1 master equals 10 men (2012)

Submitted by roko_joko on Tue, 31/07/2012 – 20:37

I noticed that there’s a way to interpret HQ ability scores exponentially, with one mastery level improving your abilities by a factor of 10, so that each ability level improves you by a factor of 10 root 20, or about 1.122. You can use this for a quick-and-dirty way to model group actions such as battles at various scales with heroes involved, or community rituals against large magical resistances.

Has this been discussed online before? All I found was discussions about trying to get Runequest to work at heroic scales, sometimes by using exponential mechanics such as this one.

Using this interpretation, you can make a table like this:

beginning pro …………… 0w1 …. 20 …….. 1 man … soldier
beginning master ………. 0w2 …. 40 …… 10 men … squad
beginning hero …………. 0w3 ….. 60 …. 100 men … company
beginning demigod ……. 0w4 ….. 80 … 1000 men … regiment
intermediate demigod … 14w4 … 92 … 5000 men … 5 regiments

This comes from the article about 10w4 Dragon Pass superheroes being comparable to five regiments: http://moondesignpublications.com/library/board/wbrm-defense.html
It generalizes to the formula Dragon Pass CR = (# of people / 250) * (1.122 ^ (HQ ability – 20)).

There are various implications of this that you could analyze, such as the following. I have not thought these through very carefully.

How this plays with HQ contest resolution probabilities.
How this plays with augments. For example, since 1.122 to the power of 6 equals 2, this suggests that a +6 augment lets you take on twice as much cannon fodder.
How this plays with HQ magic numbers like 6, 13, and 17.
How this plays with Dragon Pass mechanisms like conflict resolution probabilities and the CRs of various units. For example, the formula above says that a full regiment of 0w2 masters would have a CR of 40.
How this compares to RQ POW. For example, if you boil everything down to POW, interpret POW as having a linear game effect, and say that a pro has 10 POW, this says that a 10w3 Ethilrist has 3200 POW.
What this looks like if you keep scaling up. For example, it says a 0w8 god is comparable in some way to 10 million people.

story telling, not simulation

Submitted by Charles on Tue, 31/07/2012 – 21:43.

HQ is aimed at story telling rather than simulation and has a toolkit of potential mechanisms to resolve conflict (including make your own up if you feel it works better). A single opponent’s rating in an ability will vary from contest to contest depending on the needs of the story and, in particular, whether the pacing requires the heroes to fail (or come close to failure) or requires the heroes to easily overcome opposition.

Having said all of that, this is a topic I have been thinking about in relation to the discussion of the Eaglebrown Warlocks/Magical Regiments in World of Glorantha and the article in Wyrms Footnotes 15.

I am not sure that a mathematical analysis of the numbers would precisely support the structure that you suggest. Additionally, the Hero counters in Dragon Pass often represent groups under the leadership of the named Hero, eg Harrek and his Wolf Pirates.

More to come, I think 🙂

well,

Submitted by roko_joko on Wed, 01/08/2012 – 10:36.

> DP hero counters often represent groups, eg Harrek and his Wolf Pirates.

On the other hand, army counters represent groups with officers. I think we can say the sidekicks are comparable to the officers. For example, here are three sidekick combinations with a total strength of 2000 each.

50 4w2 captains (strength 16 each) and 500 8w1 sergeants (strength 2.5 each)
15 16w2 pirates from Harrek’s ship (strength 66 each), plus 300 11w1 pirates from other ships (strength 3.6 each)
25 18w2 Taraltara devotees (strength 80 each)

> simulation

For this thread I propose we treat OldHQ (HW/HQ1.0) and NewHQ (HQ2.0) as related-but-different games, and pretend I said “I have an idea about OldHQ,” and pretend you said “I’m not into oldHQ, but I wonder if the idea might have some applicability to NewHQ anyway.”

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