Missing Link

[ImpishSkald]

I originally posted on the Game Aid thread, but following the advice over there I'm starting a new thread. I'm new to the game and really this style of an RPG. One of the things that we are seeming to struggle against is with Mastery of Runes (Earth, Law, Spirit, Darkness or whatever). It seems when there is a contest where you are not set against another person the person either succeeds or Fumbles. Gleaning understanding of a Rune or using a rune to understand a situation. So what would people recommend with that situation?

The other thing that we have ran into is with two people with equal level of Mastery a contest between two people seems to take a long time to resolve the situation. Which on one hand makes sense, but on another with my understanding of the system that's not the design. For things that aren't a big deal I can see just roll it out as one roll and stalemate or slight victory to one side or the other is OK. But when it matters... that one roll doesn't seem sufficient.

What am I not getting? I feel there is just a concept or something fundamental I'm just overlooking from this being a very different system than anything other than maybe the Fate system that I've had experience with in the past. I am so excited to have found this setting and want to try this system with it. My first playtest went a little off the rails from this missing link.

i.e. a Chaos Beast was released in Boldhome and I (GM) rolled 1's like Wil Wheaton... and there was fire...

Edited January 16, 2018 by ImpishSkald

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, ImpishSkald said:

I'm new to the game and really this style of an RPG.

One important question is which version of HeroQuest are you using as that may influence response.

I'll assume the HQ2/HQG version as that is what I can best respond to.

1 hour ago, ImpishSkald said:

One of the things that we are seeming to struggle against is with Mastery of Runes (Earth, Law, Spirit, Darkness or whatever). It seems when there is a contest where you are not set against another person the person either succeeds or Fumbles.

All contests work the same regardless of whether there is a specific foe or general difficulty, or whether there are abilities, keywords, or runes involved (runes act as keywords in general).  The level of difficulty will be one of the primary factors in determining the outcome.

Let's assume that Eirlys has mastery of the Earth rune at 5W.  As an initiate of an Earth cult, she can use the Earth rune as a keyword ability (not just as an augment).  She is confronting the clan chief and uses the Earth rune to present herself as the Earth Queen to get his cooperation.  He's a Hard Difficulty and the current value for that difficulty is 20.

The range of values that Eirlys can get are:  1 = critical; 2-5 = success; 6-19 = failure; 20 = fumble.  However, she has a mastery and the difficulty level does not have a mastery so she gets a bump up.  As a consequence her possible results are: 1-5 = critical; 6-19 = success; 20 = failure.  The bump removes the fumble option.

The possible rolls for a difficulty of 20 are:  1 = critical; 2-19 = success; 20 = fumble.  Cross-referencing the results you still get most results except a Complete Defeat since Eirlys does not have a fumble option.

If Eirlys is confronting the Earth Priestess instead though, and that's a Very Hard Difficulty at 14W, then the masteries cancel.  Eirlys still has the usual value range, and the Earth Priestess' possible rolls are:  1 = critical; 2-14 = success; 15-19 = failure; 20 = fumble.  All results are possible, and favor the Earth Priestess on the whole.

2 hours ago, ImpishSkald said:

The other thing that we have ran into is with two people with equal level of Mastery a contest between two people seems to take a long time to resolve the situation.

It shouldn't.  A Simple Contest is one roll as above.  In an Extended Contest, at whatever point one or the other side is pushed to 5 or more points, the contest is over.  Where there is an equal level of Mastery, that cancels out so there are no bumps up or down from that.  Still a Complete Victory or Defeat achieves that immediately.  Worst case would be where it's consistently Marginal Victories or Defeats and that could go to 9 rolls.  But the player has the options of:  1) using Specific Abilities to get that +6 bonus; 2) adding an augment to get the relevant bonus; 3) spending Hero Points to bump the result in their favor; 4) see if you can get the multi-foe penalty working for you.  From my experience 5-6 rolls is pretty typical and shouldn't be that long to resolve.

[ImpishSkald]

I'm using HQG. So in the last example of the Extended Contest if both contestants pushed to 5 points. So, I think that's something I'm misunderstanding there. If both contestants get a success on the roll, does the one that has the better margin or the lower roll of that success get the point?

I do see that I was doing part of that contest wrong just on the basis of the skill they were using. Both of them had 5W and I was interpreting that as like a 25. So yeah messed that up. I knew I was missing something.

[jajagappa]

32 minutes ago, ImpishSkald said:

I'm using HQG. So in the last example of the Extended Contest if both contestants pushed to 5 points. So, I think that's something I'm misunderstanding there. If both contestants get a success on the roll, does the one that has the better margin or the lower roll of that success get the point?

