. They aren't necessarily graded along a spectrum, but rather represent a variety of different angles, takes, or outcomes.

1. Discovering stuff "in the myth" that you didn't know about. There you are, following the Stuff to Do that your mythological understanding has laid out, and wham - you're at a station that you know nothing about. H'm! What does this reveal about your god/cult that you didn't know? What does that mean for how you're going to change the practices of worship later?

This is especially useful if the "unknown station" is not a "kick-out" station (i.e. must be completed successfully to continue the quest). So you're going to get through it, and what you've really done (by your approach to it) is comment on your own religion in a way that might be significant later in the real world, in a wide variety of ways.

2. Cross-paths with other heroquesters, which is to say, your myth speaks of a (possibly mysterious) encounter or foe or whatever, and their myth does the same. So when you get to station 4 of your quest, they are there, performing station 6 or whatever of theirs.

This can be very interesting, because if it's cut-and-dried on both sides regarding what "should" happen, that's one thing ... but if you have other reasons to oppose or cooperate with the other heroquesters, then you have to make some choices about what's more important to you, the integrity of the myth or the chance to mess with or unite with the other group.

Anyway, those are just a couple of the interesting non-Crawl features of heroquesting that played a pretty big plot role in our game over the many moons of play.

Best,
Ron

[MrWrong]

This is my take on Heroquesting, bear in mind that I've only ever ran one Heroquest and it was a very spur of the moment kinda thing....I told the heroes that their god had overcome their enemy in Mythology and the next thing they are doing is waking up the whole city and getting the Heroquest ritual under way (which involved some very large AP bids).

To get my head round it, I strip it down to very basic mechanics. It also helps to present it this way to the players as well.  Obviously the myth is the story on which the whole thing hangs on, but it is by no means certain. Heroes fail their rolls, or more likely start doing things off the cuff, which wasn't in the original myth. This is okay to do, in fact Greg Stafford says that its quite expected. It is the players game after all and the rules / heroquesting methods allow for this.

At this stage I seeing as I haven't run many Heroquests, I still take them at a very basic level--eg you do the Humakt gets the Sword of Death Heroquest to get a whooping great magic sword. Also from what I've read and heard the sort of big Cosmic changing HeroQuests lead to very big changes in the setting. For example the Empire of the Wyrms Friends in the Second Age aparently wiped themselves out by trying to perform this huge HQ which involved pretty much all the magical support in the Empire. They failed, and for some quests one of the consquences of failure is that you forget your magical abilities and cult associations. This is why when you start reading some of the really obscure Gloranthan material, it says that the Empire of the Wyrms friends may not have been called that. Its just that nobody remembers because they effectivly removed themselves from the Mythical/Magical landscape. As for Godlearners, well I'm just not going there.

Players also have the option of choosing what outcome they gain for sucessfully completing the quest. So for the Humakt gains the Sword of Death quest the Hero may decide to get a magical Sword for himself, or may chose to pass the benefit onto his community, so all the Clans warriors become very skilled. So as well as players being devious little powergamers, you can also use the "well your clan needs better warriors, and the Cheif comes knocking on your door one day as the most skilled warrior in the village" card.

Probably the most important thing to remember about Heroquesting, is that it is very powerful, the rewards are great as are the penenalties, so as a consquence is reasonably rare.  Even though I've been playing RQ since the early 90s, where there where various homebrew Heroquesting rules available in the fan press, and HW since it came out, I still approach HQ very rarely, and with caution, since it is such a major magical event for both the Heros and their supporting community. Truth be told it is something that you can avoid, until you have the basics of Gloranthan adventureing under your wing.

Probably the best example of a heroquest I can think of outside of HW/HQ which everyone knows, is The Grailquest out of the Arthurian Cycle.

Also if you want to see how HQ works in Glorantha directly, get hold of a copy of King of Dragon Pass http://www.a-sharp.com/kodp/.

Hope this helps

[bluegargantua]

Hi,

 OK, this clears up a lot of stuff.  It's very similiar to the Nettle Rite from Nobilis or some of the Godwalker stuff from Unknown Armies.  So I think I've got a handle on it.

