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Garwalf

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Posts posted by Garwalf

  1. I'm interested in running Gloranthan games online--possibly for Gen Con Online-- but I have never run an online game before. So I've got a random list of questions. Sorry if this is a little disjointed.

    If I want to run something online--like RQG, 13G, or HeroQuest, which of them works best with Roll20? Are there any materials available for them like the fillable character sheets I see for D&D? How the heck do I get adventure material up on the platform?

    I've also played on Discord, and I can see that working for "Theater of the Mind"-only play. I was in a game this last weekend where the audio/video chat was over Discord, and it had a useful dice-rolling macro. Does anybody know if that is available to anybody?

    @Ian Cooper, if you don't mind me asking: What tools did you use to run HeroQuest for the Virtual Kraken? (I was too late to sign up, and the game was way too early for me in the Central time zone.)

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  2. On 5/29/2020 at 4:54 PM, Bergguy said:

    The Moana suggestion might resonate strongly with my group because half of them are obsessed with Disney princesses. But hey! If that what it takes to steer my group into the realm of myth, so be it!

    I'm surprised nobody has mentioned it here (or anywhere else) before: The day I saw it, I thought Disney's Brave was a great Orlanthi myth:

    You have a red-headed, high-spirited female protagonist (clearly Vinga) who makes a terrible mistake and then has to try to set things right. And what's more Orlanthi/Vingan than that?

    • Like 4
  3. On 5/30/2020 at 7:05 PM, Mankcam said:

    The Man With No Name Trilogy (ok, yep these are Westerns, but the vibe can be thrown into Glorantha in a major way)

    Deadman (another Western, but it feels like a HeroQuest or the Spirit Plane)

    Of these films, I think I've only seen The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but I like the idea of Glorantha feeling a lot like Westerns. I know that Robin Laws has discussed this on Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff. To paraphrase: RPG adventurers are like the "heroes" of a Western: They are violent and outside the norms of society, but society needs them around to protect against even *worse* threats.

    Along these lines, can anybody think of good classic Westerns set at a White fort or settlement, and the concern is the conflict with threatening forces outside? Any films like that could have a good Pavis vibe.

    Forgive me if I've missed it, but has anybody mentioned The Seven Samurai or The Magnificent Seven?

  4. Here's a question I have about the pass/fail cycle:

    If the heroes have been failing a lot, there's a good chance they will have accumulated penalties, but the logic of the pass/fail cycle* suggests that when the heroes have been failing a lot, they should get an easier victory. The two ideas seem to work against each other.

    I haven't run enough HQ to see how this works out in actual play. Am I overthinking this?

    *recognizing, yes, that the pass/fail cycle is a tool, not a rule.

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  5. Thank you to the OP and to the respondents who I feel have given me "permission" to use something more generous like 4d6 x 7 to generate ability scores.

    Lately I've liked ability score arrays for the sake of balance, flexibility, and allowing players to start quickly. For reference and comparison:

    • The 5th edition of That Other Game has a standard ability score array of: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (Total: 72/average: 12). Add another 12 into the mix for your seventh RuneQuest characteristic and you're set--at least for humans.
    • 13th Age in Glorantha recommends an array of: 17, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 (Total: 81/average: 13.5). Add another 14 into the mix for your seventh characteristic (for a total of 95), and you still have base ability scores that could be generated by "low" rolls (rolled ability scores totaling 92 plus an extra 3 points)

    I haven't had a chance to form a RuneQuest group yet, but

    Even though I'm not currently playing, I tried rolling a character to see what it's like and I was really disappointed when I rolled up some truly pathetic characteristics. People can argue all they want that it doesn't have that much impact on the game, but it sure doesn't *feel* heroic to have your avatar in the game world below average in everything.

    • Like 1
  6. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I've bought the dice to support the following solution:

    I stick out a huge-*ss red d20 on the table to indicate the difficulty level--a nod to the ever-present Red Moon. (And, no, I don't know how I'll indicate masteries yet.)

