About 10 months into our Midnight campaign, we playtested HeroQuest for the setting a week ago.

I pregenerated an all-evil cast of PCs to choose from, an NPC cast and a rudimentary R-map and some simple bangs, and off we went.

Before I go into more detail, here's the result: yup, we'll be converting over.

First responses (going around the table):

Player #1: Shining eyes. Like me she likes character-centred stuff and like me, she hasn't had many gaming opportunities outside the ubiquitous DnD. She's been sold on HQ pretty much since I first started raving incoherently about it a while ago, and it looks like play hasn't disappointed. "Fun session. Now let's talk about what my PC will look like in HQ, ok..."

Player #2: Mixed, ending on an upbeat note. Couldn't stay for the whole session (work interfering at short notice), and left looking a bit disappointed. I talked to him afterwards. He says he'll miss the tons of dice rolling and combat tactics stuff we had in DnD, but is in favour of converting over anyway because he saw how much fun I had running it and the other players playing it. He also told me that while he'd describe himself as a "powergamer" and "rollplayer", the most memorable moments from my game for him involved decisions his character made, and most notably one brilliant success talking a racist but powerful elf around to granting to humans more rights in the forest. He's distrustful of a magic system without detailed spell descriptions but looks forward to having a chance at making his character more of a "talker" when we convert. I'm planning to meet with him separately to talk over the magic system I want to use and give him input.

Player #3: Mostly in favour. Says he had fun, enjoyed how the system supports roleplay rather than shoehorning play into rules the way DnD tends to do. As yet unconvinced about what could possibly be cool about extended contests - we ran through one primarily to see how the mechanics work and what to do with them in the future, which isn't a good introduction to them.

Me: Wow. Simply, wow. I had suspected it but had no way of telling before I tried it: HeroQuest supports the style I like incredibly well. I was still struggling with the rules and some pesky engrained DnD habits (and will be for a while), but still it was enormously liberating for me to drop all the DnD ballast I've been struggling with in the past and focus on content of the game, both in prep and in play.

Next post: lessons taken and questions unresolved.

Two main learning lessons for me as a GM from this playtest session (I'm sure there will be tons more as we continue to play):

1. When you're playing rules rather than SIS, be aware of it. Rules play and SIS play are two different types of fun.

I used to think DnD was a game that supported tactical combat play. This worried me a bit because our Midnight game is a game about a bunch of freedom fighters operating as guerrillas/budding shadow politicians in a warzone, so there's always been a strong focus on combat and pre-combat "tactical" discussions. I feared that moving over to HeroQuest, which couldn't care less about combat merely because it's combat, might cause us to flounder a bit.

We had (I think) three instances of "combat" (by which in this context I mean contests involving acts or threats of violence on at least one side) in the playtest - two simple contests, one extended contest. Did they cause us to flounder? Yup, they did, to an extent, but not for the reasons I expected.

Most of us enjoyed the simple contest in the opening scene: a run-in of the evil PCs and their minions with a group of stragglers from a fleeing band of resistance fighters, which was quickly dealt with. Cool, players #1 and #3 said. In DnD this would have taken an hour to set up and run through.
Player #2 said he missed the "tactical" dimension and was a bit bored by the fight.

Talking after the game, he and I got into a discussion about tactics. It turns out that by "tactics" he means the whole DnD shebang. How many squares on the battle grid for that Fireball? How many rounds will this Stoneskin last before our fighters will have to beat the retreat? Who's getting the last two potions of Blur and when do we drink them to ensure the effect doesn't run out during the fight?

All this is rules stuff, stuff that "happens" on the battle grid and can be counted out and displayed using minis. It's got little to nothing to do what actually happens in the SIS before, during and after a fight. What about using the terrain and light/darkness to your advantage? What about staging a distraction? What about playing on the enemy's emotion to shake/enrage/move them? Etc. - and that's not even going to the more exotic examples such as reciting heroic poetry to stop someone lobbing at you with their axe.

DnD supports the first sort of tactics but not the second: tactical rules play, yes. Tactics that matter in the SIS? No. Combat is abstracted to what goes on on the battle grid and in computing the effect of the numerous combat and magic rules subsets. It can be fun, yup, I enjoy it sometimes.

The drawback for me after playing/running DnD for too long is that I've lost awareness of the other dimension, and the way I observed it, that's true of everyone in our group. The instant there's potential for violence "we go into combat mode". Thankfully, in HQ that doesn't mean "Let's get the rulebooks and the ruler out" - but in our playtest session it still means that we, all of us together, drop out of the shared imagination space and into a rules mindset.

In play:
- At the beginning of the session, players picked up their pregenerated characters, read the two or three sentences of intro blurb I provided for each, and jumped right in.
- We are zooming along, everyone is having big-time fun playing evil-and-in-power characters for a change and making them nastier by the minute. (They are looking forward to having their normal PCs encounter these baddies some time...)
- A game element that appears to be an enemy shows up. Contest time.
- People stop playing and sit staring blandly at their character sheets, computing, giving the bare bones of input. "I hit the leader." "I hang back. If my orcs can't deal with it, I charge in." It's not in the words so much as in the tone and in the mood around the table. From one instant to the next, the spark has gone out of the game.
- We roll dice (thankfully, it's a simple contest, so that's done with quickly), determine the outcome and move on.
- Immediately, fun and group speed pick up again. In hindsight, this "combat" felt like a glitch in the game rather than a moment of heightened drama, which is what I think a contest should be.

The glitch is much more noticeable in the extended contest:
- The two remaining PCs plus minions have cornered the remaining resistance fighters, including one PC's elven double(?) agent / lover.
- We decide to run this as an extended contest.
- What happens feels much like a DnD combat with all the tactical rules fun taken away and close to zero SIS content. It's my failing to a large extent: as much as I've tried to learn extended contests from the rulebook, I'm a kinesthetic type, so I don't grok the mechanics until about halfway through the contest. Even then I'm too caught up in managing AP stuff to offer any interesting in-game content that the players might have played off of. I'll make sure I reserve some brain capacity for the actual game next time I run an extended contest. :)

Again in hindsight, I'm sure there was a lot of potential in that contest: the personal conflict between the PC and his NPC lover; the personalities involved; the fact that the players and I love to play off of each other to create scenes - only we never do that in "combat". Somehow, it looks like to us, combat time is rules time. It doesn't have to be that way and I'm sure we can find a more fun way.

I just have to remember to break my own habit - and to offer opportunities for players to do the same.

Now... How do I do that? Any advice?

2. Before you save things for tomorrow, check and double-check that you really don't want them today.

We'll be getting together for a character conversion session in a couple of weeks' time. The R-map in the playtest scenario appears to have been useful to at least one player and I want people to have something more visual to refer to than our assorted cast list, so I'm now making a Relationship Map for our cast of recurring NPCs. This has made me notice two things.

(a) The local cast of NPCs in the three refugee camps the PCs use as a combined base of operations tend to sit around all by themselves - when I look at "blood and sex" only, I get virtually no ties at all. My first thought ws, "Blimey, what a dysfunctional bunch of NPCs".

Although that's not such a big problem now I've noticed it, could even turn into a benefit. The camps started out by being bleak, starving, hopeless places when the PCs first arrived. As they work in the area, things gradually change, and introducing some new ties over time will tie in ok with that development I think, showing that bit by bit, hope and life are returning to a previously desolate place.
(The local NPCs' seeming isolation also leaves me more freedom to include ties to other places and factions, which is cool.)

So, I'll be ok with this bit I reckon.


(b) Now, to my problem child:

I so have political factions on both the oppression and resistance sides. But in almost a year of play, none of that has entered play.

The declared goal of the campaign has been from the start that the players want their PCs to eventually grow into heroes powerful enough to try and turn this whole war around. In true DnD fashion, we've kept things nice and local at first, now as the PCs are reaching mid-levels, we're expanding into the environs a bit. The large-scale stuff has never entered our minds as far as specific play was concerned.

Big mistake on my part, that. How much more focus and direction the campaign could have had if I'd seen this at the outset! It makes me gnash my teeth. (Not that that helps any.)
I was all caught up in that old DnD paradigm - low-level characters do low-level stuff. Mid-level characters do mid-level stuff. High-level characters don't happen unless you have the stamina to stay in the campaign for years and years. Sigh.


Now, how to deal with this? I'll be talking about it to my players when we convert their characters, obviously; but I'd like to have some ideas for a solution.
Going from "PCs know nothing" to "PCs now miraculously know about continental politics" is cheesy. Having wagonloads of information dumped on them in game is a drag and a bore and extremely disempowering. So - cut it up into fitting pieces? Give every PC a sliver of the whole? I don't have to reveal everything at once, obviously. Have information filter slowly through as PCs achieve more and more? This was my original, DnDish approach, and something about it doesn't feel quite right.

Whatever way I turn it, it feels to me as if I have to talk large-scale politics with the players to empower them, and do it now.

How to deal with it in game is another matter. Hm. I'll keep thinking I guess. Unless somebody here has a genius solution to offer.

I'm going to preface this by saying I suck at giving advice. I don't know why. I just do. Recent developments have pretty much convinced me of that.

I'm going to follow that by saying I'm posting here in a spirit of helping out. I'm not pressing any agenda, style of play or any other BS on you or anyone else. If I talk about how I've done things or mistakes I've made and what I think it means, that's just me talking. It doesn't have to be how you or anyone else feels about it. You don't have to read/listen/adhere to anything I'm saying. I'm okay with that. I can be wrong. I can be a butthead. But if I say anything that you read that you think might help you out, then that makes this worth it (to me). That's my purpose here.

I just don't want there to be any confusion on those matters.

