Too many Keywords? (was Heroquest 7th Sea)

[Barna]

In my recent attempt to convert 7th Sea to Heroquest, I stumbled upon a problem. Generally, I think of Keywords as important issues you need to define about your character; where he comes from (Homeland), what it his main trade (Occupation) and who does he worship (Deity or the like). My problem is, 7th Sea has at least three more keywords which can be massively important: Swordsman School, Sorcery and Membership (to Secret Societies). I do beleive that these merit their own skills, personality traits, relationships, etc. However, not all PC´s are interested in these. There are many characters out there who have neither of them. So it´s mainly a balance issue; how can I balance characters taking one, two, three or none of these special Keywords?
Should I take extra HP out of their CG pool? Give a bonus HP for each category they pass up?

I´m really stumped on this one. 

[a_verheaghe]

You mention the Worship catagory, but since there is no magic associated with it in 7th Sea I'd roll it into the Homeland catagory. The 7th Sea world emulates a time when allmost everyone was religious. That religion was often heavily influnced by where you lived.
Instead use your keywords in question swordsmanshiup school sorcery school etc. If I recall in 7th Sea characters had one or the other. If a character wants to later learn additional schools or sorcery the mechanics are already built in.

[Barna]

Problem is, everyone has a Homeland or Occupation, but not everyone in the game is a Swordsman, Sorcerer or part of a Secret Society. Keywords are powerful at CG since they provide you with a lot of skills, personality traits, etc. If one of my characters takes, say, Swordsman School and Secret Society keywords, how can I balance him with the hero who didn´t and only has a Homeland & Occupation Keyword?

[mneme]

I'd handle things differently.

Have the following keyword categories:

Homeland
Occupation
Hobby
Dirty Tricks

Or something; I'm not sure on those last two categories. The thing to remember is that HeroQuest actually had two magic keywords (more or less) -- your better magic school and your general magic.  However, to be able to use magic actively, you had to concentrate -- giving up a keyword in exchange for greater power.  You can do the same thing in SwashQuest, letting someone Concentrate on their hobby (magic) to be able to use it actively, but give up dirty tricks.  Or they can concentrate on Dirty Tricks/combat, and give up having a hobby. 

Or they can take magic and dirty tricks, but not concentrate on any of it -- so they can't use it actively, but can use it in a more supporting role -- a less game-effective set of abilites, but allowing them to be less specialized.

I guess if you really added more than 4 keyword categories, you could allow someone to double-concentrate -- not sure how that would work on a player-balance perspecitve, but it would probably do OK.

Does this help?

[Barna]

Mainly, I was thinking about some sort of "Keyword split". Everyone gets their Homeland Keyword at 17 as usual. You also get an Occupation keyword by default, but you may also choose to have a Membership, Swordsman School and Sorcery Keyword. However, you must "split" your points amongst them. Therefore, if you only choose an Occupation Keyword it starts at 17. If you choose an extra Keyword (say, Sorcery), you get Occupation at level 16 and the extra one at level 15. If you choose two extra Keywords (Sorcery & Swordsmanship, for example), you get Occupation at 15, one extra at 14 and the other one at 13. Should you choose THREE extra Keywords (and let´s face it, you ARE pushing it fella) you get Occupation at 14 and the two extra keywords at 13.

Sound viable?

PS: I recently realized that point-wise and advantage-wise Membership in a Secret Society are not as useful/powerful as Sorcery or Swordsman Schools. Therefore, I might work with Membership as a Relationship keyword (starting at 13 as usual) which only grants the training/equipment/fame bonuses when it reaches certain levels. For example, in order to be considered a Knight of the Rose & Cross you must reach 5M in your "Membership: Rose & Cross¨ relationship.

[Mike Holmes]

I sorta agree with Joshua. There's another perspective to this, however, which is that this sort of "balance" doesn't matter. To whit, in my current IRC game, the majority of the main PCs had no specialized magic keyword. And it doesn't seem to matter at all.

I've commented on this before, and here's why I think it works: if you're playing HQ in the style that I think it supports, keywords are less about power than they are about identity:

Homeland = who am I culturally?
Occupation = who am I within that society?
Religion = what do I believe, generally?
Specialized Magic = what beliefs are most important to me?

Now, if you don't have a specialized magic keyword for a character, that simply means that they don't find any particular cult most important, but instead other things in life. The ommission is a powerful statement of "normality" if you will.

