Hi

I picked up HQ some weeks ago and I'm really excited about playing it. I don't have much experience however with such 'unusual' game-concepts (after years of GURPS, Earthdawn and D&D I tried Pool and loved it and there is a copy of Sorcerer waiting on my shelf).

I would like to use HQ with a different setting than Glorantha. It's the setting from a German RPG called DSA - “Das Schwarze Auge” (the black eye). It's a standard low-fantasy setting based on the middle-ages or renaissance, with 'scientifically' explained magic and some fantasy races like elves and dwarfs.

As I never played HQ I'm struggling with the right keywords for character creation. The occupation keywords in HQ are pretty generic for a fantasy setting. But I'm quite at a loss with the homeland keywords and especially the magic keywords.

Maybe someone could provide some general ideas on creating new keywords for such a setting or suggest a thread that could be of help.

Thanks in advance

Caynreth

I've retooled HQ for a number of different settings myself. There are a couple of approaches that you could take regarding the Homelands:

1) Take a highlighter to the sourcebook: I did this in my Hyborea game. I just took a highlighter to the source material (in the Hyborea campaign it was a big word document detailing the setting) and highlighted every personality trait, skill and relationship that was listed as common to the people of that region. If the book said they were "tall" that was good enough to give the Race a "Tall 10" ability or something of that nature. If it said they were conniving, well that was just the personality trait "Conniving."

An important point here, however, that Mike Holmes brought to light for me was to differentiate abilities and personality traits that were intrinsic to Race/Species and those that were ingrained due to the Culture or Homeland. It's the whole Nature vs. Nurture debate from Anthropology 101. For instance, say I have Elves. Well, the book says they don't age, they're beautiful, naturally graceful, well-read, peaceful, and cooperative.

Well, "Don't Age", "Beautiful" and "Naturally Graceful" are all fairly well ingrained into their "genetics" so to speak. So those would be "Species" or "Racial" abilities. We would also give these abilities a ranking (most likely) along the lines of "Don't Age 5w2" (5w2 is a good rating for abilities like immunities and whatnot), "Beautiful 19" and "Naturally Graceful 15." As you play more, you'll get more familiar with what rating to give what ability. You'll also here have to decide which abilities are "magical" in nature and which are not. "Don't Age 5w2" is pretty well a magical ability. Whether or not the other two are is a decision you'll have to make based upon the source material or your own gut instinct.

The other abilities and personality traits like "Well-Read", "Peaceful" and "Cooperative" I would put into the Elven Homeland. Why? Well, a good question I ask myself is "If an Elf were born and raised outside of their homeland would this trait still be a part of their character?" For instance, is it possible for there to be a warlike Elf, an illiterate Elf, or an Elf that didn't get along with everybody. If those answers are emphatically "Yes" then I generally put the trait into a Homeland, instead of the "Race/Species" category. A good comparison is that there are no Elves that don't have the "Resist Aging" ability but there are Elves that aren't necessarily peaceful.

I hope I'm making sense....

2) A second tactic that I've used in Homelands, especially those in less developed settings, is to go through the HeroQuest book and find a culture that is most similar to the one I'm trying to emulate. I then grift as many of the traits listed in the HeroQuest homeland for the homeland I'm trying to build. This is, IMO, a good way to add some depth to the cultures in many settings. IME, a lot of published settings leave some pretty gaping holes in their cultures that HeroQuest plugs up.

It's also worth noting that, in most of the settings I've built, I've been using a combination of these two methods.

P.S. HeroQuest Homelands also ALWAYS include the [Homeland] Geography and [Homeland] Customs at the very least. Just go ahead and write those down whenever you do a homeland. IME, also, the following formula follows the setup of Homelands in HQ fairly closely:

Homelands have roughly 7 Abilities listed, two of which are the Geography and Customs. Homelands often have between 3 and 5 Personality Traits listed. Relationships vary but usually having anywhere from 1-3 suggestions is pretty safe.

And that's it for Homelands.

Now, regarding magic, before I give any advice on how I would do it or have done it, I would like a bit more information. You mention that the magic is "scientific" which would lead me in the direction of HQ Wizardry, but how exactly is the magic supposed to work in the setting. A modified form of Theism may actually work better (or even Animism if such is the case).