StalkingBlue wrote: The glitch is much more noticeable in the extended contest:
- The two remaining PCs plus minions have cornered the remaining resistance fighters, including one PC's elven double(?) agent / lover.
- We decide to run this as an extended contest.
- What happens feels much like a DnD combat with all the tactical rules fun taken away and close to zero SIS content. It's my failing to a large extent: as much as I've tried to learn extended contests from the rulebook, I'm a kinesthetic type, so I don't grok the mechanics until about halfway through the contest. Even then I'm too caught up in managing AP stuff to offer any interesting in-game content that the players might have played off of. I'll make sure I reserve some brain capacity for the actual game next time I run an extended contest. :)

StalkingBlue wrote: I just have to remember to break my own habit - and to offer opportunities for players to do the same.

Now... How do I do that? Any advice?

I think Scott's talking about my game. And it's at least 90% simple, if not more. I estimated that I'd had about 6 extended contests in 19 sessions. Well, 23 sessions now.

So, like Scott said (he's much better at giving advice than he credit's himself for).

Dude! Darth so won that round of the contest! Luke totally lost his cool after he said that!

If you ever have a problem trying to guage whether or not somthing should be an extended contest, remember this climactic scene between Luke, the Emperor, and Darth Vader. No, they don't have to be that climactic to use an extended contest. But think not just about the importance, but about how the conflict in question was framed. Note how that scene is so long that they break away, and come back to it several times. Even a five minute long Bruce Lee thug thrashing doesn't break in the action usually. If it only takes 5 minutes on screen, even though that's a long time in a movie, it should be a simple contest.

Only the marathon scenes that have to be paced out should be extended contests. Where each "salvo" is worthy of a scene itself.

OK, we beat that one to death.


Second, you'll get faster, and more comfortable with all sorts of contests. This was your first session of play. And everyone learned how things work basically, right? It's not a tough system, it's consistent, and it doesn't have many exceptions to how to resolve things. So, eventually, it'll start to go really quickly, you'll find.

Except when it doesn't. Actually what happens is that the players will start to get good at it. In fact, watch for player #2 to actually "get it" suddenly at some point, and become really good at making things dramatic in contests. Just a prediction. Anyhow, when they get good at it, suddenly they'll be describing how their augments are involved in more detail, and generally helping you make things interesting. This can take a while. But that's OK, because it's all smile time, not work.

You can encourage this to get them there more quickly. First thing is to question augments. Don't say, "No, that won't work" ever, instead say, "Wha? How do you figer?" Then get this big smile on your face when they explain it.

If they take the time to explain it, give them the benefit of the doubt. So it's a bit of a stretch, so what? Reward players who try hard to make things interesting. Even if they're not always that successful. Because they'll become more successful when you do. They'll note that you kinda balked at this one, and will automatically tell you why it works the next time they stretch an augment. And they'll get more entertaining to make you buy in.

So get entertaining back. Here's a neat fact. Don't worry about hurting the PCs. You can't kill them accidentally (if you think you can, then ask me why it's not true). In fact, HQ will have them loving to lose. So go to town on them. If they're not losing every other contest, you're taking it too easy on them. And sometimes, just squish them with something way bigger than they are. Puts things in perspective, and gives them something to shoot for. Play wild and carefree, and the players will too.

Eventually it's all smiles and nods in contests. Might take some time to get there, but not too long. Realizing that it's on it's way, reliably, will help your confidence, too. You can already feel what it's trying to do, can't you. Just have some faith that it will. And it will.

Why does it work? Because HQ played this way encourages the conflict resolution to produce the sort of SIS detail you're looking for. (To get all technical).


OK, on to the other issue, information. Here's the key. Play exactly like you did before, with only one exception. Give all the NPCs motives to spill the beans to the PCs. Don't infodump, no. Make the player feel that his hero is special because the NPC needs him to know where the dark cabal hangs out because the NPC wants revenge or whatever. The usual mode of play is that NPCs are obstacles to giving out information. Simply change that to it's opposite, and you'll be where you want to be in not time, and it'll be more than just plausible, it'll be dramatic, too. Because the heroes will get all tangled up with said NPCs on the way.

Before you know it, you'll have more plot happening than you can keep track of (literally, last night I lost track of all the stuff my players were creating through interaction).

Mike

Hi Scott, thanks for replying.

I'm much indebted to you already for your Midnight conversion.
I did end up writing my own keywords (not least because that's part of how I learn a system, by playing around with stuff and seeing what it does for me), and I'm planning to use a much simplified magic system. But your conversion and especially your carefully thought out and extensive design notes helped me divorce HQ rules from Glorantha setting ballast in the first place and get an idea of what I wanted in a conversion for my game. Without your document, I don't know how I'd ever have got anywhere, so many thanks for that.

Scripty wrote: I don't think this is a failing on your part. My first extended contest I tried to make climbing a tower some big, dramatic thing. It sounds like your first extended contest was far and above better than mine.

In the HQ game in which I'm currently playing, extended contests are pretty rare. In fact, (and I don't think I'm misrepresenting the game or GM) about 90% or more of the contests are just simple contests. A participant on the Forge (I think) once suggested to me (when I was starting out) to let the players' interest determine what type of contest you'll use.

Just because something's a combat doesn't necessarily dictate that it should be an Extended Contest. You probably already know that but it's an important point, IMO.

1) Start bidding crazy...
2) Use abilities other than the run-of-the-mill ones...

Mike Holmes wrote: I think Scott's talking about my game. And it's at least 90% simple, if not more. I estimated that I'd had about 6 extended contests in 19 sessions. Well, 23 sessions now.

...But think not just about the importance, but about how the conflict in question was framed. Note how that scene is so long that they break away, and come back to it several times. Even a five minute long Bruce Lee thug thrashing doesn't break in the action usually. If it only takes 5 minutes on screen, even though that's a long time in a movie, it should be a simple contest.

Only the marathon scenes that have to be paced out should be extended contests. Where each "salvo" is worthy of a scene itself.

Second, you'll get faster, and more comfortable with all sorts of contests. This was your first session of play. And everyone learned how things work basically, right? It's not a tough system, it's consistent, and it doesn't have many exceptions to how to resolve things. So, eventually, it'll start to go really quickly, you'll find.

Except when it doesn't. Actually what happens is that the players will start to get good at it. In fact, watch for player #2 to actually "get it" suddenly at some point, and become really good at making things dramatic in contests. Just a prediction.

You can encourage this to get them there more quickly. First thing is to question augments. Don't say, "No, that won't work" ever, instead say, "Wha? How do you figer?" Then get this big smile on your face when they explain it.

If they take the time to explain it, give them the benefit of the doubt. So it's a bit of a stretch, so what? Reward players who try hard to make things interesting. Even if they're not always that successful. Because they'll become more successful when you do. They'll note that you kinda balked at this one, and will automatically tell you why it works the next time they stretch an augment. And they'll get more entertaining to make you buy in.

So get entertaining back. Here's a neat fact. Don't worry about hurting the PCs. You can't kill them accidentally (if you think you can, then ask me why it's not true). In fact, HQ will have them loving to lose. So go to town on them. If they're not losing every other contest, you're taking it too easy on them. And sometimes, just squish them with something way bigger than they are. Puts things in perspective, and gives them something to shoot for. Play wild and carefree, and the players will too.

Eventually it's all smiles and nods in contests. Might take some time to get there, but not too long. Realizing that it's on it's way, reliably, will help your confidence, too. You can already feel what it's trying to do, can't you. Just have some faith that it will. And it will.

OK, on to the other issue, information. Here's the key. Play exactly like you did before, with only one exception. Give all the NPCs motives to spill the beans to the PCs. Don't infodump, no. Make the player feel that his hero is special because the NPC needs him to know where the dark cabal hangs out because the NPC wants revenge or whatever. The usual mode of play is that NPCs are obstacles to giving out information. Simply change that to it's opposite, and you'll be where you want to be in not time, and it'll be more than just plausible, it'll be dramatic, too. Because the heroes will get all tangled up with said NPCs on the way.

StalkingBlue wrote: The problem I see is that traditionally the group has focussed strongly on success as the core goal of the game. This is due to a number of things:
- the overall goal we've formulated at the outset of the campaign, i.e. win this war;
- of the kind of play DnD supports best, i.e. success rocks (and nets XP and items), failure sucks; and
- a tradition the group has grown into through playing in player #3's long-standing, wonderfully challenging, hard-Gamist DnD campaign.

Hi.

I have a question for the guys with lots of HQ experience.

RE: Stalking Blues question about hooking the Players into the "factions" and the still vague Goal of the War:

In addition to the suggestions made so far, could the players also add reasons or goals for WHY they are fighting the war onto their character sheets? I mean, could SB approach the players and say, "Listen, we haven't really talked about this yet, but is there something you're looking for from all this?"

They might then come up with some negotiated backstory elements that become attributes.

For example, a player comes up with, "Seeking the Brotherhood of the Sun." 13. Now, SB might not have a Brother of the Sun, but he might have a faction lying around that serves this function quite well and could easily slot it in. (Apparently they haven't made any appearearances yet.)

Or, "Last survivor of Village Ruined by Badguys 13," or what not.

I know this breaks a couple of continuity concerns in the transfer between games, but this is kind of how HQ is geared to work, right? If it is, then it seems that this transition period would be a perfect place to add in details, just like in a tv series. "Look, we haven't mentioned this one way or another yet, but here's a fact about me you don't know yet..." and so on. It's not a contradiction of what's come before. It's an expansion of what's already been revealed!

Essentiallly SB says, "Because of the nature of this game, we can expand who your characters are, what they want, and what matters to them. Let's do that, because it actually matters to this game."

