Mike Holmes wrote: (which almost gets me off on my in-game/metagame rant - a really high strength ability doesn't neccessarily mean that the character is strong at all)

Mike Holmes wrote: The other typical problem with "converting" to narrativism, is getting the players to buy into the idea (which Chris hinted at) that the ratings aren't entirely meant to reflect some in-game reality.

... Consider the following, as an extreme example meant to see if you can wrap your head around the concept in question. You could have a character described as being a huge strong guy, who doesn't have a the ability Strong at all.

... Then you could have a small guy who would be described in-game as much weaker who has Strong 5W. In many games this would mean that the little guy was the stronger of the two. In fact there'd be some chart that would list how much each can carry or the like.

There is no such chart in HQ, and for a reason. Because the ability Strong doesn't neccessarily reflect the strength of the character. Instead it represents how often the character will be able to resolve conflicts favorably using strength.

... Again, in our example, if the two guys lift stones larger and larger to see who can lift the larger stone, in a situation that's not a conflict, the big guy will win.

... But, say the big guy is trying to pound the little guy into the ground. The little guy will likely win the contest (all else being equal), due to his Strong abilty.

Doesn't that make him stronger? No, it doesn't. The narration of the win could be something like, "Despite being much weaker, Skinny Guy manages to maneuver to get some good leverage and make his muscles work well to cut off the Big guy's windpipe, knocking him unconscious."

... The skinny guy wins because of his strength, yes. but not because he's stronger. But because the game statistics said that the story should go such that he will win this way more often.

Does that make any sense?

... Now, what usually happens is that everyone makes things easy to grasp, and matches pretty closely the ability descriptions to the in-game descriptions. So the above circumstance doesn't often (ever, even) occur. But it could,

... and it would be valid. Understanding this is key in figuring out how things work in a game like HQ.

Hi HB,

This is a great question. Here's the key point to look at in this game, ratings don't necessary measure the quality itself, they measure the "cinematic" power of the quality over the outcomes in play.

So, to pull an example; Luke Skywalker pretty much "hears" about the Force from Ben Kenobi, does a couple of drills, and basically sucks. Yet his "Force" rating is high, because it does a lot for helping him blow up the Death Star. There is no question that his ability actually sucks, but cinematically, it is powerful enough to count when he needs it. A player could have chosen to make the Force rating very high, even before the character "knew" about possessing such abilities.

Why look at things this way instead of Strength X= X strong? Well, consider the contest between Agnar the Strong attempting to pummel his brother Bedor the Persuasive who is trying to calm him down. Agnar is using his strength, and Bedor is using his persuasion, and they both happen to be equal(after all is said and done). How can persuasion be as "powerful" as strength? Easy, we're measuring the rating's power over the outcome of the story, not a simulation of reality.

Of course, if you want, you can measure everything literally, at which point, you have to deal with two problems:

-Relationships-

So, if Love Wife is 17 as a normal rating, what is Love Wife 5W4? Is that the kind of love that can only be had by higher beings? Is it obssessive? What kind of love can add a massive +8 to strength or other traits in a contest?

-Augmentation-

Also, if it becomes easy to augment from +10 to +50 with enough traits firing off, what does that say about your reality for traits like strength? "I'm really motivated today, I could take on a giant... literally!!!" ?

When you approach ratings as a measure of story power, and not in game causality, these issues disappear, and you can play without having to dive deep into DoubleThink to rationalize things away. "If he sucks, why is his Force high?" "Because he's the hero, and it's his schtick" "Oh, ok."

Thoughts?

Chris

Hi Hobbitboy,

I'm not going to speak for Mike, but I'll offer my own interpretation. The disconnect you're having is probably stemming from viewing the rules as the "laws" of the world. I think that, according to Mike's take, you need to look at ability ratings as expressions of story potency. They are a character's ability and power to interact with the story in certain ways.

The guy who's described as strong, but who doesn't have the Strong ability, may be the strongest guy around but his strength is not going to be a focus of his story.

I'm not positive I agree with that, but I'm not sure I disagree with it either. I haven't had the opportunity to run or play the system yet (though I hope to soon), so I'm not really qualified to make a judgment yet.

