Some time ago I bought myself HeroQuest. I like freeform systems - I realise they're not good for every group and mood, sometimes you just need a laundry list of things to choose from - but still, I like them and have had some fun with them. I also like the idea of the "describe your guy in 100 words, and from that we get their abilities" thing. Again, not for everyone, but fun.

But the game book itself is so cluttered with the Glorantha stuff, and game design musings, and play examples from a pretty unimpressive game group, that it's hard to get a good handle on what the thing would look like in play with a good game group. There just doesn't seem to be much around, and HeroQuest is starting to look like one of those games which is widely-praised but rarely-played.

Over on the current HQ forum, I posted asking for and got some example narrative descriptions of characters. And there's a really good and interesting convention game example, Serenity: HeroQuest, "Echoes in the Black" (check it out even if you hate HQ, it's good). But aside from that... not so much.

So, who's got some examples for me? Or is HeroQuest too commie mutant traitor for therpgsite?

I was just trying to find a good review that said something about how the system works.  So far, just fluff.  Anyone have a link to a good review that talks about the game itself instead of the setting / brand history?

HQ at its core is just a really flexible chargen and resolution system. But it's a really good one.

The curious can download the game aids from here. You can play a game of HQ off these if you have the slightest idea of how the system works. These are the core rules, and you could use them to do any setting you like.

In play I think it works best if you run it like Dogs in the Vineyard, that is:

1. Say yes or roll the dice: never roll for anything unless there's a bona fide conflict to be resolved by it. If there is, hit the dice.

2. Drive towards conflict: As the GM, go in hard looking for opportunities to bring on the conflicts. The skill lies in driving the game towards these points.

If you play that way, you get a natural and uncontroversial flow of free roleplaying (dialogue, whatever), punctuated by dice rolls upon which the next bit depends. That's where the system comes into its own.

The system is infinitely scaleable (you can have conflicts between gods or beggars), contains infinite possibilities for conflicts (every ability can in principle be used in a conflict) and is infinitely 'zoomable' (you can zoom in and out on any conflict you want).

So in play, you could decide the result of a war in one roll, or you could play out a moment's stare as a struggle of wills in an extended contest. The sky's the limit. However, I strongly suggest sticking to simple contests for the first game or two.

Augments can be a pitfall. If people just run their fingers down their sheets going "...and +2 for Hates Lunars", it's boring. Like the whole game, in fact. This is one game you want people willing to pitch in and play with gusto, because there's nowhere to hide.

So when people augment, allow anything they come up with as long as it's entertaining and plausible (to your group's standard). It's not about powergaming, it's about getting the abilities on the sheet all interrelating and being roleplayed.

In HQ you'll find that failure and partial success happens a lot. Watch how you frame contests. You should have an idea going in how failure (and especially partial failure) might pan out. My general principle is that it should be interesting either way. Any time you forget that, things can get sucky.

I think it's useful to think of the system in terms of conflicts rather than tasks. Ask the player what they want to achieve. For example, if somebody enters a sword-fight, are they trying to kill their opponent, make him beg for mercy or carve a Z on his forehead? You need a general sort of idea so that you can interpret the results of the contest.

Will that do for now?

That sounds like very good advice, droog, and it's nice and concrete, not abstract.

One thing not mentioned is character generation and the imagination required, and also imagination required in play. That's my impression, that it requires a lot of imagination. Some systems require imagination in chargen, but not so much when resolving conflicts and tasks; Fate might be an example of this. But it seems like HeroQuest needs a lot of imagination during chargen and in play. Am I right?

My experience is that most players have a good bit of imagination in creating their character, but when playing them, not as much. Doesn't mean they're dull and stupid, it's just a relative thing. For some reason, many players find it easier to write a few pages of character background than (say) describe what it means when they just won some PC-NPC contest - that's what I've found with systems like Risus.

I've talked to other players and GMs, so I know I'm not unique in this - imagination for character generation being much greater than imagination in play. Do you think HeroQuest can improve this, encouraging imagination in play? I've often said, "okay, you succeed/fail - tell me what happened?" and got blank looks from players, had to do the description myself. You can get away with that in games like RuneQuest, because you've got the rules stuff to fall back on, but I'm worried that HeroQuest would fall absolutely flat.

I'm sure this is a GMing and player thing rather than HQ-specific, but still... What are people's thoughts?

I don't think HQ improves your imagination in play, but it does enable it. Risus is an excellent comparison – you might say HQ may suit people who want a slightly crunchier Risus.

I think it's doom for HQ if you run anything resembling a straightforward adventure. The system is just not interesting enough to sustain a series of rolls to get through. I think you've got to hit the characters hard with external conflict that links to their chr sheets and forces them to choose sides, make decisions etc. A rich setting is good for this because it gives you plenty of material (eg the rival clan is vying for control of Richberry Valley etc).

