The first session of my Hyborea/HQ game took place last Monday. I'm glad that I stepped back from it a while to let it settle in my head a bit, because I don't think I really ran the game all that well. The players had fun, and they seemed to like HeroQuest. But I didn't quite capture the Narr elements that I was looking for.

To follow up on my earlier rant, the one player who was a big R.E. Howard fan didn't show, and isn't going to. That surprised me. But we still picked up a random new guy who's coming over from straight D&D.

The HeroQuest character generation worked like a charm. All the characters are well-fleshed out and, oddly enough, all very true to the spirit of Conan's stories. We have a Zamoran thief, interlocked in a clan feud involving his sheepherding family to the north, an Aquilonian sorcerer's apprentice who was given a stolen artifact by his evil mentor, a Hyrkanian warrior chasing down a murderous traitor to his clan, and a Hyperborean who has stolen a necromantic amulet from his uncle (IIRC).

Because the system was new, I wanted to try to stick to the familiar and decided to start the group out in Arenjun in a HeroQuest-ized version of "The Tower of the Elephant." First, I know the story pretty much front and back. So, it's familiar, allowing me to focus on the mechanics and getting the "play" of HeroQuest right. And, second, I thought using an actual Conan story as a backdrop would both ensure that the feel of the game remained authentic and offer a real treat for my one player who was most enthused about playing in Hyborea. Seeing that she didn't show, the latter bit of reasoning was chucked out the window. So, it's all new territory for this crew.

Now, before everyone throws up their hands in dismay that I've Simmed HQ, let me qualify this by saying that I created a relationship map loosely based on the REH story with the Heart of the Elephant as the MacGuffin within which to run. Of course, at the center of it all is Yara with a web of supporters, rivals and others out to kill him. There are also a couple of organized theiving rings that are out for the famed gem. This is the hook that the group took, being led to their employer by the very same loud-mouthed Kothian that Conan offed in the actual story.

Surprisingly, the players took a number of skills on their own initiative that added a good deal of depth to their characters. Noting that both the Aquilonian and Hyrkanian took Cooking in one form or another, I decided to start the game in the same tavern as the Conan story with a bit of an Iron Chef competition going on. Sadly, neither player stepped up and a cook-off was concluded between the aforementioned Kothian and a wealthy Nemedian merchant antiquarian without involvement from either player. But then the Hyperborean showed up, which will always get things moving.

Shortly after entering the room, the Hyperborean was rushed by a couple of Aesir outlaws with a serious hate for all things Hyperborean. A number of people left the tavern outright at the sight of the Hyperborean, but the players mostly watched as the big, gaunt, battle-axe wielding HyperB eventually took out the two Aesirs. More on this later.

Long story short, the Kothian, on threat of death for being such a wiseguy, offered the Zamoran thief an opportunity for "riches beyond his wildest dreams". Hearing this as the tavern was completely empty except for the players, the Kothian, an old man and the two Aesirs, all the players immediately signed up. The Kothian then took them down a labrynthine network of back alleys to what he termed a "Merchant" interested in acquiring a certain jewel, which, of course, was a Zamoran crime boss looking to get some payback on Yara for shrivelling his legs into two little rotten stumps. Needless to say, after some haggling and such, the group took the job for an ungodly sum.

Looking for more info, the Kothian let the group know that the only person to have ever bypassed the walls of the tower and lived was a thief currently being held in the King's Dungeon. Honestly, I couldn't remember whether Arenjun or Shadizar was the capital of Zamora but I just went with that for simplicity's sake. The thief, of course, was now blind as Yara had turned his eyes into a nest of baby spiders. Why the King was holding the thief no one really knows, but, of course, the King is looking for a bit of payback on Yara himself. He's holding the thief so that he can, perhaps, mount an assassination attempt on Yara using what little knowledge the thief has about the Tower. Of course, following this thread, Taurus is pretty much ruled out, but I may still be able to introduce the Prince of Thieves at a later point in the story. With a bit of backtracking he could easily fit in as having been posing as the Nemedian merchant from the tavern while casing the Tower for himself.

The group then went about entering the King's dungeon through a little used, but heavily trapped, sewer line. More on this later as well. The Hyrkanian got through and has the blind thief.

Now, anyone familiar with the story itself will know just how far from the Conan story this game has progressed. The players are engaged in a completely different area of the relationship map than Conan was and are, for the most part, driving the focus of the game with their own decisions and actions. There's no real storyline here, although their influence on events are setting off reactions all over the map, all properly dark and backstab-like to reflect the feel of Zamora with a degree of integrity.

This game was short. The entire story that has occured thus far took place in less than an hour and a half of real time (not game world time), following a wee bit over an hour in character gen. One thing I noticed here was that HeroQuest runs much faster than I'm used to. Because of this, I also noticed that the game tends to get caught up in the direction that the players want to go. The whole King's Dungeon thing was pretty much improv'd. I knew that there was a thief who had gotten past Yara's walls and I knew that the King had him and why, but I had no real reason to toss him in the King's Dungeons. The sewer crawl just worked better for the type of skulking around that the group seemed interested in at the time.

