>I wonder if it may have been due to the essentially 'Runequest'
>ambience of the material. Pavis and the Big Rubble is arguably the
>quintessential D&D type setting for Glorantha.
It may have originated as D&D type setting but the Big Rubble is still capable of being a setting for heroic roleplaying. The feeling I had with Ian's material is that he never quite made the conceptual leap between the two, such as detailed descriptions of mundane obstacles including the contests necessary to overcome them.
A trap-filled room or complex could have easily been reduced by giving it an ability of fiendishly trapped 15W (say). When the Heroes attempt to plunder it, all that would have been needed to do was to play it as an extended contest with the complex's attacks being various nasties from the Indiana Jones movies (Leap of Faith, Huge Ball, Snakes etc). The treasure could likewise be reduced to ancient pavic artefacts (wealth 5w) with only a significant magical object per complex. For additional effort, a hero could use his Pavic Lore on his swag of looted artefacts to find something immediately useful in his predicament (ie an ancient scroll with an incantation to dismiss zombies).
>Some could also argue that the Heroquest rules do not really
>support that kind of gaming. For example, when I ran the Cradle
>scenario I could see players tire of rolling a large number of
>simple contests to settle combats.
The Cradle's problem is that throughout the scenario the aim is just to defend the cradle with the interesting stuff taking place off-stage. If I were to do it in Heroquest, I would have made the player heroes able to control the Cradle's motion but they have to figure out how to use the giant girl's toys in order to overcome the many obstacles. In addition, there will be a subplot involving Garrath. Does he want to turn the cradle over to Harrek the Beserk at the end? If so, he will seek to stop the heroes from becoming too attached to the cradle by forbidding them to investigate the toys and so forth with an attempt to buy them off with gold once Corflu has been passed.
--Peter Metcalfe
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