I'm going to agree with the rest that the ranking really rates the story importance more than the physical reality.

I think if you do this, then, you need to remember to tailor NPCs and such in relation to the characters, and not by some standard scale. Thus if someone is strong, you should make your giants strong in relation to that.
It then becomes about how Strong the giant is in relation to the Strong person. I think the problem is when you are trying to decide the physical world's resistance to something. i.e. I think you have to avoid giving rocks "Heavy 5W" as an ability in this version. It's only Heavy in relation to how difficult it is for the player to lift.

Also, this explains why "Loathes Olaf 17" still means you hate Olaf more than "Dislikes Olaf 5W".

I like this, but it does require thinking a new way about things. I think you can play HQ with the numbers being a straight description of reality (although you then have to think about putting in limitations on Strong, or Love, or what have you to explain why they shouldn't go up to 15W4 or some such).

I do think most players avoid this by mentally making it a scale so that someone with Strong 15 is weaker than someone with Strong 1W.

Like Thor, I get this, and I don't dislike it, but I'm not sure I like it either.

Probably the simplest way to articulate the idea is that while in a normal game "Strong" means "this character in the imagined world is strong", in HQ and other such systems it means "we the players want this character to solve his problems with his strength". Add a number to the qualifier and it becomes "we the players want this character to solve his problems with his strength this much."

HQ is fundamentally different from world-simulating systems in this regard; you the player do not manipulate the game world at all through manipulating the numbers on the character sheet. The numbers themselves do not say anything about the game world. Instead, you manipulate the negotiation between players. By getting a high Strength for your character you're effectively saying that you want to tell scenes and stories where your character's strength counts. The rules are there to give a structure to the negotiation: instead of actually talking about it with others you just need the GM's permission for the trait and the rules will tell you how much story importance you can put in the trait at this time.

Yes, the above means that the traits need not have any real connection to the actual things of the game world. The overwhelmingly commonest interpretation of "Strength 2W" is "this character is stronger than those around him, and it shows", but this is not the only possibility. Example: my character, Olaf the unlucky, has "Strength 3". He is however just as strong and robust as others in his village. It's just that every time he tries to do something dramatic or interesting with his strength, he seems to stumble, or twist his ankle, or face the wrong direction. In effect he's learned not to solve things with brute strength, and only rarely even tries. His "Strenght 3" is interpreted as "I don't want Olaf to rely on strength, but that's because he doesn't believe in himself, not because he's actually weak".

Everything in HQ rules is predicated on this largely unspoken difference from world simulating systems. There's no simulation in the conflict rules, or magic rules, or experience rules, or anything at all in there.

Everything in HQ rules is predicated on this largely unspoken difference from world simulating systems.

in HeroQuest the game world changes to support the story as represented by the rules. If you spend HP to increase you strength rating, you get slightly stronger in the game world, and if you don't think that is plausible (and are worried about plausibility), you shouldn't spend the HP.

in ForgeQuest there is no mapping from the game rules to the game world, there is only the story and the rules. Consequently there are no problems with spending HP to increase any ability, the narrator will just adjust the ability ratings of future opponents appropriately.

soru wrote:

Everything in HQ rules is predicated on this largely unspoken difference from world simulating systems.

In ForgeQuest yes, HeroQuest not so much.

Hi folks,

The divide between the two views really comes into place based on the nebulous idea of "realism".

In the Glorantha setting, yes, it is possible for Farmer Schmoe to love the princess 15W6, and yes, it can provide a +14 bonus to strength and everything else. It IS mythic. In this sense, everything on the sheet can map to reality, and yes, you had better accept that with sufficient augments, someone can hop up a mastery or two by that alone. Realism will be very loose, ala Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

If you either A) cannot accept the wide variance reality, or B) want to play in another setting, you either have to artificially set limits to scores or else divorce the resolution from in game modelling.

I'm quite cool with it either way. The key point being brought up here in the Forge is that you can work it however works for your plausibility needs. The numbers exist for you at the table, not for Habbar the Wise.

The question then becomes; are you going to accept the in game reality created by the HQ system that it models, Glorantha, where the strange and wonderous happens everyday? Or are you going to modify that?

