Khelbiros

At a local gaming expo, my club demonstrated roleplaying games (mostly their own designs) to a mix of card, board and computer gamers. The idea was to come up with short, twenty minute demonstrations of a game. I thought this would a great chance to take the new QuestWorlds SRD for a spin. I'd previously run HeroQuest Glorantha before, but my group bounced off the setting, and from a GM perspective, I didn't like the adjudication: the resistance roll, bumping/cancelling masteries and then looking up the chart and narrating the result was time consuming. Even after running several sessions, I couldn't get into it. (Unlike, say, Fudge, where the players roll, look at the ladder and you can keep the action going.) But I was always fond of the free form skills and how you could evoke a character from descriptors alone.) Now QuestWorlds has got rid of the chart, and moved to a sleeker success-based system. Time to test it out! My scenario 'Rescue the hostages from the terrorists summoning Cthulhu', with the heroes all secret government agent monsters, like Hellboy. Below is one of the shortened demo characters: The scenario was all simple contests (roll and count success) THE WEREWOLF Concept: Werewolf bodyguard:10 Background: Trained athlete: 15 Free Skill: 10 Powers Werewolf: 5M +Enhanced senses: 10M +Regeneration: 10M +Claws: 10M Flaws: Get distracted by gnawing hunger 10 What worked: The index-card characters worked well, as players could read it and instantly grok what the character was about. The fact that you could apply any ability to any reasonable situation lead to lots of creative roleplay. There was a player who used 'Charming smile' to nearly every challenge. Players who hadn't roleplayed before, or only played it during the dim and distant days of high school picked it up easily. One character used their Free Skill slot to become a sniper, and quickly unpacked their rifle to take out a cultist sentry. The player-side went well—the new rules are easy to explain. Roll under=1 success, bullseye=2 success, roll over=fail. And the mastery was explained as an automatic success. They thought rolling low on the d20 was simple and understandable. Players instinctively tried buffing (augmenting) even though I hadn't explained the concept in round, so that worked—one round of buffing, then the next round of enhanced action. What didn't work: The resistance roll. Maybe it's just my brain, but it was a bit taxing to roll against each player action, compare successes etc, adjudicate the result. In the end, I was running it like a game with a static difficulty e.g 0 successes = Failure, 1 success - Okay success (Yes BUT), 2 successes - Awesome! That worked pretty well for the purposes of the demo and everyone had fun. I web-surfed to see if there were any QW hacks for removing resistance rolls. I don't think that outsourcing the roll to the players would work, but I think there's merit in having a static difficulty variant of game, perhaps tucked away in the appendix!. Anyway, those are my observations from recent actual play.

Thanks for letting us know. I'm keen to see how this all develops.

Any updates, or was this recorded somewhere?

For a good skill system, check out Revolution d100. There's a small group (15 or so) of core skills (Close Combat, Craft etc). Each one has a skill base derived from from Characteristic A + Characteristic B. You customize it with traits (or specializations). Each one of these gives you +30 to the core skill. The SRD is here: http://www.alephtargames.com/images/ogl/rd100_srd.zip I'm keen on BRP Star Trek; let us know how your project goes.

I could never get my TWGS to stay open properly. It keeps curling up. Also, I'd love one that took A4 rather than letter.

My understanding was that you could use the Support Action multiple times per conflict, provided it was based on a different trait than previously used and different from the Roll for Effect trait. So technically, one lead PC and a party of five PCs with a variety of different traits could buff the leader PC's roll significantly each round (providing they provide sufficient justification of using the Traits and so forth). Do you agree with this interpretation?

