Heroquest 2: what does the system add?
FredGarber:
Quote from: Alexander Julian on July 13, 2009, 08:56:43 PM
Quick example from actual play:
Anrur (me) goes to talk to his mentor Orkarl about some Lunar converts.
In character me and Orkarl chat a bit, he starts talking about the bad influence of the Lunars. I state my prize ‘convince Orkarl that Humakt has a plan for the Lunars and they are not the enemy.’ I pick an ability ‘initiate of Humakt 1W.’ I don’t state the means because I’ve already said in the state prize section I’m talking with him. I then say some stuff in character ‘The Lunar god talker healed me. I asked her before I pledged my sword “are you corrupting the clan” and was satisfied they were not.’ (I’m paraphrasing). We then roll the dice and consult the success chart. I get a major success. The GM narrates Orlkarl as being convinced by my argument and he even decides to join me in defending the Moon winds against any hostile clan members.
I think your Thematic Premise, after choosing ability, wasn't still "Does faith in your gods help your brothers overcome prejudice?"
It was "Can your faith, aided by your dedication as an initiate, help your brothers overcome prejudice?"
I can take it out of the setting for an example:
Johnny is the street kid. Can he convince his brother in the Mafia to not shoot members of the Columbian Cartel? It's a different moment, a different conflict if Johnny has become a priest, as opposed to if Johnny is a baseball player or Johnny is an accountant, right?
It could be that abilities don't affect your Effectiveness at addressing Story Now, but they do add Color to your addressing of Premise.
I think you are making the "your" in your Thematic Premise a generic 'You', meaning a person in general.
But I think Narratives only reflect stories about people "in general" They are about specific characters.
-Fred
Joel P. Shempert:
Fred's nailed it. I was trying to figure out how to express that, and coming up dry. In my limited but satisfying play experience (with HQ one, mind), what abilities feed a conflict make a statement, occasionally powerful, about who your character is. When this statement, through action, addresses Premise, all that Color says a great deal. there have always been Abilities that handle that particular heavy lifting better than others (Ruthless 3W vs Sword 3W, say), but overall the tools are there to build a narrative Story Now-fashion. And my understanding is that HQ2 has actually pared down the sheer number of abilities on a sheet to allow easier focus on the ones that are truly central to expressing that character.
It's also worth noting that HQ puts relationships right in the forefront of this system by making them Abilities. Sure, using Eloquent to persuade my brother is fairly value-neutral, but using Eloquent augmented by My Brother Respects Me is pregnant with meaning. I'm leveraging my brother's respect toward getting his assent in a contentious manner. Now the outcome of the conflict can't help but have a huge impact on that relationship, provided the players are attentive to that at ALL.
(And incidentally, I was trying to come up with a contrasting augment that was more neutral, and it was actually HARD. For instance, Eloquent plus Well-Liked. Well, damn but if "Well-liked" isn't a hell of a pregnant quality to leverage--"That's easy for you to say, bro; everyone likes you." or even, given success, "OK, you win. Everyone'll take your side anyway." Every ability used in a conflict can have moral or emotional value, given that you look for it. And playing HQ for Story Now means looking for it.)
Peace,
-Joel
Alexander Julian:
I’m still not sure why the abilities themselves are needed. Take the previous Humakt example. The fact I’m an initiate is already in play in the fiction. Same with the eloquent brother example. It’s the tactics I use that are thematically relevant. Not which ability I select. All the abilities do is limit the range of tactics I can use somewhat.
Now something like In A Wicked Age does a similar thing. The big difference is that you roll the dice first and this seems to change everything for me. I can grasp why traits in IAWA help get the thematic juices flowing.
So in HQ if the resolution order was:
Choose prize
Choose ability
Roll dice
Choose tactics
Then it would make sense to me. Say if I was using ‘ruthless’ as my trait. If I fail then it could be because mercy got the better of me that time. With the resolution sequence as it is written, failing after choosing ruthless always means that ruthlessness didn’t work.
Does that make any sense or is just an idiosyncratic oddity of mine? It just feels the resolution order is wrong and I’m not sure why. It could be totally in my imagination, a kind of cognitive blindness. I’d like to try and get to the bottom of it though.
Joel P. Shempert:
Huh. I hadn't looked at it from that angle. With IaWA it's true that you roll your forms first, but it always strikes me as weak when players roll forms and then just have their actions be whatever, instead of stemming from the forms chosen. All rolling the forms beforehand means to me is that you're committing in advance to narrating that tactic as opposed another.
In the case of your "ruthless" example, I'd say you're exactly right: HQ will never tell you, from a roll result whether you were ruthless or not. It'll tell you what effect your ruthlessness has had. YOU make the choice to be ruthless, just like you make the choice of whether tu pull a gun on the Town Steward in Dogs in the Vineyard. Then, the choice made, you roll dice. that's the heart of Story now.
You seem kind of down on that possibility: a fail result means only that ruthlessness didn't work. I say, awesome! "ruthlessness didn't work" is a great outcome to work with. 'Cause it doesn't end there. Now someone (the Narrator in this case, I believe) gets to describe why and how ruthlessness didn't work. I could come up with a bunch of fun examples in an instant, like I did with the "persuade brother" example. Your target is defiant, your target is totally cowed and useless, your once-healthy relationship is broken, etc. etc. Awesome stuff.
"Choose what you do, then roll" is a pretty solid systemic framework for Story Now. "Roll, then find out what you do" is most assuredly not.
peace,
-Joel
Danny_K:
Quote from: Alexander Julian on July 13, 2009, 03:27:30 PM
Campaign: Pelanda during the Lunar revolution (Glorantha). One of the central questions during the game was ‘what will you do when the revolution comes’
My character was InsiEstes a hideously ugly philosopher of the Kassa school. Here are the relevant abilities I had listed.
No appreciation for the arts 15
Hatred will not let him rest 17
Knows what he’s against 16
Condemn Pelandian morality 1W
InsiEstes (me) has been sent by the King to quell the Lunar mob. Now instead of quelling them I decide instead to tell them to steal (a big moral taboo in Pelandian society). My basic intent is to have them run amok and over turn the city. InsiEstes at this point just hates the established order, he’s a resentful malicious type who just wants to hurt the society that he thinks has shunned him.
So I state ‘get the mob to run amok and steal’ as my prize. Now Ben the GM vetoes this because Pelandians wouldn’t do that. Instead they’re going to outcast me from the city, make me a stranger (the worst crime in Pelandan society). Ben asks me if this ok first and I’m fine with it.
Now this is a pretty cool outcome. The important point to remember here is that it was decided by GM veto. The way the system is set up I have no idea whether I can make a mob riot. I have to just state an intent and hope it doesn’t get Vetoed. Now another point is this. If I hadn’t been ok then we’d have had to retcon the last 15-20 minutes of play because what I was doing up until that point was a set up so I could try and incite the mob.
Alexander, please tell me if this going too far away from what you want to discuss, but what I'm seeing here is that you're in a game where the theme is the breakdown of society in a revolution, you have a character who's geared to break down society, and when your character is in a prime position to attack Pelandian morality head-on, the GM veto nullifies all that and your character goes spinning off in a totally different direction instead. I'm in no position to say whether that was the right thing or not (and that's besides the point), but it seems to me that you might not be getting to address premise because the GM veto is there as a buffer, keeping the system from actually affecting the course of play.
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