HQ for Cyberpunk and strength ratings of cyborgs

[Der_Renegat]

Hey!
I love the whole cyberpunk genre, especially in manga comics like Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Eden and Blame!
While its really easy to adapt most aspects of HQ i have problems assigning Strength and Mass abilities for cyborgs, androids and powerarmor. Has anybody here some suggestions for me, what numbers/masteries would seem to be appropiate?
Everybody knows what the first 4 masteries mean:
M=journeyman
M2=master
M3=hero
M4=beginning of godlike power (demigod like herkules maybe)

but beyond its getting difficult. Who has experiences with such people *lol*?
al the best
Christian

[Donald]

While its really easy to adapt most aspects of HQ i have problems assigning Strength and Mass abilities for cyborgs, androids and powerarmor. Has anybody here some suggestions for me, what numbers/masteries would seem to be appropiate?
Christian

Beyond that starting PCs can't interact in any meaningful way and even heros will struggle. I don't know much about the cyberpunk genre  but you need to remember the mastery system is a logarithmic scale so the jump from 10w to 10w2 is much less than from 10w2 to 10w3.

For example a horse is large 5w while an elephant is large 18w so the only things with large in the w2 and w3 ranges are going to be ocean liners and starships. 10w5 is probably a planet and 10w6 a sun but this is getting more into SF than cyberpunk.

[soru]

For example a horse is large 5w while an elephant is large 18w

If those are anaxial's rosters numbers, its best to treat those as if they were written for a game almost, but not entirely, unlike either HW or HQ. This may well be literally true, as i think I remember hearing they were largely written to a pre-publication draft of HW.

The better way to treat stuff like this in HQ is to ask a version of the eternal geek question 'who would win in a fight between a star destroyer and the Enterprise?'

Or to be slightly more precise, 'how much effort would a narrator have to put into suspending the audience's disbelief if he wants to have the weaker beat the stronger?'

if the answer is:

could happen with no explanation needed:                           same level of mastery
needs some explanation such as clever tactics, numbers or luck to justify the win:   one level of mastery difference
needs all of the above to win: two levels of mastery difference
no way to win: three or more levels

Then, assuming you have unmodified humans in your universe, use them as a baseline and ask 'who would win in a fight?'

So the 'arnold' model cyborg would have best ability around W3, as it was eventually brought down after an epic struggle by a group of normal humans with no more than a single level of mastery. A 'shiny metal pool' cyborg would be maybe W5, as it required a similar level of effort for a normal terminator to beat. And so on.

Cyborgs work well in HQ, precisely because their abilities are tied into their nature. What can cause more of a problem in sf games is equipment. Players are going to expect to be able to walk into a shop and purchase a blaster or gauss pistol or starship, which really isn't handled well by the default 'pay 1hp get a new ability at 12' rule.

soru

[Der_Renegat]

Well, it always comes down to a HQ-philosophy discussion....
I understand that all the ratings are just meaningful for the story and that you dont need an absolute scale, like you use to have in simulationist games.
But if you think about cyberpunk, its quite possible to have a lot of very different characters (powerwise) in your story, from mundane to really, really powerful (think: "Battle Angel Alita" with all its mad cyborgmonsters). So here you have a kind of a scale, that relates to your story and thus you have to come up with numbers.
For example: you are in a cyborg bar: you have normal biological humans, humans with implants (NeurotransmitterM3), humans with bionic arms (bionic armsM3), a full cyborg (mass 10M, artificial arms 10M3, plated bodyM3) and a monster cyborg-3m high (Huge M5??).
Surely you can narrate everthing, a jumbo jet falling on your head means you are just dead, no roll needed.
The whole idea for this topic was inspired when i read that post about the heroic scale here in this forum, where somebody assigned ratings for middle earth characters. I found it quite revealing, how powerful certain characters are, because it explained a lot of story details for me, for instance seeing how powerful gandalf might really be.
And it showed, its possible.
I have deducted some more meaning of masteries (and they are all from the HQ rulesbook):

M-journeyman
M2-master/among the best in the community
M3-great master, hero/among the best in the region
M4-M5-demigod/among the best in the country
M6-M8-ruler/founder over/of elementary aspects of the world (saint, magical lord)
M8-M12-creator of a ,,universe" (view of world or actual world)



soru said:
,,What can cause more of a problem in sf games is equipment. Players are going to expect to be able to walk into a shop and purchase a blaster or gauss pistol or starship, which really isn't handled well by the default 'pay 1hp get a new ability at 12' rule."