Currently, I'm in the middle of a re-write of the Midnight-HeroQuest conversion and also working on a DarkSun-HeroQuest game as well. I should be done within the next few months. I would be happy to send you anything that you would like to give you an example of some ideas. Unfortunately, most of the documents have a big Under Construction sign on them right now. But, if you're willing to wait a week or two, Midnight would probably be a good example of where you take the HeroQuest system with a little time and a lot of typing.

Scott

I read Scripty's Midnight HeroQuest document back when I was considering running HeroQuest in a different setting, and it proved to be very useful. So I highly reccomend you take a look at that.

I really don't have very many reccomendations beyond that as I think he covered what you need to do quite nicely up there.

As an aside, Scripty if you want any help with your Dark Sun conversion let me know. While I don't actually own any of the Midnight source material I do have a big stack of Dark Sun material that would allow me to contribute. I also think I have a much better grasp of the rules now that I have played the game a bit...

doubtofbuddha wrote:
As an aside, Scripty if you want any help with your Dark Sun conversion let me know. While I don't actually own any of the Midnight source material I do have a big stack of Dark Sun material that would allow me to contribute. I also think I have a much better grasp of the rules now that I have played the game a bit...

Thanks a lot for your extensive reply! The 'highlighter' idea is easy to apply and great. I'll start with this one.

I'm still not sure what to do with the different races/species. Would you suggest to make up an additional type of keyword for the races/species? What about the humans? In my setting they are like real humans, nothing special here.
The difference between race and homeland makes very much sense. Usually all elves are nice guys who respect nature and live in in the woods. But your example with the elf raised somewhere else makes it quite clear.

Now magic: In DSA magic is supposed to be the manipulation of a magical essence from another plane. Every magic-user can hold an amount of mana and use it to carry out spells. Only some people can use magic, this ability is inborn. While mages and other scholars use magic in a technical way, there are other magic-users who see it more in a natural way, as a special essence like that of life or alike.

The types of magic users and their ideas about magic are pretty much like those in D&D or other classical RPGs:
Druids: Magic comes from Sky and Earth thought as elementary powers. Druids want to stay neutral.
Geodes: Dwarven druids who choose one of the elements to serve. Their magical power comes from this element.
Elves: All elves are magic-users. They don't believe in gods. Magic is an essence like life and a tool to live their lives.
Witches: They believe in Satuaria the goddess of Earth, the mother of all things, who gives them their power.
Dilettantes: People who can do wonderous things, but don't know why and sometimes what.
Mages: The classical scholars. They study magical power as a tool and a raw energy to manipulate things the way they want them to be.
Charlatan: The entertainer type. He uses his magic in his live in stage. Magic is the possibility to impress and deceive others.
Implike: People raised by imps. They use magic to do, well, implike things.

There are also priests in this setting, who get their magical powers from their gods. They have a known and respected pantheon of gods (12 and an adversary god) and there are some shamanistic cultures where people believe in the great 'wolf-mother' and alike.

I'd like to read your 'conversion documents'. Please e-mail them when you're finished.

Once again: Thanks.

Caynreth wrote:
The types of magic users and their ideas about magic are pretty much like those in D&D or other classical RPGs:

Caynreth wrote: Druids: Magic comes from Sky and Earth thought as elementary powers. Druids want to stay neutral.

Caynreth wrote: Geodes: Dwarven druids who choose one of the elements to serve. Their magical power comes from this element.

Caynreth wrote: Elves: All elves are magic-users. They don't believe in gods. Magic is an essence like life and a tool to live their lives.

Caynreth wrote: Witches: They believe in Satuaria the goddess of Earth, the mother of all things, who gives them their power.

Caynreth wrote: Dilettantes: People who can do wonderous things, but don't know why and sometimes what.

Talents, most likely. Or Theism.

Caynreth wrote: Mages: The classical scholars. They study magical power as a tool and a raw energy to manipulate things the way they want them to be.

Sounds more like Wizardry. But it could probably also be represented by the rules for Theism.

Caynreth wrote: Charlatan: The entertainer type. He uses his magic in his live in stage. Magic is the possibility to impress and deceive others.

Talents or Theism.

