I am working on starting a Lunar Glorantha HeroQuest game.
One of my players is creating a character who is a dragonnewt
reincarnated into human form who wishes the goal of his character to
be to ascend into draconic form eventually. In light of this, I have
been giving him information about the dragonnewt path to becoming a
dragon.
Last night a player of mine brought up so concerns he has over it, and
tonight we had a discussion about it and it basically seems to come
down to the fact that he doesn't particularly like the avenues the
setting creates for him to achieve his goal. I think
I am not sure exactly how to handle it. A transcript of the
conversation (posted with his permission) is below. Any suggestions?
Player: Don't get me wrong I want to try the HeroQuest game.
Player: But to be quite honest, the setting is not very appealing.
Player: What I'm hoping is, I can work past my problems with the
setting and have fun with my character.
me: ok.
Player: Yeah
Player: So we'll see how it goes
Player: I need to at least give it a chance. =)
me: So what exactly do you dislike about the setting?
me: if you sent anything I missed it...
Player: Sure hold on
Player: Player: I don't know, it just doesn't interest me very much.
It seems like a lot of mythological fluff with only a bit of real
substance behind it.
Player: Whether or not that's right, it still feels that way.
me: what do you see as substance?
Player: Stuff that makes me feel like this is a place that actually
exists.
Player: Politics, economy, culture, etc etc.
me: erm
me: Thats all in the Imperial Lunar Handbook...
me: the two-page write-ups are brimming with cultural stuff
Player: Yeah, but even when I looked at the Darjinni..
me: and it talks all about economy and politics in there
Player: It was just like "Well yeah that's kind of cool...but eh"
Player: I don't know.
me: I mean myths are discussed a bit, but thats because they are
important to the politics, economy, and culture.
Player: I really wish I could better explain to you what's bothering me.
Player: =/
Player: But I'm not even sure I completely know.
me: hmm.
me: Yeah
me: I wish I knew too.
me: :-P
Player: One of the things that did throw me off though is that when
you told me about how Dragonnewts became a Dragon by shedding all
their personality traits and everything
Player: And it kind of made me think "Well there's another thing about
this world that is going to make me adjust the way I want to play my
character to have any semblance of achieving my goals"
Player: I like the idea of doing things my own way, carving out my own
path.
me: "The life of a dragonewt consists of always bettering himself,
mastering his emotions and reactions to events so that he may advance
to the next stage of being. Each stage of dragonewt development
requires that the dragonewt constantly strive to master specific
emotions and personality traits. The goal of every dragonewt is to
react with conscious deliberation at all times."
me: That is a more thorough explanation of it.
Player: What emotions and personality traits am I supposed to master?
Player: That's still rather vague.
me: Crested Dragonewts: The crested dragonewt must master his
Aggressive-Passive, Brave-Cowardly, Energetic-Lazy, Stubborn-Docile,
and Unreliable-Dependable personality traits. These are the most
primitive traits and emotions that the dragonewts must master.
Beaked Dragonewts: To advance to the tailed priest stage the beaked
dragonewt must have mastered his Curious-Apathetic, Leader-Follower,
Impulsive-Cautious, Nervous-Calm, and Suspicious-Trusting traits.
Tailed Priest: The goal of the tailed priest is to become a full
priest of the dragon religion. To do this he must be able to take the
form of a dragon, and have mastered these personality traits that
allow him to deal with the outside world: Honorable-Dishonorable,
Greedy-Generous, Impatient-Patient, and Extrovert-Introvert.
Full Priest: The full priest strives to complete the mastering of his
personality traits so that he may begin to learn to master the world
around him. The traits that he must master include: Clever-Dull,
Innovative-Conservative, Optimist-Pessimist, and Constructive-Destructive.
Player: And what do you mean about by "master"
Player: Does that mean eliminate?
me: " The goal of every dragonewt is to react with conscious
deliberation at all times."
me: And I am explaining to you how dragonnewts do it.
me: You are already not doing it their way.
me: However, the thing is what you are seeking to accomplish will
eventually require heroquests
me: Probably multiple ones
Player: And that's cool. But I was getting frustrated because it just
seemed like the already established world stuff was getting in the way
of me doing what I wanted to do.
Player: Like "You do it this way or you get crap"
me: They are difficult to begin with..trying to do obscure ones are
even more so.
me: Well see the thing is...
me: This isn't like D&D.
me: Culture and society actually matters
me: You can make your own way...
me: Its just that much harder.
