Low Level Campaign Massageing Re: Digest Number 256

From: Jane Williams <jane_at_...>
Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 21:40:07 -0000

Not all of us can spend all day, every day, keeping up with this list.
Certainly not me.

> > (Except for the player who wanted every skill listed on
> > his RQ character sheet to be listed on the HW sheet: and by RQ
> > standards, there were a lot of them).
>
> This could be a mistake

I'm quite sure it would have been a mistake. So I tore up his character sheet, and we started again.

>- one thing I noticed about HW is that with

> Improv penalties, one can do a vast number of the old skills quite
> readily wth a single ability

Especially if some skills are only notably high because of high stats.
Just give them Agile, and there's all those DEX bonuses dealt with in one go.

> > Then we did Occupations, and started to run into trouble. The
chap
with
> > the 18 POW and 18 Piety (yes, Pendragon Traits) who's a junior
> > trainee priest (no choirboy jokes, please) took Godtalker at 12,
> > dropped the "Initiate To", and was happy.
>
> Oh dear. We're making a direct conversion aren't we? =)

We're taking existing chaarcters, whose place in the clan is known and
understood. RQ did a lousy job of representing them in many cases, so I'm ignoring the RQ numbers and trying to concentrate on the characters as understood.

> If he's a trainee priest, I might allow him a devotee,
> though IIRC your game is
> sort of a proto-initiate kind of thing.

I wondered about that. He's devoted to Orlanth (small "d"), but not really up to the skill and knowledge levels implied by being a Devotee.

> Remember, however, that these folks will have been trained for
> their jobs/their parents jobs from an
> early age. Letting folks choose their careers and slope along
> till they are 18 is a very recent luxury, after all.

Which is why I insist they're all competent (1W) at one skill useful to the clan. For most of them, that's a craft/herding type of skill. My godi's apprentice picked "Pray to Orlanth" for his 1W skill.

> Godtalker at 12? Hmmm. I'd have given a 13

You're not the only one to suggest it: I'm considering an increase. My
original reasoning was that this is the level at which skills start.

> but you're working at a
> level of the game where the system might break down.

Really? I thought it was designed to be scalable?

> You'll find that
> the challenges have to be scaled back considerably

Well, that's hardly difficult.

> and that the heroes
> will have trouble advancing to more 'adult' stats.

Don't follow. In what way will they have trouble?

> > The fisherman got a modified version of Hunter: not too hard to
sort out.
> > Level 12 again.
>
> Easily done. I think that there will be some fisher-folk type
> keywords out there.

Probably. Is there a collection of extra keywords on-line somewhere?

> > The ones with crafter backgrounds we just had to make up.
> > And the guys whose background was mixed: learning hunting from dad
> > and brewing from mum, for instance, got one keyword at 10 and the
> > other at 8. If the same skill was listed for both, they took that
one at 12.
>
> Hmmm. Crafter is not very heroic

"Heroic" is not what I'm after. Not yet.

> but I'd be very willing to suspect
> that TR will have a *lot* of occupational keywords.
That's very nice for it: when it appears.

> Again, its sort of
> difficult to map over directly. Its not quite the same world.

It's the same world, just a different way of describing it. A better way, I think. I can describe these characters much better with HW than
I ever could with RQ, even after I added Pendragon Traits and Passions.

> Call me fudgy but I'd have been happier starting from scratch and
> experimenting with the game as written

This *is* the game as written. You chose the power of your "series": low, medium, high. This one is low, at the moment.

> You take the higher, of course. I think that is mentioned. I
believe
it
> is in the FAQ (if not, it certainly should be). There's no reason
to
> take the LOWER, after all.

But there could be plenty of reason to take the sum of the two. Or, more likely the higher + a bit. Otherwise the additional lower skill just gets lost.

> Give the heroes a stand alone feat. That's how we handle neat stuff
> given by Hero Band spirits. See Barntaros, The Hidden Gale in the
> Narrator's book or the extra stuff in the boxed set for details.

Nice idea, but the Affinity to the plant is exactly what I was trying to express for the bloodlines all along. Only RQ wouldn't do it.

> minor or petty deity worshiped by a clan ... to something that is >
more common -- tribe based or several clans
> in various places worship something similar -- Vangarth teh Flyer
> being an example of this) and that would provide an affinity.

That's an idea. In fact, in one case I *know* it's true, though the bloodline in question don't... they came to this area a long time ago from the NW, fleeing persecution, and they worship a female reed spirit with very long legs, called "Enslib". They have no idea who or what she was originally. What's left of her no longer has a language in common with them.

And the rest of the bunch: well, I'm sure lots of clans have a thing about Oak trees.

> > BTW. I already know they go in for sheep, and there's already a
plot-
> > hook set up for the Poss to ask the PCs for help. Just don't ask
who
> > was nicking the Poss cows!).
> >
> Um, that was us. But we'd be happy to blame you!

Oh, so that's why there weren't many left! (Except for that one very fine bull, when someone rolled a 01. Trying to rationalise that afterwards, I think the animal-starved Poss had done some sort of HQ, and this bull was the result. And my lot nicked it. There's a plot here, I'm sure of it.)

> I just hope those weren't my sheep. I just stole them, darnit.
Errrm... we'll put them back when we're done, OK?

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