Caynreth wrote: Implike: People raised by imps. They use magic to do, well, implike things.

Again, Talents or Theism.

Caynreth wrote: There are also priests in this setting, who get their magical powers from their gods. They have a known and respected pantheon of gods (12 and an adversary god) and there are some shamanistic cultures where people believe in the great 'wolf-mother' and alike.

Theism for the Priests. Animism for the Shamans, just because, well, Shamans SHOULD be using Animism, even if it isn't reflected in the source material.

Another thing to note is that when I am referring to the various forms of magic I am referring to their RULES not their ties to the setting. Magic in HeroQuest is very much tied to the setting. I'm not talking about making Dilettantes devotees to a specific diety, I'm talking about having their powers function like those of the Theists in HeroQuest. There are subtle differences between Theism and Wizardry. There are not so subtle differences between these two and Animism. When in doubt, I think Theism's framework is the most versatile.

I think that Midnight will help you out a lot. When I'm done with this revision (I'm hoping within the next couple of weeks), you'll see it has: a new (more generic) way of handling magic and concentrating one's magic that is less reliant on setting elements, two ways of handlings the spell points issue, and extensive rules for handling the building of characters with multiple types of magic and how that affects the use of that magic. Overall, it should be quite interesting. I owe most of the inspiration for this revision to Mike Holmes. His advice and him taking the time to go over some of the areas of the HeroQuest system upon which were still grey to me were instrumental in making the document usable not only to those who were coming from Midnight to the HeroQuest system but also for those who were unfamiliar with Midnight but knew HeroQuest backwards and forwards.

It will also give you several examples of breaking out Race/Species and Homeland.

Caynreth wrote: I'd like to read your 'conversion documents'. Please e-mail them when you're finished.

Once again: Thanks.

Sure. If you could PM me your email, I'll make sure I send you a copy of Midnight after I'm done with the latest overhaul.

Scott

Scripty wrote:

Super-kewl! Not to threadjack here, but would you mind if (once I got a draft of the Dark Sun stuff completed) I sent a copy to you to review and make corrections? That would be great. Right now, I'm working with the boxed set and a few of the Splatbooks. I'm trying to start out pre-Dragon Kings so I'm pulling out most of the meta-plot. I would still really appreciate it if you wouldn't mind giving what I have a once over when it's (almost) ready for human consumption. Lael Buchanan, Mike Holmes and others have been a great help with the Midnight conversion. Once I get Mike's suggestions addressed, I'm thinking of posting the Midnight document to againsttheshadow.org (a Midnight fansite). Mike had a lot of great input about HeroQuest and using it in other settings. It's really exciting to think that I might have the same level of collaboration on Dark Sun, too. Thanks Jesse!

Scott

I want to look at the Immunity thing. I'm writing an article about this stuff, and I want to discuss this before proceeding.

Basically I used the 5W2, to be immunity, because of how it reads - the character is a master at resisting these things. Sounds good, but does it work? For aging, for example, in order to make aging appropriately dangerous against a typical human with a Resist Aging defaulted to 6, you need only to set it to 17 or so. This will typically result in a Hurt or Impaired result, which seems comensurate with aging. Only a 1 in 400 to be dying from age. I'm really not sure where I'd put one of these, but I don't think that it would get a mastery.

OTOH, it doesn't need a mastery. Against that elf, even a default strength of 6 for the attack will weaken the elf substantially once in 400, and deliver a hurt more often than that. For creatures that live potentially more than 12,000 years, is this appropriate? Hard to say.

But much more obvious, are my "immunities" to fire and the like. At 5w2, that fire giant is going to have a serious problem going through even a bonfire (using the sample resistances), much less magma or something. So, is this really enough?

The simplest method is just to say that these aren't potential contests for these characters. That is, immunity means immunity, and you just never roll. But what about magical attacks? Does the character have a heightened resistance to these? Complete immunity? In any case, per the Bombastic Title (?) rule, this isn't really in the spirit of HQ. That is, I'd prefer to say that immune means "rarely if ever succumbs to normal levels of these things". Such that you'd probably only do a contest if the attack had some oomph behind it. (For aging, for example, I'm thinking like the ghost's attack from D&D).

