[Heroquest 2] Pass/Fail and Setting-Heavy Story Now
Web_Weaver:
In Story Now terms, I have always seen heroquesting as very compatible.
By going onto the Heroplane the PC's are almost roleplaying, this gives a kind of higher level abstraction, which makes the players actions easier to perform at a meta game level. Therefore it can be easier to allow the players to decide on the context of conflicts and have the necessary say of the consequences of their actions.
David Dunham came up with a card based style of play for heroquests, back in the early HW days where the players introduced elements and stations from their hand when appropriate, which also highlights how it is quite common to see heroquesting as a player led activity. Our group used an adapted version of this to great effect.
Erik Weissengruber:
Sorry to thread bump. But I thought I would conclude this thread with a note about how I have resolved some of the issues raised above.
The key to keeping the setting consistent comes from setting what is or is not a stretch. I was trying to use the number of masteries as a yardstick for setting difficulties, syncing it up with the pass-fail cycle, etc.
The simpler solution is this: stick to the pass/fail rhythm at all times. The fictional positioning the characters gather behind an action is what makes it plausible or an implausible stretch.
I do have a rubric for setting plausibility. I was trying to make a few broad stages, like the gang sizes in Apocalypse World or the ship types in poison'd.
Position = [Quantity x Quality] and is compared to Rank. It is a stretch to affect any Rank higher than your Position. Each level of Position higher to Rank gives a bump up or a bump down.
QUANTITY (One=1, Several=2, Mob=3, Clan=4, Tribe=5, Nation), QUALITY (Mundane =1, Expert=2 (PC), Leader=3, Rune Lord/Priest/Devote = 5, Hero=10, Superhero=15).
Let us say that there is some Heroquesting baddie. The Rank for Hero is 10.
The heroes (several experts = 4) has got the fyrd (mob of mundanes = 3) out into the field. They are at a disadvantage, so they are operating at a Stretch, their Position of 7 being lower than 10.
As Heroquest conflicts are resolved solidly from the player's perspective, there is no need to do any fancy calculations for the advantage the Hero has against them.
If the same situation had been in play and the players had convinced a squad of lancers to join in, that would add a mob of experts (6). That gets us to a Position of 13. More than enough to qualify for a position of advantage over the Hero. They would at most pose an irritation to a superhero like Harrek the Berserk.
There is probably some more elegant way to represent this. But it seems to reflect canonical Glorantha and allow for quick decisions about what is or is not a stretch.
I like the way Apocalypse World provides clear and simple benchmarks to turn the ficitonal positioning achieved by the players into numbers for resolution. I have to have a kludge like this to make my setting-heavy Heroquest 2.0 operate in a similar fashion. But it looks as if it will work
Erik Weissengruber:
I am sure that someone can parse the above table and come up with a routine for determining plausibility. But I need to see it.
http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/120459/lakaon.gif
How to read this:
Look at the quality and the number of the PCs’ forces. All the other forces in the same row are an even match. Anything in a lower row is at a disadvantage against the PCs. Anything in a higher row is a “Stretch.” To overcome the stretch and to match forces with a force in a higher row, the PCs need to ally with at least one of the forces on the PCs row.
Target numbers will be set using the Pass/Fail Method
Erik Weissengruber:
The final session of my HQ campaign was a heroquest.
None of the events relates to the previous discussions. But those who have been following this thread might be interested in how the heroquest played out.
http://tinyurl.com/dxvs6qu
Erik Weissengruber:
So 8 players have signed up for my next iteration of a Setting-Heavy Heroquest game, in Pavis.
The rules are supposed to emulate adventure fiction. I want to do a particular kind of genre aesthetic: intrigue. To bring the intrigue-heavy setting into techniques I have proposed a kind of scene economy. It differs from Burning Empires in that I cannot leverge mechanical currency against the players in some kind of competition. At most, I am making fictional positioning to determine what is probable or improbable, and to present players with the consequences of their actions on the global setting.
http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/glor_hq_tag/wikis/rules-notes
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