 I wonder what's a good way to present this to players.  There's a lot you can do with Heroquests and you want them to make good use of it and not, "Hey, that god pissed us off, let's mess with his metaphysical reality."

 From the replies....

This is especially useful if the "unknown station" is not a "kick-out" station (i.e. must be completed successfully to continue the quest). So you're going to get through it, and what you've really done (by your approach to it) is comment on your own religion in a way that might be significant later in the real world, in a wide variety of ways.

Can you elaborate on that a bit?  If this unknown station pops up and your group is suddenly in uncharted territory, are you really making a comment other than "crap, we need to get back to the myth"?  I suppose it depends on the nature of the unknown station.  

One idea I had was that a Heroqeust has a "Secret Station".  There's a part of the myth that never gets told because it makes the god look bad.  So you go through the station and get a stern warning at the other end that you can never talk about this to anyone else.  So you come back home and all these people wanna know what happened.  Fun stuff.

Players also have the option of choosing what outcome they gain for sucessfully completing the quest. So for the Humakt gains the Sword of Death quest the Hero may decide to get a magical Sword for himself, or may chose to pass the benefit onto his community, so all the Clans warriors become very skilled. So as well as players being devious little powergamers, you can also use the "well your clan needs better warriors, and the Cheif comes knocking on your door one day as the most skilled warrior in the village" card.

Benefits for the community are another interesting scenario.  Particularly, when there are no benefits.  I can envision a scenario in which a community needs to get a Heroquest done, they get together a group of local heroes, throw their complete support behind them...and they completely fail.  Those that don't die on the Other Side are left gibbering wrecks.  The community doesn't just fail to get the benefits, this community is going to break up completely due to this botched Heroquest.  Enter your PCs who have some vested interest in seeing this community stay intact(ish).  How to save the day?  Another Heroquest.  

Good stuff, thanks for the help.

later
Tom

[Uncle Dark]

One idea I had was that a Heroqeust has a "Secret Station".  There's a part of the myth that never gets told because it makes the god look bad.  So you go through the station and get a stern warning at the other end that you can never talk about this to anyone else.  So you come back home and all these people wanna know what happened.  Fun stuff.

This is a big thing, actually.  There are parts of the myths that only Devotees of the god know, which might show up in Heroquests.  Maybe this is how they first found out...

Also consider: the PCs are doing a Heroquest they've done before.  This time, there's a new station.  Where did it come from?  Who changed the myth?  Is the god trying to tell us something?

Benefits for the community are another interesting scenario.  Particularly, when there are no benefits.  I can envision a scenario in which a community needs to get a Heroquest done, they get together a group of local heroes, throw their complete support behind them...and they completely fail.  Those that don't die on the Other Side are left gibbering wrecks.  The community doesn't just fail to get the benefits, this community is going to break up completely due to this botched Heroquest.  Enter your PCs who have some vested interest in seeing this community stay intact(ish).  How to save the day?  Another Heroquest.  

I'd thought of starting a game like this...

Lon

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tom,

Your "botched heroquest" scenario concept was the motor behind just about every Hero Wars story/sub-story during our fourteen months of play.

Regarding my "comment" concept, you may be underestimating players a bit. If you can see what I'm talking about, they probably will too, especially when some of the political/mystic passion of Glorantha has seeped into their thinking. It's really an amazing setting for getting people to care about the issues ... I'm thinking about a dinner-party scene in which the characters, all pretty unreconstructed Heortlanders, were wined and dined by, for lack of a better word, a Boldhome "Lunar-liberal" who thought they were getting a raw deal from Tatius' armies.

After the players (and characters) had processed a bit of this kind of ethical ambiguity in the setting, when they encounter the pretty black-and-white "Heortlings good, Lunars bad" context of a typical Heortling Heroquest, they don't feel any too ready simply to proceed through the myth obediently. They want to put a spin on it via their decisions during the quest.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

The thing I really like about the ambiguity between Heortlings and Lunars is that it is SO historical.  Substitute Celts and Romans and you see the exact same thing.  Today we like to paint things very "Us" against "Them" with a fairly broad encompassing definition of "Us" and "Them".