So, first, I'm asking this to see if I'm getting the game right.

And second, I'm actually offering this kind of thinking for SB and his players if I'm getting the game right.

Best,

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote: So, first, I'm asking this to see if I'm getting the game right.

And second, I'm actually offering this kind of thinking for SB and his players if I'm getting the game right.

Thanks Brand.

And StalkingBlue, this approach might make Player #3's eyes all shiny.

No, he won't be able to count off hexes for a fireball.

But...

"You mean, if I negotiate my guy to scene where he's hunting down the bastard who killed off my village, I get to augment my rolls with that attribute?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." Beat. "OH!"

Good luck,

Christopher

StalkingBlue wrote: Hm ok. I guess we might end up with a similar ratio. Right now I'm thinking I might prod my players gently to try extended contests a bit more often at first, until we get the hang of them. I at least would like to get a clearer view of what we can do with extended contests and where the potential for fun is for our group.

Wow, that's brilliant. I hadn't realised that before, but I agree. This speaks in favour of actually pacing extended contests in some cases, by cutting back and forth between the contest and other scenes.
(I know the book explains that for longterm things like election campaigns, but I hadn't realised it might work with conflicts that are resolved in one go.)

I might have to tread lightly on this for a bit while we all learn what to do with this particular dimension of HQ freedom. - Hm, or possibly that's another DnD habit of mine speaking here, not sure which.

Though one of our best and most memorable sessions in the Midnight game resulted from a big failure on the PCs'/players' part, when they spectacularly bungled an attack on some enemy forces they'd badly underestimated.

Anything in particular I could try to ease the group over into a new mindset about success/failure and fun/unfun?

I've never run NPCs as obstacles to information by default, yet the flow of information in my games has always been somewhat lacking. All those NPCs sitting around waiting only to be asked ...
I simply hadn't given them good enough motives to spill the beans.

At the risk of people missing the post directly above this one, I'm posting again.

There are some other D&D assumptions that need to be checked at the door of HQ Midnight, IMO. For example, I was reading somthing that someone posted about the setting and their comment was something like "Lots to do without ever having to meet up with a Night King." Much less Izrador, I expect. I can see the reasoning - if they killed these guys, then they'd be unemployed as monster slayers, right?

Which left me thinking, what the hell?

The source material for the setting is LotR, right?
Izrador = Sauron
Night Kings = Nazgul
Orcs = Orcs
Right?

Let's see, what happens in the source story?
- Very human characters stop onslaught of huge army? Check.
- Hobbit and sheildmaiden of Rohan personaly slay the head Nazgul? Check.
- Two other Hobbits personally take on the incarnation of Sauron, by trying to destroy it. And do? Check.

This is my advice. Pick an approximate number of sessions that you want this game to go. You're goal is then to have Izrador dead by the end of that length. No other overall goal will suffice for this setting.

BTW, for the Dark Suns setting that Scott has worked up? Same thing, a complete saving of the world is what's appropriate? What, it's a D&D setting made to be infinitely adversarial to the PCs? Well, then why did they put all of the darkness/sacrifice/redemption theme into the setting? And why can't we use HQ to finally effect it?

Put another way, I wonder how many players actually got the chance to play out "winning" the Dark Sun campaign in D&D. And of those that did, how many played by the rules?

Thank goodness for Hero Quest.

I mean, I've played in a lot of settings like this. And when you start, you create a character, and think, "Huh, wouldn't it be cool if this guy someday ended up saving the world? Nah, he's just a newb, he'll never do that?" (sound like a kid from Tatoine, before his aunt and uncle get killed, anyone?) You might even want to play off this feeling, and not tell the players that your goal is for them to kill Izrador or whatever. But the point is that in D&D, the "Nah" is correct unless you plan to play the fifteen years it takes, fudging all the close contests it'll take to get the PC to high enough level to anti-climactically slay the big bad guy.

With HQ, it's more than plausible, it's going to happen if you play it out with that intent. Personally I would shoot for 40 sessions tops.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: This is my advice. Pick an approximate number of sessions that you want this game to go. You're goal is then to have Izrador dead by the end of that length. No other overall goal will suffice for this setting.

Brand_Robins wrote: The third point is the hardest to deal with, I think. Like a court case, nothing so influences the outcome of a game as precedent. Changing it is very difficult, but luckily the methods are usually pretty simple – and you’ve already started doing them. It sounds, from your posts, like you’ve already had discussions with the players about why you want to change this for your game. That’s step number one.

You’ve also started analyzing your own play style. That’s step number two. Step number three is to keep doing both of those things.

...I told them that they could count on losing contests in this game at least once a session or so. They immediately became concerned that their characters would be stripped of their cool, that their protagonist role would be removed, and that they’d never be able to advance or grow the characters. They also were afraid that losing would make them unable to effect of change the world, which leads into your first point – if we lose, how can we win the war?

With my group I was able to show them the way around this by going to the novels we were basing the game off of.

However there are plenty of examples of how losing a contest does not mean you lose the war in film, literature, and history. Getting your players to look at these and really think about how they apply to their characters and the story they are telling may give you a chance to draw out the dramatic potential in failure. They also can help you as a GM by showing you how to stage failure so that it doesn’t de-protagonize the PCs.

Let us look for a moment at Braveheart. It’s a good match for your campaign, I think, being a movie about a poor man’s rebellion against the more powerful, entrenched, and duplicitous powers that are unjustly ruling his country. (It also has more to do with fantasy than history, but I’ll leave that rant aside.)

Also, watch the scenes as a GM. In every case where Willy fails it is because of circumstances he couldn’t control. He doesn’t make a dork of himself in failure, he doesn’t do things so stupid that you think he deserves to die, he doesn’t ever chicken out, run away, or plain give up.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: In addition to the suggestions made so far, could the players also add reasons or goals for WHY they are fighting the war onto their character sheets? I mean, could SB approach the players and say, "Listen, we haven't really talked about this yet, but is there something you're looking for from all this?"

They might then come up with some negotiated backstory elements that become attributes.

...

I know this breaks a couple of continuity concerns in the transfer between games, but this is kind of how HQ is geared to work, right? If it is, then it seems that this transition period would be a perfect place to add in details, just like in a tv series. "Look, we haven't mentioned this one way or another yet, but here's a fact about me you don't know yet..." and so on. It's not a contradiction of what's come before. It's an expansion of what's already been revealed!

Essentiallly SB says, "Because of the nature of this game, we can expand who your characters are, what they want, and what matters to them. Let's do that, because it actually matters to this game."

Christopher Kubasik wrote: "You mean, if I negotiate my guy to scene where he's hunting down the bastard who killed off my village, I get to augment my rolls with that attribute?"

StalkingBlue wrote: The flip side of all this is that many, even the majority of defeats the PCs have suffered in this game have in fact resulted from a bad decision on the players' part.

Lot's to cover, and I haven't even gotten stuff back on my post yet. :-)
(Edited to note the cross post with Brand - almost deserves a "Jinx!")

I've also started drifting the game from its original hard-Gamist approach (trying to cater to what I perceived to be the group's wishes) towards a style I'm more comfortable with. That wasn't too appreciated by some players who wanted "their DnD" and I lost two players in the process - but I've had incredibly rewarding feedback, too, sometimes from quite unexpected directions.

Keep talking to them, keep analyzing and figuring things out, and keep reinforcing the changes that you want to make.

It isn't as we haven't been talking about what the game _should_ be about, there's lots of goals - but somehow the dimension of "how is this going to be a cool story" is missing a bit.

The players have always tended to say that they expected their PCs to die horribly.

Hm, not sure how I could prevent players from making stupid mistakes at times.

Though the vibe I got from the two more Gamist minded players in the group was more of a faintly superior "This is how easy it is to break this system?!" - Only looking at one dimension here, mind you. I don't think either is out to break the game.

Mike Holmes wrote: My point is, rather, that what you need to do is simply move to the ratio that works best for your group.

...

When a contest is one of the other should depend entirely on whether or not the players (including the narrator) feel as players that it should be. For whatever reason.

Let me reiterate that. The reasons for having an extended contest are entirely player reasons. Something about the situation has to say to all of the participants in the game (all, not just the player with the hero in question and the narrator) that it demands special treatment.

Conversely, you could establish a contrast by flashing to a totally non-conflict situation. You know what I'm talking about. In the one scene the hero battles furiously and in the other his buddy relaxes with some light music, a book, and a snifter of brandy. There's a term for this from movies, IIRC. Perhaps Chris would know what it is. Juxtaposition, in any case.

First, like he says, do discuss what's going on to analyze play, but, whatever you do, don't bring up Forge terminology. Just use plain English. There's nothing worse than theory talk to really gum up the works. And you don't need it at all to establish a clear creative agenda throughout all the players. It's tempting to drop into the shorthand of GNS and the like, but it never works well with non-theorists.

Generally speaking, I think this article might have something pertinent to say to you: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9812

Second, I have to reiterate what Brand said about protagonists and failure. Here's a little exercise. Ask them to name a really cool character who never fails.

I always comment that there's been this running contest through the years about who is the most beat up actor, Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson.

For the game in question, start with the question for the players, "What has your character lost, because of the evil?" That's right, start them off as having suffered defeat, and lots of it.

Ask the players if it felt extra cool, when they finally righted the situation. Then ask them how they expect to get that feeling if their characters don't lose something first.

First, have a frank discussion about something. How many times did you fudge the dice in D&D so that they'd win? ...

I mean, it's no fun if the PCs get dead, is it? Or have to retreat in the final scene to heal up and come back later to take a second stab at it.