But to get to that point for fire, that's a 5W4 just to be able to beat the largest normal fires even half the time. I'd probably be satisfied with that, personally, but the question is do I want to give out powers that large just based on species? I mean, I thought that Cyclopses were bad with their Huge 10W3, ratings. OTOH, these are pretty narrow. I think that most players would be hard pressed to find ways to attack others with a Resist Aging 5W2 (OTOOH...).

So, what do y'all think? Would you rate immunities? How high makes for a reasonable immunity? Is it odd to be handing out abilities that high just to describe some little characteristic of a creature? Are immunities just not supported by the game?

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: So, what do y'all think? Would you rate immunities? How high makes for a reasonable immunity? Is it odd to be handing out abilities that high just to describe some little characteristic of a creature? Are immunities just not supported by the game?

doubtofbuddha wrote:
Definitely. Do you have my e-mail address?

doubtofbuddha wrote: I actually know the guy who runs againsttheshadow.org and am currently encouraging him to try out HeroQuest. ;) He seems pretty enthusiastic about the idea so far.

doubtofbuddha wrote: But yeah, I would definitely be willing to help you out. Besides it would give me good practice if I ever decide to do something similar with Planescape.......

doubtofbuddha wrote: PS, any chance you would be willing to give me reccomendations on relationship mapping my current game. :D If not its cool.

Mike Holmes wrote: So, what do y'all think? Would you rate immunities? How high makes for a reasonable immunity? Is it odd to be handing out abilities that high just to describe some little characteristic of a creature? Are immunities just not supported by the game?

Mike

Yep, that does it, thanks. Looking at things, for the immunities that seem to be impossible, they'd be magical, and hence work that way (I love the fire giant in the forest fire image). For those like aging, I don't have any set information anyhow on oppositions, so I can set these as I like. No problems.

Thanks,
Mike

This has been a really useful thread.

The idea of treating resistances as magical is what I would have suggested, if it hadn't been already. Keep in mind, however, that this does seem to stretch the rules a bit -- the Resistance 14 thing applies when you use a magical ability as an active ability in a contest, not when you resist some other ability using a magical ability. It makes sense, but it isn't actually part of the rules as I read them.

As for low-tech magic, Caynreth mentioned Mana, which implied (to me) a daily limit on spell-casting. It this is true, theism is not a good choice for the magic systems, because it doesn't have such limits.

In DSA magic is supposed to be the manipulation of a magical essence from another plane. Every magic-user can hold an amount of mana and use it to carry out spells. Only some people can use magic, this ability is inborn. While mages and other scholars use magic in a technical way, there are other magic-users who see it more in a natural way, as a special essence like that of life or alike.

OK, I'll try to explain DSA-magic with more details.

The world itself is without any magical energy. But there is another plane (astral plane) which is full of raw magical energy. A magic-user is able to draw upon this energy, fill himself with it and transform it into some usefull effect. The magic-user is like a container for magical energy. The amount of it depends on his experience. The higher the experience the higher the amount of energy he can hold. Sometimes the magical energy from the astral plane becomes manifest without any worldly activity by a magician. It then fills places, objects or people.

The magic user can manipulate everything around him with the use of the magical energy he holds. The effect of his 'wizardry' depends on the amount of energy he uses and the ways he learned magic. Some magic-users are highly trained to achieve certain effects, others just let the energy flow and hope it works the way they want it to. During this process the magic-user empties his amount of magical energy. So magic is limited by the amount of magical energy one can hold at a time.

There are three ways to refill this energy:
1) Enter the astral plane and draw upon this raw energy. Extremly dangerous and not well known.
2) Take some kind of potion. These are very difficult to make.
3) Just rest and sleep. The usual way.

At first I wasn't concerned with limiting the magical pool during conversion. But now I worry about the balance between PCs. In HQ everyone can use magic, so this is not a problem. But in DSA it's limited to only a few.
I thought about allowing the use of magic only with an appropriate occupation keyword. Or make the players choose between an occupation or a magic keyword. But I'm still not sure. I don't want the magic users to become those 'super-heros' making the other characters useless.

Any thoughts?

Cay

Hi,

Here's how I would do it, based solely on your last post. I don't know if it helps.

Caynreth wrote: The world itself is without any magical energy.