    Each player has 2 d20's of their own--one red (for the narrator/opposition) and one of any other color.

  7. On 11/28/2018 at 4:48 AM, Ian Cooper said:

    So, the game has gone through some eras of understanding....

    Nowadays I would suggest that judicious usage of stretch penalties that have a little more oomph i.e. -3. -6. -9, -W might be a better tool, and we can then discard this rule, which is confusing.

    I definitely like the idea of having one stretch penalty rule rather than separate rules for stretches and for specific ability bonuses.

    Thanks to @Corvantir for bringing this up. This was the next thing I was going to mention (honest!) For me the big confusion was that, as written, I understood the specific ability bonuses to work in different ways, depending on the challenge:

    Against a personalized opponent, specific ability bonuses/penalties depended on the participants in the contest. For example, if the hero were a Lankhor Mhy sage using her "Heortling" keyword to fight, she would be at a disadvantage fighting a Lunar soldier.

    Against an abstract resistance, specific ability bonuses/penalties depended on the abilities of other heroes. So if that Lankhor Mhy sage were using her "Heortling" keyword again--this time to walk through snowy woods, she would suffer a -3 penalty if one of her companions had the "Hunter" keyword, and -6 if that companion had the "Walk through woods on snowshoes" ability.

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  8. On 11/28/2018 at 5:03 PM, Ian Cooper said:

    I think the MOP rule exists to allow players to take down something with a Nearly Impossible resistance, by tag teaming it, especially if the first up players fight defensively to reduce the RPs lost from a defeat. I think that is interesting enough to make it worth keeping. However, a player should probably not suffer a MOP against a resistance, the resistance should be picked to be multiple opponent worthy.

    This makes sense, but it is never how I have read the rules as written.

    Like @jrutila, I have been confused about the MOP rules as written in HQ2 and HQG. HQG, pp. 81-82 explicitly addresses *players* as the ones subject to MOP's, and then goes on to discuss how having followers may affect those penalties. HQG p. 107 talks about bunching militias and war gangs together into a single resistance. I feel like there's nothing in the rules as currently written to square this circle. (And I just realized that @JonL said this earlier and better than I.)

    Again, the more explicit you can be, and the more directly you can address players and GM's, the better.

  9. On 11/27/2018 at 9:30 AM, Ian Cooper said:

    I actually had a conversation with @Jeff about this yesterday for the new core rules version. The headline version is that we will be going with a new improvement system, that is simple, and influenced by Prince Valiant, Greg's other storytelling game. We would drop baseline opposition increase, and recommend that you increase the resistance between 'seasons' of your campaign (where season is defined as season of a TV show ending with you taking down the current big bad etc). When you increase the resistance we would recommend that you pitch previously mildly challenging opponents (i.e. moderate resistance) as now easier given your increased competence (low). Although, we set resistance via story needs, credibility pushes us to imply that the players have improved relative to those around them, and now as bigger players will meet bigger challenges. Your stories should reflect that.

    Overall, I like the direction this is going. I like the idea of obvious hero improvement relative to challenges, and I definitely like any direct advice to GM's, which is what this sounds like.

    I have one question: The way you have phrased this, it sounds like all hero "improvement" is really accomplished by the GM fiddling with resistance levels, so the players don't make any changes on their character sheets. Is this correct? If so, that may be a bit of a challenge for players coming from other games where they are used to seeing the improvement in their heroes. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but again it may be something that will need to be addressed directly.

  10. I like the rules of thumb that you 

    On 12/7/2018 at 4:29 AM, Ian Cooper said:

    My rule of thumb, which once appeared when discussing rune magic for runequest is that you can affect an area "about the size of an elemental" or in simpler HeroQuest terms, about the size of a room. And you range is anything within sight. Anything larger or further tends to require a ritual.

    But I was wondering if others had thoughts on this?