...then ask them if they trust you to make sure that their characters are cool. Because, after all, this is what the fudging was about in the other system, where only success is cool.

If they trust you, then they have to understand that you, as narrator in HQ have the power to assure that not only do their characters never die in the wrong situations, but that they fail with aplomb. Without altering the system at all.

As Brand points out, it's about making the character look good failing.

Now, that's an oversimplification - what you really want to do is to make sure that occasionally it is the character's "fault". But here what you want to do is highlight any failings that the character has. Maybe he failed to impress the girl because of the fear of spiders that he has on the character sheet. The player took it, so he must be willing to have that be a factor. It makes the character sympathetic again, human.

Ask them if they thought it was realistic that all of their opponents were always tailored to their ability level?

Because in D&D that would mean no interesting player conflict to overcome (they'd just lose), and because in losing it would mean that they lost their characters. What fun would that be? In fact, since D&D is about resource management, the players don't encounter "equal" foes hardly ever. Instead they encounter a series of way less powerful foes designed to slowly drain them of those resources.

What's really cool about HQ is that you no longer have to worry about this. You can instead concentrate on what's interesting, plausible, realistic, or dramatic as a foe. You can put anything out there, and not worry about the players getting punished.

So put anything out there...

Because failing is OK,

and because Hero Points mean that the player gets some control over when they succeed and fail.

...looking at the setting, have a Night King come along....
...he's just passing through. He doesn't know about the PCs, and has way more important things to do than deal with them. He doesn't know that they're "rebels," but something about them makes him leery. So, lacking time to investigate more closely, he casts a spell on them to "mark" them as potential troublemakers...
...
No matter what the result, the NK moves on to his important business.

Rule that a complete defeat does something like taking an arm off of a character, or a leg, or, more metaphysically a "Seared Soul" or something reminiscent of Frodo's injury on Weathertop.

Give them an appropriate flaw to represent it (at an appropriate level, too, like 10W2 - yeah I'm serious). Or kill a follower involved. Or maybe they kill him, in which case now they're really in a heap of trouble, right?

That is, you could have said that the contest was to survive. But you didn't. Instead you did something more plausible.

Second, they get to see that no matter how bad the result of a contest, even if they go so heroic as to attack an Uber-Bad-Guy it doesn't mean that they lose their characters. Instead, they now have all the more reason to hate the bad guys. They've lost something, and lost it in play (far more potent than losing something in the background).

And they now see that you're not fudging die rolls - which means that even though this is a major metaplot baddie, that they could have killed it if they'd been prepared correctly. Losing like this actually gives the players some hope.

Six Masteries seems like too much to overcome, but it's not - Josh, a player in my FTF game, nearly defeated a 10W5 resistance recently. Took a ritual with a ton of community support, and getting together all of the best stuff for it, but he had a shot at it. His failure was spectacular.

With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).

Lastly, they're in deeper trouble than they were before, meaning that more plot just has to happen. And they have some new goals like dispelling the mark, or regenerating an arm, or finding a dramatic replacement for the follower. The failure gives them something to do, something that the players will want badly.

Good analysis. Yes, don't ever trust that players will think to ask. Make sure that the NPCs tell, whether asked or not. Oh, give the players a chance to ask (makes em feel smart), but then have the NPCs grab the heroes and spill their guts if they're not asked.

What's key about this is that, not only do the players have more information to work on, but you can make the NPC demands interesting. Basically they should set up do or don't dillemas that say something about the character.

Ouff, big cross-post. (Plus distractions from a chain of phone calls unrelated to one another.) Jinx indeed!

And again, lots from you guys for me to think about. Work permitting, I'll post replies to tonight's new posts some time tomorrow.

StalkingBlue wrote: I'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads). I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me. I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction. In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think. So thanks for that.

That's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion. That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)

Oh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would. Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.

Another interesting point that's making me think. You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs. In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities. So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).

After a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.

So frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it. Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this. I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".

Heck, maybe that's great anyway: looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".

A retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round. Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.

PC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments. We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.

That said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them.

I suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.

And isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.

Very good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.

And it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail. I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.

They weren't. :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.

Hey, DnD isn't that dumb a system!

I know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that. In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.

I've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.

So I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war. Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape. Does that make sense?

Fair enough. All of this I could have done in DnD, basically. Why didn't I?
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.

- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.

- And one other thing. When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...". But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him. And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen". Now where's that from? Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe. If I did, I'm now scared. I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't. Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".

Here's another of my problems. So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party". I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.

A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.

Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.

Of course. We did that anyway. That's one of the things DnD supports: you can always decide how to frame the challenge.

That's a great example, I'm beginning to see now. To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.

Ok, that's cool. I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them. When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.

Who knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.

With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).

Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)

Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players. If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.

(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic. Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped. There's no reason that can't change when we convert. I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)

Examples would be much appreciated. :)

StalkingBlue wrote: I'm grateful that you keep stressing how you consult your players about this kind of thing (I've also seen it in older threads). I can't begin to tell you how freeing this is for me. I've always wanted to approach a game with lots of communication and player input, but have never been sure how far I could dare to go and have restrained myself a lot in that direction. In everything you say, I see you have already been farther not only than I ever went, but usually even farther than I dared think. So thanks for that.

That's what I was thinking of actually - what I was seeing was the long sequence in Godfather where messy mass killings are interwoven with brief, serene cuts of the little daughter walking up to the altar for her first communion. That bit subsequently gets imitated in the rather weak third Godfather film, where mass shootings are interwoven with the same daughter's wedding scenes.)

Oh yes, that's great. I completely agree from a story point of view, I'm sure everybody would. Somehow people just don't seem to want to apply it to games - although thinking back to my experiences running for roleplaying newbies (current group are all DnD veterans), it's probably just DnD thinking that makes people want to avoid failure at all cost.

Another interesting point that's making me think. You see, they pretty had that already, in their original PCs. In a setting this bleak, if a character has anything in their backstory at all it's going to be some loss or defeat or obstacle to opportunities. So the original PCs all had some horribly depressing stuff in their background (not horribly "bad", mind you, just very horrible - most had killed off all their PCs' background ties).

After a number of PC deaths, all players are now on a new character. The second time round each player worked hard to give their PC something in their background wasn't all horrible and desolate - they simply needed it to give the PC added strength and counteract the bleakness of the setting.

So frankly, although I do see your point, I also want to help preserve this dynamic the players have been building, they have been creating story potential from it. Not sure how much sense that makes or how to solve this. I might just encourage to look at both sides of a PC's background - "dark" and "bright and shiny".

Heck, maybe that's great anyway: looking at a PC as having two sides may help getting beyond "Failure Sucks" to "Failure is a Part of Success".

A retreat followed by a second try can be fun and makes for a cool story if the circumstances, and the players' plans, are different enough from the first time round. Rest, heal up, kick in door a second (third, umpth) time isn't fun, I agree.

PC death isn't exactly fun when it happens, but it can make for great tragedy and very memorable story moments. We've had two of those in this game: one scene where PCs held a gnome-style wake for a fallen PC, sitting in a circle and telling their memories of the dead person; and another death at the end of a long and tense attempt to free the PC from capture.

That said, we've had so many PC deaths in this campaign that I'm well sick and tired of them.

I suppose I fudged in a roundabout way, by handing out FPs as a more player-empowering alternative to me fudging die rolls.

And isn't this a big sign that the players already see failure as potentially cool? PC death is the most drastic consequence of defeat I guess, yet people all agreed that it belonged in the game.

Very good point. I've said a bit about past trust issues in the group in my reply to Brand above, but I'd say that by now we have an ok basis.

And it gives the player the power to define how their character should look when they fail. I like this a lot - in fact as a player I'd likely feel happier losing a contest because of a Fear Spiders I put on my char sheet than because of a random stupid waiter spilling soup on me.

They weren't. :-) Although when they weren't, there was always a chance to avoid a fight if the players were smart.

Hey, DnD isn't that dumb a system!

I know HQ will give me more leeway in presenting stuff for PCs to do, and will give players ideas for what their PCs might want to do, and maybe we'll drift away more and more from the combat mission focus - but I can't really force that. In past scenarios some players have been disappointed at not "getting to fight" even though they did other stuff that they still remember while many (not all!) fights are quickly forgotten.

I've done that in the past, but when I presented a challenge with a fifty percent or worse chance for the PCs to lose, I didn't make it inescapable because indeed, in situations with enemy contact it would have made for unavoidable character loss.

So I can see how I can experiment with changing my approach to prepping for situations that don't involve the enemy in the war. Enemy contact situations (except for the easy ones of course) will still tend to involve a risk of lethality, so I'm thinking I should probably stay with my previous tactic of providing a chance to escape. Does that make sense?

Fair enough. All of this I could have done in DnD, basically. Why didn't I?
- Trust issues. For months and months I was avoiding dropping unavoidable "overpowering" experiences on the PCs so as to make sure players wouldn't feel all disempowered. Players still felt their PCs were very powerless for a while unteil they got the hang of the game.

- Part of that feeling of powerlessness was that in this setting, especially at low DnD levels, PCs are constantly outnumbered and outgunned.

- And one other thing. When I read you Night King example I kept thinking, "But... But... But...". But a Night King doesn't just pass through on business. But PCs don't even come close to a Night King because he has all that retinue around him. And about a dozen other things that I immediately thought "just wouldn't happen". Now where's that from? Was I actually simulating a Night King's business trip in my mind and thinking your NK scene didn't feel "realistic"? Maybe. If I did, I'm now scared. I get very frustrated with games that put simulating a game world reality over cool story potential and I don't want that kind of thinking in my own game. But maybe I didn't. Maybe your example was just too drastic to for me to keep suspension of disbelief.
I'll just observe this a bit - I might have got tied down by a tendency in a part of the group to demand "exact world detail".

