Loz wrote: Also, having played more sessions, I believe it to be a very versatile system and I've been seduced into producing key word conversion for gaming in Moorcock's Young Kingdoms. Folk on The Forge who know me know I'm a BRP/d100 die-hard, but I think HQ is terrific, to be honest, and it suits my GMing and playing style.

And the HQ book is also the best intro to Glorantha I've seen.

Top marks, Issaries.

Hi S,

I'm actually currently writing up my own alternate setting, and I believe the answer is: It's as much work as you want to put into it. Seriously.

In another thread here, I said, "HQ is to Narrativism, as GURPS is to Sim", which is to say, highly flexible and capable of taking on a lot of varied settings without much trouble.

The Occupations list covers pretty much everything before the steam age, and after that, it shouldn't be too hard to create new occupations, as we're personally MORE familiar with occupations of the last 100-200 years than say, the bronze age.

The Homelands and cultures can be popped out pretty quick, especially if you don't produce 20-odd cults and religions. Strip those out and you'll see that most of the Homelands actually take up only 1 column, or a few paragraphs on a page.

For additional speed, fun, and creativity, put homeland/culture creation into your players hands("So, you want to be a Nemidian? Tell me abou them!"), with the usual GM review.

If you want to save yourself EVEN more time, treat the abilities like Over the Edge traits, which is to say, make them broad, such as only using Keywords and unique descriptions, kick out the individual skills. At that point, you can probably do almost any kind of creation on the fly. The only major change you'll get from that is that character advancement will speed up by about 4-5 times.

Chris
(edited for clarity)

I've got some substantive experience on this subject. In fact, you can find some posts on this forum, and on the Actual Play forum that deal with my foray into using Hew Wars to run the old Rolemaster standard fantasy world called Shadow World. Many of the other threads speak to just this issue.

First, I have to admit that I'm not sure how successful it was. That is, I had loads of fun playing it, but we (seem to) have abandoned the game to play with another GM (Josh Neff) using Glorantha. That said, I think it may have been my attempt to make the game sorta "campaigny", or something, and we only abandoned it to try more exciting things. So I think that nothing can be blamed on the system, and it wasn't really a failure. But I do thiink that there were some potential issues. None of which were breakers in any way, though.

In fact, I wanted to use the system for exactly the sort of play that it produced in the setting. The characters had strong links to the setting, the action was ineresting and intense. It was all very cool to me.

What Chris says is sorta true from my experience. Which is to say that it does take some effort. Obviously the core resolution works just fine. There are two things that have to happen.

First, you have to decide what you want to do for chargen in terms of Keywords. Given that the Keywords in the HQ book are just samples anyhow, however, and that you'd have to make your own for characters from other places, you can see that it's no big deal to make up more Homeland Keywords. It does take a little effort, but there's an easy way around that. Let the players make up the keywords. Give them an article on the Homeland, or just your impressions of it as GM. Then, like the Narrative method of chargen, just have them pick out the things that seem to make sense as Abilities to go along. Make them like other Homeland Keywords in that you should remember to include the appropriate relationships and such that make a well rounded Keyword.

This is really rewarding as a process, because the player then has an investment in the are that he's helping to mechanically flesh out. Occupatonal Keywords are likely no different from Glorantha to your world and can be ported intact. In any case, these need to be fabricated often enopugh that there's really no difference playing with the system in Glorantha or other worlds as fara s Occupational Keywords go.

The second thing that needs real work, and by far the more difficult, is coming up with how magic works in the world in question, and how to handle these keywords. Assuming that you already have some idea of how it works in the world that you're interested in playing in, the easiest thing is to tailor the various magic systems in the game to the mechanics for similar Gloranthan types. For instance if you have clerical magic, it can work like Themism most likely, or perhaps Sorcery if that seems more appropriate to the religions of your setting. Some magic tradiitons will be more like HQ Animism.