     

    I like this rule of thumb, and I think it would be a good idea to lay it out pretty clearly, preferably supported by examples.

    Your mention of rituals makes perfect sense to me, as somebody pretty familiar with Glorantha. I think newbie players may need some help understanding the distinction between what their characters can do while on the latest cattle raid and what members of their cult or community can do by acting together.

    In general, I like the idea of stating pretty explicitly what players can do with magic. I know that it's a point of pride that HeroQuest doesn't take up space with stat blocks, but the fact is that sometimes it's useful to set aside a little space to explicitly lay out how certain concepts can be best applied in playing the game.

    • Like 1
  11. On 5/1/2018 at 12:22 AM, davecake said:

    I don't want full NPC stats a la HW back, but I would like to move towards a bit more detail than current HQ2. Even just a list of a few abilities the character is good at, a few notable weaknesses. 

    Even if they are not used to set difficulties, they are still useful to explain results (eg if you failed to overcome them, mention their strengths, if you beat them soundly describe it as exploiting a weakness), and while I certainly think narrativist concerns overrules simulationist ones, a little consistency and verisimilitude can improve any narrative that has some realist aspirations. 

    I like the way that HQ2 suggested handling animals (and, by implication, NPC's): Set a block aside with a description and notation of "Significant Abilities" and "Exceptional Abilities." A quick summary like that makes it easier for a GM to run the heroes' opponents in a contest, instead of having to plow through paragraphs of exposition to find a couple of "gameable" nuggets of information.

    • Like 2
  12. Also, please clarify and emphasize that "success" and "failure" refer to the players' rolls, while "victory" and "defeat" refer to the results of a contest--i.e., that it's entirely possible to "succeed" on an ability check and still meet "defeat" in the contest. The last time I ran a session at a con, I found that players had difficulty grasping the concept that their victory or defeat hinged on more than their own dice roll. No doubt they were coming in thinking of that *other* game using d20's.

    Incidentally, some of the "clever dice tricks" mentioned in the thread of that same name look like they should clear up some of this confusion in play:

     

    • Like 2
  13. On 10/16/2018 at 6:59 AM, Ian Cooper said:

    I'm having a peer at how Prince Valiant does this, because it is part of HeroQuest's DNA....

    Now knocking off the grandiose zeros you get something like 10XP to earn an advance, 1-5XP per session, averaging 2. That gives us an advance about every 5 sessions, on average. Of course, resistance does not increase in this system.

    Now some kind of mirror might be that we give you 1XP for showing up. 1XP for any Major+ victory or any Major- defeat (failure can be a teacher, if you survive). Capped out at 5XP a session. Then when you get to advance you can two from the following.  You can take any one item only once, and you cannot apply the improvement to the same ability or keyword (or keyword that an improved ability was a break-out ability for.

    • +9 to an ability or +6 to a keyword
    • + 6 to another ability or +3 to another keyword
    • A new ability at 13
    • A new ability at 13

    I'm hoping to hear suggestions for refinement of the list, but I do want to give out significant bonuses. Remember, at this rate, it will only happen once every 5 sessions, so getting a mastery on a keyword would take you 20 sessions of spending your main increase on that ability.

    I am tempted also to improve XP handouts for any kind of result beyond marginal: 1 for minor, 2 for major, 3 for complete, but remove the 'showing up' bonus and lower the cap to three. That way, every contest that has a significant result gets you something, but we still cap out to control how fast you can advance. A complete victory or defeat is overwhelming in learning terms at that point.

    Of course, overall, we have additional bookkeeping beyond the benefits and consequences, which is what that system helps avoid.

    Does that seem any better?

    Given these options, I would prefer to only give out XP for Major+ Victories/Defeats. That reduces the bookkepping and, more importantly, makes those Major+ victories and defeats that much more special.

    As others have already pointed out, any variant on the XP system presented here will mean *very* slow advancement for groups that don't play very often. What would this mean for adventures (like most of the existing printed HQ material) where the main rewards come in the form of opportunities to add or improve abilities?