Also, players seemed to be interested in following the story from their character's motivations. The Aquilonian was eager to gain some money to show up his elder brother and gain his father's grudging respect. He was the second-born in his family. The Zamoran's clan from Northern Zamora were being wiped out by their rival clan because of new horse riding tactics that they had never encountered before. After some questioning, the Hyrkanian realized that, most likely, his man was working for the rival clan. The Zamoran was looking for money to help get his clan arms to fight off their rivals. The Zamoran enlisted the Hyrkanian on agreement that, after helping him acquire the gem, the Zamoran would take the Hyrkanian back to his homelands to mete swift justice on the rival clan's new military advisor. And the Hyperborean is going along pretty much for the same reasons Conan did: plunder, plunder, plunder.

So, other than realizing that I need to think a bit more long term when preparing for HeroQuest games, I think the game went fairly well. But I came across a few logjams that I thought the group here could help me with.

The first is the bar-fight between the Hyperborean and the two Aesir. I intended it to be a Simple Contest at the time, in order to show how combat in HeroQuest could be fast and quickly resolved. That didn't happen. The Hyperborean's first roll turned out to be a tie. Wouldn't you know it? So, running off the top of my head, we described events (the players and I) and rolled another contest. This one was a marginal defeat for the player. I realize now that this would have been a perfect time to introduce Hero Points into the system, but my brain locked up. I froze and we wound up rolling a total of 5 Simple Contests to resolve the bar fight. It wound up having the feel of a D&D fight, almost. The combat was more descriptive, but we definitely broke down into the "my turn, your turn" type of play.

My questions follow. How would you guys have handled the situation? Does a simple contest really mean one-roll-and-out? If players are rolling a bunch of Ties and Marginals, is it okay to have the contest drawn out into a couple of rolls? Overall, I felt this was one of the major failings of the evening, on my part. Rather than show how streamlined the game could be, I screwed up and fell back into a rote method of play. Any advice on how to avoid this mental trap?

Speaking of traps, the lone Extended Contest of the evening was the trek through the sewers to the King's Dungeon. I had intended for the Cooking contest to serve as the player's introduction to this mechanic but, passing on that, I opted to use the sewers as an Indiana Jones style trap gauntlet. My problem was in how I handled this. I didn't understand Extended Contests very well, I found. I represented APs with poker chips. Bad move. Players knew exactly how many the sewer had and an element of surprise was definitely lost. I also represented the traps as part of the Extended Contest, with no clear goal as to what result the "sewer" as a passive participant was trying to achieve. At this point, I think I would've represented the traps as Unrelated Actions attempting to wound the players and use the labrynthine sewers as a way to the King's Dungeon or a means to mislead the players into more danger.

How would you guys (and girls) have approached this? Am I on the right track or completely whacky? Any help or advice regarding these types of Extended Contests against a passive antagonist?

One thing I did notice about HeroQuest upon reflection and running my wife through a brief supers adventure was that it really forces you to think in terms of story development. Not so much in terms of how do I work this next bit in, like my typical D&D games, but, rather, in terms of where this is all going. Revisiting the system over the weekend, I caught myself at my best when I thought of play almost like a movie, letting go of what I had "prepared" for the evening and following more the flow of "if this were a movie, what would happen next?"

In conclusion, I surmised that many of my old means of preparation were pretty much null and void. Maps were nice but, mostly, no help based on their use in play. Dungeons seemed right out, although my "5-step dungeon" thought process for improvising them was essential. I also found myself needing to slow down for description, of all things. In the past, combats had taken so long that I had become accustomed to abbreviating or foregoing description altogether just to keep the action going. Now, that I have time for it, I find myself following the same habits of old, foregoing description but, as a result, running short of bangs before the night's end. And, speaking of bangs, I also found them of less use than before. It was nice to have one, or two, at hand. But I found that once those were taken, the story seemed to flow away from the others that I had prepared. Perhaps, this game calls for a more general sort of "Bang" than I am used to creating?

Thanks for taking the time to read all of this. I am essentially sharing my intial experiences with the system in order to get experienced players and narrators' thoughts on it. Besides being way too unfamiliar with the Extended Contest rules to have attempted to run one, does my experience and observations gel with how you use/interpret HeroQuest? The players liked the game. For die hard D&Ders, I would say their enthusiasm for the system was quite high. With a bit more knowledge and forethought, I think I could really represent the system better for them, however. On a scale of 1 to 5, my execution as a Narrator that night was "Eh" which is one point less than pathetic. Thanks in advance for any advice, observations or musings that you could offer. I look forward to learning more about HeroQuest and how other people use it for their games, in order to improve my own. I know from past experience on this forum that this is not an unrealistic expectation.

Hello,

Three points, man. All constructed around the central idea that you do not need help; you are rocking and rolling. What you apparently need is hand-holding, so here's a little bit.

1. You didn't "sim" anything. You provided Situational material, which is necessary in all role-playing. I consider HQ to support "setting-based Narrativist" play, and as such it requires major GM authority over what's there in the setting, especially what's dynamically there. The fact that you identified that your group's evolving story was not Tower of the Elephant, regardless of your faith to its beginning/setup components, is enough to get rid of this fear.

2. About that My-turn-your-turn isssue in the fight, you were working against some seriously-established habits of play both in yourself and in the players. So don't worry about it much. I strongly recommend that you emphasize conflicts, not tasks, in such scenes.

"I pick up the chair and throw it at him!" is not a conflict resolver. It merely rearranges stuff in the scene, and then the player looks at you expectantly. "I'm knocking him out with the chair!" is a conflict resolver. Here's my point: the latter is no less absorbing and in-character than the former.