Actually ist 13, not 12. But never the less, what do you think is the problem ???
I would give all equipment a keyword with abilities and a rating.
If you want your campaign to be heroic everybody can make full use of the equipment ratings, whenever he picks it up. Or you handle it like a magical object in HQ, that maybe has a very high rating but you don´t know yet how to fully use it. So you buy a new ability and raise it seperately.

all the best

Christian

[Donald]

I have deducted some more meaning of masteries (and they are all from the HQ rulesbook):

M-journeyman
M2-master/among the best in the community
M3-great master, hero/among the best in the region
M4-M5-demigod/among the best in the country
M6-M8-ruler/founder over/of elementary aspects of the world (saint, magical lord)
M8-M12-creator of a ,,universe" (view of world or actual world)
Christian

Where did you find the latter? page 19 goes up to 1w4 which represents best in the world. I remember seeing some higher levels somewhere but that was for gods and their equals such as true dragons and true giants. I can't recall any of them going above w7 or w8 and that was for their best ability which wasn't necessarily particularly useful.

I can well believe Anaxial's Roster isn't particularly accurate in detail but there is a mathmatical model behind the numbers and it doesn't support the great differences you indicate above. Harrak (a superhero, 1w4) killed a god and took his skin for a cloak so that would indicate a mastery difference. Equally the difference between major gods (like Yelm and Orlanth) and lesser ones (like Urox and Humakt) is not sufficent for them to be more than a couple of masteries apart.

soru said:
,,What can cause more of a problem in sf games is equipment. Players are going to expect to be able to walk into a shop and purchase a blaster or gauss pistol or starship, which really isn't handled well by the default 'pay 1hp get a new ability at 12' rule."

Actually ist 13, not 12. But never the less, what do you think is the problem ???
I would give all equipment a keyword with abilities and a rating.

Depends if the ability is part of a keyword, if not the default is 6 rather than 12 or 13.

As a narrator I wouldn't have a problem with a player buying a starship and trying to fly it with a pilot ability of 6 or even 13. After the first fumble I'd give them a decent chance to escape the crash that wrote it off. Then starship navigation fumbles would get them badly lost. Of course even failures could get them in trouble with port authorities, space cops or whatever. I don't think most players would take long to get the hint that they need to get their abilities up to at least a mastery before going off on their own.

[Mac Logo]

Where did you find the latter? page 19 goes up to 1w4 which represents best in the world. I remember seeing some higher levels somewhere but that was for gods and their equals such as true dragons and true giants. I can't recall any of them going above w7 or w8 and that was for their best ability which wasn't necessarily particularly useful.

It's in the Game Aids section under Sample Resistances, p274 I think. Greater Gods and such go up to 1w12.

Personally, I would not get to worrried what a mastery actually means. I look on it as a relative scale. Sometimes I think of it as linear, sometimes logarithmic and sometimes exponential. Whatever is right for the game at that point.

If I have a setting where characters are immortal, 3000 years old and not bound to be unchanging by some "cosmic compromise", well HQ is the rule system to go with, because it is open ended. It all depends what is mutable within the setting.

Glorantha is Myth, so heroquests change Glorantha. Not every setting has that feature. Some purport to emulate realistic settings. I think that SF would actually scale to the Enterprise/ISD being a pretty major god - either craft is capable of devastating an entire world.

Sorry, I'm wandering of topic, so I'll stop there.

Cheers,

Graeme

[soru]

As a narrator I wouldn't have a problem with a player buying a starship and trying to fly it with a pilot ability of 6 or even 13.

But what about the case where Tim Strong but Dim challenges the player that he can lift anything he owns? Using the 'spacecraft 6' rating as a defense against 'strong' wouldn't work very well.

It's one thing to use your 'guns' skill to hit somebody, another when you want to use your laser pistol to burn through a locked door, or a shaped charge to blow up a building. Sometimes you are using your skill augmented by gear, other times you are using the power of the gear directly.

For a SF game focusing on gear, it's probably a good idea to give equipment the same amount of emphasis as vanilla HQ gives to magic.

A spacecraft is probably best treated as a follower, either a patron (enterprise) or a sidekick (millenium falcon).

Equipment skills could be affinities, say scientific equipment 3w1 with 3 feats: spectral analyser, environmental sampler, hyperspace tracker. Operating a different piece of gear encountered in play would mean an improv penalty, but it would only take 1hp to add it as a feat at your full affinity rating.

Getting a piece of technology to operate according to spec is a 10 difficulty (technology being easier to use than magic). Opposed contests use the normal rules.

soru

[Donald]

It's in the Game Aids section under Sample Resistances, p274 I think. Greater Gods and such go up to 1w12.

Personally, I would not get to worrried what a mastery actually means. I look on it as a relative scale. Sometimes I think of it as linear, sometimes logarithmic and sometimes exponential. Whatever is right for the game at that point.

I like to understand the numbers so I can pick a number as required without having to look it up in the book.

I'm not sure that the resistences are quite comparable with the levels of mastery for characters. I suspect they include augments and community support bonuses which for the gods are going to amount to two or three masteries in themselves.

[Mac Logo]

For a SF game focusing on gear, it's probably a good idea to give equipment the same amount of emphasis as vanilla HQ gives to magic.
<snip>
Equipment skills could be affinities, say scientific equipment 3w1 with 3 feats: spectral analyser, environmental sampler, hyperspace tracker. Operating a different piece of gear encountered in play would mean an improv penalty, but it would only take 1hp to add it as a feat at your full affinity rating.