Chris

Sidenote:

The other thing to be aware of is that the rulebook pushes Nar goals and even advice in play, but all the examples are pretty Sim...

Example: my character, Olaf the unlucky, has "Strength 3". He is however just as strong and robust as others in his village. It's just that every time he tries to do something dramatic or interesting with his strength, he seems to stumble, or twist his ankle, or face the wrong direction. In effect he's learned not to solve things with brute strength, and only rarely even tries. His "Strenght 3" is interpreted as "I don't want Olaf to rely on strength, but that's because he doesn't believe in himself, not because he's actually weak".

1. I'm not advocating actually disconnecting the in-game description of things and the mechanical description. And I never have. Read my posts again. What I've said is that, if somebody did this, it would work fine. I've also said that nobody does do this in the way I describe, so the point is moot. The reason I brought this up is because the exercise of thinking of it this way helps people to see the important part. Which is how to successfully make appropriate contests and apply the HQ mechanics given the intent of the design.

In fact, I play particularly "sim" if you will compared to a lot of people around here (Chris, for instance), and require a lot of adherence of ability description to in-game "reality." I just realize that it's a choice, and something that one can play around with a lot.

This is not new, it's what Scott, you and I, Soru, all agreed to in the thread from a while back about the same subject. In any case, in play it's not an issue.

2. This is not just my own local interpretation, or some "Forge" interpretation. Just to be sure, when sitting down with Greg Stafford and Robin Laws at Origins just a couple of weeks ago, I asked them point blank what the intention of the design was. And they confirmed what I'm saying. Now, I'm breaking Ron's rule about knowing Greg being off limits as a topic, but I did this purely in the name of targeted research. Moreover, you don't have to believe me, you can read these posts from Robin himself: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/message/604
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HeroQuest-rules/message/4665

Also you can read the statements in the book in the narrators section that say the same things. Soru, I put it to you that you are reading in interpretations about how things in the game work from your play of other games. If you disagree, then please show me where it is that the text supports your ideas. Because I can't find it anywhere.

Even more importantly, however, I've also never said it was the one true way to play HQ. That is, I agree with you that you can play HQ without this interpretation, and have never said otherwise. All I've said is that if (and I stress, if) you have problems with how HQ works as written, that you can be rid of all of the problems by using the dramatic interpretation of ability levels. And in the threads in question, the posters asked how to play with narrativism, and for that, this is a particularly direct answer. There's been no attack on your mode that you need to defend it from.

LC, actually magic is particularly dramatic in HQ, and I could go on as to the necessity of why this is so. The whole mundane/magic resistance problem speaks to the issue.

3. Lastly, I'm on record as saying that one should rarely, if ever, discuss this sort of thing with players. It's actually often counterproductive. All one has to do is to play this way themselves, and players will follow along. Or what LC said.


Is that any more clear?

Mike

I don't think we would actually play all that differently. I am not so much disagreeing with you as with some of the people who think they are agreeing with you.

But:

2. This is not just my own local interpretation, or some "Forge" interpretation.

soru wrote: By the book, if you have 10W2 wealth, you are, in game, as rich as a duke (though certainly not of the same social standing, if all your money is in coins and not land). I don't think that can be reconciled with the 'rating implies nothing about the gameworld' view.

Again, of course these things say something about the game world. At the very least, in the most radical of cases, they say that when things occur that would require the ability in question, these things will tend to come out more favorably for the side that has the higher rating. Not that anyone in the game world knows this, this is just for the players. We all agree on that, right? Nobody in the game world thinks, "Gee, I'm glad I'm Strong 17."

Nobody has said at any time that this linkage does not exist. The many "example" resistances imply that these would be good resistances to use to represent contests that are dramatically appropriate. Yes, this is due to the numbers being plausible representations of the in-game state. Again, nobody has said that plausibility should go out the door. The question is whether or not the viewpoint of what these represent is some direct representation of some "physics" model of the game (or, rather, an attempt to simulate mechanically the way that things would work in the game), or an attempt at modeling the dramatic reality of things. That is, does the Duke have a 5W2 rating (or whatever is appropriate) because that models a duke well, or because if I'm in a contest with that Duke competing against him to buy some object, that this is likely a dramatically appropriate level to set the resistance?