People always mess this up. They think Author Stance and Fortune-in-the-Middle have to be disconnected from "getting into my guy," and they are profoundly wrong.

So merely ... ask, during these scenes. If you get a chair-throwing line, with no conflict resolution, just get it in there by asking. Then your Simple Contests will mean that stuff happens.

3. A Bang is not a Bang until it enters play. Until then, it's just words on a page or in your head, and has no intrinsic value. That Bang you provided? Did it prompt decisions that defined "the story" at the table? According to your description, emphatically Yes. That is overwhelmingly successful and important, and the last thing you need to concern yourself with is getting Bang B into place after Bang A. There is no "B" unless play demands it, in your judgment as Bang-Holder.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote:
2. About that My-turn-your-turn isssue in the fight, you were working against some seriously-established habits of play both in yourself and in the players. So don't worry about it much. I strongly recommend that you emphasize conflicts, not tasks, in such scenes.

"I pick up the chair and throw it at him!" is not a conflict resolver. It merely rearranges stuff in the scene, and then the player looks at you expectantly. "I'm knocking him out with the chair!" is a conflict resolver. Here's my point: the latter is no less absorbing and in-character than the former.

People always mess this up. They think Author Stance and Fortune-in-the-Middle have to be disconnected from "getting into my guy," and they are profoundly wrong.

So merely ... ask, during these scenes. If you get a chair-throwing line, with no conflict resolution, just get it in there by asking. Then your Simple Contests will mean that stuff happens.

The conclusion of the ToE adventure occured this week, with only three of the players returning. The Zamoran thief, for some reason, was AWOL. Not expecting him to return, I narrated a speedy exit that could have meant he was either dead or washed ashore to safety. The option for his character's return is still open, however, and highly plausible.

Primarily, my biggest problems in the second game stemmed from my lack of preparation or, rather, preparing for the wrong things. Whereas, I prepared for a grim and dangerous contest in the sewers of Zamora and an eventual confrontation between the PCs and their patron, the PCs went straight for the Tower. I hadn't much anticipated that the Tower would be much of an obstacle in this session. I assumed that the players would either break through to the ground floors or climb up through the top ala Taurus and Conan.

But the players wasted no time in scaling the Tower and running amok for a while in a manner reminiscent of D&D play as I have grown accustomed to it.

The first glitch occured when the Aquilonian, who had volunteered to "case" the premises, decided instead to sneak in and singlehandedly pre-empt the party. Internally, I was against this. The Aquilonian had some minor magical abilities that could conceivably get him into the Tower, but not beyond the lions and, certainly, not past Yara himself. The Aquilonian had no idea what was in there and, although he had heard rumors of Yara's power, really had no idea what he was up against.

I was in between a sort of rock and a hard place. Here was one player doing something incredibly ill-advised. If he failed, he'd most likely be killed. If he succeeded, he would potentially de-protagonize the rest of the group. What to do? What to do?

The Aquilonian snuck past the guards fairly easily (using his "Pass Unseen" magical talent which basically just kept people from really noticing that he was there). But the lions were not people, and were not fooled by his tricks. On a simple contest (in retrospect I should have perhaps made this an Extended Contest), the lion rolled a Crit and bumped the Aquilonian's Failure to a fumble.

The Aquilonian's player then settled into a deep funk. He didn't want to spend his last Hero Point to simply avoid dying. By all means, then, he should have died. I caved and allowed him to be taken prisoner by Yara for questioning. I understood how the player felt, but I suppose he didn't understand the extent of the gamble that he was undertaking.

To underline this frustration, the player basically had his player throw a tantrum when Yara initated the interrogation, calling him all sorts of names and basically behaving in a manner that screamed "Kill me now!"

To account for the group's loss of a member, I introduced Taurus in much the same way that Conan met him. I had left that option available and he turned out to be very helpful to the group. I had some problems with the extended contest representing the climb up, however. How exactly does an inanimate object act to prevent the players from climbing it?

Not sure. So the climb was anti-climactic to say the least. The Aquilonian, held at the top of the tower, was able to help them climb up, however. Long story short, Taurus kicked it. The giant spider went down hard with a shot from the Hyrkanian's bow (shortly before it was about to bite the Aquilonian who had dove into the room with a wild abandon). Yara, of course, was alerted that others would possibly be attempting to loot his tower and was on hand, in spider form, to cast some pretty nasty little spells. The players aborted the mission. The Aquilonian deciding to face off against Yara (despite being impaired) finally died. Yara lived and the remaining members of the party survived to tell the tale. This wasn't too far removed from the main thrust of Howard's stories, but it was anti-climactic.

Had I to do it over again I would've introduced the Elephant-headed Godling Thing earlier, perhaps even substituting his room for the treasure room. But, as things were going, the Aquilonian's player was acting like such a complete nimrod that it was quite likely the party would not have been able to enlist the help of the creature (which would be the key to defeating Yara).

I also would have focused much more on the Tower or, specifically, the types of contests that the characters might find in the Tower. A bit more thought or even experience might have given me a better Extended Contest to represent the stealthy climb up the Tower. Again, in retrospect, the game worked best when I thought in terms of a movie and really broke down when I began thinking in terms of a role-playing game.