I'm reading through the rules and have some questions about conflicts. For a one-on-one conflict between one PC and one opposition NPC (or force), if the PC takes a Support action to boost their next round's Roll for Affect, it appears they still get a defense roll if the NPC attacks them in that round (as per the Robin Hood example). So assuming it's a chase conflict, and everyone is rolling Agility [Running], there's little point for a PC to perform a support action to boost their Agility [Running] on the next round, if they still have to make an opposed Agility [Running] check against the NPC in the current round (even though the NPC counts as the attacker). Is this correct? For the conflicts which involve the entire PC group, only one PC can 'lead' or 'Roll for Effect'. Is there a limit to how many PCs can provide a support action? For example with six PCs, one PC will 'lead'--could the other five provide support actions leading to incredible bonus stacking or just one? (I assume just one.) I think my group would prefer a situation where they all get do something in an extended conflict, rather than watching a lead PC roll and some other person support in the round. (This is what they're used to in other extended conflict systems such as the D&D4 skill challenges and so forth.) The rules for Many to Many conflicts advise there should be multiple opposition Resolution Point pools in this case. If so, are there any metrics or rules of thumb for: How many individual PC Resolution Point pools should there be for the conflict? How many opposing individual Resolution Point pools should there be per PC? If I had a six PC party, and just wanted a single opposition Resolution Point total, and a single PC Resolution Point total for a conflict, and wanted to give each PC the chance to Roll for Effect or Support each round rather than being a bystander, should I simply multiply the starting RP by the number of PCs involved? Or half? Let me know your thoughts.

Is possible to get a PDF of Dynamic in English?

Hey there. I'll be running a convention game in the future at an old hotel that was once a quarantine station. The organizers would like something with a hospital, nautical or quarantine theme; or even an Australian theme. (A lighthouse might work as well!) Something about isolation, being cut off, and things Going Horribly Wrong. Ideally: The game would run for around 4 hours. The game would come with pre-gens. They would have interesting backgrounds that relate to the scenario, and provide roleplaying hooks to enable the PCs to interact with with each other. Antagonism (mild or otherwise) between pre-gens is fine. I've run Sandy's 'The Derelict' before, to good effect. Let me know if you've got any other thoughts.

I think I had this trouble when I tried their d20 Modern demo. It kept installing a strange program when I ran set up. You could try this http://www.alteregosoftware.com/faq.php#WrongSetup or contact them directly. Or you could look at the Hero Lab Cthulhu 7 files, which would be my recommendation.

Thanks for the feedback. It's helping me figure out the game and setting. More updates! We finished making characters and We started a small introductionary adventure. The player who read the book complained about the 'mined' bronze in the setting, and said this sort of ruins the standard bronze age enconomy of trading/making bronze. After some discussion, we got the game going agian. The player with the Darkness/Law/Death runes changed to Darkness/Communication and Argan Argar. Some more questions! Should the ability 'Initiate of [Deity]' be a standard ability or a breakout under a rune? In the example characters, it looked like a breakout, but it's not really a spell. I thought only spells went under runes. If spells are specific breakouts under runes, does that mean that they're cheaper than buying normal abilities? Can other abilities suggested in the template (e.g. Characteristic) be stand alone abilities or breakouts under other abilities? One character had the characteristic as a breakout under occupation. We were confused about what was convered by occupation skills and what was covered by general abilities. A PC with a hunter occupation wanted a specific sneaking ability and we weren't sure where to put it. I ended up ruling that occupational skills were more about knowledge and players should stuff like hunting and and fighting as specific abilities. The PCs did standard adventury things like hagging, tracking and exploring. They failed a lot of the rolls, as I kept rolling higher than them. We discussed whether to) only have PCs roll without the GM's roll, or to only roll for something important and significant. The two rolls does mean that you get lots of marginal victories/defeats.

@Steve - Thanks for the clarification. I'll pass that onto the group. @Jajagappa - Thanks for the thorough feedback and response. Here's some responses in point form: Robust list of skills - Maybe I can start compiling one if this mini campaign is a success. Some players did like the freeform list. There are just some people in the group who like preset lists for things like this. HP - I might try it by the book and see how the group likes that. It's a similar experience/benny point system to Numenera, which they didn't like, but we'll see how it goes this time. Clan Questionnaire - I agree that the myths are chaotic. However, I could structure questionnaire around Greek mythology so we could see the progression of the myths throughout time e.g. Void -> Titans -> Uranus -> Cronus -> Zeus -> Olympian Rule -> Various demigods/mortal wars. However, I do believe that in it's current form, the questionnaire isn't good for new players. If the idea was to get new players interested in Gloranthan mythology and retain that interest, it wasn't a good fit due it its unclarity. For example, a Star Captain shows up in one of the answers. There's no context - is this a spirit or a guy with a spaceship? However, if the questionnaire introduced these concepts slowly instead and had context, it would be a lot stronger as a 'learn Glorantha' tool. Wyters/Treasures. These suggestions look great! I'll rework some of the abilities and clan treasures. Some more background; after two of the characters have darkness runes, and trolls are the clan's only allies, I've put the clan in the Torkani tribe. I'll drop by and give another update after the next session

