Aprewett

David, your post reads like you are rolling against the difficulty number. I thought the gm rolls against the difficulty and the 2 outcomes cross-referenced?

But if that is the case what was the success level outcome of the gm's roll?

I hope there is some examples of Flaws. I dont think I am doing them right. I got the impression that they are the Resistance or Difficulty rating against witch the player is rolling a suitable ability.

Is that correct?

Or

They are an abiluty like any other and the gm still sets a difficulty level to roll against? 

Major yes to the examples and not the short story stuff in HQG. But multiple examples and then some more. I have playtested a few board games and war games etc and the one problem between the developer who is imbedded in the system and knows what he is reading without really reading it and a noob trying to interpret what is going on.

So I could go with the idea that even with a player defeat, I can still rule it’s a victory but just not the sort of outcome the players may have had at the start. Maybe some important gear is damaged in the melee etc. Need to come up with interesting complications.

The penny is in slow motion free fall...

My confusion came from page 58 of HQG that states the GM also Frames the outcome - secretly. I have seen other advise by veterans of the system that does not match the as written rules. Which is fine but leads to confusion when you read threads that don’t match the text.

So in my original post and following that rule; the ghoul - me - thinks that eating the players is a good outcome.

But still no one as really answered my question about what happens if the ghoul wins the extended competition. Is it a total party kill. The advice seems to be no, you twist it narratively to the story to keep it interesting. But the rules don’t point to this way. They say - Players; name the prize, name the tactics and then the GM secretly does the same. So I don’t think to myself ‘kill enemy and eat them’, but some other softer option, based on advice here. But at some point this is not going to be the case. The big climatic monster does want to kill and eat. There is no advice on this outcome, but to find some softly resolution. Where is the threat to the players.

You can see how the system as written and the forum seem to be at odds - unless I am missing something.

I always liked the Harn system for skills, development and rolls.

A visual ‘how to play’ recording would be brilliant.

Sorry for the thread derail, but with so many vets on hand it’s great.

So my problem with all this and I am very much a novice. So I will try to explain in short hand so as not to write a thesis.

When you read all these threads for this system and the system its self leads to confusion.

We have system that as written and as I mentioned before delivered a consequence of defeat at odds with the desire of the players, so the advice is to just give them the outcome to greater or lesser extent, that was the frame, but what if the tables are turned and this happened to 2 of the 3 players, they were defeated. I give them a wound level equal to the defeat, but what if all the players went down?

My ghoul wants the same outcome as them, to kill them and in its case eat them. So if it wins by just the least victory level it gets that outcome also? But I remember reading advice that this is not how you do it, instead you assign the consequence of defeat level - hurt etc to them. I just can’t see how to use the Extended Contest in a physical conflict. Other contests I can see working.

I should probably give up and just try to wing some semblance of a system for myself. But what we novices need is more examples, clear examples from multiple outcomes. If all my players had been defeated via the Group Extended Contest what then? TPK? You would sort of think the outcome should be using the same system for both parties.

Sorry if I am being dense, I just cant see the system in action. It must work, but I just need more examples, otherwise I will just keep most system use to Simple Contests.

I should add in case it matters how I ran the contest.

The ghoul came out of the shadows and attacked pc1, so from that point pc1 faced the full difficulty of the encounter. Pc2 and 3 jumped in with magic and sword, so one had MOP -3 and the next MOP -6. I ran each contest separately with points mounting up on each side. The magic was all at range so that had to be narrated and I did plenty of fight narration and movement. But the mage failed first and then I think pc1 went down leaving pc3 on the same exchange to win the day. The Rising Action Resolution gave a Marginal Victory. The Mage who was defeated came out Injured, sort of a game over event as this was just the starting scene as they entered the villains lair. Can’t remember the other defeated pc’s injury and even the last man standing was Hurt.

We are going to have to do a redo, I am fairly sure I mucked up the difficulty level of the encounter, but that aside we came away with a unsatisfying experience. My only idea is to run individual simple contests chained together if I understand how that works and assign consequences at the end of each exchange. They should be able to play more tactically also by moving around and swapping out characters to keep the best fighter type as the one facing the full difficulty and the others snipping from the sides.

So I sort of get how its supposed to play out as a narration system but it’s like the system has two side by side resolution systems, ghosting along but not one clear way to handle situations.

Where do you find HQ1 please?

We just did our fist EC and it seemed to be a total balls up.

3 players v's a ghoul.

In the end only one player left standing and if I did it correct with the point score difference between him and the monster the monster only came out with a Hurt condition. The Frame was to defeat the thing, so now I am really confused as to how/when/why to use a EC. Probably operator error, but much confusion. What is the point of the 'Frame the outcome' if the system then gives a different result.

No expert, we have not got past simple contests yet. But for longer exchanges if Corvantir your players want to wearing down feel, but you don’t want bookwork, could a morale or momentum modifier work. It’s only temporary and will be lost or gained as the exchange plays out.

