Heroquests

[Bill the barbarian]

On 2/19/2021 at 7:50 AM, Oracle said:

Patience is a virtue - and it seems to be the most important geas for all Runequest addicts ...

Oh so nicely said but so true! I had to wait about 2 and half decades to get an RQ I could call my own back. At my age that is cutting it close.

[Bill the barbarian]

 

3 hours ago, StephenMcG said:

I have been using HeroQuest to run Heroquest for my RuneQuest players.  Each character has a dual character sheet, one for his physical self and one for the Hero Plane....

2 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

I have heard that is an excellent solution for some tables. We have never been fond of the HeroQuest rules system, not quite enough crunch for our players. 

 

With thoughts like this I agreed to join PbF game of HQ. Poor @jajagappahad me trying to recreate an HQ character that I had whipped out in 2 hours and in considerable depth in RQ. After a month of trying to considerable frustration (probably on both parts) and heartache I did a terrible thing and dropped from his game without anywhere near enough apologies or explanations (sorry sir and sorry to my fellow players that I let down). It was a bad time and I had way too much on my plate and I ended up losing a whole lot of projects at the same time, but anyway, my point... not a simple solution or in my case as satisfying as I thought it was going to be. My grandiose designs to do something very like this myself went up in disappointment.  

[jajagappa]

7 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

After a month of trying to considerable frustration (probably on both parts) and heartache I did a terrible thing and dropped from his game without anywhere near enough apologies or explanations (sorry sir and sorry to my fellow players that I let down). It was a bad time and I had way too much on my plate

No worries!  PbF's are a different breed of game on their own, let alone working with a new system like HQG, which is decidedly different than RQG. 

While my RQG heroquests are influenced in ways by my HQG experiences (perhaps most in the flow from station-to-station and a greater use of Opposed Rolls for non-combat tests), they are still RQG in design and process. 

[Bill the barbarian]

1 minute ago, jajagappa said:

While my RQG heroquests are influenced in ways by my HQG experiences (perhaps most in the flow from station-to-station and a greater use of Opposed Rolls for non-combat tests), they are still RQG in design and process. 

Oh good (thanks the gods)! Then one day (in the future) )consider me for a position in an RQG PbF, but I will not apply for such unless I am sure I have the time your cnsiderable talents deserve. I really thought you were a great GM and had some good stuff on the go there. 

Cheers and thanks!

[Brootse]

On 2/19/2021 at 3:34 PM, Soccercalle said:

Any news about the things we have been waiting for a couple of decades, official RQ rules for Heroquests? We was promised that they would follow soon after the new rules. I think it is great that the Jonstown Compendium gives us scenarios and settings. But I think that Chaosium should prioritize official Heroquest rules and official cult descriptions. That is more important than "the art". I would rather prefer an ugly word-file in 2021 to the most beautiful book ever in 2027 or something.

Yeah. I don't get why they weren't included in the core rules. Heroquests are more integral to games set Glorantha than Sorcery is.

[HreshtIronBorne]

We got a bunch of the basic cults and bare bones sorcery. We could have AT LEAST gotten some bare bones Hero Soul rules or something. I dunno. Even just some basic rules and where to look for stories to turn into quests would go a heck of a long way for new players. 

[Shiningbrow]

13 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I don't know because I keep also reading other people on these forums say that Chaosium "should" prioritize the cult book more because "obviously" you can't run games with only the rulebook's cult, and how Chaosium "should" prioritize the Sartar Homeland book more because "obviously" you can't force people to go and use the older HeroQuest Sartar book, and how Chaosium "should" prioritize the books on Nochet or the West or Kralorela or whatever because "obviously" you can't ask fans to play "yet again" in the same Sartar+Prax sandbox that they've had for 40 years and "obviously" they should change things. Only not change things like advance the timeline to 1625, for some reason...  so yeah I think there will be people complaining either way 🙂 

I think you're missing an important point. All of the examples you just mentioned would require its own book (or at least, very large sections of one). We're talking about putting in a few pages. For something that had been promised decades ago. That is supposed to be a very important part of the RQ experience. So, I'll reiterate my stance - I thing Chaosium has dropped the ball by not including (a few pages on) some general Heroquesting rules in the RQ:G book. A section in the RBoM would have been appropriate (I can only presume that there is zero magic related to Heroquests...!).... A section in the Cults book would be appropriate... (it sounds like cults have absolutely nothing to do wtih Heroquests now...).