Yes, in HQG, if both results are the same (i.e. success vs. success, fail vs. fail), then the higher roll wins and gets a Marginal Victory.  (HQ2 used low roll wins, but I've found overall that high roll wins makes sense and tends to be easier to remember.)

[ImpishSkald]

Thanks for the insights. I appreciate it.

[jrutila]

In HQG you have to understand that the player's single roll is not about the character succeeding. You always need both rolls (player's and GM's) to determine the outcome of the contest (Victory or Defeat). The goal and outcome of the contest are always from the Hero's (the PC) point of view. Even when the opposing contestant is an NPC I tend to think the resistance as abstract and story based (is the Defeat interesting outcome at this point). There is a couple of cases when the resistance can be read from abilities: PC vs PC and PC overcoming his Flaw.

8 hours ago, ImpishSkald said:

i.e. a Chaos Beast was released in Boldhome and I (GM) rolled 1's like Wil Wheaton... and there was fire...

Out of curiosity. In this case, what was the goal of the contest? Were they driving the beast away? Or did they just try to survive it? Kill it? The outcome of this contest shouldn't be about the monster succeeding destroying Boldhome. It should be about the Heroes dealing with the monster. If they block it the city is safe but the monster just backs away. If they get Complete Victory (or even Major) the monster is dead and the heroes are celebrated. Marginal Defeat would mean the monster destroys part of the city but Heroes manage to prevent casualties. Complete Defeat would mean the Heroes are trampled by the monster and need urgent help (even its own story arc) to survive. The nine different outcome levels give you lots of juice for imagination.

I probably didn't answer any of your questions (I think @jajagappa did a great job there) but just gave my two cents for a new HQ player. Welcome.

[ImpishSkald]

It was more than one roll. Things escalated pretty quickly. The PC was trying to use the Chaos Beast as a distraction to cause some destruction and continued rolls lead to bad things. PC had multiple bad rolls and I had multiple good/excellent rolls. I rolled 1's 3 out of 7 times with the PC rolling 2 20's out of 7. It was a test run of the system anyway.

So yeah at the charts with the crit and fumbles coming up made things pretty rough. The dice gods were at play to help make things all nasty too. It was kind of comical and tragic at the same time.

[JonL]

When the dice go hard against them like that, do your best to come up with consequences that lead to more opportunities for exciting challenges to come. The "fail-forward" concept is your friend there. Make the situation more dire and the stakes higher with each failed roll.  If they pull through and succeed in spite of all the setbacks, it will be that much sweeter.

You can also make use the angle of the idea of not applying consequences until the end of extended contests. There's no "death-spiral" of piling on penalties from exchange to exchange, but the pile of rocks waiting to fall on you if you lose gets bigger & bigger (sometimes making an Assist action worthwhile to diffuse the threat). 

Sometimes the extended contest makes more sense from a dramatic fun standpoint, other times serial simple contests with consequences applied immediately is better, especially if you're aiming for grittier action rather than a pulp/high-fantasy/four-color feel.

[JonL]

On 1/16/2018 at 6:38 PM, ImpishSkald said:

I do see that I was doing part of that contest wrong just on the basis of the skill they were using. Both of them had 5W and I was interpreting that as like a 25. So yeah messed that up. I knew I was missing something.

 

On 1/16/2018 at 7:13 PM, jajagappa said:

Yes, in HQG, if both results are the same (i.e. success vs. success, fail vs. fail), then the higher roll wins and gets a Marginal Victory.  (HQ2 used low roll wins, but I've found overall that high roll wins makes sense and tends to be easier to remember.)

I take that idea a step further and have criticals happen when rolling your rating exactly rather than when rolling a one. This makes the rolling a bit more coherently blackjack-like, and more significantly makes it easy to resolve tied criticals. As a further bonus, it opens the slim door for someone without a mastery to upset someone with a mastery edge on a critical, e.g. Player with a 17 ability rolls 17, GM rolling 5w resistance  rolls a four. Player's crit-on-17 beats gm's crit-on-4. In that situation (which came up in the last game I ran), narrate something really awesome for the double crit, even though it's still just a marginal victory. In the recent instance, I had the PC's sword shatter as she struck a killing blow against an opponent charging her on horseback.

The only tricky thing to handle with that approach is abilities rated exactly at 20. I handle that by having the critical continue to happen on a rolled 19, while treating the rolled 20 as a regular fail rather than a fumble. The 20 bit usually comes up with a 17-rated ability rolling with a +3 bonus from an augment or lingering benefit rather than 20-rated abilities, as players will usually raise a 20 to a 1w at their first opportunity.