Here's another of my problems. So I take a PC's arm or leg. By group consent this game is about people fighting a war, and to complicate things further, people generally want to stay in a "party". I'm trying to work on that a bit, some of the best moments for each PC have been solo scenes, but it's another DnD paradigm hard to shift. As of now, a PC who loses an arm or a leg is likely out of the game - not because I say so but because the player would likely decide to retire the PC and play someone else who can still move around and fight with the rest.

A Seared Soul is easier to work with I guess.

Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.

Of course. We did that anyway. That's one of the things DnD supports: you can always decide how to frame the challenge.

That's a great example, I'm beginning to see now. To me, if a player decides to take on a nigh-impossible contest, that's different thing from a contest that merely passes by on business and hits the PC cold.

Ok, that's cool. I think with my group, the way is probably to let them experience their power first, and some consequences of failure in an environment that won't take their arms and legs from them. When they then decide to take on something out of their league (yes, they decide), I'm sure we'll be able to work out how to make the game still feel cool if horrible consequences hit the PCs.

Who knows, by then maybe people will even feel more comfortable with splitting up and doing individual things more. This is another thing that would help me, but that I don't want to force on people.

With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).

Thanks for tactical advice, much appreciated. I'll need it. :)

Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players. If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.

(In the Midnight DnD magic system, the good guys didn't have access to limb regeneration magic. Players are aware of that of course, so a PC who'd lost a limb will be dropped. There's no reason that can't change when we convert. I'm dropping the DnD magic system anyway.)

Examples would be much appreciated. :)

Brand_Robins wrote: I'm going to tentatively suggest that this is, once again, an outgrowth of D&D gamist play. Even the rhetoric of the setup and statement has a degree of goal-oriented play assumption behind it, i.e. “the bad decisions” almost certainly being tactical decisions made for reasons of misunderstanding or misestimating the nature of the conflict/opposition and the paths needed to achieve victory.

When you get into a Nar/SIS/HQ style game this has the propensity to up and vanish.

Partly this is due to the system. Even a “bad plan” can come off a success due to augmentation and HP usage, and even the best plan can go all to crap if you roll a 20. D&D assumes a certain resource allocation mode of play, HQ doesn’t, and so a lot of the bad decisions around system control and step-on-up style threat assessment simply ceases to be relevant.

In HQ, otoh, a confrontation with a Night King is not going to kill the PCs, and may actually give them more drama and story potential, and so isn’t inherently a bad decision at all. Similarly, a group of 1st level characters raiding the Orc stronghold with bad plans in D&D may be a death sentence, but in HQ its just going to result in another challenge to overcome and more drama.

The game ...
... starts to be about what the players want to push and what the characters do with their personal choices.

Also, there are very few situations in HQ in which there is a real no win situation on its face. I’ve had players overcome vast odds with lucky rolls, lots of augments, and good tactics. (The tactics, btw, are things like you talked about before – real tactics rather than the resource allocation tactics of D&D.) You may toss your Night King 10m6 at the PCs and find them kicking his ass – I know I have.

StalkingBlue wrote: Example 1 - linear scenario set up as a Gamist challenge:

StalkingBlue wrote: Example 2 - not-so-linear setup:

I kinda see your point; although I'm thinking that the players' decisions in both examples I've described above was about something other than resource allocation

Yes, yes. Slowly but steadily I'm beginning to see what the two of you are driving at. I read the words clearly the first time round, but that particular paradigm takes a lot of time to shift in my head.

Ouff - back again. I've finally realised what makes me take so long to post replies to this thread: half the time I write something, then look at it and think, "Wait a minute, there's something here, think again..." And I do. And often end up writing something else because some tiny thing has just clicked that hadn't before.

Mike Holmes wrote: Oh, so the "Creeping Up" rant was actually more pertinent than I thought.

Realize this. The players who are giving you the positive feedback are already down with the entire mode of play. Meaning that there's no reason to creep with these guys. It won't hurt anything to do so, but you could have skipped all the creeping.

This is one area that you can over-discuss for sure. One thing that's critical to avoid is any actual discussion of what might happen in play. "Playing before you play" makes the actual act rather dull when it happens.

You never have to kill in HQ. Only do so when it's dramatically sensible. In fact, my rule is that I would never do it without asking the player if he thought it was cool explicitly.

This is one of those difficult concepts. The player is not the character, and in HQ this means that the character can fail, and the player "win." That is, doing "stupid things" in HQ should be encouraged. Rather, the player should be encouraged to do the dramatic thing, no matter what makes sense "tactically." Because he just might win. And if he doesn't, losing in HQ is fun anyhow. There are no bad results for the player. So HQ makes all decisions good ones. You can't go wrong.

Here's how you alter this. Next time the player gets into a contest, find some ability that he didn't to augment with, and which makes sense to you, and ask him if he wants to augment with it. That is, help him discover more and more augments. Once they see that the idea is to find all the ones that apply, then it'll dawn on them that they're not trying to win. The augmenting is merely about making the character seem cooler in the current situation.

Mike Holmes wrote: In some ways, I'm a rather simmy player. That is, I don't really like to talk about the metagame all that much. I'm very into trying to provide that in-game feel at times. So why do I say that I only do extended contests or whatever with player interest?

Well, it's a matter of subtle cues. That is, if you watch players, they're always giving them off. Constantly, in a sort of semi-conscoius mode - almost Freudian in nature. Completely subtextual, but in a visible way.

At full speed, FTF, it generally involves looking at everyone in a single scan across the table. Worst case, scenario, you find one strong dissenter in the bunch, and you'll have to stop for twnety seconds to discuss what their objection to proceeding or refraining is.

Whatever you do, do not stop for a ten minute discussion on whether to have a twenty minute extended contest. Just decide and go. This is your job as narrator.

There's real theme embedded in the setting here, scads of it. The problem is that D&D can't suppoprt the players in bringing that out (practically speaking it means that it never happens). Which is kinda sad to me. I'm glad we're going to get to see that theme come out.

Excellent, excellent. This gives them something to lose, too, likely. Can you see the ability, or abilities that each player can take to represent both the losses, and the things that they're hopeful about? Likely lots of relationships, I'm guessing?

I think it's interesting that they feel that PC death is an acceptable failure, but that you worry that somehow losing battles won't be. I say play and find out.

Good, so it's the system that they don't trust, then.

Most would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.

BTW, my advice on flaws is to advertise them thusly. "You can take any ability you like at any level for free - as long as I agree that it's something that I'm likely to use against you often enough." Players can't resist that. "Fr-fr-free Abilities? As high as I want?" Have napkins ready as some may drool.

The point is that the challenge was always tailored to their character's abilities to handle it. Even if the ability in question was to run away. Sometimes in real life and in literature, the character has no chance, he's just outclassed. The tendency to occasionally win out anyhow is represented by a combination of good rolling, appropriate situation (lots of augments), and Hero Points.

The point is that there's something anticlimactic about the way that Hit Points deliver plot immunity, that's reversed by the way Action Points give plot immunity.

Mike Holmes wrote: Fight all you want. Your mistake here is in assuming that fighting is about killing. It's not, even when lethal methods are used. Here's the trick. Ask yourself what the characters are fighting for in this case. Why is the fight happening?

In the first case, repelled from the gatehouse, the alarm is sounded, and now it's a chase scene. In the second, if they don't get the gem, they end up forced into an underground chamber where they encounter a giant spider (and that fear of spiders comes into play). In the last case, the new rout they're forced along goes into very, very dark territory.

Three battles in a row, and no chance of either death or capture. I can do this all day long.

So you have to be prepared to narrate other sorts of failures than this. The best way to do that, is to find out what the larger goal of the fight is, and find other failure conditions.

If you don't start thinking like this now, you're going to have real trouble with the system.

Well, see, in HQ, this is what happens. A Night King comes along, and the players get the drop on him (you rule). Do the players attack it? No, they're not dumb. Instead they run away. Or they figure out some sort of way to deal with the Night King that preys on it's weaknesses. Fighting isn't one of them, presumably, so they'll come up with something else.

Well, yes, but you're worried about nothing. Instead of coming up with a situation like this, just let your players look at their sheets and come up with something like "Can we run for it?" Then just say yes, and make a contest out of it. I mean, just don't plan. And it'll all work out fine. The more you plan on how things are going to turn out, the more you'll be dissapointed, and have problems. Instead, just go with the flow.

Ooh, glad you mentioned this one. First, starting heroes in HQ aren't the incompetent noobs that D&D first level characters are - but they're relatively inexperienced. What level were the PCs at? If it's something like mid level, seriously consider giving them copious amounts of "Advanced Experience." Too often in conversions poeple forget to do this. In fact, many HQ games set in Glorantha start at "starting" when they should start with Advanced Experience.

It really doesn't matter in terms of "progression" where you start the heroes, just make them have the abilities that they need to have to be what the players expect.

Anyhow, even starting characters in HQ are dangerous. With Advanced Experience, they can do miraculous things at times. Being heroic is really easy.

First, I don't know the setting well enough to say for sure whether it was a plausible setup. But what I'm sure is that it could be if you wanted it to be.

Think about this - four hobbit stand in a road. A ringwraith is coming down it looking for one of them. Do they stand a chance? Sure, if they hide.

You're going to have to think outside of the box a bit more in HQ. First, in HQ, the guy fighting without the arm is the coolest one in the group. Let's see, with all augments he's 15W, as is his buddy. He loses -5 to 10W for the arm. Is he as good? No. But he's kicking ass just the same, and with only one arm! That'd be just too cool. Once playing in a game of Primeval, a player narrated cutting his own arm off and using it as his sole weapon, because it was the only way he could make the upcoming fight a challenge.