Well, we did clan and character creation last night. Here's some post-mortems! Clan Creation Questionnaire My suggestion for those who were thinking of using the clan questionnaire to introduce new players to the setting is.... don't! Overall, the group founded it confusing and even for the mythology buffs, it was hard to piece together the oral history of the clan due to the lack of context. The clan appeared to get reformed and broken many times. Gods are described as dead and then show up again in the next question. The 'mythic style' of writing we found awkward and hard to parse. There were some odd grammatical/sentence constructs. We were doing the quiz round-robin, and people were picking some odd answers for the clan Wyter powers. We had a few laughs, but I think by the time the clan's storyline became coherent, people just wanted to push through and were picking odd answers. I think it's good idea, but think that the clan quiz needs to streamlined and made more approachable for newcomers to Glorantha. At least before I'd use it again. I'd have something that clearly details the mythic progress of the clan through the ages. I've got the somewhat nihilistic clan report here for those interest: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QexzmZ5sWA5IcLNuvVHGRVjzUp9sfMf_l1gdp2lEN8g/edit?usp=sharing. I'll edit this a bit before the next session. With the Wyter powers, should these be the clan treasures? Let me know if you've got any emergent plot suggestions/ideas for the clan. I agree with the advice above to skip all this stuff, build characters, and then fit the clan around them than the other way around. Character Creation So we started to make characters using HeroQuest Glorantha. Some points: One player wanted a robust list of abilities to pick from, rather than having to make them up. Is there such a thing for list-orientated players? Why do breakouts cost 1 ability point in character creation, but are half the cost with XP? A player was arguing that these no mechanical benefit to taking breakouts in chargen with ability points, and you're better off picking only main abilities doing chargen and breakouts when you get to XP. After picking runes and everything, another player was frustrated that none of his runes (Death, Law, Darkness) were encapsulated by a single god on the list. His preference would have been to start with a god and work backwards to get a collection of runes that could have all been activated for spells. (He likes reading a book and understanding the entire ruleset before making up a character, so I've given him the HQG book for the week.) Is there are Death/Law/Darkness cult? Is there a preferred house rule to decouple Hero Points from XP? My preference is for players to spend their HP points on boosting rolls, and just to get a flat amount of XP each session. What should this flat amount of XP be? Let me know if you've got any suggestions. Cheers. Next Session I plan to finish character creation, get each PC to add some NPCs to the clan, and to do short, starting adventure.

Hi everyone, I'm going to run a short game (four or so sessions) with my current RPG group. I've got HeroQuest Glorantha and the two Sartar books. The group hasn't played HeroQuest before, and all they know that it's a 'bronze age' style campaign. Is the best way to start with the clan questionnaire in the first Sartar book? It does seem a bit long - if anyone has tried it? Is it the best way to build a clan? Should the group agree on each answer, or just one person do one part of the quiz at a time to keep things moving? To get the group invested in the setting, I want them to design their own clan and build in characters that link to it. Otherwise, I was thinking of something like how the Dresden Files book has you building the PC 'world', where everyone contributes a fact or conflict about the world. Let me know what the best way to start this off would be. Cheers.

The commercial character generator Hero Lab has been updated for 7th edition Call of Cthulhu. It's a robust program for generating characters, managing their growth, tracking equipment and there's even a combat tracker.

Chaosium announced a new online character generator, The Dhole's House, for CoC7! I've played around with it and it didn't take long to make up a new character sheet PDF. https://www.dholeshouse.org/Default There's a G+ group for feedback and updates: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/108394060966260336873

A Quackstart!

