Archivist

In games like Fate you can decide to roll to take risky/action consuming actions that if possible, give you a leg up (create advantage). Other games have more mechanical versions of this (e.g., different combat actions in savage worlds). It *seems* like beyond narrating the outcome, in an extended contest you're just rolling until the outcome is achieved, usually on the same trait repeatedly against the same resistence. e.g., Round 1: "I feint and stab him" (rolls Master Swordsman of Ginaz 2W against resistance X) Round 2: "I leap on a table, then kick him in the face as I slash downward" (same roll as above) Am I missing something?

In The One Ring NPCs: have simplified stat blocks (e.g., everything they can do physically is represented by a single stat); have an attribute level (which describes their overall competence level; have keywords and underlined things that indicate situations where their attribute level gets added to their overall competence gets their attribute level added to their competence I think Cypher System and Chronicle of Darkness (Hunter the Vigil) NPC's work similarly.

It seems like NPC's are built exactly like PC's - skills, stats, hit locations, etc. Is there some approach for building simplified antagonists?

[HeroQuest 2, p. 22] a hero w/ a 3W mastery with a -6 penalty has a target number of 17 I'm not clear why that's a 17. If you forget about the -6 penalty then they have to roll a 3 or under, and get a free bump up because of their Mastery (if it's not canceled). Wouldn't the -6 just reduce their target number to 1? Or does it eliminate the mastery. If that's the case, and I had 3W2, would it still reduce it to 17 or something else?

Fixed.

HQ 2 has a Death Spiral alternate rule on p. 76, which is a bit like the Mythic Russia Chained Contest. Has anyone used the MR Chained Contest in their Heroquest 2e games? How did you adapt it? How did it work? What do you do to run great extended contests? The thread below on RPG net shows there's lots of different opinions on what the rules actually allow and how people run them. How do you set up good ones? What rulings do you use? https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?583487-HeroQuest-Switching-Tactics-in-Extended-Contests/page3

I did read the examples in the HeroQuest Glorantha book, but I didn't understand them until I looked at the examples that were posted here.

This is really helpful. If you have a mastery (e.g., 1W), do you auto succeed (since any roll is always under 21), do you only succeed on a 1 (and therefore a critical) that you get a free bump for (from the mastery)/

Can someone walk me through (or point me to) a walk through of the core mechanic. I'm reading through HeroQuest Glorantha and I'm completely unclear on how a Simple Contest works.

Newt, how does HeroQuest avoid the narrative exhaustion you mentioned. It seems like it should have the same issue..

Cool. I have Hamlets Hit points. I'm not that interested in Hill Folk / Drama System, but that's a personal preference.

Ha. it seems pretty cool. I'm only mentioning it because I just got it and people say it's like HeroQuest.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the OtherWorlds RPG? It seems a lot like HeroQuest

Sweet. I'm going to buy that book.

So lets assume I'm playing it RAW (which I'm fine with). Aren't most scenes more interesting if they're nail-biting, so shouldn't I always make it more difficult. I'm not clear on how I know when to make a scene more exciting or not (unless it's trivial). I'm not arguing that HeroQuest is wrong, what I'm confused about is how I, the GM, know not to *ALWAYS* make it more difficult because 99.9% of scenes are always more interesting if they're nail-biting. You know, and other HeroQuest GM's know, i'm just not sure how I (gary) knows.

I was reading HeroQuest Glorantha (2e) and it had a section about how important it was to set difficulty based on how interesting success/failure would be for the narrative. Lets leave aside the pass/fail cycle AND any attempt to simulate realistic difficulty. I'm confused about how this guideline helps me set the difficulty. I get it for the extremes - if it's something that MUST happen to move the story forward, then use a low difficulty, if it would short-circuit the story, then use a high difficulty (e.g., the player's one-shotting the campaign's antagonist in the first scene). But what about everything else? In general, what's interesting is for the players most of the time to "kind of" succeed (with some consequences, often a setback or a failure to achieve the primary goal) - if you look at most cool movies that's what happens. But how does that help me set the difficulty. Do I just always set it at some slightly high difficulty to get this effect? This can't possibly be how HeroQuest 2e works. I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding something here.

Hi! I got the PDF from you when I bought the softcover. How do I get my updated PDF?

So your character and mine are called to a crime scene, where it seems a victim has been killed! We have to find out who did it and stop them! As you're some kind of super-spy for arcane people. So you might use your 7W to hunt for clues to the killer (you've killed a bunch of people so you know how). Then, you'll have to figure out how to find the guy, and so on. So a whole adventure worth of scenes. Let's say I have "White Court Wizard 7W". Keywords that describe broad magical abilities, like this, confuse me on how to adjudicate them. Why couldn't I just say "I'm going to cast a spell to find the murderer and teleport him to a secure, warded location," which sort of ends the adventure if I make my roll. If I instead had "Black Court Vampire 7W," we all kind of know what being a Black Court Vampire lets you do, so I couldn't say "I'm going to use Black Court Vampire 7W to find the murderer and teleport him to a secure, warded location." Keywords that describe broad magical abilities seem like they would short circuit any adventure premise. HQ 2 Glorantha doesn't have this issue, I guess, because the magic system is very well described in the book, so it's pretty clear what Sprit Magic or Water Rune can do. Fate Accelerated Dresden Files doesn't have the issue because there are a whole bunch of mechanics that limit the scope of the effect of any ritual you make up. D&D doesn't have this issue because you have a limited set of spells that do specific things. So there must be *some* way of allowing players to have magical skill in HeroQuest II without allowing them to resolve any adventure premise in their first roll. I understand Keywords are supposed to be broad, but what keeps them normally from being adventure breaking is that there's a clear sense, narratively, of what they can do.

How do you adjudicate overly-broad supernatural abilities? Example: I'm running a Dresden-Files style supernatural investigation game, where the core activity is investigating some problem, then solving it If I have "County Medical Examiner 7W", it's pretty clear that I can't just magically resolve both elements of the core activity with a description and roll. However, if I have "College Trained Wizard 7W", it would make sense for me (or the character) to do something like I cast a spell to find out what is going on I cast a spell to solve the problem I think I'm missing something fundamental here.

Thanks JonL. I actually have both of those products (they get recommended frequently). I really really wish the people that own the Heroquest II licence would get things straightened up in a way that the company that made Nameless Streets would work with them on that product line. They really nailed it in showing what you could do with Heroquest II.

Cool JohnL.

Hmm... Sounds like I need to go through HQ 2 and HQG2 to figure out the differences. I'm looking for non-glorantha, but my guess is since Glorantha was released later (2.1) it's probably better.

Are there any major differences between the HeroQuest 2 system as presented in Heroquest 2 vs Heroquest Glorantha and Satar Kingdom of Heroes?

This should totally go in "how do I do that" under "how do I implement" advantages, disadvantages, and edges.