In 4.231... David Dunham <dunham_at_pensee.com> says: > Date: Sat, 1 Mar
> Greg has consistently mentioned that it's possible to be inadvertently
> drawn into a heroquest.
Some people are born HeroQuesters, some become Heroquesters, some have HeroQuesting thrust upon them. A PC in a game I ran about three years ago fell into the latter category. He'd transgressed his cult's rules in a fairly significant way (he possessed a forbidden spirit spell), and ended up being HeroQuested by his Head Priest in a real-world HQ, walking the Path of his God, who lost the spell in the Godtime. This involved being beaten to within an inch of his life, then nearly bleeding to death whilst he tried to get out of the situation (he got the Path more-or-less right, so he lived), then finally receiving a Gift entirely consistent with his - unwilling - HQ. Took him ages to recover, but he's on the starting rungs of the Hero Path now.
Andrew Barton <100010.533_at_CompuServe.COM> wrote:
> RQ2 had a rule that 'all adventurers are right-handed'. Obviously, this
> isn't true literally in our world and probably not in Glorantha either.
Not IMG, for certain, although all the current PCs are RH.
> - -But-, anyone taught to fight with hand-to-hand weapons in a formed unit
> would be taught to use them the right-handed way round. Otherwise, they
> wouldn't fit in their place in the shield wall (or pike block for those with
> two-handed spears and such).
Depends how they're used. The PBI (Poor Bloody Infantry) might be - the lefties who show no ability. But a lefty is a pretty useful person. (I fenced LH for years, and did vastly better than my RH colleagues.) For hand-to-hand, an average lefty'll make mincemeat of an average righty, and - for that matter - any other lefties who aren't used to fighting their own.
> In re-enactment groups, I've heard of putting lefties on the right of the
> line so as to avoid presenting an unshielded side. You never hear of this
> arrangement in history - the vulnerability of the right, unshielded flank is
> a tactical commonplace and if it could be fixed in that way it surely would
> have been.
Lefties have another use too. Sure, use the unexceptional lefties on the RH of the shield wall - but keep the better-than-average ones for targetted hit squads. If you want to capture or kill a specific person or target in the opposition, send in an all-lefty hit squad, trained to be used to fighting either handedness, and you've got a seriously dangerous elite who can take on the opposition's RH elite and win. I imagine this as a _very_ Red Moon thing to do.
> So, in my game, -all- adventurers -start- with prior experience fighting
> right-handed. If they want to learn off-hand skill in play they can, but
> trainers aren't easy to find.
I don't play that way - unless there's a cultural bias against lefties (per the Arabs and so on), people train fight with their best hand. Let's face it, there's no point in wasting a useful talent, or expending all that training to have a fighter who's still not as good as the RH average. And lefties have a _very_ valuable role in training, giving righties practise in fighting lefties, which improves the overall skill level of the regiment, and gives the elite a chance to counter the tactics I described above.
Jon
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