Something else I noticed was that the game didn't much support the "GM vs. Players" mentality that is prevalent in a number of other rpgs. The Aquilonian's player was very much into this mindset and really threw the whole adventure by trying to upstage everyone else at the table. Following that, his every breath was pretty much to oppose/derail/complicate/berate the adventure, the other PCs or any NPC that might happen his way. I guess with behavior of that caliber I shouldn't be surprised that I felt that this session didn't go all that well either.

Questions that occured to me after some thought, however, were: As mentioned before, how does an inanimate object come into play in an Extended Contest? Does it "act" against the players? How do you guard against the "old school" lines of thought (like "Player vs. GM" thinking) when running HeroQuest? Is it just an old habit that will have to die hard with certain players or is there something that I, as a Narrator, am missing that will counter it now? Also, how do you handle player protagonism when a player is acting directly against the rest of the group? At what point do you put a brake on player protagonism to preserve protagonism for everyone else? The Aquilonian's player pretty much single-handedly did everything he could this game to wreck it for everyone else and wasn't satisfied until he did. He's normally not this bad and generally really likes more Narr play, but for some reason that night he just let loose with the Killer PC mentality. HeroQuest was not a useful tool from reining in this player, nor is it meant to be, IMO. By all rights, the player should have been killed by the lions... What do you do in that instance? Fudge and let the other players' preparation and planning be diminished? Or should I have let the roll stand where it was and had the Aquilonian up and die? The whole instance had a very Sim feel to it, and this player really seemed up for a Sim or Gamist style of play on this particular evening.

I couldn't help feeling that I dropped the ball here in a fairly big way. Any advice would be great.

Heya Scripty,

I too am fairly new to HeroQuest and have had some of the same issues you’ve had with the rules (though not with the players, for which I thank Ron’s advice about getting the right players and setting up play contracts). So I thought I’d chime in with some ideas that have helped me in the past, which may be of some help to you.

The first glitch occured when the Aquilonian, who had volunteered to "case" the premises, decided instead to sneak in and singlehandedly pre-empt the party… The Aquilonian's player then settled into a deep funk… I understood how the player felt, but I suppose he didn't understand the extent of the gamble that he was undertaking.

I had some problems with the extended contest representing the climb up, however. How exactly does an inanimate object act to prevent the players from climbing it

At what point do you put a brake on player protagonism to preserve protagonism for everyone else?

Brand_Robins wrote: Its also important to know what the expected consequences of failure are. If you expect to die/be removed from game by failure, or to have your hero role negated, then you’re going to become despondent upon failing. This, it seems, is what happened to your player. Sure, he wasn’t dead, but he also had lost his sense of his character’s heroic ability. Partly this seems to be immaturity on his part, but it also probably has to do with the way that such situations are often handled in game. “You should be dead, but I’ll give you a break and keep you alive until someone else rescues you” is not something that is going to make someone wanting to play a hero happy.

Brand_Robins wrote: The way around this is to make it clear what the results of failure will be, and that a failure can be more of a chance to be a hero, rather than less of one – and then the player has to do their part and deal with that like an adult. In this situation the response on these lines would be “You’re captured, but already you are plotting your daring escape/epic confrontation of wills with the sorcerer/seduction of the sorcerer’s daughter.”

Brand_Robins wrote: I’d say there are two issues going on here. The first, and probably more important, is questioning why you made the climb up the tower an extended contest. Extended contests are best used when there is something dynamic and dramatic at stake, something with which a significant portion of the game should be taken up with. Scaling the tower in this case, and in the story as I remember it, seems to be less a central pivot of the story and more an event that lies between the pivotal events (meeting Taurus and either fighting the spider or meeting the Ganesha clone) – so it seems more fitting to a simple contest.

Brand_Robins wrote: My group does this by briefly pausing play and having a quick series of author stance ides about how we can move the scenario back on track in a way that will preserve everyone’s hero roll. As GM you should, of course, be able to call such a stop as well. But I don’t think the traditional notion of the GM having to single-handedly fix all the problems is the best way to fix the issue. It works much better to get everyone to step away from character roll and have the group as a whole fix the issue collaboratively. If the GM forces a fix it could, really, end up ruining the protagonist stance of everyone – as the story has become something forced by the GM. If the group as a whole cooperates to fix it, then it’s a joint story told by all.

Brand_Robins wrote: Of course, the other option (something someone more comfortable with Narrativism will probably bring up shortly) is to be more aggressive in your scene framing.

Brand_Robins wrote: Finally, I don’t think you’re doing badly or that you messed up the game. You sound like you’re doing better than I did the first couple times I tried running a game in my personal version of narrative play. I think you need to talk about the game with the players and set up a stronger social contract, and you may need to scene-frame more aggressively, but your game sounds fun to me. In fact, it sounds like a game that I’d like to play in.

Hello,

I hope I'm not being too terse with the following, but time is limited at the moment.

1. The canonical story should have been abandoned the moment you looked at the character sheets, if not before. Your tendency to "make things go like they go" got you into a lot of trouble; role-playing HQ is authorship rather than celebration of the source material.

2. Character protagonism is not the same thing as player ego. When the latter turns out to be the issue, and the "character's integrity" is used as club to keep the ego climbing ever higher, then you are facing major GNS conflict, if not indeed Social Contract conflict at a wider level.