For HeroWars to work, the "Us" and the "Them" have to be MUCH smaller, much more personal.  Doing whats right for "Us" may make us enemies of this group of Lunars...but we don't particularly have a problem with THAT group of Lunars.  In fact, we kind of like THAT group of Lunars and help them out when THIS group of Lunars tries to out maneuver them.  

THIS group of Heortlings are our age old enemy who we hate more than we love our own children.  Sure we hate THIS group of Lunars, but we hate THIS group of Heortlings even more. For many Celts who were oppressed by other Celts, the Romans were their saviors

Its all a very mixed up small scale where alliances shift like the wind and each new generation brings a new set of priorities.  

Thinking about it at this scale should open all kinds of doors for Heroquesting.  What happens when two Hero Bands are questing the same myth at the same time. Both want to succeed to benefit themselves and strengthen their god...but the two groups come from feuding clans and are sworn to kill each other on sight...in the middle of a quest?!

There are also enough versions of gods to make your head spin.  What happens when you go hero questing in the myth you've always been told and discover now that its changed.  Ra becomes Ammon-Ra becomes Aten-Ra to give an Egyptian equivelent.  What the heck...someelses version of god is gaining ascendence...gotta stop that.  What if the new version is something so horrible that you'd be willing to accept a Lunar version of your god before you accept this Heortling alternative version...what if there's no way to preserve your version of the god, and now you must try to promote a version thats the least offensive to you...

All kinds of possibilities when you bring "Us" and "Them" down to the scale of individual bands and villages.

[Tod Olson]

Thinking about it at this scale should open all kinds of doors for Heroquesting.  What happens when two Hero Bands are questing the same myth at the same time. Both want to succeed to benefit themselves and strengthen their god...but the two groups come from feuding clans and are sworn to kill each other on sight...in the middle of a quest?!

There are also enough versions of gods to make your head spin.  What happens when you go hero questing in the myth you've always been told and discover now that its changed.  Ra becomes Ammon-Ra becomes Aten-Ra to give an Egyptian equivelent.  What the heck...someelses version of god is gaining ascendence...gotta stop that.  What if the new version is something so horrible that you'd be willing to accept a Lunar version of your god before you accept this Heortling alternative version...what if there's no way to preserve your version of the god, and now you must try to promote a version thats the least offensive to you...

Here's an example of  both of these ideas as played in the game Ron mentioned:

We had a Heortling band who, due to player interest, was developing productive ways of dealing with Chaos. Killed lots of Chaos-beasts, but we also found other ways to cope. Enter the "Lunar-rehabilitated" NPC broo who is looking for some non-chaos aspect of Thed to worship so other broo have an option. A temporary teamup for different reasons eventually led to our band adopting his cause.

How to provide access to this aspect of Thed? Thed (IIRC) became a creature of chaos after a great injustice. Orlanth tried his brother who raped her and let the guy off. During the proceedings no one spoke for Thed. The great injustice, not only of the perp avoiding punishment, but of not even being represented caused Thed to become so resentful and hateful that she became a creature of chas. So we hero quested into the trialto speak for Thed. This would create some mythological access to the pre-chaosThed.

During this process, there was also a powerful broo shaman performing a similar hero quest, but with a goal directly counter to ours, and we had great fun with the conflict in the otherworld.

Our band was successful in its goal, and so, after great risk, created this very small thread of connection to a previously unavailable aspect of Thed. This connection is very tenuous and fragile, more hero questing could give it more substance and reveal more about the fertility goddess who became Thed. She may have had another name, her own family tree, other connections to the Gloranthan cosmology.  All of this can be created through play.

No one knew how this hero quest would turn out until we rolled the dice. We did know it would have cosmological consequences.

-Tod

[Ron Edwards]

What Tod said. I presented a bit more of my thinking about the myth involved in the Goddess of Rape? thread.