As a comparison, both the sections on Spirit Magic and Rune magic were detailed in 4 pages each (the rest are just sample spells). Sorcery took 10 pages to detail (plus sample spells). And, we now have a Red Book of Magic, that in a way, makes those chapters on spirit and Rune magic superfluous (well, obviously not to that extent, but why do we have a whole new book on magic which we've (largely) already got, but yet again we don't have even a simple (simplistic?) overview of the very much awaited Heroquesting???)

(don't get me wrong - the RBoM is great! I'm merely arguing that the premise of "we should be patient" is a fallacy, and that the onus should be on different priorities of what the fans have been wanting and asking for - especially those waited for a long time)

 

13 hours ago, lordabdul said:

so yeah I think there will be people complaining either way 🙂 

Of course.... 😛

[Lordabdul]

9 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I think you're missing an important point. All of the examples you just mentioned would require its own book (or at least, very large sections of one). We're talking about putting in a few pages. For something that had been promised decades ago.

Well, first, my tongue was somewhat inside my cheek when I wrote that comment, as several people seem to have noted 🙂 

Second, I think another issue was just that, during these decades, nobody came up with heroquesting rules for RQ that any of the Chaosium people were really happy with. At least that's the impression I get from various interviews and mailing list archives. IIRC, Jeff posted a "yes, I think we've finally cracked it" a couple years after the rulebook was published. They possibly wanted to put the new rulebook behind them before tackling that problem.

But hey, I started RQ with RQG so I don't have the decades of "waiting" for this. I don't care that much, and I don't need these rules yet (although arguably other newbies who started with RQG might already be at the point they need them by now). Personally speaking, the heroquesting rules I've seen so far in the JC have left me cold. I get a hunch that the official rules might not be my cup of tea either so I casually started jotting notes down for my own rules. They seem to line up with some of what @Runeblogger has on his blog (you can check part 3 of this 3-post series here, it's the one that contains the meat of his rules... use the "Translate to English" button at the top if you don't read Spanish) but it's too early to tell.

Edited February 22, 2021 by lordabdul

[Shiningbrow]

15 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Well, first, my tongue was somewhat inside my cheek when I wrote that comment, as several people seem to have noted 🙂 

Oh, I so missed that 😞 I wondered why you got some of the responses you did.....

I read @Runeblogger's HQ rules... not completely impressed. Some things yes, other things no. Bonuses and penalties for temples, etc and Runic affiliations ok - but then, what about Heroquests that span days (or even weeks or months?) Using runic powers - cool.

Knowing what the 'curse' will be if you fail - I don't think that fits.

Nor do I think that every Heroquest should entail a gamble of known skills/powers/ etc... sometimes, most definitely!

Margins of success/failure aren't mentioned - and I think that should be significant.

[Lordabdul]

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Bonuses and penalties for temples, etc and Runic affiliations ok

And bonuses for day of the year or starting location or community investment, yes. These are the things I also have in mind. For the rest, you can throw a rock at the internet and hit at least a handful of heroquesting rules, whether on the JC or on some random people's websites. That will give you ideas, both for things you want and things you don't want (which is useful too!). My guess is that there will be very little rules you actually like out there... which means the probability of liking the official rules will be low. Expect to be disappointed or underwhelmed, if only on account of having built up expectations over the years that frankly can't be matched. Which is why I don't think people should be this impatient about them.

Personally, I don't care too much about the rules because I can make some up myself, and I expect the official rules to not have the crunch where I want it (based on the White Bull campaign on YouTube). What I'm genuinely looking forward to however is the approach for running heroquests. That is, avoiding a boring myth lore dump before the adventure starts. Supposedly Jeff and Chris Klug have figured a way to involve the players (who are potentially newbies who don't know much about Glorantha) in creating the myth "as you go", during the heroquest. I can vaguely picture how that could work but I'm interested to see how far the final text will go. Plus all the cool details about identification/ranging/etc., summon of evils, and magical roads that have been teased by Jeff. Some of these texts actually contain a few tidbits that completely cleared up some of the questions I've had about heroquests, and will be great improvements over everything I've read so far from the older books.

