> However, I did my own scenery-chewing when I led the great Rokari
> walkout. Hmm, maybe the unkind would suggest that it was easy for
> me to play a pompus little twit or a scheming politician??
That would be beneath even me! As one of the authors, though, can I say that Jim's walkout at the end of the Seventh Ecclesiastical Council upon the election of the Lunar/Hrestoli Antipope (Dalai Dan) was a real high spot of that game: dramatic, in character, beautifully staged, and a fitting climax to a council marked by unprincipled trimming and wishy-washy dilution of the Malkioni Faith.
> A quester who retains the power he obtains for his own selfish
> gratification becomes very powerful indeed. But he does not matter.
> The world does not remember him in any important way. When he dies,
> his cool powers die with him.
One possible "thought-mechanism" for this that Greg was talking about a couple of years back would be something like this:
Let's say your heroquester gets his hands on Humakt's Sword of Death. (I'll leave the Dentures of Death out of this, but anyone curious can find them in Plunder). He could hang onto the Sword himself, and gain +100% to his Sword Attack. But in fifty years time, he'll be dead and the Sword will be gone. Or he could (somehow) bestow it upon his clan or temple, and give them all an opportunity to gain +10% EACH to their Sword Attack, FOREVER. And then he'll be a Hero, and everyone will remember what he did and try to emulate it... but he'll only have +10% to his Sword Attack, too.
So how to get player/heroes to make the "right" choice? One way Greg suggested was based on Pendragon-style games stretching over generations, only without playing out all of the in-between bits: the players generate characters and play in an adventure, and then the GM skips forward a generation or two and has the original characters' children or grandchildren deal with the repercussions -- when a +10% ARMY would be quite a handy thing to have! The "first adventure" becomes something like a prologue or flashback to the "main story": the acts of the original (predecessor) characters shape the lives and background of their descendents.
(But this is always being done, whether by making or breaking a marriage, alliance, or heroquest: and all of these should be lasting relationships; and maybe that's one of the secrets behind writing HeroQuest -- if not, it ought to be).
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