Further, another thing that's interesting about it is that you are free to pick up a new magic cult in play. That is, if you start play with your character decided as to what cult they belong to, you don't get to play out that decision. Sometimes it's more fun to develop into such a thing in play.

As far as highlighted abilities, all characters have the same amount of points to add to abilities - the ones that get the most attention with these points are highlighted. So, yeah, a character with an additional keyword on the character sheet may have more abilities, but they'll have precisely the same highlighting of abilities. The rest is just broad definition of the character. Conceptually all of the abilities under Warrior just all combine to say, "He's a warrior."

So, basically, I wouldn't sweat it much.

BTW, I always allow an additional keyword if the player wants. Check out the narrator section of the book on Advanced Experience for some idea of what to do with these. Also check it out for ideas on how to make appropriately powered characters. For 7th Sea, for instance, characters should start with way higher keyword levels, and way, way more points to customize the characters. A conservative estimate, yes, a conservative estimate, would put them with keywords at 15W, and a couple hundred points for customization, no more than 30 on one. Maxing abilities out at 5W3. Much higher is also doable.

Straight starting characters would be odd for 7th Sea, I think.

Mike

[mneme]

It's true -- balance is overrated.  Doesn't stop me from thinking in terms of it, 'cause it's trivial to go from balanced rules to subjective ones, but not so easy the other way.

Some good points about the keywords, though I think it sometimes makes sense to redefine the top level keywords to support the world and cultures.  (We had a discussion about this in A&E for a specific genre...ah, right, Paul Mason was trying to do an adaption for Water-Margin period China.  I'll see if I can dig up the zine where I proposed what I thought was an appropriate division).  Glorantha is very much a world where everone has religion, and everyone has specialized magics -- others might have other stuff (in 7th Sea, everyone fights.  In a China game, the same, actually; even bad-assed sorcerors and buerocrats have kung fu).

I fight it oddly right...but also ironic that 7th Sea characters would have a higher starting level than HQ characters -- because starting characters in the -actual- 7th Sea game are actually quite weak compared to the true bad-asses of the world (but then, HQ is good at dealing with scale).

[Barna]

Thanks to you both for the insight on this, it really cleared up my views on the matter (specially regarding balance).

As you say mneme, characters in 7th Sea don't start as powerful as they should, but that is one of the game's small flaws. Since I'm working with experienced characters, I will the converting their current R&K scores to HQ, so I needn't worry much about CG for now (although I do need the Occupation and Homeland keywords for the conversion).

I think I'm gonna use the standard Occupation & Homeland keywords plus a "Trademark" pick such as the ones used in Star Wars HQ. Sorcery and Swordsman Schools will be options in Trademarks, as they are important enough character-wise to merit the spenditure. At the same time, I will be creating a new ability type, "Memberhips". You can buy Memberships with your initial 10 extra skill picks. Not sure if they will start at 6 or 13 yet, but in the end it's a minor point. Your level in the Membership: Secret Society ability determines your rank and importance in the Society. I think it's a neat way of managing them. If the characters want to start out as full-fledged members of the Societies at CG it will cost them a few points to bump the ability up to the adequate level.

I haven't yet received my book (though I'm told it has already shipped :) ) but I'd like to have an idea of how to compare a general difficulty level with HQ resistance levels. That is, how would you complete the following table?

DIFFICULTY          HQ Resistance
Easy
Moderate
Difficult
Very Difficult
Heroic

I'd like to be able to relate the usual R&K difficulty levels to the new, more granular HQ resistances.

[Mike Holmes]

Joshua,

Balance is a tough concept, because it can have so many meanings. Balance, very generally, means that every player can see a way for their character to be a main protagonist in the events that are occuring in the game - more simply put, the character will be fun to play. In a game where being a protagonist means having enough power to contend with the challenges presented, "power balance" is very important. I think that HQ, however, intends to support a different sort of play (it seems to work best that way for me, at least), and that sort of play is about characters facing the moral challenges presented by their environment. As such, the "balance" we need here is one by which we make characters equally thematically interesting.

What I'm saying is that I think that even if you don't power balance at all, HQ is still quite balanced for this style of play. No particular character type will dominate selection (not all characters will be of one type).