Every time I've got this recipe right, the players have had very little trouble getting into it. Try holding their hand a bit at first; eg I took my friend's chr sheet out of his hand and starting going down it for extra augments. Be encouraging.

But in any case, the official narrator of contest results in HQ is the GM, if I'm not greatly mistaken. Personally, I like to check stuff with the players and get their two cents' worth, but it's not actually theirs to call in the end. So that specific problem doesn't exist.

One thing on chargen: I'm not really a huge fan of the 100-words system, and I make it optional. It seems to me it rewards writing skill more than anything else – to me it's misplaced creativity. I prefer to just give them keywords and ten abilities.

Here's three chrs from the recent game I really should run a couple more sessions of:

Gaius Corerus Quintus

Keywords

Occupation: Haruspex 17
Culture: Roman 17
Religion: Old Roman Gods 17

Important Abilities

Philosophical Arguments 13
Weasel into people’s good graces 19
Incite Spiritual curiosity/turmoil 17

Unnerving Gaze 3M
Read Entrails 17
Predict Weather via Signs/Omens 14
Curse with ill fate/luck 15
Silence Crowd with gesture 15
Find useful Herbs 13
Deliver foreboding warning 13
High Ritual 13

Initial Goals

Secure a safe & comfortable position in a household of note.
Prevent Christianity from gaining a foothold in England, to ensure he never has to move on again.



Mairead

Keywords

Occupation: Druid
Culture: Irish
Religion: Old Gods


Important Abilities

Provide divine inspiration 14
Sing a distracting song 18
Look What I Found! 15
Perform horrid sacrifice 17
Throw something 16
Impose Geas 4M

Goals

To keep the Old Gods alive in the face of change.
To seek the Spear of Destiny (Spear of Lugh)

Geas

Never to stand with her back facing the sun on a Sabbat


Lucius

Keywords

Occupation: Clergyman 17
Culture: Briton 17
Religion: Roman Christian 17

Important Abilities

Dignity of the church 18
Recite Prayer 19
Sanctify 19
Uphold Family Honour 19
Speak in Tongues 10M2

Goals
To preserve Christianity and honour his family.


**********************************
This is a stripped-down version of HQ; basically I threw the magic system away. Notice the big abilities: Quintus really flogged 'Unnerving Gaze' and Lucius pulled off a couple of great scenes with 'Speaking in Tongues'.

droog really hit the main points.  HeroQuest is really a system for setting up and resolving conflict, not simple task resolution.  Every ability listed on the character sheet should represent a potential conflict that the character has either encountered before (thus, their listed level of advanced experience) or expects to encounter in the future (unmodified, base Keyword scores).  These are the sorts of problems that you and your people commonly have to come to grips with.

Now, it can be used as a simple task resolution system, but this is where it seems to fall a little flat -- especially with combat.  While another system would require a series of back-and-forth rolls, HeroQuest usually abstracts the task to a single roll, modified by whatever applicable abilities you can make the case for.  On the flip side of this, there is the Extended Contest, which does feature the back-and-forth volley exchange, but it isn't necessarily from one moment to the next, one action to the next -- it can be abstracted out to one entire situation to the next, or one season to the next.

I'm still pretty proud of this example that I trundle out a couple of times a year -- Glorantha for the Yoots.  The HQ campaign described was from three years ago when my son was only 4.  I did most of the foot work for him, but I honestly think he grokked the basics of the system (even if I misunderstood bits of it at the time -- like round-by-round combat :deflated: ).  I think it really undescores the players freedom of action in both creating and portraying the character, and the simplicity in play.

Right now I'm about to start an Avatar, the Last Airbender campaign for both my son and daughter using HQ.  It's kind of old hat for my son, but my daughter really seems to be digging the freedom she has in creating her character.  And the "zoomable" scope that droog mentioned really fits the broadly varied nature of the source material.

!i!

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaNow, it can be used as a simple task resolution system, but this is where it seems to fall a little flat -- especially with combat.  While another system would require a series of back-and-forth rolls, HeroQuest usually abstracts the task to a single roll, modified by whatever applicable abilities you can make the case for.  On the flip side of this, there is the Extended Contest, which does feature the back-and-forth volley exchange, but it isn't necessarily from one moment to the next, one action to the next -- it can be abstracted out to one entire situation to the next, or one season to the next.

