RE: Solitaire rules or rules without DM

From: Mike Holmes <mike_c_holmes_at_...>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 13:05:49 -0500

>From: "thanksforfish" <thanksforfish_at_...>

>Does anyone know of any heroquest rules that allow 2 players to play the
>heroes with no-one dedicated to playing the DM ?

As with any case where there is no sole GM (narrator in this case), the key is to distribute that person's normal duties. So you simply have to decide:

1. Who sets adversity for the characters (assigns challenges, and resistance ratings, etc). One way is to have the other player set adversity for your character.
2. Who gets to narrate the results of contests? Again, you could merely have the other player do it for your character, or split it like player narrates his own victories, other player narrates failures. Also assigment of mechanical consequences can be married to this or split out before the narration occurs (requiring narration to match consequences).
3. Who gets to add setting details. You can probably simply allow anyone to add anything, or come up with a more complex split.

You can split these less evenly, like having one player do all of the setting, but the other player set all of the adversity (deciding when the setting attacks and whatnot).

If you think about the duties of the narrator, you can probably split them up in an ammenable manner. Like Jane says, once you've done that, I think HQ will work admirably without any changes in the rules.

Mike