3. The good news is that you are doing well to filter, re-form, play again, filter, re-form, play again, and so on. Over time, I expect to learn about some amazing play.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: I hope I'm not being too terse with the following, but time is limited at the moment.

Ron Edwards wrote: 1. The canonical story should have been abandoned the moment you looked at the character sheets, if not before. Your tendency to "make things go like they go" got you into a lot of trouble; role-playing HQ is authorship rather than celebration of the source material.

Ron Edwards wrote: 2. Character protagonism is not the same thing as player ego. When the latter turns out to be the issue, and the "character's integrity" is used as club to keep the ego climbing ever higher, then you are facing major GNS conflict, if not indeed Social Contract conflict at a wider level.

Ron Edwards wrote: 3. The good news is that you are doing well to filter, re-form, play again, filter, re-form, play again, and so on. Over time, I expect to learn about some amazing play.

Ouch, the Aquilonian guy sounds like a real pain.

Frankly, he deserved to lose his character though I'd not actual do that. Instead I'd have done somethign similar to you. Something like "The Lion guardian bashes you with a paw, the force of the blow knockign you against the wall. You are aware of it looming over you as conciousnes slips away." And then switch to the other players and give them a chance to cathch up. The player lost rights narative focus with the contest.

On runing a series of simple contests, there's nothign wrong with this. Each contest has normal consequences in terms of wounds, which are cumulative penalties, and you just carry on. Not a great way to do things naratively perhaps, but perfectly allowable under the rules if all the combattants are saying is 'I hit him'. If they want to knock their opponent permanently out of the contest then they need to either go to an extended contest or try something more than just 'I hit him'. For example "I attack so ferociously they shit themselves and run for it". Any level of success at that, and the opposition will have to withdraw, though because it's a contest involving morale more than physical abilities they can defend with appropriate abilities such as loyalty or determination as well as just close combat.


Simon Hibbs

simon_hibbs wrote: On runing a series of simple contests, there's nothign wrong with this. Each contest has normal consequences in terms of wounds, which are cumulative penalties, and you just carry on. Not a great way to do things naratively perhaps, but perfectly allowable under the rules if all the combattants are saying is 'I hit him'. If they want to knock their opponent permanently out of the contest then they need to either go to an extended contest or try something more than just 'I hit him'. For example "I attack so ferociously they shit themselves and run for it". Any level of success at that, and the opposition will have to withdraw, though because it's a contest involving morale more than physical abilities they can defend with appropriate abilities such as loyalty or determination as well as just close combat.

Simon Hibbs

One Conflict per Simple Conflict. I think (hope) that what Simon is telling you is that Conflcits can come up very quickly.

A good definition of Conflicts is that they aren't tasks. That is, if a player wants to kill someone, then that's the Conflict; surprise is just a part of that, one task on the way to completing it. If you're contemplating rolling for tasks then what you need is an Extended Conflict.

Now, that means that if the Conflict in question was getting inside of he Tower, that I'd definitely have it be an Extended Conflict. As long as there ought to be more than one roll involved, then it's an Extended Conflcit. It's really that simple. Brand is assuming that when you say, "there's not much you can do to have a tower resist" that you're telling him that it ought to be one roll - a Simple Conflcit.

But let's look at that presumption. It never ceases to amaze me that people make this claim. It's like the whole opposed/unopposed thing. First off, resistance doesn't have to be really an active seeming thing. That is, if I have you roll against your Hardy 17 to avoid being hurt in a fall, you're really not doing anything, are you? You're just checking against some quality. The same thing is true for climbing a wall. And there are as many ways for a wall to resist you as you can imagine.

For example, as the character climbs, on it's phase, the player might face a low AP bid with, "You find yourself in a difficult position with the next handhold that's almost out of reach." If the player wins the roll, they get past that hendhold. If they do not, then they had to backtrack a bit to a less optimal rout. Let's say that you've had a few rolls, and narrated being near the top of the tower, but the player has 14 AP and the tower has 15 AP left due to small bids lower down. GM narrates, "You grab onto one of the crenelations on top, but it's loose and comes down on you!" The GM bids all 15 AP.

The roll then is to see if the character manages to avoid the falling rock, and gets to the top. If he fails then it all depends on how much he failed by. If he was reduced to zero, he falls, lands in the reflecting pool; the lions come over to see what's up. If he goes to -16, he crashed through the roof of the guard minarette half way up wounding himself in the process, landing in the middle of a group of guards. If he goes to -31, he lands on the pavement in front of the tower, and the rock from the crenelation lands on top of him.

I mean, if you want to think of it as an active force, then it's not the Height of the Tower that he's overcoming, it's a battle against Gravity the entire way up. Other things the tower can "do":

• vines tangle the character
• a particular section is passable only via an exhausting maneuver
• the next handhold in the charcter's path is a sharp metal flashing that could cut him
• birds in a hidden nest fly out at the character
• the rout of the climb could split with one rout leading to a "dead end"
• shutter to a barred window blows opens while the character is resting on it's sill


Near the top roll for endurance at least once for sure. Trade in 7 AP for a hurt representing exhaustion.

Failure conditions for these need not be falling, either. If the Conflict is "Climb into the tower undetected," then the character may have limited time. If he gets to zero, he doesn't fall, but a guard has spotted him (in a very bad position). The tower has defeated him by making him take too much time. Etc. The Tower can change it's goal at any time. So one moment failure means a potential fall, and the next it means detection.