For magic that has less religious ties like you often see standard in many fantasy settings, you have to make a decision to either go more religious, or to stick with the atheistic magic. If you go with religious magic then it's easy enough to use HQ Sorcery to represent that sort of magic. If not, then you have to figure out a replacement for things like veneration of saints, etc, or just drop it. Bascially what I did for SW Essence users, is to treat it like worship of the Essence in a way. Which worked just fine.

In any case, you'll have to do some thinking about how to get things to line up, and how to mechanically handle different types of magic. Once you do, however, you'll be pleased by the result I think.

Actually, if you don't have a well established magic system in place, it's easier to do, as you can just adopt the HQ model more intact. Which I think would work very well.

All in all, I can only recommend trying it. I think that the effort that you put into it will, as Chris says, pay off in the end big time. So go for it.

To contradict Chris, however, I'd highly suggest going with the fully detailed version. I haven't found the detail to be all that much trouble in any way, and it has, in fact, provided a lot of fun in making characters really come alive. I'm strongly against movements to broaden Abilites like this. It's a good idea for other systems that don't have interstice coverage like HQ does. But given that the Keywords provide that broad coverage already, you don't need to broaden the other abilites. Leaving them to make for more fully realized characters.

If you don't want to put all the effort in right away, that doesn't mean you can't ump right in either. You can use the "create on the fly" rules to flesh things out as you go. In fact, I'm intrigues by the idea of starting off a game with no detail about the world or characters at all, and just making it all up as you go. That would be neat.

Mike

Thanks for the heads up, Mike and Chris. I appreciate you taking the time to share your ideas and experiences. My copy of HeroQuest should be arriving tomorrow.

Scripty wrote: But a question of mine, which does not seem to be yet addressed on this forum, is how much work is needed to go into using HeroQuest for another setting? What exactly is necessary to do so and, from those with experience running/playing the game, how difficult is it to change various elements (i.e. magic) within the context of the system?

Is it a system where things are fairly mutable, like Sorcerer or Donjon, or is it a system that breaks down quite easily if tinkered with too much like D&D? And by "breaks down", I mean that rules are so interdependent that changing one thing can affect so many other aspects of the game system that altering the system is an unpredictable and uncertain enterprise.

simon_hibbs wrote:

Scripty wrote:
The fact that HeroQuest presents three verry different kinds of magic answers that question to some extent, though of course they all use many core rules for magic in common. nevertheless integrating spirits (Animism) and using affinities (Theism) are clearly very different.

<snip>

As for tinkering wiht the core system, sure you could break it if you weren't carefull, but that's true of any game system. Less so of HeroQuest than many because it doesn't have all that many game mechanics, so you're much less likely to get unexpected interactions between disparate parts of the game engine.

<snip>

The only problem might occur if you introduce abilities that don't obey the normal rules. In fact this also already occurs in HeroQuest under carefully controlled circumstances, since the secret powers of a religion don't follow the normal rules. Since in Glorantha these are world-shattering magics that have changed the face of Glorantha in the past, and are only available to major heroes, this makes sense for the setting. It may not make sense in another setting, but something else might.

Simon Hibbs

I'm intrigued that HeroQuest has so many magic systems. It's my hope that they will be versatile enough that I can port them over to another setting with as few changes as possible. Primarily, I just want to use the HeroQuest rules (from what I know about them) in a different setting. I've read examples of play and discussions/reviews of the system. From what I've read it sounds like a system that would really gel with the Narrativist style of play that I'm currently pursuing. It also seems like a system that heavily protagonizes the players, which I also like.

I'm not really interested in tinkering with the rules of HeroQuest, just taking them as whole-hog as possible and plopping them into Middle Earth, Hyborea, Midnight, Freedom City, or the Galactic Empire. I want to do as few rule adjustments as humanly possible. I'm lazy like that. But I have yet to find my "Holy Grail". That is a versatile rules-set that clicks with what I'm trying to do (i.e. Narrativism, Protagonism), which is STILL a rules-set. I like short and simple rules. IMO, Over the Edge is great, until you get to Hit Points and Firearms. I think Unknown Armies is also good, but, IME, it de-protagonizes the players in the same vein as D&D. I like the Pool/Puddle A LOT, but I feel it's almost TOO rules lite for some of the things I'm going for. I liked what I heard about HeroQuest because it seemed to have the Narrativist/Protagonist elements that drew me to the Pool and games such as Donjon, but it still seemed to be enough of a game to satisfy those old Gamist tendencies within me. If it's everything that has been said about it, it seems a near perfect fit. So, when I'm speaking of using HeroQuest in another setting, it's with the intent of NOT messing with it or having to shoehorn it into a campaign. I want to touch as little of it as possible, yet still have it function in a consistent manner.