Caynreth wrote: But there is another plane (astral plane) which is full of raw magical energy. A magic-user is able to draw upon this energy, fill himself with it and transform it into some usefull effect. The magic-user is like a container for magical energy. The amount of it depends on his experience. The higher the experience the higher the amount of energy he can hold.

Caynreth wrote: During this process the magic-user empties his amount of magical energy. So magic is limited by the amount of magical energy one can hold at a time.

Caynreth wrote: There are three ways to refill this energy:
1) Enter the astral plane and draw upon this raw energy. Extremly dangerous and not well known.

Caynreth wrote: 2) Take some kind of potion. These are very difficult to make.

Caynreth wrote: 3) Just rest and sleep. The usual way.

Caynreth wrote: Sometimes the magical energy from the astral plane becomes manifest without any worldly activity by a magician. It then fills places, objects or people.

Caynreth wrote: The magic user can manipulate everything around him with the use of the magical energy he holds. The effect of his 'wizardry' depends on the amount of energy he uses and the ways he learned magic. Some magic-users are highly trained to achieve certain effects,

Caynreth wrote: others just let the energy flow and hope it works the way they want it to.

Caynreth wrote: At first I wasn't concerned with limiting the magical pool during conversion. But now I worry about the balance between PCs. In HQ everyone can use magic, so this is not a problem. But in DSA it's limited to only a few.

Peter Nordstrand wrote: Every magic user has a Mana ability, which is her capacity for storing magical energy. Treat it as a mundane ability (either a Skill or perhaps a Relationship with the astral world). No Magical Ability is allowed to increase past a character's rating in Mana.

Edited to note here that this cross posted with Scott. So now you have three options on how to handle these things. :-)

Peter's suggestions are looking a bit like what I posted here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8054

Comments:

Peter Nordstrand wrote: Every magic user has a Mana ability, which is her capacity for storing magical energy. Treat it as a mundane ability (either a Skill or perhaps a Relationship with the astral world). No Magical Ability is allowed to increase past a character's rating in Mana.

Caynreth wrote: There are many ways to do this I guess, but I would just make sure that any failed magic roll inflicted damage to a character's Mana rating (as per Contest Consequences table, page 74). No magical or mundane ability, except the ones mentioned below, can be used to "heal" Mana.

Treat these objects as Reliquaries (see HeroQuest, page 174). I.e. they have functions just like Guardians. People filled by magical energy can be treated either as Guardians, or as ordinary people with special abilities, or both.

Treat as spells in HeroQuest, i.e. each magical effect can do only a limited thing. Suitable abilities are specific (Ignite Wood, Protection from Missile Fire).

Caynreth wrote: At first I wasn't concerned with limiting the magical pool during conversion. But now I worry about the balance between PCs. In HQ everyone can use magic, so this is not a problem. But in DSA it's limited to only a few.

I don't think this is much of a problem.

Before deciding how to convert HQ magic rules into DSA magic there is still one thing about character creation I don't know how to handle.

I assume every player will choose a race/species keyword, then a homeland keyword and a keyword for the character's occupation.

That's all for non-magic-users. But how should I proceed with magic users? Will they get an additional 'magic' keyword? Or sould they choose their magic keyword instead of an occupation? Or something completly different?

Any suggestions would be very helpful

Cay

Hmmm. If you were to simply have magic as part of an occupation, would it really balance out with other occupations? I'm guessing no. That is, unless you short the occupation of lots of things that it should have, then I think that smashing magic into an occupation just makes the occupation stronger. So I wouldn't do that. Keep them separate.

Now, that means that magic wielding characters have more breadth, power, etc, doesn't it? But why is that? Because they have an additional keyword, essentially.

In my SW game, I discovered that it was more interesting to allow characters to have more than the basic level of starting abilites. But what I found is that different players went different ways with how they wanted their character to be special. So I just went with the flow, and basically said that each character has one "thing" that makes them special. So, some have Advanced Experience, making their ability levels higher, some have odd Species Keywords. Some have the "Traveler" keyword to represent being from all over. And some have extra keywords.

So, what I'd suggest is just allowing players with characters that do not have a magic keyword to have another keyword. If you feel the need to balance.

