Heroquesting

[Carcosa]

How would you suggest running a Heroquest using Runequest rules? I think it would be more open to gamemaster interpretation compared to Heroquest (although I have never read the Heroquest rules)

[David Scott]

I ran many HeroQuests using RQ2/3, I did a lot of work investigating everything that was out there to help me do it: Sandy Petersen’s Heroquest rules, Shattered Norns by Steve Marsh, another super RQ variant by Steve Maurer, Tales of the Reaching Moon did a special on it, I even ran panels at conventions to explore what others were doing, and absorbed as much as I could from Greg. Ultimately although the games themselves were a lot of fun, I was always left with a feeling that RQ wasn’t right for it. Eventually I started “winging” them, and reduced the rules to as simple as possible. HeroQuesting is not a super RuneQuest variant. Although the rules let you increase your stats and abilities to ever higher levels implying that is route to go. A quick fix I used was to divide everyones skills by 10 and just treat it as a normal adventure in a different place. Opponents from the rules weren’t divide by 10, heroes soon avoided combat where possible. POW could be burnt permanently for rerolls.. Anything brought back was x10 in the normal world. This worked pretty well as I was happy to wing most stuff anyway. I then discovered cinematic rpgs, Everyway, TORG, then finally HeroQuest and converted over…
I am very interested in how the design mechanism will approach this.

For Historical research purposes
Steve Maurer’s HeroQuest: http://www.nikkeffingham.com/runequest/hqrules.htm
Shattered Norn’s http://www.adrr.com/hero/norns/

[Roko Joko]

Quote:

Quote from David Scott on September 22, 2013, 21:27
I was always left with a feeling that RQ wasn’t right for it

Can you say why?

[Jeff Richard]

As a rules system, RQ2 was built around a combat engine modeled on SCA-style combat. It is gritty and very in-this-world realistic. A core assumption is that a “hero” is simply the lucky person who rolled very well and managed to crit when the giant fumbled! Those very strengths were weaknesses when running mythic adventures in the Other World, where a hero who carefully walks the right path can confront powers that would otherwise crush him utterly, where Harmast, the bare-footed farmer, could travel the same path through Hell as the mightiest of the gods.

Even if you aren’t using HeroQuest, if you want to understand Gloranthan heroquesting, I’d buy http://www.glorantha.com/product/sartar-kingdom-of-heroes/, read through the heroquesting chapter and read the Colymar Campaign carefully. There’s an awful lot of material there on how to stage, run, and GM heroquests, regardless of system.

[Joerg Baumgartner]

The way I experienced e.g. the Plundering of Aron quest (narrated by Greg using HeroQuest), a hero’s skills would be unmodified if exactly appropriate to a situation/mythical precedence, and penalized in other situations. Division by 10 as the default appears quite harsh to me.

I can imagine a mechanic where a player rolls for his character’s identification with the mythical role for a situation, determining his modifier for the current scene. Attacking such an identification might result in a new identification test. Attacking the opponent’s identification may weaken that opponent, but might also weaken the total magic of that quest.

[David Scott]

Quote:

Quote from Roko Joko on September 22, 2013, 23:53

Quote:

Quote from David Scott on September 22, 2013, 21:27
I was always left with a feeling that RQ wasn’t right for it

Can you say why?

the mechanics always seemed clunky. The Gumshoe system sums it up for me at the moment – players not making a roll or picking up on a clue can derail an adventure. I was also ripe for discovering cinematic/narration based gaming.

Quote:

Quote from Joerg Baumgartner on September 23, 2013, 07:58
Division by 10 as the default appears quite harsh to me.

That was my experimental stuff, I’m not suggesting it was a good idea. It worked to shape characters and reduce the SuperRuneQuest element with escalating skills. Any other maths division was not as straight forward in play.

I also went down the Pendragon trait road using the template in Griffin mountain, but that too was clunky. Pendragon Pass was a good halfway house. But it lacked the scaling of masteries that Robin Laws introduced.

[Jeff Richard]

Applying tactical skirmish rules to something more akin to a lucid dream is always going to feel clunky. A Heroquest most emphatically should not be Super RuneQuest; dealing with the primal powers of our collective unconscious does not require critical hits! Garb yourself appropriately for the trek, walk carefully through paths of the gods and heroes, and interact with the core archetypes of Glorantha. Sometimes the barefoot shepherd boy can kill the Emperor of the Universe or slay the Cosmic Dragon!

[Lawrence]

We will be covering HeroQuesting, in its many varieties, in RQ6, and will be avoiding the clunk like the plague. There are some elegant ways of gaming HeroQuests with the RQ rules that avoid the typical view that the system is too ‘simulationist’. Pete and I have spent the best part of the past 5 years working on just such mechanics, so I’m confident that, when Adventures in Glorantha sees print, you’ll have a range of simple, elegant, clunk-free tools at your disposal.

🙂

[Jeff Richard]

And let me make it clear that I fully expect Pete and Loz will come up with guidelines for Heroquesting in AiG that pass my muster!

