Communities as HeroQuest Characters

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Grievous said:

On 6/4/2018 at 5:52 PM, Joerg said:

Greg used to run Hero Wars games where every player represented a community, in turn represented by a very limited number of abilities and a single score for each subunit of the community. There was some resource management involved, too.

I played a game at some incarnation of Tentacles where each played controlled one uz faction of the Blue Moon Plateau, with the overall challenge to provide the optimum food to the oldest Mistress Mother to give birth to the new form of Surface World uz, untainted by the Curse of Kin. In our game, we managed to locate the cap of one of the eight planetary sons of Yelm - actually the top tier of his ziggurat - and attempted to transport it to Blue Moon Plateau. We didn't consider that this Son of Yelm also was an incarnation of Sedenya, and were intercepted by forces of the Empire. The game ended there and then, but as a narrator I would have allowed a second game where an underworld ambush to retrieve that thing from Lunar safeguarding could have been staged.

I don't think there is anything like this published as an rpg. The concept is provably playable, although creating this as a genre pack might be kind of hard.

I'm very interested in this idea, as I've been planning to use Heroquest for community/larger scale stuff as an addition to my Runequest stuff. Currently at the raw idea stage, but I think it has merit. I'd love to hear more about this particular idea/execution if there is more to know!

This has been a while ago, but basically each faction had an elite Mistress troll ability (IIRC with a few breakouts) in the high mastery region, a few Dark Troll abilities in the low mastery region with maybe 2 breakouts, trollkin abilities (possibly at varying levels for values, soldiers and food), and a few insect herds (divided in adults and maggots) whose abilities could be used as well.

The game was "turn based", and at each turn the faction had to fulfill certain obligations like feeding the faction and its dependents, leading the seasonal rites, pleasing the ancient mistress in her pregnancy, and using the rest of the faction's abilities to either augment such activities or to launch specific other activities.

Searching for the right magical food included far ranging patrols (covered by various flying units, like value trollkin moth riders or bat-winged trolls themselves). When an interesting site had been found, the artifact had to be dug up, which (for my winged, armless bat-trolls) meant sending in the maggots to excavate the item.

 

Jeff RIchard hosted a similar game with HeroQuest at  Kraken, about two years ago. Two groups of five players each would play against each other. Group one was slightly less veteran Gloranthan and got to choose the setting (which turned out to be Melib) and their faction (options supplied by Jeff, they chose Prince Harstar and his Holy Country allies), group two then was happy to take Zaranistangi demigods teleporting in to the "Mastakos" temple city in the north of the island.

Each group had five communal resources, War, Magic, Harmony, Wealth and Fertility. The game was "turn based", much like Greg's Blue Moon Troll game. Each turn, each group would have to deal with a domestic problem, an external problem, and whatever problems the other group presented to the opposition, and projects of their own. One resource was really good (IIRC 17W), one resource really bad (IIRC 12, Group 1 had Wealth at max and Magic at its lowest, Group 2 the other way around) and the rest with good or at least fair vaöues (3W and 17, again IIRC). You had to have an unused ability to do anything. With three tasks being the norm, two of the abilities could be used to augment or have extra projects, like really hard heroquests resolved in a simple contest.

So we brought back the Sword of Tolat (without traveling to Fronela), or called in Harrek and the Wolf Pirate to counter the Zaranistangi/Amazon alliance disrupting all naval contact to the Holy Country. Lots of fun stuff dealt with like the Icelandic sagas dealt with a summer spent going raiding in Ireland: "That summer he went a-viking in the western Isles. When he returned...."

 

In comparison, Greg's Hero Wars game was a lot "grittier" and dealt with details glossed over  in Jeff's game. It isn't quite fair to compare those two games because Jeff's game lived from the indirect and occasional direct interaction between the two groups.

Both games were very memorable to me, and left me with a thirst for more of this.

[soltakss]

I have used Communites as HeroQuest characters for a long while.

In the Birchbark Chronicles supplement for Mythic Russia, I have Cities and Rivers as HeroQuest characters that can be used to augment, assist or oppose Adventurers. 

The beauty of HeroQuest is that you can use Abilities and Breakouts to customise these and make them very personalised, bringing out what is important to those places.

You can use the same principles to describe a Clan, a Kingdom, a City, a River, a Mountain or whatever you want.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

I have used Communites as HeroQuest characters for a long while.

In the Birchbark Chronicles supplement for Mythic Russia, I have Cities and Rivers as HeroQuest characters that can be used to augment, assist or oppose Adventurers. 

Same thing for ships, as per "Men of the Seas", but have you played the communities as player characters?

Men of the Seas actually suggests the possibility of playing the ship as the character and the crew as sidekicks/breakout abilities.

While mentioning Men of the Seas, the concept of "Ports of Call" sounds like the HeroQuest version of the Traveller UPP, and could easily be translated to such a setting. (This also avoids the trap of single biome planets. Having a planetary starport with one or two adjacent biomes only makes sense. Defining an entire planet with a biosphere that way? Usually bollocks.)

 

[soltakss]

On 6/9/2018 at 1:27 PM, Joerg said:

Same thing for ships, as per "Men of the Seas", but have you played the communities as player characters?

No, I am normally the GM.Narrator/Whatever, so haven't played a community.