[Hero Quest 2.0] Procedures for Setting Heavy Game in Pavis

Started by Erik Weissengruber, December 25, 2012, 01:10:00 PM

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Erik Weissengruber

Since Spring of 2012 I have been running a fairly large (6-7 players) game of Hero Quest set in Pavis.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth proceeded working out a few simple play procedures for making HQ 2.0's rules work for me and work with the setting.

The Pass/Fail cycle provides a mechanism for setting resistance levels. A player with a starting skill in "Summon Ghost of the Plains" rated at a Target Number (TN) of 17 will have to roll 17 or under to get a Success. All rolls in HQ are opposed, with the GM or other player providing fictional opposition and aiming for a roll of less than or equal to the TN. Hero Wars and HQ1 provided guidelines for setting Glorantha-appropriate TNs. HQ 2.0 uses the Pass/Fail Cycle, where an escalating base TN (starting at 14 and raising automatically every 2 sessions) rises and falls and the players' fortunes rise and fall. A series of prior failures can bring the general resistance to a TN of 6 or 8, and a series of successes can raise it as high as 36. This cycle is supposed to give the players the sensation of being in an action narrative with an implied narrative arc. The underlying premise is discussed in designer Robin Laws' Hamlet's Hit Points: http://gameplaywright.net/books/hamlets-hit-points/

Successes can be rolled or bought through the currency of Hero Points.

The Pass/Fail cycle is working for me now. Not so much the aesthetic experience of being in an action narrative, but the setting-congruent theme that there can be no success without sacrifice. Hero Points allow players to buy a lot of victories. That has the effect of keeping the TNs high. When there is some threat to the whole clan, players who have bought up a lot of success are setting themselves up for a might challenge. What I have seen is players exploring parts of the setting, such as interesting locales or seeking out NPCs, and willing to lose some sort of conflict with the expectation that a) they will have learned more about the setting, b) that some challenge of importance to the clan as a whole will be more likely to go in the players' favour. That might screw up the consistency of a mundane world, but in a fantastic world where sacrifice is part of a myth/ritual-governed cosmos it works beautifully.

Consistency and richness of setting suffers when put through the meat grinder of the Pass/Fail cycle. Moreover, the setting is premised on the idea that beings undertaking a heroic path can, through heroquests, communion with the gods, creating communities, and beating really nasty baddies and taking their stuff, rise in levels of power. We have mundane schubbs, worshipers, Priests, Heroes, Super-Heroes, Demi-gods, etc. To have a veteran Hero put in a corner just because of some unrelated prior dice rolls just blanches the colour out of my Glorantha. Luckily, Laws' rules set has a device for maintaining setting consistency:
Stretches. Any conflict that Stretches credibility is penalized by -6 to the player character's TN, and will at most attain a Marginal Victory (a -3 to the ability relevant to the contest). And no amount of Hero Point expenditure can change that.

The Pass/Fail cycle provides a nice simple Target Number that is the product of a number of linked decisions by the players (including use of the game's Hero Point currency). But the Stretch makes sure that players understand the scale of the opposition to their characters' desires, and the extent of the sacrifices they will have to make to overcome it. Jolene the Praxian Shaman comes into a conflict with the ghost, I roll a 19 for the ghost, a failure, and Joanne rolls 2 for her Shaman and has won a Minor Victory. 2 HP come over and we are in Total Victory. The ghost is there, boom. If there were some super-secret Ghost, or a powerful ghost that was defiant of all summoning, Jolene would have been in bigger trouble. Getting the ghost to come would be at most a Marginal Victory, and Hero Point expenses would not change that. 3 more Marginal Victories would get the result of the first roll. So taking on significant foes requires a series of linked rolls to achieve the result. In my game I allow any character with fictional positioning to go for a stretch. So if, somehow, the players could appear before the throne of the most-high god of Dancing, they would have a chance to scratch him. And then feel the blast of wrath. Or, if the arrogant leader PC allows a beggar into her presence, there could be a slice from even that insignificant wretch.

No need for complicated formulae to work out scales of oppositon, or for schemes of bonuses and penalties for characters of different rank to come into conflict with each other.

Also: player character vs player character conflicts have an interesting dynamic. Initially, I looked at one player's victory cancelling out the consequences of the opponent's defeat: the TN would neither rise nor fall. But now I count it as a failure, with the rationalization that in a setting where we are concerned with the survival of a community (the Golden Arrow clan), dissensus between members is counter to the long-term interests of the community. I have seen the players willing to take the consequences of defeat at another player's hand. Their personal failure contributes to the success of the clan in a way that satisfies the players involved but can only be seen as a kind of irony from the point of view of the characters. "Yeah, you proved yourself the better bard. I will be back to teach you a lesson. But meanwhile, our coffers are being filled with donations from wealthy patrons."