From my previous posts over the last year, I just can’t get my group of 15+ years to enjoy Heroquest- other then one person who loves it. I’ve scrapped my Greyhawk conversion for the moment.
SO I am forced to leave my comfort zone. A local gameshop owner has agreed to let me run a few demo games after hours in a sly effort to interview potential new players.
Here’s where my request for help comes in.
I want to run a pirate adventure (everybody likes pirates), something simple and potentially short and shows off the narrativist approach. Characters would be pre-made, and the scope would be small. The culture or Homeland would be one or two pirate ships- the ships would be written up as characters, and ideally the adventure would not range over a wide area and involve less then a dozen NPCs.
Here’s my very rough idea so far and your help in going forward would be great.
It’s a fantasy so there can be plenty of magic, but the setting is vague so far, I’m torn between identifying the setting as Glorantha or some other game world or just letting it remain a vague magic infused earth like setting.
Pirate captain and his 1st mate head up 2 ships- something is happening to cause contention between the crews of the 2 ships. It may be easiest to go with clichés here and have it be between the captain and 1st mate over booty.
I’d need 2 or 3 other areas of conflict between crewmen.
At least one of the bangs should occur on an island.
And 1 bang should occur on a storm-wracked deck of a ship.
I prefer the 100-word write-up version of character creation, but am not a stickler for ending at 100 words around 100 is fine.
I’ll post my Captain write-up shortly.
Thanks for your help,
Andy

Hi Andy,

If you're just demo'ing HQ, you may wish to keep the number of traits low on the pregen characters- say 20 or less.  It'll make it easier for new players to hunt down traits for augments.  Also, if any relevant personality traits should go near the top- they're basically what you'll be using to "load" the situation and give some light direction to the players.

As far as pirates- the cliche is good, but it's pretty unlikely the players are going to get invested over "Who controls the ships" very deeply.  Usually you can get people to invest over things more emotionally close, family, friends, love, ideals, etc. 

So, one idea you could use would be to have a magical macguffin that grants 1 wish every 100 years and everyone is loaded with meaningful goals: "Bring back my dead son", "Free my nation from slavery, so I don't have to be a pirate anymore", "Remove all my sins", etc.  Since you're looking at a small group, load everyone with 2 or 3 of these, and you'll see some interesting decisions during play as players begin to value or angle for one over the other.  Make sure to remind them they can use these motivations as augments as well!

Otherwise, the power struggle alone doesn't really say much about Nar play- the "everybody brawl" type thing can happen in any Creative Agenda, and usually only impresses people with the combat system of a game.

Chris

Calico Jack, Pirate (homeland) Captain of the Rising Sun (occupation) Devotee of ??? (magic)
Calico Jack is a wild-eyed hairy bear of a man. His unsavory reputation as a violent man precedes him, and he is easily recognized by his bright patchwork coat and brace of stunningly impressive engraved pistols. He is prone to senseless bursts of brutality and drunken browbeating, tempered by his more then equitable distribution of booty- Jack is in it for the notoriety! He is accompanied by an ill-tempered Pixie that acts as his spy, perhaps the only being to whom he’s ever shown kindness. It is widely known that he wears the Ring of the Sea King.

I think what I’d like to do is come up with a dozen characters including the 1st mate and pixie and various crew and allow the players access to them ahead of time to review and choose one to play, the captain not being available. All characters should have a relation of some kind to the captain like fear or hate, but some may have others in addition to or in place of, like loyalty etc. And of course relations amongst each-other spread throughout.
For the opening bang- I think the crew is on the beach- either recovering or burying treasure (not necessarily buried on the beach, that’s just where the opening bang happens) and someone has just shot Calico Jack in the back and killed him.

So, one idea you could use would be to have a magical macguffin that grants 1 wish every 100 years and everyone is loaded with meaningful goals: "Bring back my dead son", "Free my nation from slavery, so I don't have to be a pirate anymore", "Remove all my sins", etc.  Since you're looking at a small group, load everyone with 2 or 3 of these, and you'll see some interesting decisions during play as players begin to value or angle for one over the other.  Make sure to remind them they can use these motivations as augments as well!

This is good!

I agree with Chris about the character sheet thing. I've been doing that in demos lately, and it seems to work very well. In fact I've been going a step further, and requiring players to tailor the character somewhat. The intention being to give the player some sense of ownership and power to direct the character.

These are the explicit steps:
1. Before play the player has to add one ability to the character that's not a relationship, and one that is. These abilities start at 17, or keyword level if appropriate (or higher, if the characters are higher powered - depends on the scenario). For the pirate game, for instance, the player would be required to make up one other member of the crew with whom he has a specific relationship. Then I usually kill these NPCs as fast as I can possibly remember to once play starts. :-)
2. This is a minimum requirement. Players may also add as many other abilities as they like at 17 or keyword level. Given that the sheet starts out short, they usually can't go overboard. I haven't even see anyone try. They can do this until play starts.
3. After play starts, I allow players to add as many abilities as they want during play as well, all at 13. I've yet to see any player get to ten. I often explain that this isn't some alternate system, but that we're simply using HQ's built-in "As You Go" system of development. I've seen a lot of equipment (worth a +1 augment) appear this way, for example.

This does run the risk of allowing players to accidentally "pre-decide" things for their characters that are supposed to be questionable for bangs - this happened at least once that I know of. But even then, the ability was revealed on the spot, so it had all the feel of a satisfactory bang (for everyone else, it may have been a letdown for the player). But overall I think that the benefits outweigh the potential dangers.

One billiant suggestion that somebody gave me recently was to ensure that short descriptions of cults were made available to players, so they had an idea of what their characters believed, and the nature of the magic they get from the cult. I think that's key.

I'll disagree with Chris that ownership of the ship isn't a huge deal. Ships are NPCs, and there are just as potent links between characters and ships as with people. Sailors tend to be male, and ships are always female ("she's running slow tonight, Cap'n!") Put the right stuff on the character sheet, and I think it's all good. Remember, Chris, that a crew is a surrogate family. A big, dysfunctional surrogate family. :-)

In fact, having the captain shot in the back is the classic starting bang used in the pirate game Run Out the Guns. Yep, every campaign is supposed to start out this way. And it's a good one. Having the characters negotiate their new positions and all is quite interesting, I've found.

Anyhow, I think that the basic premise you have is good...and then I'd combine it with Chris's too. Basically, Jack dies, and the matter of who is going to run the crew has to be settled. That said, it's a temporary arrangement, and can only be legalized by hitting the nearest port. Ah, but wait! Jack has left a map! Apparently he hasn't been wandering randomly isle to isle this last year, he's been looking for something, the Nuhookoo Idol (which does like Chris says). Only a couole of weeks left until it's gone for another 100 years! But which island does it point to?

Then give the characters all sorts of motives to go to particular islands. Do the standard LARP thing where you give each character a primary and secondary goal, and have every character have an ally with a secondary goal that has a matching island destination as the first character's primary goal. So:

Character - Primary Island - Secondary Island
PC 1 - A - B
PC 2 - B - C
PC 3 - C - D
PC 4 - D - A

The map is so ambigous that it doesn't help, meaning that characters will advocate for their favored island, factions will form, and hopefully people will end up killing each other over it. Where ever they end up going, sure enough, the idol turns out to be there, but they have to kill some innocent natives (who warn them that the idol is not what they think), to get it. Do they, or do they get wise and turn back?

If/when the idol is back on board, it turns into a nasty demon that asks for blood sacrifices in order to give it's one wish. Do you turn on your mates and kill them to get what you want? Which ones? Call it the "Sorcerer" ending. :-)

Just some ideas.

Mike