Regarding your statement on the "abilities that don't obey normal rules", I had another random brainflash. Given abilities like those you mention, which I assume to be sort of like the "Sunset Leap" mentioned in another forum, could HeroQuest be the unrequited rules-set then...

for the Matrix??

If so, I think Greg and Issaries have a license that they could do serious justice to. I'm speculating that could be a good meeting of system/setting. Considering the Wachowski Bros. are (reportedly) gamers/ex-gamers themselves, maybe they could cut Stafford a deal. Him and Robin are sort of legends (as close as it gets, IMO) in the world of RPGs...

EDIT: Clarification of what drew me to HeroQuest.

In a word, Yes.

Hero Quest rules-set, as I've been saying for some time since playing Hero Wars, presents the single most important go-to action-adventure RPG rules-set ever written.

In other words, if you want to play superheroes, Star Wars, or any other flashy yet thematic kind of adventure, and if you're into Narrativist play without much weirdness (e.g. shared GMing or similar), then Hero Quest is the basic game.

I look forward to an upcoming decade when people's first experience with role-playing is with this game. That will be a different world.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote:
I look forward to an upcoming decade when people's first experience with role-playing is with this game. That will be a different world.

Best,
Ron

My own personal explorations with the HeroQuest mechanics have included an intensely satisfying but incomplete conversion of Nephilim, a convention scenario crossing Star Wars with Solaris in which Jedi Knights investigate a living planet tainted by the Dark Side, a thought-experiment based on an extremely oddball concept I had years ago called "Quark: The Roleplaying Game of Quantum Physics", and two grand swashbuckling one-shots based on The Three Musketeers and The Princess Bride respectively.

RaconteurX wrote: My own personal explorations with the HeroQuest mechanics have included an intensely satisfying but incomplete conversion of Nephilim, a convention scenario crossing Star Wars with Solaris in which Jedi Knights investigate a living planet tainted by the Dark Side, a thought-experiment based on an extremely oddball concept I had years ago called "Quark: The Roleplaying Game of Quantum Physics", and two grand swashbuckling one-shots based on The Three Musketeers and The Princess Bride respectively.

Scripty wrote: What kind of changes did you need to make to the rules or did you need to adopt to accomodate such a wide spectrum of genres?

Also, how did the games turn out? That Star Wars/Solaris idea sounds really cool. I bet that was a lot of fun.

Thanks for the quick reply, Michael. It was encouraging to hear that you didn't have to do reams and reams of house rules and conversion notes to bring HQ into those other settings. I'm saving your comments so that I can review them after I get a better handle on HQ magic (My book just got here yesterday).

Scripty wrote: It was encouraging to hear that you didn't have to do reams and reams of house rules and conversion notes to bring HQ into those other settings.

Ooh, imagine working up all the Tekumel Keywords. Have you actually done that? Do you have notes? That would be really neat, IMO.

I'd also love to see a write up for Jorune if anyone has such notes. Would actually make that setting playable, I think. Jorune is OOP, IIRC. Has anyone thought of contacting them for a revival using HQ as the core rules?

Talislanta would be cool to see written up too, as long as we're at it. Harn (wouldn't that be ironic)?

I'm thinking just Homeland Keywords with the associated Abilites. I think I'll post what I have so far for Shadow World at some point. It's very limited so far, being as we only did Keywords for Homelands from which the character's came. But I could work some more out, I think. I'll post here, if/when.