The point is that I think that the whole climb thing could make a great Extended Conflict. You just have to be creative about what sort of "actions" the tower can take against the player.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Brand is assuming that when you say, "there's not much you can do to have a tower resist" that you're telling him that it ought to be one roll - a Simple Conflcit.

I haven't tried playing HQ yet, but when has ignorance ever stopped me from commenting? =)

I would have handled the Aquilonian in a way similar to Simon, except I would probably not gone so far as let the Lion knock him out.

I probably would have had him use his "Pass Unseen" ability to move out into the room, and then have him notice that the lions appear to be sniffing the air, perhaps moving meaningfully towards him. So now he can react by retreating, or attacking them, or something else. At the point where actual combat between him and the Lions is about to start, I'd jump in with a "MEANWHILE" and shift narrative focus over to the rest of the party.

Perhaps the others make it up to the top of the tower in time to rescue the Aquilonian from his fate. Perhaps they are able to catch him wounded but not yet dead, and yet still before Yara captures him.

But really, he did deserve to die, or at the very least get wounded heavily, and suffer lasting penalty. At some point, being dumb is just asking for it.

On the extended contest/simple contest thing, I think the thing to realize is that you can make, say, the Bar Fight the simple contest. Ie, 'finish the bar fight', one roll, win or lose. Or, you can dial it up and say, 'Knock this guy out', yes or no. If no, well, then maybe HE gets to try knocking YOU out, or whatever.

Likewise with the tower. The whole climb can be a single simple contest, or you can make 'reaching the first ledge' into a simple contest.

Or, finally, you can do an extended contest, as others have described in depth. I think an excellent model for this is in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In the "Throw me the idol. I'll throw you the whip!" scene, when Indy jumping the pit is an extended contest. He leaps, but only hits the edge and begins to slip, then he grabs the root, but it begins to pull out of the ground, then he gets his grip and manages to climb over the lip. It's a perfect example of an inanimate object 'opposing' a character in a climactic fashion.

Now if I can just scare up some players...

Scripty wrote: I thought that any contest requiring more than one roll should be an Extended Contest.

Is that how you play HeroQuest (i.e. Roll a Simple Contest for surprise, roll another to hit, roll another for the wounded party to attempt to run away...)?

What I've been doing has been tying all those elements to one roll and then trying to interpret what happened from there.

Hi there,

Just how much in-game action a Simple Contest entails tends to be kind of like an accordion: sometimes it squeezes real short, and other times it stretches out long. Wow, what a simile! I could go on and talk about how it must do both to make beautiful music, but I figure Mike H is retching about now already.

Anyway, in my game, I tend more toward Michael's (RaconteurX) point of view. Very occasionally, a series of Simple Contests is involved, but only when we're talking about several distinct conflicts.

Best,
Ron

Thanks to everybody for the great responses. I am learning a great deal here and I appreciate the help.

Mike wrote: The point is that I think that the whole climb thing could make a great Extended Conflict. You just have to be creative about what sort of "actions" the tower can take against the player.

Mike

Brand_Robins wrote: So, under that analysis, I think part of the problem that happened with contests in the game is that Scripty had an idea of what type of contest he wanted to have based on ideas external to the flow of the game. He wanted the fight to be simple, and so it was simple even though it ended up feeling incomplete, and wanted the tower climb to be extended and so it was extended even though no one had ideas about it.

Brand_Robins

AnyaTheBlue wrote: I probably would have had him use his "Pass Unseen" ability to move out into the room, and then have him notice that the lions appear to be sniffing the air, perhaps moving meaningfully towards him. So now he can react by retreating, or attacking them, or something else.

AnyaTheBlue

RaconteurX wrote: You can play HeroQuest that way, but that pretty much derails the entire purpose of the contest mechanics, which is to highlight moments of dramatic tension in the story you are telling. A single conflict should not require more than one contest, whether simple or extended. The key is framing... just as you frame a scene with specific objectives in mind, so too should you be framing contests. Use extended contests only for the important, suspense-filled conflicts... those you want the players to sweat over. Everything else is anti- climactic.

RaconteurX

Scripty, the Aqualonian player was just stupid. I don't mean stupid for disrupting the game, I mean just plain stupid.

How many clues do you need to determine that this course of action was a bad idea.

1) You're hired to get inside a tower. That right there tells you it isn't something ordinary people are capable of or they wouldn't need you.

2) The guy who hired you has money but is physically crippled. That right there tells you the guy is someone powerful. If he were a nobody, he wouldn't have money. As a physical cripple in Hyborea someone would have taken it from him long ago, so obviously he must be something more than that. As someone who is either powerful himself or has powerful backers he still needed to hire someone else to raid the tower. Ding...if the tower's too tough for him, its probably pretty nasty.

3) The sum of money was outrageously high. One doesn't offer that kind of money for an easy job. And one doesn't offer that kind of money easily. If the player had any sense at all he would have immediately concluded that the guy had probably tried to hire others at a more normal price but no one would touch it. Meaning...its a big deal.


There were plenty of clues just in what you described that any player worth his dice should have picked up on. The only thing I noticed that you might have done better in this regard is use rumor or common knowledge to impress on all of the players who this Yara guy is...someone fairly legendary in the area.

Valamir wrote: There were plenty of clues just in what you described that any player worth his dice should have picked up on. The only thing I noticed that you might have done better in this regard is use rumor or common knowledge to impress on all of the players who this Yara guy is...someone fairly legendary in the area.