Has anyone experimented with more injury levels?

It just seems by dice rolls to go from hurt to really messed up quickly.

Maybe its not possible with the resolution levels as is.

Regards

Allan

And we don’t use Hero Points in our game, so I suppose 2-3 XP would work.

FYI; our corruption house rule. With minimal play testing and even less grasp of the rules.

Base corruption is set a 6. As a flaw it’s been set to copy his heightens ability score after char gen mods. Can’t remember what that is. At this stage we are thinking the flaw is static, so as he gets better at magic his corruption will get less.

Rolled by me the ref against the players magic occupation keyword.

Using the resolution points as a +/- from the roll. 

‘So if the player gets a success to my failure that reduces the base to 4 and this is added to his current corruption.

Currently working on a cap of 20, sort of as per the system with mastery levels.

When corruption hits 20 we do some sort of stigmata and maybe at 40 turned to chaos. I think the base level should go up when he gets to 20. And as per the original game the corruption can heal over time or with the aid of other cleansing magic. The only problem in morphing rules is the original has both temporary corruption, the sort that fades away and perminant, the sort that slowly cereeps up and is harder to reduce.

Any vet thoughts?

Ok, thanks. Just leave the dice as rolled.

How do I rule on this situation.

Success but the ref.

Failure by the player, bumped up by mastery, to a success.

How do a work out highest dice roll on a tie with the degree of success/failure, from a bump up/down?

Thanks

My HQG journey only started 18 months ago. That was also my introduction to Glorantha. Not really understanding the setting from HQG, especially the magic and creatures - powers of both. I thought I would have to delve into Runequest and along came the latest version. So I dived in and then started seeing masses of errata clarifications all over the place, so a few voices started calling for a official thread in one place and that was like pulling teeth. I don't understand a publisher who knows there is going to be errata, not starting an official thread day 2 after release, instead we all had to jump up and down begging. I gave up at this stage and realised I had pulled a clanger by buying into version 1 of the book and was never going to wrap my head (and time) around all the errata, let alone the rules. So in that time I must have spend close to $1000 buying current and old titles, I was loving what I was reading but the company that produces it... not so much. I have since given up on Runequest, the only thing I was half looking for was the discount code for the printed screen - I don't think its been sent, probably would not get it anyway unless I had spare cash. So I am generally a thumbs down with this publisher, not the fans though, deffinately the counter balance to my negative feelings.

Just my journey for those that might be interested in a newby's exposure to this place. They have my money, more fool me, diving in and not treading water for a bit to see if the temperture was ok. And yes I saw early on all the calls for an errata to HQ, but did not read the signs very well.

I thought about that but figured this SRD thinky is effectively HQ3.5

Just an FYI and may have been covered already.

@Ian Cooper pg 74 HQG, part 3, confused my from my first read until today, so a long time...

That section mentions 2 lasting consequences determined etc. I then tried to make sense of the bits that followed like parting shot, and thought I was so dumb that I could not match up the part 3 with parting shots and asymmetrical exchanges.  And now I know it was the publisher doing a poor job of cut and paste, thanks to HQ2. Please fix this and either marry the text up or put a page reference to page 82!

How dare you, come in here with your zombie boots and muddy up the place. Take your ravenous rpg hunger elsewhere mister...

Bloody barbarians!

Thanks for all the help, we brainstormed a possible system for the corruption and just need to see how it works.

My follow up question is about flaws. 

Is the value as suggested on page 47, after char gen and all points have been spent?

All contests in HQ are rolled against a difficulty/resistance,  so what ability do you use if there is no obvious one. Compulsive for example or blindness? There are no attributes to roll against. 

I really wish the HQ book line had more examples throughout,  its a real turnoff having to interpret even what sound like basic rules. Please please please put more in the srd.

Ps; one of our characters has something similar to compulsive as a flaw.

This week we had a tie on a failure - failure roll. Seemed odd that the higher roll still wins. Is that correct?

Thanks everyone,  gaming tomorrow,  when we will port over the other 2 characters and work out the corruption. Looking forward to using HQ and keen to see the new version.

Thanks. How does it increase? Is that a mechanic in the Flaw system? Sorry very new to HQ, with only a one session one off played a year ago and then we shelved it as I tried to digest Glorantha and felt I had to digest Runequest and whilted.

Maybe if I could be so bold; a working example of a creeping corruption from every spell cast. That eventually overwhelms and turn you into a abomination. My player loves playing spell casters and I need to get over this speed bump as fast as possible, incidentally one of the reasons I felt I had to play Glorantha with RQ first to understand the magic imbedded in the setting.

Symbaroum runs with two types of corruption; a temporary and permanent. I don’t really need to mirror that if it’s too difficult. There is a threshold which when reached brings in stigmas and when the total resilience is reached you are doomed. Just to inform on the mechanics a little.

Just so releaved to ditch the system and hope this can work.