This matches my impressions. I had a couple of sessions of play of it a few years ago, GMed by a fellow both droog and I know. That guy now says we didn't get to the heart of the thing, just using it as a task resolution system - of course I don't have the benefit of other sessions to compare it with. Nonetheless I enjoyed myself at the time. It did strike me as odd that there was no difference in game mechanics terms between Broadsword 13 and Polearm 13, or Fast Horse 17 and Fast Camel 17. The differences were cosmetic only.

Because of that, my impression was that you needed to focus a lot on vivid descriptions of things - if the system doesn't provide the difference, you have to! For me, the memorable part of the sessions I played was when we (the PCs) were arguing for a sneaky way of stealing/recovering a rival clan's cattle, and the NPCs were arguing for a violent way. So we spoke at a public meeting, and there was a Clan Chief 17 using his position to argue from, augmented by his Stout Warriors (Followers) 13 cheering for him, and my character the merchant who was Owed Favours 13 was moving through the crowd saying, "hey, you owe me favours, better cheer for our guy arguing!" and so on - lots of stuff went into it. The players' imagination plus the GM's openness to things made it exciting.

So when you guys are saying that the key is to make the conflicts interesting, so that both player and character are invested in it, that resonates strongly with me and the experience of those couple of sessions.

I realise that officially the GM is the narrator of things in HQ, but my instinct is that if that were strictly followed, then the strength of HQ - it being free and open for interesting description - might become a weakness, the players passively awaiting the GM's response. I think I'd encourage a bit of player description of things, that'd increase their feeling of investment, so that the difference between this and that trait wouldn't be only cosmetic for them.

Does that seem right?

Quote from: JimBobOzI realise that officially the GM is the narrator of things in HQ, but my instinct is that if that were strictly followed, then the strength of HQ - it being free and open for interesting description - might become a weakness, the players passively awaiting the GM's response. I think I'd encourage a bit of player description of things, that'd increase their feeling of investment, so that the difference between this and that trait wouldn't be only cosmetic for them.

Does that seem right?

Well, yes, but I recommend not just sitting back and saying "What do you reckon?", especially if they're used to more conventional resolution systems. You'll very likely need to lead by example and show them the potential.

Also, you should encourage roleplaying (description etc) on the input side before you encourage it on the output side. The players should be coming up with creative ways to use their abilities and augment, and roleplaying them. It should be a rule that you don't get the augment unless it's described in some way.

So then, the players build up excitement for the moment of the die roll, and the GM puts the capper on it after the roll. In practice, as always, that's more fluid if you let it be. The GM might suggest augments and the players might suggest outcomes – you should think of it as helping each other out. But it's part of the fun of GMing to have the narration of outcomes in your hands. Players in, GM out.

droog, do you think HQ would be appropriate for settings like Jorune. I've (okay a GM friend of mine) been trying do this for some time ? I've read that some folks use HQ for settings like Forgotten Realms, Krynn and other high fantasy settings. Would it work well for Jorune?

Regards,
David R

Encourage their input before encouraging the output side - that's one of those things which is obvious once someone else tells you it! Thanks

And another thing: the setting, or the shared sense of the fiction, is what makes the difference between abilities not cosmetic. For instance, if you're fighting in a narrow passageway 'Broadsword' might be more useful than 'Polearm'. That's handled through situational modifiers ("-10 to your Polearm skill for the cramped conditions"). Or say you have to race across a desert – is 'Fast Camel' better than 'Fast Horse' in those conditions? Maybe neither is ideal and what you really want is 'Camel with Stamina'.

And the outcomes will also be different. Are you going to solve this problem with 'Broadsword' or 'Charming Personality'? The outcome of that is going to be very definitely not cosmetic in its effects on the fiction.

That's why it's important to have a really good grasp on the setting. HQ puts the setting directly into play (through abilities), but you have to be on top of it. Again, this will be the GM's job, at least at first.

Quote from: David Rdroog, do you think HQ would be appropriate for settings like Jorune. I've (okay a GM friend of mine) been trying do this for some time ? I've read that some folks use HQ for settings like Forgotten Realms, Krynn and other high fantasy settings. Would it work well for Jorune?

HQ will do any setting you like, with the caveat that it's always HQ. If you don't like the way HQ does things, you won't like it in any setting.

I don't know a lot about Jorune, but it sounds like a rich setting. You just need to write the keywords. I can crap on about the process I went through if you like, and maybe work through some ideas for Jorune with you, but you'd have to give me a bit of a summary.

Quote from: droogI don't know a lot about Jorune, but it sounds like a rich setting. You just need to write the keywords. I can crap on about the process I went through if you like, and maybe work through some ideas for Jorune with you, but you'd have to give me a bit of a summary.

I'll post a rough outline (later on, got to get my notes) of the setting and you take it from there...

Regards,
David R

droog a very good summary may be found here:

http://www.jorune.org/index.html

Regards,
David R