The nice thing is that you really don't have to answer the question (Alex, you're right, most of the time it's not a problem). That is, again, most of the time you can reconcile each of these views with each other. Abilities can represent both of these things in most situations. Or, rather, we buy into the idea of an objective existence of the game world in order to feel the character's conflicts more powerfully in some way.

The only question is what implications each viewpoint has when it comes to certain applications. For instance, the book says that HP spending mostly occurs between adventures, and you only get HP then, and further that if you want to develop any ability more than one, you have to pay extra to do it (at a prohibitively costly upward trend). One could interperet this as an attempt to ensure that characters only learn things at a "realistic" rate. Which would imply that the mechanics are representing the in-game reality.

But there are several problems with this. First, HP can be spent for things that explicitly and only have to do with story pacing. Most obviously the idea of cementing items. If you don't cement an item, the text implies that the narrator can use dramatic license to take them from a player. This can have nothing to do with "realism" it can only have to do with character balance in terms of the ongoing story.

I believe that the slow development methods that are in the book are actually intended to produce some drama in terms of making the use of HP more momentous, and the expanding costs are intended to give players a reason to spend on a wider variety of abilities which is more interesting than just "stacking" on one. I have no evidence from the sections on development directly (with the above exception of the item drama rules). But, given that the sections on examples, and development, etc, don't say how these things are intended to be used, I think that the parts in the narrator's section intend to speak to all of these situations.

That said, I would also agree that the designers just didn't take a whole lotta stance on this at all. Making it possible to interperet the game either way. And, again, it does just fine in either mode for lots of people (in fact it plays better in either mode than most games play in any one mode).

This all said, the people who are agreeing with me play just like I do, I think. That is, the rhetoric that we use to get people to see this viewpoint may have you convinced that they play some radically different version of the game. When, in fact, it's just meant to get people to consider that there may be another viewpoint by which one can play.

If that causes confusion, which I admit it might in some cases, that's the price that sometimes has to be paid to break people from being locked down by their traditional viewpoints. That doesn't make those viewpoints bad, it just makes it hard for some people to understand ours.

Mike

P.S. If you want an example of a "Forge" drift, which would be to say that I am the Forge, which is ridiculous, but if you wanted an example: I give out HP between every session (I don't have "adventures" per se, so I have to have some interval), I allow players to spend HP to cement or increase abilities during play or whenever they like, and I don't charge extra for "Stacking" all the time. Occasionally. Depends. These changes are more radical, and I'd only suggest people using them at all if they consider the ramifications first, and agree with what the changes accomplish. Which is to completely dissociate HP from the idea that they measure "realisitic" advancement at all, and place them cognatively firmly in the players mind as a dramatic device. Which still doesn't mean that you chuck plausibility, just that any dramatic device will suffice for plausibility's sake in this case. For instance, the old, "Well, I always knew how, but you just didn't know I knew," excuse is valid in my game.

Again, mostly agreed.

except:

That is, does the Duke have a 5W2 rating (or whatever is appropriate) because that models a duke well, or because if I'm in a contest with that Duke competing against him to buy some object, that this is likely a dramatically appropriate level to set the resistance?

I got no problem with that. That's even more catering to the narrativism mode. Basically creating in-game reality as you need to to explain how the drama arises. Yep, no problem with that at all.

Mike

One of my favorite things about this game is that anything that you have named, and have a score for, is far more important than anything else about you, that isn't.

Universalis is also this way.

It doesn't matter if you are a big hulking barbarian-type in your character description.

If you have Shy 13, Cowardly 17, Clumsy 23...thats way more important than any non-listed 'strength'.

Certainly not a physics-related attribute system, although plausiblity is important!

Other games, in order to be "big" and "hulking" would force you to buy a high Strength score... thankfully this game doesn't.

OK, maybe they do play differently that I do... :-)

OTOH, Bob's in my online game...

Mike

Sorry for revisiting this after all this time but it seemed better than starting a new thread.