That said, there are probably those who would argue that the common magic keyword is no substitute for a Specialized Magic Keyword. And most characters I've seen that have Specialized ones also have Common Magic anyhow. Meaning that in normal HQ this "imbalance" already exists, and is simply ignored. As such you might not even need my balance crock.

Mike

Caynreth:

Before deciding how to convert HQ magic rules into DSA magic there is still one thing about character creation I don't know how to handle.

I assume every player will choose a race/species keyword, then a homeland keyword and a keyword for the character's occupation.

That's all for non-magic-users. But how should I proceed with magic users? Will they get an additional 'magic' keyword? Or sould they choose their magic keyword instead of an occupation? Or something completly different?

Hmmm. If you were to simply have magic as part of an occupation, would it really balance out with other occupations? I'm guessing no. That is, unless you short the occupation of lots of things that it should have, then I think that smashing magic into an occupation just makes the occupation stronger. So I wouldn't do that. Keep them separate.

Now, that means that magic wielding characters have more breadth, power, etc, doesn't it? But why is that? Because they have an additional keyword, essentially.

I'm still working on converting HQ to my own setting. I made some decisions concerning the restriction of magic, but still have some questions (If you don't understand something or if something sounds stupid: Please bear with me. I have never wrote that much in english before):

I really love the system presented in HQ but I had a hard time understanding how some things work. The magic chapters were the hardest for me, as I always tried to understand the underlying rules system since I didn't want to use Glorantha as setting but adopt the rules for my own setting.

I have struggled a lot with how to balance magic: it is not available for everyone in the world I will play in. Meanwhile I have read other posts and have hoped for some "insight". Something I read here at the Forge - I can't remember the thread or post - finaly hit the point: Magic in HQ is not thought to be a scientifcaly explainable force like electricity. Magic in HQ is tied to religion, because only the things you believe in make you powerfull. Therefore I decided not to 'balance' magic for my world. If people believe in their lucky charms they should really have a higher chance to succeed. They can use common magic (common beliefs) or choose a believe system that suits them more.

Now I'm trying to picture some characters in HQ-system-terms. As I never created HQ-characters before it will be a great help if someone more experienced gives me some hints here:

Rix-Blix:
Rix-Blix was born and raised in the Kingdom of Horas (homeland). In his childhood someone discovered his abilities to use raw magical essence and took him to the Magical Fighting Academy in Bethana. Rix-Blix had a hard time with the discipline there but managed somehow beeing a clever guy. One day he was supposed to cast his first important war spell. Instead of burning an object with his fire power he produced a fire explosion which devastated a part of the library and his mentors office. In addition he conjured a daemon which almost killed his mentor.
After that Rix-Blix fled the academy and joined a troupe of wandering entertainers. He now is a fulltime entertainer (occupation) who uses his magical abilities to improve his work,

What kind of magical keyword would you suggest for this guy? Only the common one with some spells he uses for his daily work? Or a specialized keyword fitting the Academy he came from? Or something else?

Thanks in advance

Cay

Caynreth wrote:
Rix-Blix: Rix-Blix was born and raised in the Kingdom of Horas (homeland). In his childhood someone discovered his abilities to use raw magical essence and took him to the Magical Fighting Academy in Bethana. Rix-Blix had a hard time with the discipline there but managed somehow beeing a clever guy. One day he was supposed to cast his first important war spell. Instead of burning an object with his fire power he produced a fire explosion which devastated a part of the library and his mentors office. In addition he conjured a daemon which almost killed his mentor. After that Rix-Blix fled the academy and joined a troupe of wandering entertainers. He now is a fulltime entertainer (occupation) who uses his magical abilities to improve his work,

What kind of magical keyword would you suggest for this guy? Only the common one with some spells he uses for his daily work? Or a specialized keyword fitting the Academy he came from? Or something else?

Thanks in advance

Cay

Scripty wrote:
I think you have the Midnight-HQ document, Caynreth.

Caynreth wrote:

Scripty wrote:
I think you have the Midnight-HQ document, Caynreth.

No, I don't!!!

Sounds very interesting. Where can I get it?

Caynreth wrote: (If you don't understand something or if something sounds stupid: Please bear with me. I have never wrote that much in english before)

Therefore I decided not to 'balance' magic for my world.