    On 10/16/2018 at 7:04 PM, Ian Cooper said:

    I'd also not let you earn XP from a contest you spend hero points on

    Like many here, I personally don't like the idea of setting up a player conflict between "I need to spend this hero point to succeed spectacularly" and "I need to save this hero point so that I can advance the ability later. I think of hero point spends as a moment when the hero is inspired or just plain awesome, so it seems like spending hero points and advancing could well go hand in hand. But, then, I realize you may have your own reasons--and a bit more playtest experience than I.

  14. On 10/5/2018 at 10:22 AM, Ian Cooper said:

    Hi all,

    It is time to get your feedback on new mechanisms for handling improvement. There are two aspects to the changes: (1) when the base resistance increases (2) how you improve abilities.

    Just as note, we have made benefits and consequences more symmetrical, but that is not the object of debate in this thread. I am interested in your feedback on the Experience Points and Story Progression options.

    This is a current draft of my thoughts, but I would love to hear what you think.

     Resistance Progression

    Your GM may decide that resistance to your actions gets harder, as the campaign progresses. This reflects the trope of the type of challenges you face getting tougher as you improve.

    Session Progression

    In this case, after four sessions of play, your GM will increase base resistance by 1. After every subsequent two-session interval, it increases by another point.

    Story Progression

    Your GM may also prefer a strategy that mimics a TV show more where the resistance does not increase during a season of the show, allowing our protagonists to get more competent as the show progresses towards its climax. In the next season though the resistance usually goes up, and the writers reflect this with more challenging opposition in the new season of the show.

    In that case your GM should bump the resistance by +3, +6 or +9 for the next campaign you play with the same characters. The size of the change should reflect the increase in your previous abilities in the last campaign. For example, if in the last season you increased your occupation keyword by +6, your GM may decide to increase the resistance by +3 or +6 to reflect the more challenging opposition in the new campaign.

    No Progression

    Your GM may also decide that the resistances do not get harder as the campaign progresses, reflecting the PCs ability to disregard minor challenges, and simply choose harder resistances to challenge the players

    ---------------------------------------------------

    I like the idea of having different options for how to alter the Base Value.

    Whether you call this "Resistance Progression" or "Difficulty Progression," please make clear the difference between the difficulty name ("Very Easy" to "Nearly Impossible") and the difficulty number (e.g., 6 to 14 W 2).

    (I will add that I just drove myself crazy leafing through HQG and HQ2 to see if there was a distinction in terminology in the existing rules--only to find that HQ2 talks about "Resistance" and "Resistance Number" while HQG talks about "Difficulty" and "Difficulty Number.")

  15. On 8/9/2018 at 8:50 AM, JonL said:

    When handling group contests, I used to roll as many dice as I had players all at once, and the die that landed closest to each player at the table would be that player's opposing roll. It's super fast and works really well when everyone is sitting around an actual table, but it's less clear when folks are scattered around a living room on couches & easy chairs.

    While looking over the Chessex booth at Gen Con last week, I had a further inspiration. I bought several pairs of d20s in an assorment of colors, two reds, two blues, two greens, etc. Next time I run a game, I plan to give each player one of a color pair, while I keep the other. when a group contest rolls around, I'll roll the corresponding dice - and everyone can then see at a glance which die matches with which player.

    Here's the "stupid dice trick" I want to try the next time I run HeroQuest: Make sure every player has 2d20: One red die and one of any other color. When the player is in a contest, he or she rolls both dice. The red die is the resistance roll and the other is the hero's roll.

    (I stole this from a game of 7th Sea or the new Star Wars, where every single roll was made by the players, not the GM.)

    I'm hoping this will combine well with the publicly displayed huge resistance die.