Best,
Ron

[simon_hibbs]

My question is how (in the gameworld) do these quests re-define anything?  How do the quests change?  My understanding suggests that these Heroquests follow a set script and only make a god's story stronger the more often they are performed.  At worst, the character's fail or bail on the story at one of the stations and in some metaphysical way this degrades the god's power a bit. ...

Failing a station of a quest is usualy only bad for the character, unless the character has full support from others, in which case they also share in the success/failiure.

Most heroquests do not change the myths and are intended to follow the trditional path, because most heroquests are basicaly religious ritual re-enactments. Going on a pilgrimage is a very low-level form of heroquest. Going through an initiation ritual is a heroquest. In RQ terms learning a Rune Magic probably involved learning the myths that the magic derived from and performing a ritual that is also basicaly a heroquest, and in HW learning a Feat is probably the same thing. These quests are so well known and understood that they don't look like the same thing, but they are.

Major Heroquests are basicaly the same, but they aim at achieving a much greater effect and so aren't performed so often, and are much more dangerous. However in times of turmoil, even the normal, routine quests can become dangerous and uncertain. In the Hero Wars era the world is changing, and the mythic and religious landscape will change with it.

Remember that they myths are always related to the way the world is. They map directly onto a real-world process or event. The Lightringer Quest maps directly on to the daily rising and setting of the sun. The Orlanthi Sandles of darkness quest maps directly on to the fact that storm clouds make it dark. If the world changes, the quests will have to change.

In my game, Black Sun worshipers from the Kingdom of Ignorance are infiltrating the Lunar religion in order to bring about the coming of the Blood Sun. However my Lunar players are subverting their plans and unintentionaly eing drawn into heroquests against their will. Whenever they enact a religious ritual, they risk being drawn into the mythic events that are being set into motion.

e.g. One of the characetrs was initiated into the Black Sun cult, but another player (Alicia, a Natha priestess) magicaly spiked the initiation ritual and so now Vanaxis is initiated into the Blood Moon cult, which nobody's even heard of. At her next worship ritual, Alicia was drawn into one of Natha's myths (taken from The Entekosiad) and witnessed a woman giving birth surrounded by three women. She could have done a number of tings, but the mythic location was related to sacrifices, so Alicia decided to sacrifice the crone, who wnet willingly into the bog. She could have decided to sacrifice the baby, killing Vanaxis link to the Blood Moon in the process and aborting the whole problem, but she chose not to. She could have sacrificed the afterbirth (some historical sects use afterbirths in symolic human sacrifice rituals). Her choices will affect other characters, their magic and the way this plot line will re-surface later in the campaign.

It's tricky to do, and because you're dealing in symbolism so much it's important to try and make sure the measnings of what is happeneing are communicated while still keeping a level of mystery. The only way to find out if it's going to work though is to try it.


Simon Hibbs

[Mike Holmes]

Dude, you just gave me a great idea. Using an alternate setting, I had no real use for Hero Questing per se. I mean, I could have shoved that in but it's not even something I really like that much about the game, and doesn't seem to fit.

But HQs in terms of rituals to attain Feats and such, well, that's perfect. I mean, it's implicit in the fact that an Animist has to do a little battle with the spirit to get it to be a Fetish or something. But I hadn't thought of this in terms of other forms of ritual.

From now on in my game, if a player wants to get a new magic ability of any sort, I'm going to require that they design some ritual or task that they have to overcome to get the thing (they can't just spend Hero Points, even with a good explanation). For some it could be as small as a dangerous first casting of a Spell. For religious stuff there may be painful rituals involved. All sorts of nifty possibilities. These would be like tiny HQs with the reward at the end being the Ability in question.

This just happens to coincide with the fact that one of my characters is headed for a ritual next session. Perfect chance to test it out. Whee!

Thanks for he idea,
Mike

[simon_hibbs]

From now on in my game, if a player wants to get a new magic ability of any sort, I'm going to require that they design some ritual or task that they have to overcome to get the thing (they can't just spend Hero Points, even with a good explanation). For some it could be as small as a dangerous first casting of a Spell. For religious stuff there may be painful rituals involved. All sorts of nifty possibilities. These would be like tiny HQs with the reward at the end being the Ability in question.

