RE: Re: Low level HQ

From: Silburn, Luke <luke.silburn_at_...>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 10:39:55 +0100

I've got hazy recollections of some session write-ups someone did a few months ago describing a one-on-one HQ game with his young son (five-ish IIRC), it featured a princess captured by Dragonnewts and a young jungle hunter protagonist with a cloud leopard sidekick. All in all it sounded well cool and had some excellent commentary about the practicalities of running games for a young'un.

Unfortunately I've completely blanked on who did the write-ups and where on the internet I saw them - it was posted to an actual play forum at either rpg.net or The Forge I reckon, but I utterly failed to turn them up when I went hunting for them last night - maybe someone else on the list will have better luck.

Anyway the general impression I got from those write ups is that HQ is an excellent system for introducing small kids as it focuses squarely on telling a story, is as abstract as you want it to be and it doesn't require familiarity with hugely convoluted rulesets for effective play.

Regards
Luke

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob
To: HeroQuest-RPG_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: 9/8/2004 10:18 PM
Subject: Re: Low level HQ

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.
  

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