Mike

It just occured to me that the HQ system is just what Fading Suns needs.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: It just occured to me that the HQ system is just what Fading Suns needs.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Ooh, imagine working up all the Tekumel Keywords. Have you actually done that? Do you have notes? That would be really neat, IMO.

I'd also love to see a write up for Jorune if anyone has such notes. Talislanta would be cool to see written up too, as long as we're at it. Harn (wouldn't that be ironic)?

I wrote: Might even be fun to create regional keywords within Tsolyanu...

A friend of mine has run several Dune games using the Hero Wars mechanics and it worked very well. He sets his games before the first novel, when Dune is under Harkonen rule and Keyns is first sent there. The players are usualy fremen who rescue/are rescued by/befriend Keynes and are instrumental in his adoption into Fremen culture. Loads of fun!

*Warning* What follows is fan fiction. I hate fan fiction, but every now and then I write some anyway. Sue me. Molack was my character.


Molack at the Wind Trap:

Molack crouched in silence on a rock ledge inside the cavern. Through his stillsuit he could feel the coolness of the rock underneath him, and the warmth of the sun-baked air drifting in through the cave mouth before him. He knew that this temperature difference was crucial to the magic of this place. A gust of wind blew into the cave mouth and the rasping sound of wind on stone echoed through the cavern behind him for a moment, then subsided. Though he could not see it from here, he could smell the desert out there, arid and forbiding. Yet all of these things were familiar to him and he paid them little attention, but only watched the slim figure sitting in the cave mouth, wrapped only in a thin garment of plain cotton.

If it had been any other man sitting there, his stillsuit carelessly piled beside him, he would have forfeited his life. As a Water Master, it would have been a duty and an honour for Molack to punish such a blatant transgression of the law. Yet it was unthinkable.

The figure turned his head sudddenly, and saw Molack sitting there for the first time.
"How long have you been there?"
Molack stirred uneasily. "One third of an hour, Lord... Should I go?"
"No, Molack. I will return now, and I shall be glad of the company on the way back to the Sietch." The man got up, and Molack moved forward to help him don his stillsuit.

"I know I am breaking your laws Molack" The man spoke the Fremen language fluently, but still his offworld accent was unmistakable.
"You are not of our people, Lord. Your ways are offworld ways."
"But you disaprove!" The man looked Molack in the eyes, but Molack looked down at the shoulder strap he was tying. At length, he answerred "You bring new ways Lord, and these new ways demand new laws."
"That is no answer Molack, to change Arrakis we need water. As a Water Master you know the importance of the water laws."
"You sit at the entrance lord, the mousture from your body enters the cave and is caught by the wind traps."
"Yet some may be lost, and even so the law is the law."

"Would you have me report you to the Naib?" Molack looked up and faced the man that had changed his life. This time it was Keynes who looked away.
"No Molack. I only want you to understand why I come here like this. I have taught you about air moisture content, nitrogen cycles and the greenhouse effect, but this is not enough. I was not born here, and to know Arrakis I must touch it. I must feel the wind and sun of Arakis against my skin. Despite everything I say in my lectures, Arrakis is not a diagram on a board but a thing to touch and taste and smell."

Not for the first time, Molack's thought to himself 'I would die for this man.'

RaconteurX wrote: You might have Urban/Coastal/Plains which in BEL could mean your hero comes from Chicago, Detroit, or New York. In Tsolyanu, it could mean your hero comes from Jakalla or Bey Su. We would then just require keywords for each combination, or even each component. Hm...

Wow, Nick, great analysis.

I think that perhaps magic would come with appropriate Occupations, or merely have to be purchased with extra slots. It's the ubiquitousness of the magic in Glorantha that means that you have to have a Magic Keyword, and hence it's exclusion from the occupations, IMO. For other settings, it seems to me that magic Abilities would make sense as part of Occupations.

Think of it this way - either you get an Occupation, or you get a Magic Keyword representing yout occupation.

Make sense?

Mike

I have to admit be being very intrigued by the mix of HQ, Solaris and Star Wars. I would love more details. It sounds totally evil from a Narrator POV.