Edited February 23, 2021 by lordabdul

[French Desperate WindChild]

33 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

My guess is that there will be very little rules you actually like out there... which means the probability of liking the official rules will be low. Expect to be disappointed or underwhelmed, if only on account of having built up expectations over the years that frankly can't be matched. Which is why I don't think people should be this impatient about them.

there is a difference between liking (or not) some unofficial rules and liking (or not) the official rules : the official rules are ... official. That means,(good or not) that any further scenario published by chaosium or in JC, would probably follow the official rules.

If we have 10 authors with their own rules because THE rules don't exist, you will find some inconsistencies between the scenarii (stats, rewards, etc...)

Of course  we can adjust, of course a publication is not only rules and stats but story. But at the end of the day, the quest of the runes and the period of the heroes will not suffer to have the rules about gaining runes and hero power.

But we are discussing about a work in progress. The white bull campaign episod demonstates we are near the deliverance.

Happy you are to have not experimented the suffering of so long time without these rules 😉

 

[HreshtIronBorne]

5 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Personally, I don't care too much about the rules because I can make some up myself, and I expect the official rules to not have the crunch where I want it (based on the White Bull campaign on YouTube). What I'm genuinely looking forward to however is the approach for running heroquests. That is, avoiding a boring myth lore dump before the adventure starts. Supposedly Jeff and Chris Klug have figured a way to involve the players (who are potentially newbies who don't know much about Glorantha) in creating the myth "as you go", during the heroquest. I can vaguely picture how that could work but I'm interested to see how far the final text will go. Plus all the cool details about identification/ranging/etc., summon of evils, and magical roads that have been teased by Jeff. Some of these texts actually contain a few tidbits that completely cleared up some of the questions I've had about heroquests, and will be great improvements over everything I've read so far from the older books.

These are the vital crunchy details that would make running a Hero Quest much less of an ordeal for new players and GMs. I have just started trying to GM my own games for friends after being a player for over a decade. I thought it would be super easy and I knew a ton about Glorantha amd RQ. This is false. 

Trying to just find stories about gods is hard, much less trying to turn them into something of a gameable adventure. Even just taking one of the already published Quests out of owned material and showing how they would play it would go a helluva long way. 

 

I don't really have the attention span to parse the White Bull campaign videos for information. The format for VoD Roleplaying overwhelms me. 

[FungusColombicus]

On 2/20/2021 at 3:11 PM, lordabdul said:

I don't know because I keep also reading other people on these forums say that Chaosium "should" prioritize the cult book more because "obviously" you can't run games with only the rulebook's cult, and how Chaosium "should" prioritize the Sartar Homeland book more because "obviously" you can't force people to go and use the older HeroQuest Sartar book, and how Chaosium "should" prioritize the books on Nochet or the West or Kralorela or whatever because "obviously" you can't ask fans to play "yet again" in the same Sartar+Prax sandbox that they've had for 40 years and "obviously" they should change things. Only not change things like advance the timeline to 1625, for some reason...  so yeah I think there will be people complaining either way 🙂 

To tell you the truth... Chaosium should prioritize ALL THE DAMMED BOOKS (even those that we have never considered such as Marine Life of Glorantha, The Empire of Wyrm Friends, etc...) and release them at once in the next 72 hours or we collectively will whine and complaint about Chaosium priorities until the universe ends...

What people don't realize is that predicting what is the priority of Chaosium is a HeroQuest by his own merit.

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Trying to just find stories about gods is hard, much less trying to turn them into something of a gameable adventure.

This is one reason why the Cults book is so important to have available.  All the pantheons, the monomyth, and the key stories for ~100 deities before time.  That then becomes a solid reference to work with in shaping heroquests and turning into something gameable. 

[HreshtIronBorne]

49 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

This is one reason why the Cults book is so important to have available.  All the pantheons, the monomyth, and the key stories for ~100 deities before time.  That then becomes a solid reference to work with in shaping heroquests and turning into something gameable. 

I had no idea the Gods and Godesses books would be quite that extensive. Even more excited for them now!

[soltakss]

20 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I read @Runeblogger's HQ rules... not completely impressed. Some things yes, other things no. Bonuses and penalties for temples, etc and Runic affiliations ok - but then, what about Heroquests that span days (or even weeks or months?) Using runic powers - cool.

The thing about HeroQuesting rules is that nobody likes all of them.