Most people in Glorantha do not, actually, have a specialized magic keyword. Most Heortlings do, but they're an exception, apparently. In other cultures having such a keyword is the exception, not the rule. Now, I do think that the expectation is that, this in-game observation aside, it is expected that players will play characters with specialized magic keywords more often than not. Because it is fun stuff. But, again, what I've seen is that it's apparently just as fun not to have such a keyword. Again, Frodo would be at least as interesting to play with HQ rules as Aragorn. And, no, not because we'd balance out Frodo with massive abilities to resist the ring or something. Remember, Frodo fails in the end, and that's one of the most powerful things about LOTR. HQ can make that sort of thing work in play.


In any case, I think what Barna has above will work - I've seen such work well elswhere. In fact, you might want to consider allowing two trademarks, Barna. Also, I wouldn't make an exception to the normal rules for the memberships - that is, like anything else they should start at 13.

As for the resistances, I think that the HQ scale is better than the 7the Sea one, but I'll make some notes on a conversion:

Easy - this is a 6 resistance, the default. Note that this should only be rolled if there's some potentially fun result for failure; otherwise the "no self-respecting hero" clause comes into play, and it's automatic success. If you're not sure whether or not it'd be fun to roll, ask the player if they'd like to do so.

Moderate - this is probably a 14 resistance, the default resistance "of the world." Note that a novice (13) still has a good chance to do this, but it's very uncertain. I roll a lot at this level, because it's fun to see characters as humans who quite simply fail a lot in life.

Difficult - 5W? This really starts to relate to ability. What's difficult for one character in HQ is child's play for another. But at 5W, it's always uncertain for the vast majority of people attempting it. Even a master's master will fail occasionally. Yet even somebody with no skill at all will often manage such a task.

Very Difficult - 5W2. At this level any human has a good chance to fail, and novices are staring up quite a big hill. Though it's still far from impossible, especially if the character is backed by the drama of a HP, and/or lots of augmenting abilities.

Heroic - This really depends on what you mean by heroic. I'd call it 5W3 for most characters - meaning that they're taking on something that's probably over their head, or for which they had to really prepare hard. Opening up an otherworld is a benchmark here at 10W3. This is probably parallel to 7th Sea's "Heroic."

The Other Heroic - "Hero" in mechanical terms in HQ means somebody who is so talented that their acts take on magical (or mystical) quality to them. To challenge somebody at that level of mythic ability, you need more like a 5W4, or even higher. If you want to make it really uncertain against a player hero augmenting hard to add to a heroic level of ability, you need more like 5W5 or even higher. 5W6 is not out of the realm of possibility. Note that, at this level, these things become impossible for humans who are in a more recognizably mortal level of power.

Mike

[Barna]

I recently found a bechmark to relate HQ levels to the old "Apprentice-Journeyman-Master" concept at http://random.average-bear.com/Heroquest/WhatSkillRatingsMean. I had been translating these linearly from my character's 1-6 scores in R&K 7th Sea (2-3 being Apprentice, 4 Journeyman and 5 Master, with 6 a Grandmaster). However, considering the resistance values you just mentioned and the fact that my characters seem to be able to pull a "Very Difficult" task with their best skills at least half of the time, I beleive I need to increase the scale a bit.

For example, the Castillian Swordsman has a 4 in Fencing and 3 in Finesse (an attribute) which makes him capable of hitting a Very Difficult target number abour 50% of the time. I translated his Fencing level to around 10M, which would be Journeyman level by the standards of the webpage I just mentioned. But that'd give him a slim chance of beating a 5W2 difficulty, even with augments. I think I need to bump the levels up a Mastery level. Perhaps I can use something like the following:

6-16 Begginer
17-4M Apprentice
5M-4M2 Expert
5M2-4M3 Journeyman
5M3-4M4 Master
5M5+ Grandmaster

It does create quite a large difference between power levels, but I think it represents the heroic potential of most 7th Sea characters a lot better. 

[Mike Holmes]

I think you're making too many conversions. That is, you're adjusting HQ to make it run like 7th Sea. If you wanted the game to run like 7th Sea, then you should use 7th Sea rules. I assume you're playing HQ in order to get the cool effects of HQ. If that's the case, simply convert to the scale that you find on that web page (which I created, BTW, expanding on a table from the HQ rule book) in terms of ability levels.

I'm pretty sure that if you go with the scale you have, that you'll wreck certain things in HQ. Like the fact that no human is ever completely safe from another.

