Re: Saga system

From: Rob <robert_m_davis_at_...>
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:02:57 -0000

Hi

If you play day to day, wont you will by and large be accruing too many Hero Points too quickly. Day to day stuff should get you relatively little in the way of Hero Points IMO. The heroic stuff is what nets you the big HP. In fact I would go so far as to say I would disallow the use of Hero Points to bump results on crop tables! To quote someone from a con game I run, 'Hero Points are for heroic actions not damage limitation!' But judging by the style of game some enjoy that may be a little mean.

In order to give Jane's calculator the night off howabout this;

Following Jeffs regime of giving a couple of HP at the start of the game and maybe 2 at the end, I assume that 2HP may be used in play and 2 for advancement. Thats 294*2 Hp per year or 588 HP's for character development. Imagine that character was Kallyr. Age 15 (for arguments sake she starts her adventuring career the year prior to the fall of Boldhome). Its now 1620, and she has been in play for 19 years. thats 19 x 588 = 11,172 heropoints to spend. Say she never put any points in her affinities at creation, she could theoretically gain the cult secret in movement week, 6 weeks later! However I suspect the Narrator will enforce the 60% rule so it would take a minimum of 125 days to learn the cult secret.

This seems extreme. So lets say you only give hp once a week. This means that the average player would be accruing something like 16 hp per season, which is 84 hp per year. Kallyr after 19 years would then have spent around 1596 hp.

Played another way, you ould say she accrues 2 to spend per adventure. She plays one adventure a season - not unreasonable. She spends half the 95 seasons time not adventuring. Thats still 750+ hero points through her career.

I'm not sure if these number prove anything, but I had a bash. I also apologise if there is any miscalcs on my part.

Regards
Rob

• In HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com, "jeffrichard68" <jeff.richard_at_m...> wrote:
  >
  > > That does sound beautifully elegant, on the face of it.
  >
  > Thanks Rob for describing our system better than I could!
  >
  > > But, for long-term development, surely if you're doing one thing
  > > (farming, say) you don't improve as much in a week as in three
  > seasons,
  > > or as in thirty years?
  >
  > I've never done a "thirty year" session - maybe if we were playing
  > Brithini I would. Conceptually, I've decided that there is no
  > linkage between game-time and amounts of HP. What seems
  reasonable
  > to me given the needs of the story is really the deciding issue.
  If
  > it is important that the players become better farmers after the
  > passage of a period of time, then they get a bunch of HP to spend
  on
  > farming related skills. And so on.
  >
  > > The other question of course is what you mean by "session" and
  how
  > that
  > > relates to PBeM play. How often should HP be awarded, when play
  is
  > > continuous, not in jerks?
  >
  > A session of play is whenever our players gather to play (usually
  > every other Monday night for my game, alternating every other
  > Wednesday for David's). I give them two HP at the start of play,
  > and hand out some at the end of play. I try to pace things so
  that
  > a given "event" or "scene" will be done in no more than one play
  > session. So the Stormwalk Path heroquest was paced so that
  > preparations took one play session and the quest itself took one
  > play session. Battle of Hofstaring's Flood took one play
  session.
  > And so on.
  >
  > Jeff