I would encourage people to read as many takes on HeroQuesting as possible and take what you think is good, discarding what you don't think would work in your game.

 

[Shiningbrow]

10 hours ago, FungusColombicus said:

and release them at once in the next 72 hours

What the...????? THAT long?????

[Shiningbrow]

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

The thing about HeroQuesting rules is that nobody likes all of them.

I would encourage people to read as many takes on HeroQuesting as possible and take what you think is good, discarding what you don't think would work in your game.

 

True that!

But, that does present the issue of accessing them...

I think I'm at about 6 of those takes so far... (depends if you include the HQ/HW stuff...). Yours and Mongoose's are closest to what I like (which, I think, is a more RQ mechanical version of the HQ/HW set - yes?)

[davecake]

I personally think the rules for heroquest rewards that they described in the White Bull campaign sound great. Flexible, not immediately unbalancing to a game but scales to high power effects, lots of potential for interesting customisations for particular campaign needs and ideas. So that is a great start for official rules I am going to like.

Now, that is obviously incomplete - we know of heroquests that have different effects, such as powers for your wyter, resurrecting dead gods, etc. and they will hopefully be in fully developed heroquest rules in the future. But that is just more to look forward to. 

And already, Passions and Runes in the base rules help set things up nicely for the sort of things I'd like to see in heroquests better than previous editions of RuneQuest.

Another thing I am liking is what isn't in them. I really dislike the 'Super RuneQuest' style of rules, and I'm glad that they will largely avoid this. I don't want all my hero PCs to be running around with 800% skills, it just doesn't seem very RuneQuesty to me, and cuts out a lot of interesting plots. That's my preference, and there are plenty of other sources if that's what you want. 

I want them to have a lot of cool magic that they can invoke though, and that looks like what we'll get. I've probably got enough ideas now about what is coming that I can improvise my own rules if I need to before they get published, and they'll be close enough to the official ones. 

But what I am definitely looking forward to is the same as @lordabdul - guidance for running HeroQuests that move away from the fairly rigid 'repeat the story' model (that is often confusing and offputting to people from outside the Glorantha world, and often awkward to run while giving the players enough agency to improvise and shape the story), to something more open and flexible. I want maps of the heroplanes so we can understand the interactions more, heroquest scripts that allow for flexibility and variation, rules for building up wyters and other resources - stuff that gradually fills the world of heroquesting, moving away from the model of dropping into a scripted 'choose your own adventure' sequence, and more like gradually moving you into a world in which sophisticated magicians contest against one another with elaborate rituals in the magical otherworlds - the world of the Hero Wars. 

 

 

 

[Shiningbrow]

22 hours ago, davecake said:

moving away from the model of dropping into a scripted 'choose your own adventure' sequence,

As a general playing idea, yeah, that'd be great.

However, that's really not what Heroquesting was about - and isn't about to the vast majority of cultists.

There were 2 powers that tried that "gradually fills the world of heroquesting" - Arkat, and the God Learners. I don't think I need to say much more, do I?

(but, players want to munchkin...)

[kr0p0s]

I remember reading on the forum somewhere about Malkioni being able to access rune magic through heroquesting. I imagine that this would be through a more exploratory method possible interacting with the mythology of the more pantheistic belief systems. Not to change or break the heroquest paths in the style of the Godlearners, but using rune affinities to access rune magic.

[davecake]

1 hour ago, Shiningbrow said:

There were 2 powers that tried that "gradually fills the world of heroquesting" - Arkat, and the God Learners. I don't think I need to say much more, do I?

Not really the point I was making, but... if you think the Hero Wars isn’t basically ‘oh crap, here we go again’ on all that, you haven’t been paying attention....

[Dissolv]

Honestly I was very bummed way back in the day when the Heroquest rules were promised, but not delivered.  That was the heydey of my Runequesting, and I ran multiple long running campaigns with different (and overlapping) groups of people.   We had some very good times and pleasantly passed a lot of impoverished youth or just sleepy small town days with this wonderful hobby. 

As the campaigns went on, I had to make up my own stuff as I went along for "Heroquests".  At first I didn't even have the concept of "performing the Lightbringers Quest", or punching through to the Gods Plane, or such things.  I took my cues from Greek Mythology or snippets from Wyrms Footnotes (thank you Sir Ethilrist!)  Without clans performing big ceremonies, most things were quite literally travel adventures.  The players had to actually find a hole to the Underworld and travel there, often climbing down hundreds of miles of caverns, gradually breaching the magical barriers.  Or they would go to troll lands, have a bunch of Trollpak adventures, and if they passed the tests they were allowed "all the way down".  Things like that. 