Graeme

Mac Logo wrote: I have to admit be being very intrigued by the mix of HQ, Solaris and Star Wars. I would love more details. It sounds totally evil from a Narrator POV.

moonbroth wrote: Having a generic 'Tsolyani' homeland keyword, then applying local 'spin' might be the way to go... and this could be more than a single extra ability, depending on how keen you were to develop these differences.

RaconteurX wrote: I am not certain how well-documented the regional differences are in empires other than Tsolyanu.

I am not certain that the regional differences within Tsolyanu are as great as those between Pelorian cultures

Clans are a tough call... is it worth writing up individual keywords for each, or leave them generic?

RaconteurX wrote: Evil does not even begin to describe it, Graeme. The heroes were carefully crafted to have numerous vulnerabilities through which the Dark Side could sink its hooks into them. My chief inspiration was Unknown Armies. Its Passions and Madness Meter are easily tweaked to fit the inner turmoil which accompanies temptation by the Dark Side. Grafting this onto HeroQuest was a little ad hoc, but I was satisfied with the result and the players did not seem to realize it was anything but part of the existing HQ mechanics until I reveal that it was not at game's end.

I think we've wandered a bit. While these examples do highlight how you can use HQ for other settings, I think that each setting that needs to be discussed in more detail would do well to have it's own thread. If you really want to discuss any one of these in detail, I'd recommend starting a new topic up. There are at least two that I'd like to see get their own discrete discussions. :-)

Mike

pete_darby wrote: As someone considering throwing Gloranthan characters into Dorastor, I needto see these mechanics.

Thanks - another tool for the box...

I might pick up the new, more clear, rules as I always thought Heroquest would be ideal for:

A Robin of Sherwood style game
A Pendragon Game (as in the game)
A Fading Suns Game (as someone mentioned)

When I was looking at this stuff before I never really worried about keywording all the profressions and cultures. Surely you can just use the characters write a 100 words or so and pick the keywords out approach?

Well, that works Ian. In fact what I've been doing is to let the players know about the culture and work out the keywords together. Very similar in effect. Indeed, once the player has written the Keyword for their character, I've been saying that it then becomes the official Keyword for the setting (in this case Shadow World).

The problem with this is that I've got very few done this way. And the "work" of putting the keywords together is actually entertaining, IMO. Why let the players have all the fun? I have an urge to put these things together because I think it'll be a really interesting exercise.

In any case, when I have a written Keyword, I consider it a jumping off point anyhow. The last character I made was from Esvular, but I wanted him to have been on the road all his life. So we changed his Homeland keyword from Esvular to Esvular Traveler, changing a couple of his Abilities with it (mostly the area knowledge sorts of stuff).

So having Keywords written up is just food for thought and shortcuts for character generation. If the player says, "I want to be a typical Brother Battle," I want to be able to give him the list right off. And if he wants something different, he has something to modify off of.

But not having Homeland Keywords written wouldn't stop me from playing, indeed hasn't. I'd heartily recommend diving on in.

Magic, OTOH, is the sticking point. Not in terms of what the keywords are, but in terms of what modeling they progress upon. One could just make all magic Abilities simply straightforward Abilities. But that would take some of the color out of the system. So I try to make the Magic convert in some ways to keep the nifty elements. I've found that the setting converted benefits greatly from the thought that goes into how magic works, and that the magic itself is, in the end, much more interesting.

Mike

Mike,

Yeah, I see what you mean. I'm just incrediby lazy :)

As an aside, and slightly off topic, but pertaining to Fading Suns, if you want to see an example of how religion works on FS, watch the movie Sin Eater.

It has an order of Catholic Priests (Eskatonics) operating within the standard Catholic Church. They hunt down lost law, and believe demons still exist, etc. The 'setting of the movie' also establishes a medievil paradigm for religion, with the movie being about a man who is a Sin Eater - he can absorb sins (which are really, quantifiable things in the movie) and this annoys the church as only God can offer redemption.

It made me think of Fading Suns when I watched it. I also thought it was very good.