I had good results with Crimson Letters; it's in the back of the 7th ed book and very flexible. If you run it as a short game, remember to increase the tension by following the haunting advice in the adventure. It's a strong investigative adventure but increasing the sightings gives it a bit more omph.

i've used an Arkham Horror board as a map for games set in Arkham!

Could we upload RuneQuest and HeroQuest material to the Cult Library or should we wait for equivalent forums to be set up?

I was wondering if there were any plans for a free HeroQuest QuickStart, along the lines of the Call of Cthulhu QuickStart, with basic system rules and a scenario? I'd like to get some people interested in the game, and having a free QuickStart would be a great way get them interested in the system.

Excellent. Just a request - could we get some more diverse pregens in the adventure? (e.g. local guides etc?) I think the last few AoC pregens have all been your stock investigator types from the US.

Hey mibagents, It sounds like its working out well for you. Are you going to run the bridge incident? I guess your PCs on the folklore group could rescue the NPCs. The map encourages exploration of the town. The vague door-to-door visits for the folklore group could use a map to provide something for the visual PCs to focus on.

Hey morganhua! It was a good hook; I hope it gets used elsewhere. It's still unclear to me what side of the bridge the PCs' truck is on. If they are stranded on the opposite side of the river, it doesn't make a lot of sense to drag the cars through the river and up the other side of the bank to where the Sheriff and other PCs are. However, it looks like your reading works out; something that should be clearer in the text. They were talking to various people, but also wanted to explore the town. They thought they could get some good leads on who might know what from the library. Otherwise, there's not much of an opportunity to explore the town. A group of NPCs was also touring the outlying farms. My Blaine was a bit more laid back than yours; he suggested, but didn't dictate exactly what the PCs would and would not do. Also, my PCs enjoyed the sandboxy aspects of the game than the linear field trip events. If my entire game had been the scripted field trip, we wouldn't have had much fun. The PCs were suspicious of Blaine after the bridge incident, and Blaine's 'accidental' shoving of a PC in the water was noticed by a PC and he was accused of a deliberate murder back at the farmhouse. After a round of skill rolls, social engineering and excellent arguments on board, the PCs had the NPCs on side after a fun kangaroo court roleplaying session. It highlighted the growing tension and paranoia in the group. I couldn't think of any reason for the Sheriff or Deputy to come by. Blaine couldn't give them a satisfactory answer about the two incidents. After Blaine was 'exposed', the PCs moved onto the Dreamgate plot. It's a sign of a solid adventure that Keepers can run it in different ways in different styles, and there's enough meat it for different events to appeal to different groups.