  16. On 8/9/2018 at 8:50 AM, JonL said:

    For a long time now I've been setting an oversized d20 down on the table with the current Resistance face up, so that it's easy for everyone to compare their rolls. I use a step-down layout one like MtG players use to make it easier to find the face I want. I've toyed with the idea of using a different colored one or more than one for Mastery levels but that feels awkward. I might use a base or something down the road.

    I'm not familiar with this kind of die. How is different from the "regular" d20 I've been using since my AD&D days?

  17. On 10/16/2018 at 6:25 PM, JonL said:

    Lots of good stuff here. I second the Go stones as HP tokens.

    This past weekend I added another prop: I took a bunch of white and red poker chips and marked the whites with +3, +6, or +9, and the reds conversely with -3, -6, and -9. Handing them out proved faster, more visually apparent, and less fumble-prone than my previous die approach. 

    I recall fondly a player laughing, "Man, I gotta get rid of this thing." while holding a red -6 chip in his hand like it was heavy as lead.

    I have also heard from Robin D. Laws on Ken and Robin Talk about Stuff that this is a lot more visceral for players than toting up mathematical bonuses and penalties.

    The next time I run HQ, I definitely want to hand out *something* physical to indicate to players their bonuses/penalties. I had been thinking of just doing index cards. It will take more time, but I can specify what the problem is.

  18. On 9/2/2018 at 5:17 PM, jajagappa said:

    p.70: It's not obvious that the Group Simple Results should use the scoring from the Extended Contest Resolution Points table.  And overall I find that the Group Simple Contest is the hardest of the different contests to read through and understand.

    I concur.

    May I add: It would be useful to have advice for the GM on when it is and when it isn't a good idea to use Group Simple Contests. When I have run demo games, I've found myself using them a lot because I wanted to reflect all the heroes contributing to the resolution and I didn't want to use an extended contest. If it's normal to do that a lot, please make that clear to GM's.

    • Like 2
  19. There is an element of the community rules I do not fully understand.

    It is not clear what to do when the heroes all belong to separate communities. My reading of the community rules is that there is an underlying assumption that all the heroes belong to the same community. The opening sentence of "Gloranthan Communities" in HQG, p. 119 appears to say it pretty much outright.

    If that is the only way that communities can be used in HeroQuest, please make that specific and give guidance on constructing a party where all the heroes share a community.

    I can imagine any number of campaigns where the heroes might be working together but all belong to different communities. Consider the typical group of adventurers in Pavis. Pavis:GtA (p. 176) suggests that a hero's community is most likely going to be his or her temple. However, most adventuring parties in Pavis are going to include members of a bunch of different cults.

    • Like 1
  20. This isn't a single ruler per se, but a way the rules are presented for play--particularly the tables. I think the best thing that can be done to make the next printing of HeroQuest clearer is to edit the charts to optimize them for clarity in play. Each chart as presented in the text helps explain one particular rule, but when they are all gathered together, they are very hard to follow.

    For example, in HQG, the "Pass/Fail Difficulty" and "Difficulty Level" tables are right next to each other--but one goes from "Very Low" difficulty at the top to "Very High" at the bottom, while the other goes in the exact *opposite* direction--from "Nearly Impossible" to "Very low."

    Different players (including me) have proposed solutions to these problems with new tables that bring a lot of related information together. For instance, I came up with a table that brought together the tables for "Pass/Fail Difficulty," "Difficulty Level," and "Base Value."

    As you probably know, you can find them on the "My HeroQuest Gaming Aids" forum: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/6839-my-heroquest-gaming-aids/.

    • Like 1
  21. My heartfelt condolences go out to Greg's wife and family.

    Like many others here, I have derived great enjoyment from Greg's work over the years--most notably what he did to create or "channel" Glorantha.

    I only met him once, and I was blown away. He was a magnetic public speaker and even more, he was gracious, generous, thoughtful, and charming when I had the chance to speak one-on-one with him.

    In short, what he did and who he was made my life a little better.

    • Like 2
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