So for me, originally, Heroquests were very long, dangerous adventures to exotic locations with semi-worldly, or otherworldly inhabitants.  For those of you who played old school D&D it would be much like running the Giant modules, and then the Drow Modules, to culminate in a other-Planar adventure taking on Lolth in her home plane.  Heady stuff!

But to make it even more Gloranthan, I found it had to be personal.  By which I mean personally transformative.  Often the characters most impacted by the event would never play the same way again.  They would be freed of some limitation, or be strengthened in some way that was far more than would be gained by normal play, no matter how many skill checks and POW gain rolls were made.  The characters would emerge changed.

To my surprise, the players were equally as transformed by these epic adventures "far from the fields that we know".   Often they would go into the big adventure a fairly passive, reactive type, accepting whatever the adventure of the week would be, and trudging along like a good hero should from quest to quest.  After some of these big marathon sessions, they would often have a serious eye-opening moment "you can do that in this game????" and would start interacting with the world much more actively. They might take on roles as Rebel leaders, or try to toss Halcyon Var Encorth (sorcerer version) off of Griffin Isle.  They might dare to challenge the Gods themselves for their community's right to live.   All of these my players have done, but only after one or more very epic quests.   I think they would mostly be called "This World Heroquests" nowadays, but there were definitely some extra-planar hijinks in there. 

It doesn't have to be super high powered either.  My favorite one to this day was when one player joined the Zarings and initiated, as an adult into their ways.  He had to survive a winter in the wilderness armed only with a dagger.  We played the whole thing out, with him struggling to craft javelins, devise small traps, craft leather, survival for lean-to type shelters, the works.  His sheet was covered in experience checks constantly.  Wolves treed him, but he learned he could swing from vines and run on branches, escaping them like a squirrel.  His character toughened up and became so talented that when Orks found one of the hated Vikings and tried to hunt him down, he deftly out maneuvered them, Jungle Book style, ambushed them with stealth and Javelin skill, and finished the captain off in heroic melee, wielding a wood and obsidian sword he had crafted himself, with only his own leather gear and dodge skill to defend him.  After taking the Orks metal gear, bows and arrows, the rest of the winter was a snap.  However the character had been massively transformed, and the player was hooked on the game system in a massive way.  This was his third adventure. 

So that's what I want from a Heroquest.  So I understand how hard it is to make rules for this sort of thing.  By its very nature it is personal, hard to easily convey the necessary impact of the event, and tough to peg the risks and the rewards too. 

I don't want a by-the-numbers "how to perform the Lightbringers Quest every time you think it might help.  The Dragon Pass and Six Ages games suffer a little of that, honestly.  You cross to the other side a LOT.  Then again, I was utterly unware that the idea was to retrace the footsteps of the Gods.  In my campaigns, you were always carving your own path, so the accomplishment was never dimmed because someone else had done it first (even if they were divine).   The rewards I gave were always things unattainable in normal game play.  Increased stats, minimum skill success raised to 40% (that one was amazingly abused by the player who took it), sometimes an item, but typically magic items were not glued to the hero's sides in my campaigns.  They were more like one time solutions for a specific problem, and then the Rune Masters went back to "normal" Iron gear.  The rewards made the characters personally better.  One guy got the Ki critical skill from the Nihon rules, and was pretty happy with that.   These days I would even root the reward even more in the role playing, like always a positive encounter with <Elder Race> as a reward.  That type thing. 

End of the day, when the players do something like Heroquesting, I want it to spark wonder and mystery and even fear.    The character should be changed at the end of the adventure -- possibly strengthened, possibly massive weakened as they pay a great price for failure/success.  And the player should be inspired as well.  I want them to really feel it, and see at the end that they have really accomplished something important.  It is tough to make rules for these sorts of thing.  It is equally tough to do without rules for these sorts of things, and a lot of it really is in the hands of the GM and the players, ultimately.  That said, I LOVE the two published Heroquest adventures in the Death of Orlanth era.  Still a bit scripted, but I would totally like more of that please.