Mike

[Barna]

Perhaps you are right. If I consider all the possible augments on top of the standard skill levels, it´ll still ammount for heroic play. Besides, comparing R&K with other systems I´ve realized that the difficulty scale in this game is at odds with most of the other systems. That is, Difficult ain´t so difficult in R&K.

[Mike Holmes]

A key in HQ is that characters will fail consistently, and that this is a feature of play, not a bug. In games where you have to attempt things over and over, the "Whiff factor" is a terrible thing. But in a game where defeat means more drama, losing is an important part of the dramatic cycle. The HQ system doesn't try to capture a sense of realism in terms of some simulation of ability vs. relative danger. It captures the feel of real life drama by making any risky endeavor, well, risky.

Mike

[Barna]

I see. Perhaps that will proove a bit of a problem with my conversion. I do like failure as a narrative option and a constructive part of the story, rather than the sometimes obsessive need to "beat every difficulty" certain gamers fall into. However, I beleive the swashbuckling genre does imply a certain level of competence. While defeat can be very interesting (and I think that's true in almost any genre), heroic games in general tend to present heroes who succeed at a lot of what they do. I'll see how I deal with it.

I must admit that your last post made me rethink the style of play 7th Sea and other games instilled in me. I may have been grossly underthinking the consequences and options one has when the dice indicate a failure. The binary "yes-no" approach some games suggest happens to be a bit lacking, and I've only just realized that.

[Mike Holmes]

Yeah, competence does not mean success in the source material. The three musketeers are forever failing to get places in time. Jack Sparrow starts having lost his ship, and then in his first fight is knocked out by a bystander and put in jail. Indiana Jones is thwarted by his nemesis a couple of times and generally gets beaten up a ton. And in the end he's captured, because everyone knows he won't shoot the ark, and only gets the ark because he knows to close his eyes when the bad guys are reveling in their moment of victory.

Failing to the villains is especially important. How can you really get to hate the bad guys unless they defeat the good guys a couple of times?

Competence is displayed in the maginitude of the tests one faces. Porthos dies because his strength gives out, but we're amazed that he got as far as he did. The Musketeers typically only fail when faced with insurmountable odds that most people would be crazy to even attempt to fend off.

In HQ, there are largely three sorts of resistances you can throw at a character:

Relatively Low Resistance - these are good for showing how easily the character can handle the average conflict if they win, or for showing how mortal the character is if he loses.
Relatively Equal Resistance - these are good for high tension, and showing how cool the character is relative to the dangerous world and dangerous people, and how he's willing to risk.
Relatively High Resistance - these are to show that no matter how good you are, there's always somebody better, or just that the world is a very dangerous place. No shame in losing, everybody expected that. But if you win, then you're the hero.

In most RPGs, you have to be very careful about how difficult the opposition is, because you might destroy the PCs. Or, if you make a contest too easy, it's boring. In HQ you can set any level of opposition you like, and be assured that the outcome will be interesting. So you no longer have to avoid having the world's greatest fencer come into play, he should be there the first session to establish scale, and tension regarding that ability. You can throw the PCs up against piles of thugs to prove how cool they are when they defeat them singlehandedly (the system makes a talented individual capable of defeating lots of less talented opponents on occasion). Or you can face them with evenly matched rivals to create a lot of tension.

Create the NPC and other opposition at a level of ability using this logic - not the logic that says that character X "should be" at such and such a level. If I have a master swordsman in the group, and need a rival for him, then I create the rival NPC with similar ability levels. Then make his background match that. How wide is that chasm? Oh, about Wide 5W2 - that's a scary chasm.

The key is creative failure conditions. In most games, failing to leap the chasm means the player loses the character as he falls to his death. In HQ, if the goal is to "Get across the chasm" failing to do so means that the character doesn't get across the chasm. Maybe he chickens out. Or maybe as he's backing up to get running room, he runs into the persuing bad guys. Or he hits the other cliff, and is now hanging from a branch.

The general rule is that "failure means conflict." That is, failure doesn't mean just that some door is closed, but that another has opened and there's a monster behind it. Don't ever make failure mean that the character simply is at a dead end and can't do anything. Did the character fail to jump the chasm? Then perhaps there's a demon in the crevice that'll carry him across for a price...

This is the other way that most games punish failiure, and there's nothing in HQ to prevent you from making the same mistakes, actually. The HQ system simply doesn't require that failure means that the fun stops: it allows you to take failure and make it into escalating action.

Mike