> Jolly Good, Nick old toff. Would you do the right thing for empire
> and friends and have Chris jot off the stats of these characters so
> we can compare them to the big, bad Humakti O of recent digest
> infamy?
OK: here's some of the more memorable stats from the game. The Red Admiral had Great Power (that's the bottom of the scale). The Sultan of Karasal had Great Power, increased to Vast Power within his Sultanate. Bellex Maximus had Vast Power, increased to Incredible Power in hand-to-hand combat or when commanding the Red Army. Jar-eel the Razoress had Incredible Power. Resolution was by tossing a handful of patriotic discs and seeing how many landed moon-side up: you could reproduce this with coins or (more likely) beer-bottle tops without seriously damaging the effect.
There were also a bunch of one-use special powers, so the Blue Moon player could secretly kill anyone, the Black Army (secret police) torturer could extract the truth from anyone, etc.
Plus some generic game roles: you couldn't stop the Black Army guy from eavesdropping on any conversation between players; Beatpot's player had to supply players with food, the Chamberlain with drinks; etc.
(Sorry, but we didn't take note of anyone's Bite Attack Percentages).
I expect a lot of the background material Chris developed on the theory and practice of Lunar government, the members and roles of the Senate, Presidium, Imperial Court, etc. will be distilled into articles, cult writeups, the next freeform, and the like in the not too distant future, so I won't be posting any of the rough stuff here.
> The presence of such individual as Martin Laurie is often presented as
> evidence that any "roolz" for Heroquests would inevitably be misused.
> This is Nick Brooke's position, I believe (correct me if I am wrong, Nick).
You're wrong. I'd say Martin's experiments show that "Super RuneQuest" is NOT the right way to go forward in developing HeroQuest. Look at Tales #7: you don't have to have 260% Bite Attack to stand a chance on the Blue Boar, the Silver Fox, the Grey Hare HQs. I'd model HQs more on Pendragon adventures than these high-end rule-abusing Rune Lord antics. Adopting and expanding some system like the Pendragon personality traits might be a good way to simulate the relationship between the Hero and his community.
> I also percieve a shift to the idea that LARP is the way to go, the wave of
> the future when it comes to roleplaying Glorantha. I find such a view
pernicious,
> to say the least. Table top role playing requires much more discipline than
LARP,
> which has made LARP's goals seem loftier, if for no other reason then that
they
> are easier to acheive and so seem acheivable, as opposed to tabletop role
playing
> goals.
Duh... so you think it requires "much more discipline" to write and participate in a six-player tabletop broo-bash than an eighty-player freeform game? Well, Doyle Wayne, I ask you if this "discipline" is really such a good thing, since it makes certain types of game impossible. Isn't it perhaps a straitjacket? Have you ever played in a Gloranthan LARP, or talked to anyone who has? And what do you think the "goals" of a LARP are, if not to provide an opportunity for players to have creative fun with Glorantha?
(I wish I'd realised how damn' *EASY* it was to write HtWwO while we were doing it: it would've been *SO* reassuring to know that the two lever-arch files packed with characters, plots, notes, etc. represented far less work than Doyle Wayne puts into each one of his crack, disciplined tabletop gaming sessions :-)
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #531
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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