We ran a playtest of Episode 1, and completed in one session, for about 7 hours. The group was other GMs who plan to run a version of this adventure for our later convention season. I tried to run this as close to ‘vanilla’ as possible. Day 1 I showed the PCs a version of the Pasquallium handout, and the survey group PCs got excited about finding deposits of ‘contrarium’. This made them suspicious of Blaine on Day 1, when the site clearly had no Pasquallium. Blaine promised to take them to a site that was more likely to contain Pasquallium on Day 2. Meanwhile, the folklore group chatted to Agnus (can’t we spell it ‘Agnes’?) and gained some notes. I introduced the flower bed and Maclearan’s footprint. One PC going to the outhouse saw a Zoog. Day 2 The PCs ‘broke’ the scenario on Day 2. Firstly, the folklore group had said the previous night before that they were going to the library for most of the day. When the rain started, Blaine went to desert the survey group to make his telephone call, to check in on the welfare of the folklore group. Only, this made the survey PCs suspicious, as the other group was going to be snug in the library all the day and out of the rain! And the PCs just wanted to drive back to town and not wait three hours. The PCs didn’t feel that they were far from ton, so there was no sense of isolation. Driving back seemed to be the better choice. I had the truck breakdown and Blaine go off to telephone for repairs. A PC tried to go with him, but Blaine refused. The PC then rolled a Hard success to Track Blaine, but I fudged it and said that they couldn’t find his traces in the rain. Then someone made a Mechanical Repair role and fixed the truck. They were suspicious of the damage, especially after Blaine left, and returned to town. Then, the PCs got distracted by the collapsing bridge. This action sequence on the bridge was confusing to run, and I think needs to be clarified a bit. Maps of the area, and in particular, a diagram of the collapsing bridge incident, would have really assisted me with this section. How far out of town does Blaine abandon the group? It must be rather close if he can walk to a farmhouse and then appear at the broken bridge sequence. What if they try to follow him, and roll an Extreme success? What if they just drive back and can’t be bothered waiting? Perhaps include some Keeper advice on what happens if Blaine is tracked or escorted by the PCs. Which side of the bridge breaks? Is there another way back into town? If the truck is on the opposite side, how does the Sheriff’s team pull the truck back on the bank? Is it dragged through the water to the far side again? If it is on the same side, can’t the Sheriff just collect the surveying team? Can’t they just go back the farmhouse? The Sheriff went to get the folklore students (who were not at the farmhouse, but at the library!) Since most of the PCs were ladies, he didn’t really want their help, which kind of cuts them off from the action. Blaine seems to teleport into this scene in the written notes; I had him arrive with the Sheriff. When he accidentally knocks someone into the water, I assume he is on the opposite side to the survey group? This is a rather confusing incident and only serves to heap up more suspicion on Blaine. Day 3 The PCs tied up Blaine on Day 3, and convinced the other students to keep an eye on him. Day 3 was spent resolving the Dream Gate subplot and rescuing Emily. No one trusted Blaine enough to do the dig. It was hard to separate the group from Blaine at that point. What about including some notes on what to do if the PCs challenge and inhibit Blaine from carrying out his plot? Maclearan showed up in a drunken rage and threatened a PC with a knife. A PC got lost in the woods, but found the hut. He gathered all of the group, and they defeated the Men of Leng and captured one. They returned to their farmhouse and got the dynamite from a survey student. They went to blow up the Dream Gate, but had to fight off the moon-beast. Emily was rescued and her wounds/trauma tended to by the group. I ended the scenario with the Professor arriving who promised to look into the situation with Blaine. He put the PCs back to Arkham on the train, and the NPCs stayed behind as well. The Professor also promised to deal with the captured Man of Leng. This leaves it open for Part 2, as it creates a window for the mi-go to do their brain harvesting out of the influence of the PCs. The PCs were sick of Vermont and eager to return to Arkham. We await Episode 2, set at glorious Miskatonic! Player comments were: PCs thought that the students work better as undergrads, as the reference to ‘class credit’ is more of an undergrad thing. Why would graduates be doing the trip for class credit? Also, undergrad students are less likely to gang-up on, and mistrust Blaine. Perhaps he could be written as the Professor’s teaching assistant? PCs thought that the dreamgate subplot, and rescuing Emily, should be the main spine of the adventure, rather than field trip bits as they thought those were a bit railroady. The PCs got really obsessed by Pasquallium, and thought it would be good to put the Dream Gate near a deposit site, or near the Day 3 site (if Blaine is still in play). They were disappointed that they couldn’t find any Pasquallium, apart from some samples found near the Dream Gate. They thought that there was a lot of NPCs to relate to! Tips for other Keepers If your PCs tie up Blaine, I recommend ‘’the Professor arrives and sends the PCs home’ ending. It’s probably not elegant but it works. Perhaps the Professor could check-in by phone to see how things are going. The Professor could then arrive earlier if the PCs call him and complain about the goings on, or if people forget to check in. Think of a Plan B if Blaine is exposed earlier. Shift focus on the Dreamgate Subplot, or have the Mi-Go arrive under other pretences. Figure out the Day 2 sequence, especially if your folklore PCs are in a specific location and not a random farmhouse. If you find the field trip bits rather railroady like my group did, make the Dream Gate the spine of this adventure. On Day 1, introduce how Emily is missing. Maybe have the school teacher walk into the diner and ask about if they’ve seen her. Day 1 and Day 2, do the dreams and zoog sighting. Day 3, perhaps have Maclearan show up and chase a PC to the hut if they aren’t exploring the Sugar Maple woods. I allowed hunting rifles but no revolvers. I allowed a mining student dynamite (as you can just buy it from a general store anyway). This didn’t break the adventure. However, other players thought that there was no real reason to allow dynamite.