Scripty wrote: Take the bar fight between the Hyperborean and the Aesir. The Aesir intend to pin the Hyperborean to the wall and beat the holy snot out of him. The Hyperborean player responds with "I hit the first one with my axe". The Hyperborean and the Aesir roll a (I kid you not) "tie". We decided that they had their weapons locked together. Is the contest over?

Brand_Robins wrote: I think this specific example perfectly demonstrates where HeroQuest differs from the resolution mechanics of most other games. In most games a roll is made to determine the results of an action, in HeroQuest it is made to determine the results of a conflict. What the Hyperborean did “I hit him with my axe” was an action, not a conflict. Thus when you rolled and got a result of anything other than a full victory (or defeat) it felt lacking and off, and so you continued it with more actions. In the end what you did was, essentially, an extended contest without using the extended contest rules. (Actually, it probably would have worked well with the “Crunchy Contest” rules that were posted in another thread.)

Scripty wrote: The Hyperborean was facing off against a giant scorpion in the sewers below the King's Palace. His stated action was, again, "I hit him". I asked for more information and his response was: "I hit him with my axe." I stopped for a moment and explained that I was interested in finding out what he was trying to accomplish here and why. He replied, "I'm trying to cut off its tail with my axe." This worked out much better. He received a major victory, which I felt was sufficient for "disarming" the scorpion. The scorpion then tried to scurry away but was shot by the Hyrkanian with an arrow as it ran. That pretty much summed up that conflict. Two simple contests.

Promting. Try that.

If a player says, "I hit it", then don't follow up with, "but what are you trying to do?". That's what gets the, "I hit it with my Axe." MJ or Walt or somebody a while back posted about an idea for getting responses. That's to make incorrect assumptions. So, if a player says, "I hit it," you say, "So, you're trying to kill it?"

If your guess is incorrect, the player will correct you appropriately (because people love to do that). He'll say, "No, I'm just trying to chop off it's tail so it'll leave me alone." This is a lot better than telling the player that they're doing it wrong. It gives them an opportunity to look like the smart guy, and you get what you need.

Mike

Brand_Robins wrote: Sounds perfect to me. I'm also glad that you're in it for the long haul. Getting used to HeroQuest hasn't always been easy for me, but so far it's all been worth the effort.

Mike Holmes wrote: Promting. Try that.

If a player says, "I hit it", then don't follow up with, "but what are you trying to do?". That's what gets the, "I hit it with my Axe." MJ or Walt or somebody a while back posted about an idea for getting responses. That's to make incorrect assumptions. So, if a player says, "I hit it," you say, "So, you're trying to kill it?"

If your guess is incorrect, the player will correct you appropriately (because people love to do that). He'll say, "No, I'm just trying to chop off it's tail so it'll leave me alone." This is a lot better than telling the player that they're doing it wrong. It gives them an opportunity to look like the smart guy, and you get what you need.

Mike

Well, the last session of my HeroQuest/Hyborea game went quite well. I worked with the player who had played the Aquilonian earlier and he is now playing a character he likes better. Initially, he was trying for a D&D style magic-user. Although I personally have no problem with players creating magic-wielding characters in Hyborea, I stressed that the game world did not have Clerics, Paladins, Wizards and Sorcerers ala Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms at the start of the campaign. Hence, I think a disconnect occured when he attempted to use his magical abilities to a greater effect than their agreed-upon scope. Now, he is playing a martial artist from Khitai and is having a much easier time fitting into the setting. He also seems to appreciate that his abilities fit more into his concept (a D&D monk) than his earlier attempt.

Beyond that, I think I finally grokked the system. I am at least boosted enough in my confidence to say, "I can run a game with the HeroQuest system." I owe a good deal of thanks to everyone on this board whose advice and experience have helped me a great deal to understand what I was missing. Most especially, I would like to thank Mike, Ralph, Ron, RacounteurX and Brand_Robins for their patience and consistently excellent insight. Mike's explanations of the difference between "task-based resolution" and "conflict-based resolution" really was the final step in me being able to run the types of games that I have read about on this forum.

HeroQuest is (or seemed a couple of nights ago) to be everything I have heard it was. The system not only supports, but practically demands that you inject drama and conflict into what other systems distill down to a series of "I hit him, I miss/He hits me, I miss".

The players were also enthusiastic (for the first time) about continuing play with this system in this, and other, settings. One player had done research and deduced that Glorantha was the same setting as the old RuneQuest game. That makes one player that is interested in roleplaying in Glorantha now. The player who had played the Aquilonian earlier was so interested in the system that he discussed the possibility of him running it for other groups. He felt he understood it well enough to use it for a variety of genres/settings himself.

As an update on how the party is doing, it would seem that they have steered the game in a darker direction. The Hyperborean sold out the location of his clan's magical "standing stone" to a rival clan in exchange for their sorceress removing an evil curse from the Hyrkanian that was slowly turning him into a giant spider. The Khitai martial artist accompanied the group north to Hyperborea to avoid a group of raiders in northern Zamora. Suffice to say, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. The whole thing climaxed with the sorceress' clan ambushing the Hyperborean's clan while being led by the Hyperborean himself. The Hyperborean encountered his own father on the raid. A fierce combat ensued which resulted in the Hyperborean cutting off his father's arm and leaving his father to wallow in disgrace rather than finishing him off and allowing him to die honorably. The Hyrkanian's soul was wrenched from his body and forced into a Cimmerian slave's body by the evil sorceress, who was incapable of removing the curse of a wizard as powerful as Yara. The Khitai learned a good deal about his murky past from the scrying of the sorceress. He also fought bravely in the clan's ambush and is now considered "almost a man" by the evil Hyperboreans, who had initially thought him a merchant of some sort.