Yeah, it's a different mindset.

Will the loss of a leg really hamper him?

What, no merchants? Somebody will make one up. Why's he along? Well, he's good at infiltrating, see he knows orcish...

Again, depending on the flaw it might result in the player dropping the character.

So don't give that flaw out. The narrator, and the narrator alone says in HQ what form penalties take. I'm sure you'll come up with good ones. Ones that actually make the character more interesting to play, not less. You know your players and their characters, I'm sure you can come up with something suitably permenant.

Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?

In any case, this all assumes, remember, that the PCs decide to attack the Night King. And that they don't roll well enough to avoid Complete Failures which they may well. If you're really concerned tone it down to a dragon or giant or something, that'll only given them lots of major failures on average. Broken bones that can heal up, etc.

Well, sorta. Again, the problem with D&D is that avoiding the fight in any way, is avoiding the best part of the game. So sometimes players push it, and attack when they shouldn't. Also it just happens to be dramatic to do so. So they die.

In HQ they live. Rewared for heroism. How cool is that?

Definitely let them get a feel for how cool their characters are. I was thinking that a good stomping is about a third session event.

But stomp them! You're not getting it. If you don't stomp them, they'll never learn that the system is one they can trust.

Definitely stat out all the major baddies in general terms. That is, what's their highest ability rating? Maybe for Izrador it's 10W8. But start from the bottom and work your way up. So that you don't accidentally have to pump something way up to make it fit. Think in terms of pecking order, like "X would get crushed by Y using ability A, and Y would usebe smashed by Z using ability B"

Or does Scott already have that done? IMO, nothing less responsible than having ultra-baddies left unstatted. :-)

Ok. That depends on how much hope there is of finding a "cure" for the flaw - another thing for me to discuss with players. If I can reassure them that even horrid consequences to a PC needn't be final, they may just grasp the opportunity.

Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.

If it can be done mechanically, all it takes is looking for the in-game solution.

Again, don't change the expectations. Instead some wandering gypsy reminds the character about "Glavon's Magic Leg" and it's off on a quest we go! Or whatever.

Brand_Robins wrote: Now in HQ they still might lose if they charge the Legate willy-nilly, but losing won't be such a horrible thing. It won't get them dead, and may not even blow their mission -- it'll just give them more personal involvement, likely from being capture and escaping while finding more information, or something similar.

(Once the players learn to trust it, that is.)

StalkingBlue wrote: Example 2 - not-so-linear setup:

One thing I will note is that some of this won't get easier with HQ.

Because players are bought into their own PCs so much more (generally), giving them NPC shells may remove some of the cool for the group. There are ways around it (which you probably know many of already, being experienced at this kind of thing) -- but generally you'll want to let the players keep focus on their coolfunthing. Whether that's from linking the flashback situation to the current world, or giving the NPC a very similar conflict, without a good tie and bangs that keep the theme it can be tough.

Plus, players are screwed up. Freaks go and turtle on you sometimes for no reason at all.....
;)

Trust me, I get this. One of the reasons why I'm always so keen to talk about HQ is because I too am still learning. I started playing D&D when I was 5 and I'm now 30. Between there I've had so many dysfunctional experiences, and so many good ones that were in other modes of play, that getting my head around this stuff is often a challange.

StalkingBlue wrote: You know, the more I read from you guys, the more I wonder whether I've been drifting the game (or rather, sitting on a game that was drifting without me qute uinderstanding what was going on) much farther than I thought when I started this thread. Either that, or you two see DnD in a rather more limited and boring niche than it has to be in.

That's a comfort. Reading the Forge kinda makes me feel sometimes I must be an odd one, what with all the GM abuse and dysfunction I've seen (and not walked out on soon enough).

StalkingBlue wrote: You're referring to your Sneaking up on Mode thread that you linked above, yes? Again, very useful to me. I agree with you that sneaking up on players isn't a good idea - being upfront is much better.

I wasn't, but I didn't actually intentionally sneak up on my players; it was more that mode was sneaking up on me.

I'd had some satisfying play experience with this new group in the other GM's high-level DnD game - pure Gamist challenge. When I started the Midnight game, I tried to imitate that. It worked fine for a while, only for me something was lacking. Without knowing what I was doing, I dropped occasional "roleplaying" opportunities in, some players jumped at them, others didn't.

You never have to kill in HQ. Only do so when it's dramatically sensible. In fact, my rule is that I would never do it without asking the player if he thought it was cool explicitly.

If I do that it'll be a breakaway from some pretty deeply established traditions in our game - ones that I haven't necessarily made. The players have created them as much as I did, if not more: by always expecting the enemy to slaughter everyone, and by slaughtering everyone in their turn. I've seen them take a prisoner only once, and then only because they knew he was dangerous and could likely kill another PC before they could take him out, so they got him to surrender.

You can't go wrong.

Not unless the GM creates the bad results, anyway. I'm not clear yet about how I'll make decisions and how much (and how) to involve players in the decision about Consequences of defeat - no big deal when the Consequences are small, but scary (to me currently) when we're talking a Night King's Mark from your example.

Yes, exactly. Of course. How could I not see this... If we also manage to narrate any unusual and cool use of augments, this might do the trick.

StalkingBlue wrote: I can follow you here for FTF games at least ("face-to-face", yes?). I've found that I need to explain stuff expressly mostly when I'm first trying to build trust, to show players how I think and that I try to be fair. The same is probably true for our change to HQ. It's not a new group, I'm not a new GM to them anymore, but it's a new system and to some extent a new style.

I do hope so! The strong themes were what first inspired me about Midnight. I think that as a group we've done a pretty good job of bringing out a theme in our game - considering we were playing DnD, a system that actively gets in the way of theme I feel.

Player #2's PC has a few relationships gained in play, but zero background and no goals that would link him to his homeland. This is something the player always does: he'll play a race different from everyone else, but then does everything he can in play to pretend his race isn't different at all. He appears to hate for play to happen in his PCs' homeland. This PC's goal is to "assist a human leader to grow into her or his power because he believes that humans are worth it and realises elves are a dying race anyway".

Player #3's PC is new (played one session I think) and as yet has relationships only to NPCs in an earlier (dream-)Age of the world (player's idea). I don't know yet what his motivation is to operate in the Fourth Age, if any.

There's some logic glitch there. Hm, maybe we've more often been able to make PC deaths mean something than turn other defeats into cool outcomes? Nope, not true either. Nevertheless, it's about meaningfulness. There's a big determination on payers' part to sacrifice PCs for a good reason. They still fear failure as such though.

Most would. In fact, it's like this; the player thinks, "well, I did it to myself, I can't complain." And then they smile.

Yes, isn't it. And it's not even something you did "to" yourself, it's more that _you_ introduced a cool element into the scene by having Fear Spiders on the char sheet. Because (in the kind of game I'm dreaming of) spiders likely wouldn't put in an appearance unless someone had a Fear Spiders trait.

I'd read the first half of that bit of advice from you in some other thread and liked it a lot. I wasn't aware that you also let them choose how high they want to go. That's very nifty indeed - and yet another bit chipped away from that Gamist rock of players-want-power-GM-denies-power.

Ah ok. I'm getting the hang of this slowly. So you're saying that in HQ I can throw in stuff that completely overpowers the PCs without disempowering the players. That as long as the players trust me I can go a lot farther than I could before - always provided that the outcome leads over into some new dramatic coolness and makes the game deeper and more fun than before.

I follow you on the bit about Hit Points and I much prefer Action Point bids already, even though my first attempt at running an Extended Contest wasn't so brilliant; but what do mean by saying Action Points give plot immunity? By avoiding accidental PC death?

StalkingBlue wrote: Oh, right! Narrating a defeat is about what happens to the goal the PCs were fighting for at the time, not so much to the PCs and their opponents in the fight. What happens to the PCs and their opponents us expressed as a Consequence. Yes? Or sorta?

Can you do it in a game in which the PCs always kill everyone they can?

I realise that and I'm trying. I'm glad you suggested that mutilating PCs might be acceptable - it has made me realise how many perceived "limits" on players' parts I respect. I still think respecting limits is a very important thing, but maybe I can start pushing my own limits a bit here.

And if that isn't highly tactical, I don't know what is.

Oh cool. So I can basically stop worrying? You know, one thing DnD has done is make me slightly paranoid about doing things to characters, for fear of spoiling players' fun.

I'm not sure how much Advanced Experience I should give them. I'm thinking maybe I'll give them a total of 3 points to spend on keywords (AE by the book), and maybe 30 points to spend on abilities but without the "no more than 10 per ability" cap from the book. Does that look like it'll make characters who are distinctly heroic and better than most people in their larger area? The PCs I generated for our playtest had 30 points and no keyword increases and they were scary monsters...

The slight problem with DnD players is, if they are made too powerful they will likely feel cheated.

Yes, I'm seeing it now I think. I can get rid of that "gulf of power" mindset DnD fosters. In DnD, a character's power pretty much explodes with advancement through the levels, so having Night Kings ride through the woods on their own would completely shatter disbelief. In HQ, power disparities are much less pronounced, or at least the chances of winning anyway (with cool and creative tactics) are a lot better.

Only -5 for losing an arm? Wow, that _is_ cool.

Will the loss of a leg really hamper him?

Seeing that running away and riding very fast are core to the group's current standard tactics, yes. Although again, if I make it only -5 to riding... Heh, it might even jolt the group out of their entrenched tactics into trying something new.