Player: I'm not worried about culture and society. I can work past
those. That's conflict.
me: Its like deciding you want to, by yourself, not only become the
ruler of your country but ignore your culture and the members of it on
top of it while at the same time ignoring traditional revolutionary
tactics entirely.
Player: What I was getting the impression is to make my "acension" I
had to do it the DragonNewt way. Which went against my original
character concept even further because for some oddball reason they
don't use "Dragon Magic" because it keeps them from following the path
to becoming a dragon, which makes no sense to me.
me: "A seeming irony of their life is that the dragonewt regresses,
become weaker and less suited for advancement every time that they use
their powers. Each use of their immense magics gets the dragonewt more
and more enmeshed in the problems of existence by creating debts which
must be paid before passing onto perfect draconic being."
Player: Yeah. I honestly don't like the concept of that.
me: Well see the difficulty I am having is this...
Player: And I don't want to give the impression either that I'm
expecting to become a Dragon in a skip and a heartbeat.
Player: But I don't want to have to take one clear path to do it.
Player: I want to be able to carve out my own way and have it be
possible, because when going into this game I thought that was the
premise.
Player: It's a game of possibilites that isn't bogged down by a rule
for everything like D&D
me: hmmm....
me: ok.
me: Thats fine.
me: Let me think about this for a bit.
Player: Ok
me: see if I can come up with a solution
Player: Because even in D&D, if I wanted to create my own Kingdom,
there are a million and one ways I can go about doing that.
Player: Everyone of them possible, but none of them assured.
me: see
me: This isn't quite the same as conquering a kingdom.
Player: I understand that.
Player: But this is a goal oriented game.
Player: That is, your character is trying to achieve a certain goals.
Player: But if they only way to achieve those goals is through set
methods already established.
Player: Then that's not fun.
me: Its more along the lines of saying "I want to become a god in the
Forgotten Realms but I want to ignore the fact that gods need worshippers"
Player: But see that's different, because many Gods have cheated their
way into the position and then gained followers.
Player: Look how Cyrick did it.
Player: Not very traditional, don't you think?
me: He got his position because Ao gave it to him.
me: If the worshippers didn't accept him he would have shrivled up and
died.
me: how about this...
Player: I thought he became a God because he killed Leira and someone
else, and stole their portfolios during the Time of Troubles
me: no
Player: Eh, nevermind then. I must be thinking of someone else.
me: He killed Leira after he was already a god.
Player: I know someone cheated their way into Godhood.
me: How abotu this? We start over from the beginning. Your character
isn't a reincarnated dragonnewt. He wants to become a dragon. He
doesn't have any dragon magic.
Player: Ok, what type of magic does he have?
me: up to you. Common, Theistic, Animism, or Sorcery. But you have to
realize that, except for common magic, that all of it requires you to
follow some sort of divine being. And common magic won
me: won't help you when you with your heroquests.
Player: Again a conflict with the mythology, heh.
Player: I suppose the Dragon Spirit could work for that.
me: Its where magic comes from in Glorantha
me: eh.
me: How about I just ask the group if they would rather play in a
different world?
Player: Not just on my account.
me: maybe others feel like you do?
me: ::Shrugs::
Player: You could ask them.
Player: But if they don't.
Player: Then I'll cope.
Player: Seems to me, that I'm the only person that minds heh
me: Brian's complete and total indifference annoys me.
Player: The problem I'm having with all of this is instead of a DM
plot motivated game, this is a PC plot motivated game where you try to
achieve your goals. But instead of being able to try to create
exciting and creative ways of accomplishing those goals, it seems so
restrictive.
me: Well, how would you like to achieve these goals?
Player: I'd like to discover that in game.
Player: Research, explore, find out new things, new avenues
Player: Sweat for it, think hard about it.
Player: And then feel like I accomplished something when and if the
plan I created and designed actually turned out to work.
Player: Not the assurance of success. But merely the possibility of
well thought plans working and not "Oh well, that doesn't exactly fit
with any cultures/mythologies perspectives or beliefs, so sorry"
me: hmmm
me: As you know I frequent a message board that talks about HeroQuest
and glorantha and the like
Player: Which is why HeroQuest so sounds so awesome.
Player: But Glorantha turns me off.
Player: Right
me: Would you mind if I made a post about this and included a log of
our conversation with our screen names removed?
Player: Sure
me: Cause I want to ask for advice
me: and I would rather use your words than try to convery it.
Player: No problem.
Player: I want to try something new. And I like the sound of how
HeroQuest runs and the objectives of the game.
Player: But I look at the setting and it almost completely neuters the
very essence of what I like about it.