Interesting themes were introduced into the story by the character's actions. For one, the Hyperborean completed a betrayal of his family and clan that was only hinted in his character concept. His people are defeated, and it is his fault. The Hyrkanian, who earlier had seemed to be exploring "Honor" as a prevalent theme, completely traded over honor for his desire to remain alive in order to enact vengeance on an old enemy.

A lot happened last game. A lot. There are really too many highlights to list here. A few of the finer points were when the Hyperborean (at the end of the raid) chopped off his former clan's shaman's head and then animated it using an amulet he had originally stolen from said shaman. The evil sorceress took her rival's animated head as a trophy. The Hyrkanian also, for some strange reason, "seduced" the sorceress even though he was slowly transforming into a spider. Of course, the sorceress was more than willing as this allowed her to tap not only the Hyrkanian's life energy but also take into her some of Yara's power. This odd twist of events has certainly introduced a means to make the sorceress a recurring element of the storyline (and then some). The Hyrkanian has also earned the enmity of the Cimmerian slave's wife who, herself, is a slave of the evil sorceress. Fending off the Hyrkanian's advances in her husband's former body, the Hyrkanian has definitely earned himself an enemy that wants him very, very dead. The Hyrkanian's player summed it up nicely. "That's fine. She can come after me. I should die for this, but only after I have my revenge on Black Qadir." Black Qadir is, of course, the rival Hyrkanian for whom he is searching (and body-hopping as it would seem).

And that's not to mention the kung-fu style bounty hunters that are scouring Hyborea for the Khitai. Apparently, he fled Khitai because, as a slave/bodyguard, to a Khitai sorcerer he had not only fell in love but seduced the sorcerer's daughter. The ensuing manhunt should yield plenty of future battles of the Kill Bill variety.

Overall, it went well, I think. The synopsis above does not do it justice. Ron's article on Thed encouraged me to push the envelope and respond openly when the players themselves pushed the envelope. I think in this last game that the envelope is officially mailed. To mimic Nicholas Cage's line in Raising Arizona, "Well... It ain't Drizzt and Elminster..."

Thanks everyone for your patience and help. This is a really great system. As a comparison, I played AD&D with a group the following evening. The difference was night and day. Although the D&D system does a number of things well, it pales in areas of cinematic action and drama when compared with the above HeroQuest session. A climactic battle in the D&D game took over an hour to complete. The climactic battle in HeroQuest took about half an hour, and was focused on the players the WHOLE time. The D&D session was riddled with miffs, fumbles and waiting for my next turn. We did with one night of HeroQuest what would have taken a month or more of D&D play, if it would've arguably had been possible in any effect.

That's pretty much it right there. Night and day. It's good to finally see the sun.

Scripty wrote: Mike's explanations of the difference between "task-based resolution" and "conflict-based resolution" really was the final step in me being able to run the types of games that I have read about on this forum.

Scripty wrote: Interesting themes were introduced into the story by the character's actions. For one, the Hyperborean completed a betrayal of his family and clan that was only hinted in his character concept. His people are defeated, and it is his fault. The Hyrkanian, who earlier had seemed to be exploring "Honor" as a prevalent theme, completely traded over honor for his desire to remain alive in order to enact vengeance on an old enemy.

Wow. No, really that's all I got. Just, wow.

Why does the next session always seem so far away? Sigh...

Mike

Thanks for the encouragement. I was merely posting the results of the game for the sake of continuity. I didn't know anyone was actually following it. Perhaps I should do a more in-depth write up? The little synopsis above didn't do it justice. Especially in regards to the Cimmerian slave-girl, who has been so brutally wronged that even the Hyrkanian's player wants to see her mission of vengeance succeed. The sorceress, known as Malnetha, also added some interesting elements to the story, as she got to tap a rival's magical relic (the standing stone), a giant spider minion, the downfall of her most powerful enemies, her rival's animated head, and an embryo inside her composed of her own life-force and the Hyrkanian's combined with the magical energies of Yara and, by extension, Yag-Kosha. She certainly didn't leave the scene empty handed. The players also enjoyed slaying the Hyperborean's former mentor, whom the player had humorously named Bilgates (pronounced Bill-Gah-Tays). It was a dark humor, but an entertaining one when the Hyperborean animated Bilgates' severed head and presented it to the sorceress as a trophy. No more scrying with ram guts and bones for the sorceress. She'll be getting her mystical updates straight from the undead mouth of her rival from now on.

Like I said, this group liked their Hyborea the way I like my eyeliner... black, black, black...

You can really do A LOT in 3 and a half hours with HeroQuest, especially when epic battles can pass in the blink of an eye. Next time, I'll try to make time to do a better write-up if you guys (or any gals) are interested in following along.

Yay!

Everyone hug. I think it's time for this thread to be closed. Further implications or updates to the game in question can be taken to new thread topics.

Best,
Ron