[Heroquest 2] Pass/Fail and Setting-Heavy Story Now
Web_Weaver:
Given the focus you have mentioned and the fact that you have used the published questionnaire, community resource options, I was wondering if you had put any thought into changing the resources to match your campaign scope, or if you had just decided early on to choose the default scope presented in the Sartar Book?
My question is purely self interested as I managed to squeeze in the side text on this topic through convincing the editor of its merit.
Erik Weissengruber:
I will work at it like this: The clan is incredibly idiosyncratic. But it is valuable to others because it is so unusual. So the ratings and their scope as defined in the Sartar Book are fine. Their friends are a more conventional Ernalda/Earth Clan and an Orlanth/Storm Clan. Their Enemies are a mirror image: Earth-friendly Lunar accomplices and Storm fans, as well as Grazer raiders and a band of bandits with Kinstrife magics. Their allies include Trolls, Lightbringer clan with a shrine to the God of Sages, and 2 more traditionalists.
If I were doing a smaller scale game, I would have juggled the resources. But I like this bunch: they are way outside the mainstream and they are dirt poor -- but they punch above their weight.
The text IS useful. Heroquest doesn't have to be generic -- it can be highly customized for a particular setting! The resources and the resource cycle are a good way to feed player activity into the setting.
What can we call that point of connection that, like the pirate ship in Poison'd or the MRCZ in Freemarket, is a piece of the setting of continuous interest and is the locus through which players affect and are affected by the setting?
* Centre of Gravity?
* Meta/Mega PC?
* Nerve Core?
* Heart?
* CPU?
* Collectively Managed Setting Processing Actant Mechanism?
* The Thing?
So the text about changing resources is welcome in that it opens up the question of how to tailor a Thing for a setting.
(or a CG/MPC/NC/CPU/CmSPAM ... whatever)
Web_Weaver:
Yes exactly. That thing is exactly what I was concerned with. The idea that the scope, setting interactivity, and thematic traction, is facilitated by the choices made in setting the questionnaire, and the choosing of the resources and their weightings. And, I was worried that the Sartar book was making those choices for the GM.
I do wonder if that thing is just a more elaborate and specific definition of Setting from a Story Now perspective.
But I'm concerned I may be leading things off on a tangent so I will await a more suitable moment to discuss that further.
Erik Weissengruber:
"I do wonder if that thing is just a more elaborate and specific definition of Setting from a Story Now perspective."
Well, I decided to commit to that specific clan thing in the text because the clan/tribe/setting arc in the King of Dragon Pass game really appealed to me. The scaling up of concerns, not the metaplot or canonical history.
"I do wonder if that thing is just a more elaborate and specific definition of Setting from a Story Now perspective."
I am really into The Thing. Planet Burning for Burning Empires really gives tangible, gameable dimensions to the setting. The Fronts sheet for Apocalypse World aren't tied to fine-grained numerical values, but they represent the MC's principled commitment to the consistent behaviour of a few important agents, with the countdown clocks providing a track of how near to crisis various parts of the setting are.
Erik Weissengruber:
The relationship between character colour and setting colour is crucial.
The sessions of the game will be based on tension, so even if characters fit the cannonical models the whole direction of play will be about exploring conflict. If you love the Storm God and the Earth God, and keep the commitments to those gods gender-identified, I am still going to find ways to bring out the conflict between you and the other conformists. If you have no gods and base your magic on Water, you still have the ability to interact with other tribes no matter how weird you are. But your exceptionality will then become the issue explored later.
My player said "I imagine a steady, dependable voice of reason, so that sounds like the Earth rune as you described it. My guy will be a stalwart thane." I am cool with that player's identification with the Earth rune. The fact that 99.9% of his neighbouring clans would not understand why a MALE chose to identify with Earth is gold for Story Now. It is really bad for someone trying to follow the metaplot in the Sartar book -- Air boys and Earth girls unite to push out the foreign weirdos who have brought their cosmopolitan, sophisticated, labile culture to the area.
The numbers generated during clan creation state: no matter how un-canonical the derived clan is , it has THIS rating for Warfare, THAT rating for magic, THOSE ratings for peacemaking & wealth. It is up to us to explore what the clan's ratings MEAN in the contex of the setting, and how the characters relate to or bounce off of or defy the values implied by the thing that is the clan.
In other words, you are not tangenting me, you are helping me deal with what I wanted to deal with.
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