Up to now no one has wanted to make up any kind of character that had any perceivable ties to the Shadow, not even previously or potentially. They all claim they don't want to have to deal with possible mistrust from the other PCs. While this argument in itself is pretty lame, I'm thinking that if they all agree, there must be some theme in it they want in the game.

Hm, they've trusted me with creating "NPC hosts" for them for the dream/time travel scenarios, and most of the players even took it in their stride when I threw them into the first of them without explanation and simply had them play the NPCs ... until one PC's true memories were stirred by something emotionally difficult and she "awoke" to who she really was. Of course none of that was permanent, or "suitably permanent"...

Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?

You know what this makes me think? Your game sounds cool. :-)

Btw, I haven't quite got yet why people around here say that it's the players who are "on the losing side of Gamism".

In HQ, I only have to make sure I set up the environment so that they can find satisfying stuff, and throw satisfying stuff at them.

Both points taken, about the timing (which I'm not going to take literally, no fear - I think I'll know how to time it) and about the stomping.

That's pretty much what I was thinking I'd do (and did for our playtest session, on a small scale - no Izzy in that one, I'm afraid).

Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.

[slaps forehead many times] I'm such an idiot. One of the major local NPCs (the guy who some players won't trust because his intel wasn't always perfectly accurate) has a mithril leg! One with a working knee joint. (Yes, it has entered play.) D'oh.

Brand_Robins wrote: The reason I keep hammering it in this thread isn't even so much because it's D&D as it is because the "D&D mindset" encapsulates something about the way that RPGs are traditionally seen as inherently being that isn't true at all. People who've played one RPG for most of their RPing history get ideas about what RPGs are that come out of that game. For D&D players there are a pretty solid set of assumptions that get made, and reinforced, through years of play.

Mike Holmes wrote: All I'm saying now is don't let your player's prior proclivities make you hedge. Going all the way will work better than trying to adapt for their previous play style.

Classic. Both modes have similarities in terms of metagame. So it's not really surprising to me that you had success with Gamism, but then tried to add "roleplaying" moments. Even calling them roleplaying moments is classic. What you were really trying to insert were moments where narrativism was supported.

It's all "roleplaying." :-)

See, you're still stuck in the Matrix. And it's hard to get out.

The key, generally, is to make it "too easy." That is, if you make it a challenge, then they'll assume that it's there to "game." If you don't make it a challenge in this way, then they'll discover that this is just not something that's important to play.

She lost the contest, but had like ten HP to spend.

So in the end, the character ended up much more interesting because of Julie's decision not to spend HP.

Mike Holmes wrote: That's perfect fodder in HQ, IMO. So he should have some relationship to the human leader like "Respects Dude," if he's not abstract, or something like "Drive to Find Human Leader" if not. He should also have "Sees Own Race as Dying" or somesuch. The player then gets bonuses when playing to this, and you can then challenge his assumptions. Have an Elf come along from the homeland who's there to prove to him that the Elves still have something to give and that he should come home. Whatever the player's response, you get theme.

Well, because failure in D&D is player failure. Death is acceptable if the plan worked. If they survive and fail, then they didn't put forth the ultimate effort, right? So there is a logic to it for D&D.

Well, two things. First, not really as high as they want. The limitation is scale. That is, don't allow them to take things described as one thing at the wrong point on the scale...

Sorta. Basically both AP an HP serve to make sure that the character doesn't experience bad effects before getting to do some interesting stuff. They're immune to stoppage while they still have points.

Compare other, less dramatic systems where you often can be killed with one lucky shot.

StalkingBlue wrote: A local group has been kind enough to invite me in and play a few sessions of HQ with them. In that group, as far as I can see after three sessions or so it looks like pretty much all HPs are spent on bumping. I've started out doing the same because in that game, winning felt important for some reason. But last session I decided to use no HPs, and didn't. I want to find out what happens if I buy out of the winning and let the dice fall where they may.

She lost the contest, but had like ten HP to spend.

You can't spend more than one HP in a single contest, or can you?

Well, looking at it from a clueless-but-learning GM's point of view, it was both her decision not to spend HPs to avoid "failure", and you presenting a good alternative to "winning" with lots of opportunities to shape the game and character afterwards.

StalkingBlue wrote: I think you're right. That may be one reason why this particular player keeps saying he enjoys the game even though it has too much "roleplaying" in it for his taste. It's not a normal DnD game really, so his character-with-strong-but-cloudy-themes works better than he's used to from other games. And now it'll be getting better. Cool.

Plot Immunity in DnD. Who would have thought it.

The interesting thing here is that you say "less dramatic". I completely agree, but some people would defend the option of one-shot kills as highly dramatic. I find it restricting and frustrating because, as you've said, early death prevents you from doing enough cool stuff to make it worthwhile.

Mike Holmes wrote: In HQ, losing an arm or a leg is only as disempowering, theoretically, as the given flaw. But it's even less disempowering than that. Because all abilities can be used "positively" or "negatively" as needed.

Right. It's like Brand says, HQ doesn't make real world tactics useless. It just makes "gaming" tactics useless.

About half the time the hero will still win. But the player will be informed that it's because of their hero status (HP), and fighting for what they care about that makes them tough. Not because they're the best out there.

I'd do two things instead. The problem with this is that the incentive to stack really high is very strong. And the characters will not have much breadth.

...That sounds to me more like "mid-level".

In fact, it's with Giants that I get the term "stomp" from. Giants stomping heroes just sounds too cool to me. I'm seeing heroes going down with broken femurs as the giant continues on his merry rampage of the village.

Moreover, have them fight the equivalent of an 8th level orc. Who will have pretty much the same stats as the heroes do, since they're generated in precisely the same way.

Yes, I'm seeing it now I think. I can get rid of that "gulf of power" mindset DnD fosters.

Nope, you're still not seeing it.

The only thing you have to watch out for is making sure that the PCs have a choice at some point. That could be wether or not to attack something way out of their league. If they do, and get stomped, it's all good.

Only -5 for losing an arm? Wow, that _is_ cool.

What's the penalty in D&D? Can't wear a shield or use two handed weapons? What did you think the penalty would be.

In any case, the penalty is precisely whatever you set it at. I suggested 10W2, because it's substantial. But if you want, you can make it 10 or 10w5 for a -1 to a -11 or even higher. It's whatever level you like to set the flaw at. But don't give them a No Left Arm 10w8, because think of the jeopardy you'll be putting all of those barmaids in. I use 10W2 as a typical life changing injury or the like. A "masterful" wound.

...there's always some way out of a flaw. But it's moot, because the players will love their flaws.

Dude, I so have to get an arm cut off in play. Josh?

You know what this makes me think? Your game sounds cool. :-)

Well, Josh's game in this case.

Btw, I haven't quite got yet why people around here say that it's the players who are "on the losing side of Gamism".

People around here say that? Hmmm. I dunno.

The big bad definitely has to be statted out - it's critical. Why? I'm not sure on the precise details, but he can project power in many ways, right? It's not just his minions, but he has magic power up the wazoo, right? Well, he uses it, right?

Oh, yeah, the heroes should feel the personal reach of the evil one at times. Or how are they going to hate him?

Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.

Hmm. Now I need Bevik to lose a leg, too. This might take several shots at Julie's character...

Mike Holmes wrote: See, what's interesting to me here, is that there are no failures. What you've implied by this is that the narrator has set things up where the resistances are just so, and the HP enough, that the heroes only fail (what 95% of the time) if they do not spend HP. Is that accurate?

Were the failures interesting at all?

My point was that it wasn't like she was short on HP. Spending the one she needed to win the contest wouldn't have put her out at all. IOW, she didn't chose to fail because she was worried that she would fail someting more important, or that she wouldn't be able to buy something she wanted, but simply because failing was more interesting in this case.

... sometimes it is more fun to win. And you can always refrain from spending. So it's always best to leave yourself with the choice.

...Note that some people have the opposite experience, and their players never bump, wanting to use the points to power up. These players, too, haven't gotten it yet. They don't see that powering up isn't an indication of how cool they are as players, or that their characters will be any more successful in the future. It just indicates to the narrator where they want their character to be cool.

Mike Holmes wrote: Keep this in mind. Allow this player to...how to say this...dodge around with his themes. Allow him a lot of leeway in altering his ability scores such that he can keep his cloud, cloudy. Don't hammer that out of him by pointing out how the numbers on the page make certain things hard-coded into the character.

Plot Immunity in DnD. Who would have thought it.

There are substantive similarities between D&D and HQ. I think HQ just takes a different (and more coherent) angle, and hits it very well.

They conflate drama and suspense. That is, knowing you could die at any moment is suspenseful - even a realistic feeling in some ways (though, interestingly these systems are never truely realistic). But that's not the same as dramatic. Suspense lasts only until the bomb goes off, and then you have to deal with the outcome.

When I say that "death can't happen unless it's appropriate, I mean that it can't happen in HQ without the narrator saying it should happen then and there. So, death being just another negative result for the character, as always the player can count on the narrator doing the right thing. Since we're not sure what that is, there's always suspense. Just not a fear of failure.

StalkingBlue wrote: Thinking about it this way, flaws aren't disempowering, they simply force the player into developing new creative ideas with their character. And that's all good with me. After all, in stories the stars (whether villain or hero) always come back with a vengeance after suffering horrible setbacks, and usually with a strength that has grown out specifically of their defeat. HQ makes that possible, too.

Right. It's like Brand says, HQ doesn't make real world tactics useless. It just makes "gaming" tactics useless.

I've been trying to discuss this with my self-labelled "rollplaying" player, but he doesn't see the difference. Yet. Maybe he's kinesthetic (like me) and just has to experience it for it to click with him.

About half the time the hero will still win. But the player will be informed that it's because of their hero status (HP), and fighting for what they care about that makes them tough. Not because they're the best out there.

