My children also play. I find that too many skills spoil the
broth. Kids want to play not read a long character sheet. in fact
I generally say, 'well lets see what you have on your character
sheet'. I think that Initiate level is just fine, for grown ups
too. When I played at a convention, most of the characters were low
level with incomplete character sheets, and I thought no worse for
it.
What I like about Heroquest is that you don't need to kill stuff all
the time. In fact killing is quite a big deal, and I like that. So
far my kids haven't had to kill anyone, which is probably why I feel
comfortable playing HQ with them.
On the subject of game complexity, someone said to me that they
would like to play a game where we just improvised everything off
the keywords.
Regards
Rob
- In HeroQuest-RPG_at_yahoogroups.com, "parental_unit_2"
<parental_unit_2_at_y...> wrote:
> I was interested in a thread from Nov. 2003, when "Roderick and
> Ellen Robertson" had suggestions about how to kick off a "low
level"
> HQ campaign, with characters that are less "heroic" than the
> apparent HQ norm.
>
> Has anyone on the list run an HQ campaign where characters have
> moderate abilities and spend their time in the mundane plane? Any
> advice for doing it? (Including possibly the simple "Don't".) I
know
> there are sample scenarios for such low-level games, but I'm
> interested in hearing about experiences involving multiple
scenarios
> or full campaigns.
>
> The reason I ask: I play RPGs with my kids. I am trying to keep
game
> mechanics simple, minimize the amount of Glorantha background the
> players need to remember, and generally keep the tone light and
fun
> rather than dramatic and heroic. The HQ mechanics look simpler
than
> the system I'm using, and they offer some interesting, principled
> ways to compress parts of a scenario (by lumping chunks of the
> scenario into single contests).
>
> But it's possible that overall the HQ system is simply designed
for
> heroes, as the name implies, and low-level campaigns will trip on
> some aspects of the system. So I'd be interested to hear from HQ
> narrators who have tried low-level campaigns on how workable it is.
>
> Note that I am not looking for comparisons to other systems -- I
can
> make that call on my own, and I definitely don't want to ignite an
> extended flame on how past system X is better than HQ.