Mike Holmes wrote: The question is whether or not the viewpoint of what these represent is some direct representation of some "physics" model of the game (or, rather, an attempt to simulate mechanically the way that things would work in the game), or an attempt at modeling the dramatic reality of things. That is, does the Duke have a 5W2 rating (or whatever is appropriate) because that models a duke well, or because if I'm in a contest with that Duke competing against him to buy some object, that this is likely a dramatically appropriate level to set the resistance?

A human has neither Large nor Small. These abilities are inappropriate for most heroes without special magic: a human cannot grow to the size of a giant simply by spending hero points. Heroes may possess abilities such as Big or Slender, but without magic these remain within the hero's racial norms, and your narrator may limit their use in contests.

I can cite tons of stuff like this. Yes, the game is decidely this way, per the text. I've never said it wasn't. I merely said that it doesn't have to be to work.

Again, it's a mental exercise, not a way you'll want to play neccessarily. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm getting through. The idea of the excercise is to point out that, even if you don't go as far as saying that Big has nothing to do with the actual in-game size of the character, you also don't have to assume the usual 100% opposite ideal - that the game is modeling the in-game reality in accurate detail.

The size rules, are, actually, a good example (Soru first keyed us in to this). If the size rules were "accurate" then the biggest human would be something like Large 20W3. Then Dragons would be like Large 20W8. This based on the idea that 20W3 is about maximum human capacity in everything else. But this isn't very dramatic in many ways. We don't want Giants and Dragons to automatically win contests just because they're so much larger - it doesn't match the literature.

Put another way, the way the system you've quoted makes things, unless the narrator makes an improv modifier, a human with Big 10W2, is as potent as a Giant with Large 10W2, right? We know that they're not the same size, but the system says they are just as effective in most of these cases - with only the narrator to say otherwise.

Now, the "explanation" is that the "Large" creatures "should" have higher ratings, and that they're lower, because it represents "how effectively they can use their strength." This is from Issiaries, mind you. Read that again. They don't say "in-game" or "in a metagame fashion." Now, I know that they mean in-game, because the people protesting, are protesting the lack of modeling "accuracy" here. But it's interesting how it can be read to support the delinked viewpoint, no?

IOW, you've just cited the best evidence in the book that the method that I talk about can be used successfully, and is.

Better stated, it just won't matter in play. When you're adding up augments, and such, in an actual contest, these subjects just don't come up. Because nobody cares, really. That is, absent gamism, why does the player need to bother to check the stats of the opponent? Absent a need for "accuracy" who's suspension of disbelief is being broken? Given the very interesting dramatic outcomes of the system who could complain?

Oh, there are some who play HQ that way, but they tend to alter the system to get it to work. Starting with those size rules.

Mike

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found someone had written 'Cockroach 13' on his character sheet.

Is he a cockroach, or do people just relate to him as if he was?

How would you game that? How would you film it?

Are you one of the subset of people who would be happy to game it without necessarily knowing the answers to the third question?

soru

> Is he a cockroach, or do people just relate to him as if he was?
> How would you game that? How would you film it?
> Are you one of the subset of people who would be happy to
> game it without necessarily knowing the answers to the third question?

I dont think its the rules business to deal with these questions. Any of the three could work. The people at the table will decide how to approach it. Its the purpose of the rules to facilitate play regardless of which approach they choose.

What Nick said. These things have to be handled locally, because the rules don't say anything about them. They imply some things, but in fact the implications are not consistent, either. In any case, the system works for all of these things.

One thing to consider, however, is that similarity in breadth to other abilities is important. That is, in my game Cockroach would at least have to be a species keyword in order to make the character look like, and have the physiogomy of a cockroach. And there's no mechanical way outside of heroquesting that I know of (other than taking certain GM fiat rules to a not so logical conclusion) that allow a player to place such a keyword on their sheet. Further, as an ability, it doesn't match any of the types. That is, it's not a skill, or a relationship...I'd allow it as a personality trait, however. But filming that wouldn't mean he looked like a cockroach in that case.

But then I run a pretty literalist game in many ways. If you wanted something more surreal, I don't see why you couldn't do your narrations differently.

My point is merely that the "sample" abilities of the game are meant to be informative on what sort of thing works in the "typical" game. And sticking to that has worked for me.

Mike