Major paradigm shift ahead for some players. :-)

I'd do two things instead. The problem with this is that the incentive to stack really high is very strong. And the characters will not have much breadth.

Very good point, especially since the players, being used to DnD, might decide to stack high in abilities that will make the characters "powerful" as for DnD, rather than powerful (meaning strong in star and story potential) for HQ.

Moreover, have them fight the equivalent of an 8th level orc. Who will have pretty much the same stats as the heroes do, since they're generated in precisely the same way.

More powerful in melee, but yeah. Orcs in Midnight are borm shock infantry.

And (2.), the players will also win even if the characters lose because HQ supports much more varied and cooler Consequences.

I wouldn't have a problem stomping them without something without giving the PCs a choice first, as long as the players had some chance to choose - for example by asking them beforehand to trust me, or giving them an inkling of what I wanted to have happen.

This would be a big exception obviously, and I'd consider it only as the beginning of a scenario, almost like a prelude to a film, with very brief shots of the PCs in mid-being-stomped. Quite likely without even rolling any contest.

We've been using "preludes" as lead-ins to scenarios for a while and it works well. In one I even put them in the middle of an inescapable fight the PCs were losing, and we used only narrative, no dice. Even though it was DnD. And no one so much as frowned.

In DnD, you have to be better than everyone else at one thing. If you lose that, you're toast. As long as you don't lose that, you shrug.

Ok, let me amend this. Josh's game sounds cool, and you sound like a cool player. Better? :-p

Not? I thought that it was in threads on Actual Play that I've read it a number of times. Maybe I'm misremembering and it was somewhere else.

Trust issue totally. Show them the mechanics behind it. Yes, there are resistances to "healing" "Death" which is actually any result of a Complete Defeat.

Oh yes, that's important. Mustn't forget to explain that more clearly.

The mithril leg in my game doesn't always work right either. Especially in the morning the knee may sometimes bend the wrong way. Interested? :)

StalkingBlue wrote: Marginal Defeat bumped to Marginal Victory when my character tried to calm and lead away the first bull.

In the third session Marginal Defeat (I think) when boasting of the cattle raid to the locals at our stead. I spent no HP. The GM ruled that people wandered away because the story wasn't gripping and had been going on for too long.

Another Marginal or Minor Defeat retelling the story to the clan chief when offering the cattle. Again, I didn't bump. The chief expressed mild displeasure at the raid, saying it was politically unwise to have caused more trouble at the border in the current situation. Not sure what other consequences there were, it felt as if there might have been a reward for my character if I'd succeeded on the roll.

Then two PCs went on Heroquests for One Day. Each went through their Heroquest's stations. There were a number of Defeats, each of which gave penalties for the next station.

The players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance. One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull? he's a herder) and took it in stride.

The other player went through everything (the wifely rug of peace thing) and learnt some new magic ability but seemed exasperated, not sure why.

Mike Holmes wrote: Yes, it's OK to make fun of cripples in RPGs. Rather, you can't make light of these things such that the character looks less interesting, but you can in such a way as when the character discovers an alternate solution, that the character looks very cool.

Player A: My character is unconscious. Can you pick me up C?
Player B: Wait, you can't carry Big Bill with one arm. Ha ha.
Player C: Damnit Kersten for giving me that! Fine, I kick Big Bill over and over to flip him down the hall.
Player A: Heyyy!
Player C: Whaddaya want? I only got one arm!

Now, for the record, I'm not volunteering Gennadi to lose a hand, Mike :)

Though if I get caught with that idol... hmm.

Mike Holmes wrote: Now you're seeing the big picture better.

In narrativism, we only sympathize with the character, we don't empathize with him. And that's freeing to do what we want to do.

But in HQ, if you note that the target character is in armor, you can roll to knock him down first, and use the "half-swording" technique (see TROS) to punch through that armor like a can-opener. There's no rule in HQ that says you can do this, it's simply a real-world technique that we know works.

BTW, you can still control "pacing." Let's say that some player gets all hot and bothered to go kill Izrador, and heads straight there. Well, fine, is he going to make it all the way there without running into somebody else first? Course not, that wouldn't be dramatic.

And then again, maybe it would. I can see a game in which they fight Izrador first thing, and he lets them live inexplicably. Then the entire game becomes people avoiding them because they wonder why Izrador would have let them go. Must be some secret curse or something. Maybe he can see through their eyes now, and is using the PCs to see where his opponents lay. Or...who knows what? :-)

Think of it this way, Izrador is just another character in the story.
...
Yes, even he exists only to pose bangs for the heroes. He has no more weight this way than does the cook who travels with the rest of he gang. To the extent that he represents a possible goal for the heroes, you keep him away just as long as you keep away the cook's daughter who is the goal for another hero.

If you give them an option to avoid, and they avoid the stomping, then they miss the lesson. If they fall into the trap then they learn that the game is about making the best tactical decisions.

If you just stomp them, then they learn that the game is about making sure that every character looks as cool as they need to look all of the time.

This would be a big exception obviously, and I'd consider it only as the beginning of a scenario, almost like a prelude to a film, with very brief shots of the PCs in mid-being-stomped. Quite likely without even rolling any contest.

That works to get them to trust you, but then they don't learn to trust the system.

See, what stomping does is to say, "Look, you got the worst effect for the character that the system can possibly produce. And it was pretty cool, eh? So stop worrying about losing and go out there and kick some ass. Oh, and BTW, now you know what the scale is like."

Yes, it's OK to make fun of cripples in RPGs. Rather, you can't make light of these things such that the character looks less interesting, but you can in such a way as when the character discovers an alternate solution, that the character looks very cool.

Player A: My character is unconscious. Can you pick me up C?
Player B: Wait, you can't carry Big Bill with one arm. Ha ha.
Player C: Damnit Kersten for giving me that! Fine, I kick Big Bill over and over to flip him down the hall.
Player A: Heyyy!
Player C: Whaddaya want? I only got one arm!

I will try to lop somebody's arm off soon, however, as a practical. :-)

Mike Holmes wrote: Well one of the things I like about HQ is the mechanical penalty. Did the narrator mention one? Or do you assume that he assigned one? Even if not, I'd have assumed there was one, giving me something to "work out" between me and the chief.

The players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance. One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull? he's a herder) and took it in stride.

Interesting. Allowed by who?

Anyhow, I wouldn't worry too much about HP expenditures - if you're playing the way I think you will, then they'll use the HP "right." Again, the stomping lesson is important, because it teaches them that even if they don't use HP in contests, it's OK.

Doyce wrote: I honestly never intended to play the guy. Seriously.

Imagine having the same handicap in a game that can support the story elements of it (not the Hero-system disads, but the story elements). Just makes me hungry to dust that guy off and convert him.

StalkingBlue wrote: Hm, is that where "author stance" comes in? I know that stance and mode are two different things, but what you're saying about sympathising with the character looks like what an author would do.

I used this when we went for a drink after converting characters over on Thursday, and one player said something about not having to fear "a puny little goblin with a pointy stick". Lights lit up in both players' eyes. (In this case it was of course the goblin kicking out the armored PC's kneecap and hopping on their chest.)

If you just stomp them, then they learn that the game is about making sure that every character looks as cool as they need to look all of the time.

I would so like to disagree. Unfortunately, I can't. :-)

I don't want to interrupt, but seeing as the game in question is my 'Red Cow' campaign I might be able to illuminate a few points.

In the third session Marginal Defeat (I think) when boasting of the cattle raid to the locals at our stead. I spent no HP. The GM ruled that people wandered away because the story wasn't gripping and had been going on for too long.

This isn't too bad. But did it lead to further conflict? Also the narrator could have been nicer, and made the problem the wind or something instead of you. Sometimes a failure is OK as a simple failure, however. Once in a while.

I'd have had somebody in the crowd get insulted by some element yor character put in the story, and demand an apollogy in front of the crowd or something. But that's just me.

Another Marginal or Minor Defeat retelling the story to the clan chief when offering the cattle. Again, I didn't bump. The chief expressed mild displeasure at the raid, saying it was politically unwise to have caused more trouble at the border in the current situation. Not sure what other consequences there were, it felt as if there might have been a reward for my character if I'd succeeded on the roll.

Hmm. Well one of the things I like about HQ is the mechanical penalty. Did the narrator mention one? Or do you assume that he assigned one? Even if not, I'd have assumed there was one, giving me something to "work out" between me and the chief.

Then two PCs went on Heroquests for One Day. Each went through their Heroquest's stations. There were a number of Defeats, each of which gave penalties for the next station.

Again, what's neat is that the penalties automatically mean something in the later context. Just makes things more challenging.

The players grumbled at the difficulty of the resistance. One player wasn't allowed to go to the last station (Orlanth's taming the bull? he's a herder) and took it in stride.

Interesting. Allowed by who?

The other player went through everything (the wifely rug of peace thing) and learnt some new magic ability but seemed exasperated, not sure why.

Interesting, too.

Anyhow, I wouldn't worry too much about HP expenditures - if you're playing the way I think you will, then they'll use the HP "right." Again, the stomping lesson is important, because it teaches them that even if they don't use HP in contests, it's OK.

Thanks for dropping by Ian, & for answering Mike's questions.

Ian Cooper wrote: But my experience is that you have to be careful about showing players that defeat is not a disaster by deliberately stomping them. It is just too easy for them to feel crushed by the whole thing.

And it's looking as if the original topic has run its course, so let's call this thread closed. Thanks very much everyone, again, there has been some brilliant advice.

We converted characters last week. Once the players let me have their writeups of the finished characters I'll post them to a new thread.