This ties in quite neatly to the Regimental Magic topic...
I found some of the Call of Cthulhu spell descriptions quite close to how some rituals were described in KoS etc. Usually I used the Worship Deity "mechanics" - the participants putting anything from a minimum number of MP to all but one into the spell - for most Ceremony spells in RQ. Since there are no fixed rules for Ceremony ritual spells, and few examples, I was happy to use a precendent and make up the rest on the fly, even in RQ (though a variant system).
>When the players decided to reenact "Orlanth rescuing Ernalda" in order to
>break into Chief Orlev's Hall, they did this in order to know what they
>were supposed to do.
Military manoeuvres directed by mythical reenactment? now that's an idea for regimental magic I hadn't considered so far. It makes perfectly sense.
Even for Argrath's forming of the Sartar magical union. If Argrath ever investigated the paths of Vingkot the Victorious, he would have had access to precedents like the Ring of the Vingkotlings, which is a bit like a Summons of Allies. If magicians used this to call in spirits for an attack, the effect would be as devastating as in the DP boardgame.
>The way I view cultural heroquesting is that these
>myths are cultural stories that describe a way of dealing with a particular
>situation. When my players justify their approach to a problem by saying
>"Didn't the great Heortling hero Aram travel to Kerofin to receive her
>Necklace - and wasn't that just a Westfaring? We'd like to travel to
>Kerofin to see if we can get the Goddess' blessing!", I let them do it and
>I try to structure their adventure into something similar (BUT NOT
>IDENTICAL) to the story they are trying to act out.
Hmm. Preparing each excursion like a HeroQuest isn't the way I experienced my RQ players to do - admittedly not Glorantha knowledgists. Usually it worked the other way round, with me gathering their actions and letting parts of an appropriate myth flow in. They learned to love-hate this, especially when the Yelmalian made his views of the world dominant to the Aeolian/Orlanthi rest.
On the other hand, when the Orlanthi started questing at Rise of Ralios, they walked along well-known and less well-known precedents.
>In my own humble opinion, Heroquesting will never have a satisfactory
>rules mechanic - nor should it. I know this is frustrating to many players
>and GMs (hell, it annoyed me ever since I read in the back of RQ 2 that
>Heroquest rules will be coming out soon), but in my experience,
>heroquesting isn't a rules issue - its a story-line issue!
Very much so. If you have a multi-part quest with tests and obstacles, each of this should be assigned some mechanic proposal to resolve it. Standard obstacles like the Guardians of Hell might even be produced as prepared scenario parts... not exactly a rules system, but a DIY jigsaw quest for the referee, and for the Creative Heroquester (who knows when and how to change paths in a myth).
So, if we want a heroquest roleplaying game, what we might get is a set of situations with refereeing proposals, and a couple of myths to run the situations in. Opinions?
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