[Lawrence]

Quote:

Quote from Jeff Richard on September 25, 2013, 07:21
And let me make it clear that I fully expect Pete and Loz will come up with guidelines for Heroquesting in AiG that pass my muster!

We’re embarking on the ‘How Jeff’s Muster Was Passed’ HeroQuest with the full and avid support of the RQ community. We understand the stages involve beer, Johnny Cash, and freeforming.

See you on the Other Side…
🙂

[Mankcam]

We had the simple rpgs of the 70s, the simulationlists followed in the 80s, and the 90s introduced the narrative games which have continued today. Now we have systems that fall into distinct categories of these, although I feel BRP (and of course it’s variants, like RQ6, Renaissance, etc) walk the line nicely between being simulationist AND narrative. You can have simulationist mechanics, yet approach most aspects of storytelling gaming in a narrative manner. Rules for Passions is one example where game mechanics can support Narrative and vice versa.

I see no reason why RQ6 would be too clunky for the mythic qualities of HeroQuesting, although the system will obviously benefit from some of the concepts portrayed very well from the HeroQuest rpg. I think hindsight is a great thing, and heroquesting can be easily portrayed now with the current RQ6 rules. From memory there were steps in somedirections with MRQ2 in the Cults of Glorantha book, so building on those would be one logical way to go.

[Simon Phipp]

Quote:

Quote from Carcosa on September 22, 2013, 19:45
How would you suggest running a Heroquest using Runequest rules? I think it would be more open to gamemaster interpretation compared to Heroquest (although I have never read the Heroquest rules)

Have a look at http://www.soltakss.com/indexheroquesting.html for my take on HeroQuesting using RQ. It’s not exactly Super RQ, but gives some advice on using RQ to do HeroQuesting.

I’ve found that RQ can support HeroQuesting as easily as HeroQuest, not necessarily better, but certainly as well. All it takes is a slight change in mindset, towards a HeroQuest-style mindset.

[Pentallion]

I always felt that King of Dragon Pass did a wonderful job of showing how heroquests could be performed using Runequest mechanics. Each station had multiple means of addressing a solution, so that if a dice failed at an inopportune moment, there was almost always the chance to try something else. But knowing what else to try and which was the best solution to begin with depended upon the players knowledge of the quest itself, which meant they had to go into the quest fully prepared. Asking around “what did so and so do in this situation, how did this person overcome that?” as well as doing plenty of research and gathering all the community knowledge at your disposal was crucial. That made doing rare or relatively unknown heroquests much more dangerous as you were reduced to having to bull your way through with the proper dice rolls and one bad toss left you winging it on your own. At that point, success depended more upon your understanding of your god and his place in the myth or understanding what the obstacle you were up against meant mythically, so that you might come up with a feasible solution.

Then throwing in curveballs just added to the tension. A Storm Bull shows up where one wasn’t expected? Do I bring him along? Do I let him fight the chaos monster? These choices aren’t dependent upon the dice and yet they affect the entire outcome of the quest.

And, of course, if the best course isn’t successful, there may be penalties – or even rewards – for getting past the staion doing something else.

[Bruce Mason]

I must admit that I have become increasingly convinced over the years that you don’t actually need to *do* anything to RQ rules to run HeroQuests. If, essentially, a HeroQuest is simply a different context in which you act then what you do is, simply, define the context. So, if a HeroQuest is a type of “map” that lets you get from “place A” to “place B” it becomes all about how you enter the Hero Plane/Gods world/Orlanth’s house terminology and the logic of that world.

You don’t need “super RQ” but characters with poor skills and lacking knowledge will struggle, just like the real world, to achieve their goals. In addition, and this is my personal opinion, you can think of activities like HeroQuesting as having a magnifying effect so the results of a HeroQuest are capable of having huge impacts.

It does mean as well that you can, if you wish, imagine “sandboxing” the Hero Plane. A HeroQuest is, as I understand it, a *relatively* safe and predictable route through a portion of the Hero Plane. Should you wish to step off the path (or get knocked off the path or even simply just bull your way in) then there’s no reason you can’t try to navigate the HeroPlane based on your knowledge of the equivalent of landmarks, countour lines and so on.

None of this requires super RQ or changes to rules. Instead it requires understanding the logic of the setting and the consequences of actions and of course that no matter how well you understand the HeroQuest, something always happens.

[Baron Eric Greystone]

Interesting. In any case, I don’t feel that special rules are really needed. But I like the idea that “Heroquesting” is something the “Heroes” do, ie, the Runelords and Runepriests. Therefore in my games I wouldn’t have lesser characters on Heroquests. Now on the other hand, if you like the idea of KoDP-esque village re-enactments of Legend, as a religious observance, I can get behind that. But for me, it’s as real as any Chinese New Year Parade. Your villagers are wearing tatty costumes and masks. You can say there is a small influence on the village’s fate in the near future, as a result of the re-enactment, but again, I would reserve actual Heroquesting for the Heroes.

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