Which would make it sort of like a Keyword.

That I like. Reminiscent of the old Ringworld RPG in a way. General skills can improvise specialities, but you can raise specialities within a general category. Yes, it does sound like Ringworld. Cool. The only difference I see is that the Keywords are fixed at chargen in HQ and the equivalent in RW was derived from the classic BRP char stats.

Another genre an universe to play with and another reason to dig out the Ringworld RPG when I visit my folks over the holidays.

Thanks.

Graeme

[Mac Logo]

I'm not sure that the resistences are quite comparable with the levels of mastery for characters. I suspect they include augments and community support bonuses which for the gods are going to amount to two or three masteries in themselves.

I'm very sure that they are utterly comparable. The Heroquesting chapter is actually explicit on this. there is a table on p200. If you feel like kicking a Great Spirit, an aspect of a Great God or Zzabur, their abilities are in the range of 10w8 to 10w12.

I don't particularly need to know how much community support a being of that stature has. They have lots and it's a major heroquest to change it -  Mr. Edwards' little jaunt with Malia is a prime example - so I'd call it integral to their being without similar status intervention.

IMO The actual numbers mean little more than the Hero (or whatever) has seen that attack before and knows from vast experience that it can be countered by such and such a tactic. It's like playing chess vs a grand master. They can be on umpteen boards, thrashing each person on those boards and not really being challenged, despite every single one of their opponents being a very good player in their own right - certainly good enough to take me (and the folks that taught me) to the cleaners, .

Cheers

Graeme

[Scripty]

I like to understand the numbers so I can pick a number as required without having to look it up in the book.

Here's a fairly easy way to do it. Keep a rough estimate of your player's ability ratings in mind. Not every single one. Just look over their sheets and make a mental note, such as: "Hmm... They seem to have a number of abilities at 1w".

That's your starting point. After that, the rest is cake. If you reason that a task should be easy for them, set it at -5 to that rating. If you reason that a task is relatively foolproof, set it at -10 to that rating. Much less, and there's really no sense in rolling (at least for players, IME).

If you think a task should be tough, but not exceptionally hard, set it at the same rating or +3 to the rating. If you think the task should be difficult, give it a +5 to the rating. If you think the task should be really, really difficult, give it a +10. If you think the task should be just a hair short of impossible, give it a +20.

In this way, you can scale your challenges to the character's capabilities. For example, if the Hulk is trying to chuck a Mini across the street, what's the use in rolling? But if Agent Mulder is trying to do the same thing, it should probably be at +30 or so to your noted rating. I use this a lot. It works better than having to have a big list of numbers on hand to thumb through every time a player wants to do something.

[Donald]

I like to understand the numbers so I can pick a number as required without having to look it up in the book.

In this way, you can scale your challenges to the character's capabilities.

Yes, this is part of the process but I also like to understand the numbers in the context of the world as a whole so I don't make a task a lot more difficult for a party just because they have big numbers in appropriate skills. It may be a bit simulationist but I like my Glorantha to have an internal consistency.

[soru]

In this way, you can scale your challenges to the character's capabilities.

Personally, I find this backwards. You first work out what numbers would play an appropriate role in the story, and then work out what kind of being would plausibly have those numbers.

So, for example, if for the purposes of your story you need a NPC than can unquestionably and self-evidently resist any direct attack by a band of experienced and fully augmented heros, then maybe you need to use a god, saint or greater spirit. No problemo, use one, there are plenty out there. That does a lot less damage to suspension of disbelief than suddenly having a random lunar official be mysteriously unkillable.

soru

[Scripty]

Personally, I find this backwards.

....

So, for example, if for the purposes of your story you need a NPC than can unquestionably and self-evidently resist any direct attack by a band of experienced and fully augmented heros, then maybe you need to use a god, saint or greater spirit. No problemo, use one, there are plenty out there. That does a lot less damage to suspension of disbelief than suddenly having a random lunar official be mysteriously unkillable.

soru

Mmmkay. It sounds like you don't get what I'm saying. The world has an internal consistency but I'm proposing that is metered by your characters and not some big list of numbers. By applying my suggestion, you're not going to be making Kobolds at Strong 10W to challenge a player with Strong 7W. That would be silly. No, but if you had a Giant NPC and (here's the important part) KNEW YOUR CHARACTERS' CAPABILITIES, then you could say...

hmmm.... That PC's pretty strong, but I think he'd have a tough time against a Giant... We'll make the Giant Strong 12W. Reasonable and consistent within your game world. Should the character advance to 5w2 strength, then he should be at a level where Giants don't challenge him anymore.

Nowhere did I say throw common sense to the wind.

I think what you guys are looking for is a big list of things and their ratings. That's in HeroQuest on pages 274 and 275. The size ratings on page 206 are helpful as well.

If you are familiar with these ratings or have them handy, there's no reason why you wouldn't find my suggestion helpful, unless blessed with a complete lack of common sense.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Everyone, be nice to one another.

Best,
Ron