OK, cool. I was unaware that you'd written up the HQ already. I thought it was going to be tailored to the events of play.
>So I don't see the "mythic" stuff as being
>inherently high-rating as much as "adding cool, mythic color to what
>we're doing." I'm actually pretty confident that the heroquest I wrote
>is...for lack of a better term, low-powered mythic.
Almost seems to be a contradiction in terms - what I can't accept is that any hero quest isn't about doing amazing things.
But I think that I've found something in reading the examples, that sorta fixes things for me, perspective-wise. That is, when you go into a Heroquest to, say, fight against Orlanth to get his attention, you're representing somebody who could have defeated Orlanth - say, maybe Yanafal Tarnils or somebody. So, in order to make you seem stronger, the heroquest makes Orlanth beatable - not easy, but maybe he's a 10W3. Not even superhuman.
So, basically, in re-enacting these events, the heroquest becomes a sort of "force multiplier." That is, you seem to be doing things that are way beyond your actual capacity. So your actual power level is less important. If you are Orlanth climbing Kero Fin, then it's not the mundane world resistance, but maybe 5W2. I think I can deal with heroquests at low power from this perspective.
>From another very philosophical perspective, the myths are acually probably
just about real men who actually weren't superpowered, but their deeds were
inflated to make them seem so. So the heroquest is just a humanization of
the myth again so that you can follow in the actual footsteps of the actual
event. This matches the whole "magic in the mind of the beholder" philosophy
that I mentioned before.
So, as long as we're the right characters for the quest, I drop all opposition that I might have had.
Mike
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