shifting relationships & hero point cost

[kalyptein]

I was rereading the chapter on relationships in the HQ book and something that has been bothering me finally gelled.  I like that relationships can have a mechanical effect on the game, but the hero point cost throws me.  According to the HP cost table, it's 1 HP for a +1 to a relationship.  Now I assume the multipliers for buying more than a +1 in a single session apply to this as well, so to get a +2 costs 3 HP, +3 costs 6 HP, etc.

This makes perfect sense to me for skills or for relationships that represent a long, slow build up of prestige and trust, such as with a temple or clan.  But suppose you already have Hatred of Bob 13, and then Bob does something really nasty to you.  Adding +1 won't really capture the sudden red hot rage that fills your character, and I don't want to make a player spend his next three sessions of HP building up that relationship, leaving him unable to make any other changes to his character.  Relationships, particularlly ones like "Hatred of" or "Love of" seem like they would be prone to wild swings just based on the nature of those emotions.

I was thinking of just requiring 1 HP to cement any change to a relationship, and then hashing out exactly how big the change was with the player.  "Well yeah, Bob did just kill your parents.  You want to raise it +5?  Sounds good."  This assumes in-game events support the change.  If the player wants to alter a relationship that hasn't entered the game recently I would probably charge him normally.

Anyone else, how have you handled this sort of thing?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I have a couple of responses.

1. Sounds good. In other words, if the emotion's backing it, then fine, let the numbers reflect it. A number of examples in the HeroQuest book show Kathy, the GM, being very generous with similar things.

2. On the other hand, it might be worthwhile to get "simulation-think" off the table, in terms of what all those numbers on the HeroQuest player sheet really mean. They aren't like RuneQuest skill values. They aren't the "things" in the game-world, just how we're currently using the numbers about those things.

I'm not sure if I'm phrasing this right, but think of it this way: if my character has Hate Bob 13, it doesn't mean he hates him less than the guy who has Hate Bob 10w. It means that his hate has less impact on play. Think in terms of audience investment: we need to see Bob do more bad stuff (or whatever) in order to "get behind" my character's hate. If he just strides on and hates Bob enough to wax his ass, case closed, and Bob hasn't done much on-screen or we haven't seen your character apply his Hate Bob yet in some other way ... well, it's not as cool.

But having Hate Bob 13 gives me the opportunity to play it, and build it, and establish how much I hate Bob in a gripping way, and by the time enough of that has happened, I'll be at 10w.

Anyway, I think my point #2 is the important one, and that certain applications of point #1 can be brought in on a case-by-case basis. The key is to think of the numbers on the sheet as music, and as emotional investments on the part of the audience of that character. It's really not an in-game profile of the fictional muscle mass or what the character thinks/feels.

Best,
Ron

[RaconteurX]

One thing that HeroQuest does not touch on as much as Hero Wars and earlier playtest drafts, at least that I have found, is the notion of directed increases. A narrator can assign Hero Points to be spent only on specific abilities, or award specific ability increases, or provide an incentive to buy specific abilities by offering a discounted HP cost for them.

Thus, were I Ron's narrator, I might say "Ron, your hero really got the beat-down by that guy he hates, Bob, and in an especially humiliating way. I think an increase in his Hate Bob is in order... does a +2 sound good to you? Okay. You can also have three HP to increasing that further, if you like, but if you don't use them to increase his Hate Bob, they vanish."

But then I also like to award HP as bonuses for taking increases to flaws ("Hey Ron, I'll give those three HP you need to concentrate your magic, if you'll accept a +2 to your hero's Ill-starred flaw.")

[simon_hibbs]

I was thinking of just requiring 1 HP to cement any change to a relationship, and then hashing out exactly how big the change was with the player.  "Well yeah, Bob did just kill your parents.  You want to raise it +5?  Sounds good."  This assumes in-game events support the change.  If the player wants to alter a relationship that hasn't entered the game recently I would probably charge him normally.

Anyone else, how have you handled this sort of thing?

I think there might be scope for using the augment rules here. If Bob killed the character's parents, the Hate Bob ability might be augmented on an essentialy permanent basis by the character's Love Dad and Love Mum abilities. That's probably another +4 points streight off even if the Love abilities are only given basic starting values.

Otehr than that, I'd go with Ron's assessment. The numbers don't just represent the intensity of the emotion as much as how that emotion affects things in play.


Simon Hibbs

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Good call, Simon! After so much Hero Wars play, I sometimes forget that augmenting isn't obvious to everyone.

Essentially, no score on the sheet exists in isolation, and every score's value in system-terms (17, 8w, 14w2, etc) can be translated into augment bonus pips at a 10:1 currency rate. (I might have to double-check the details on that one; I'm working from a playing-HW-while-talking-to-game-author perspective.)

Anyway, the deal is, an effective value of an ability in play is usually much higher than the listed score on the sheet, due to augments. As soon as players understand this mechanic, there's no stopping them.

Emotional abilities (Hate Bob, etc) are probably the most obvious in this regard. "Hate Bob" cannot exist in isolation; it has to be connected with Relationships, Flaws, probably some mundane "skill" type abilities, and perhaps even Affinities. So even at a 13, it may well be effectively 17 or 19 in casual play, and much higher in a crunch situation.

Best,
Ron

[Mark Galeotti]

Slightly at a tangeant, I would mention that something I added into the Hero's Book (fingers crossed, out of the printers and to SJG in about 10 days) is a little chart listing what abilities mean in straightforward 'esclation' terms: not just skills, as in HQ, but also relationships and attitudes. Thus, 13 is 'noticeable but not dominant', while a characteristic at 17 is 'one of the basic motivators of your life' (while 5w2 is 'an all-consuming passion, driving your entire life').

After all, your basic keywords, what you are and what you do for the majority of your day are 17. In this respect, I think it is not too inappropriate to see -- under normal circumstances -- relationships increase slowly. By the time you have Hate Bob 17, it should have become one of those hobbyhorses to which you keep returning ('oh god, n, who started him off on Bob again...?).

All the best

Mark

PS: but directed HP allocations and simple narrator's fiat are also key tools in building up relationships.

[Drastic]

As another, not really new point--more of a theme-and-variation on loads of good advice already present--keep in mind the simple 1-HP cementing cost, as well.  An adventure centering around dealing with Bob killing Joe's family will give a sizable boost to "Hate Bob" for duration of that adventure; if the player's really into that, he can simply a single Hero Point and cement that change permanently.  If the player's really not into the whole Bob-Nemesis thing, he can elect not to, thus resetting the "benefit" of the one-adventure-boosted score back to its previous afterwards.

The cementing rule ties in really well with cinematic structures, I think--one movie may be about the hero's grief and quest for justice against the dastardly Bob.  The sequel certainly has that as a component of the character's history, and probably makes a reference to it, but it may be that Bob is simply not a focus of the character in that flick.  Fits in with Ron's excellent point about the scores not simulating things so much as representing the hero's focus in their life, and simply using the cementing rules simplifies strategies of X amount of HP for directed increases.

[RaconteurX]

I would go even farther as narrator, in an adventure involving the hated Bob killing Joe's family (per Drastic's last post). I would allow the player to erase his Love Family relationship (assuming they were all killed) and increase the value of his Hate Bob to that of his Love Family, were it higher already, for no cost... in this it works something like a heroquest challenge. Another option, were Love Family lower: the player could increase Joe's Hate Bob by an amount equal to the automatic augment Love Family would provide (1/10th the value), again for no cost. All contingent upon good roleplaying, of course. :)