This just happens to coincide with the fact that one of my characters is headed for a ritual next session. Perfect chance to test it out. Whee!

Please let us know how it works out, I'd love to hear any anecdotes you might have about the game.

In my game, the adventurers were sucked into heroquesting as a result of their actions during the game. For example one of the characters (Vanaxis) has initiated into a foreign cult. As a result when he took part in a worship ritual for his god (Yanafal Tarnils, the imperial war leader cult), he was
whisked off to the Hall of Tarnils on the moon. Several pillars of the temple (representing the fundamental tenets of the cult philosophy) transformed into archaic-looking warriors and attacked him, trying to kick him out of the temple. He must defeat them in a test of arms to prove he can keep his place in the cult. We're going to finish that scene this week.

Another character was peripheraly involved, but he worships Yelm, the imperial sun god. The cult Vanaxis joined is an aspect of the Black Sun, symbolising Yelm's shadow, the blind spot of the Sun. So when he worshiped yelm, he was drawn up into the Sky Realm, alongside Yelm's fiery throne. He saw black demons climbing out from a hidden entrance behind Yelm's throne and had to defeat them before they could wound the Sun God from behind (symolising the Black Sun's betrayal of the celestial emperor). He succeeded, but one of the demons was flung into the sky towards the Red Moon. Which is going to have it's own knock-on implications.

I'm having a lot of fun with this, but I don't want it to distract too much from the main plot line, which I'll try and get back to this week.


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Tom,

Are you checking in on this thread still? I'm interested to know whether our input has helped your initial question.

Best,
Ron

[bluegargantua]

Are you checking in on this thread still? I'm interested to know whether our input has helped your initial question.

Ron,

 I thought the thread had died down and was a bit surprised to see it kick back up again.

 Short answer, yes, this has been (continues to be) extremely helpful.  The examples show a wide range of uses for Heroquesting and how to plug it into games.  The true importance of Heroquesting is much, much clearer.

 I suppose this means the thread can close off, but if it encourages more people to talk about the cool ways they tie the mythic to the physical in their games, I'll feign ignorance (I'm good at that!).

 In other news, I picked up the Thunder Rebels Sourcebook the other day and have had an "A-ha!" moment or a "there's a good idea I could use" moment on every page.  I realize the main rulebook had to offer a sampler tray of cultures, religions and magic in order to provide an example for everything, but that lack of focus really shortchanges the setting and makes it hard to find a good entry point to get a new game going.  If I Ran the World, I would've put out the main rulebook and focused solely on Lunars vs. Orlanthi and Theistic magic.  Then do a follow on book for Animist and Sorcerous magics and cultures by using Grazers and Black Horse Troop cultures to round out the Dragon Pass area.  Dunno
exactly what I'd do for Mystics...probably wait for 2nd. ed. like everyone else.

 My Friendly Neighborhood Gaming Store now has Orlanth is Dead (for the clan creation stuff) and the Imperial Sourcebook (for friends and foes) on order for me.  Then I just gotta round up a few players and send them off into the world.  Hero Wars has been one of those "sounds really good, but what do I *do* with it?" games.  The discussions and reviews here have been most illuminating in this regard and I want to thank people for their input and examples (both on this particular topic and on this forum in general).

 I think my only big question now is:

 Will Ron and crew finish their Hero Wars Prep example?  That was another really helpful discussion and I've been anxiously awaiting the next installment.

 And my minor Heroquest question is:

 My friends all worship Orlanth and are going on a Heroquest I am:

       a. a worshiper of Ernalda (Orlanthi Pantheon)
       b. a worshiper of Yelm (non-Orlanthi Pantheon)
       c. a non-Theistic worshiper

 Can any of these three people go on the Heroquest?  My understandinging is that the first almost certainly can, the second might, and the third is outta luck.  If this true, it would seem to make Heroquesting difficult or impossible for groups with mixed religous beliefs.

later
Tom