Last time I ran a RQ heroquest, I just used the standard rules, scaled up:
1-4 points: standard rune spell
5-9 points: 'mega' rune spell, but still personal
< 100 pts: local area effect (e.g. call storm)
> 100 pts: _real_ magic
All costs in POW, no discounts, credit cards not accepted (after a few nasty incidents with the Jrusteli...).
Naturally, few can afford to pay the bigger costs by themselves, which is where support comes in. With support measured in POW, paid in advance, and lost if the quest fails, you need serious backing from a bunch of committed people to get anywhere.
So making a change involves:
Normally, you'd just return to the real world and use your new-found power for the good of all (or whatever). However, I play that spells cast on the hero-plane have indefinite 'duration', but are one-use.
So if you want to make a change to myth, just work your way into the right story, and use your power in the right place.
Unimaginative uses, such as casting another 100 points of shield on Yelmalio just before he goes into battle with Orlanth, will have only minor effect. The next one through this myth will see a few extra blows deflected, but it probably won't be enough to change the outcome of the fight.
Truly creative heroquesting involves using the right power at the right time - something new that you bring to the situation, an idea that hadn't been tried before. Such new ideas are often consequences of experience with other cultures and ways of life - the trick is to combine that with sufficient support within your culture to succeed in the quest. Being Arkat helps.
If you succeed, anyone following in your footsteps will see your god acting in the way you acted, and so can learn to do the same. This translates to adding a new rune spell to those available at a temple.
If there is enough cultural contact, spells get passed on from temple to temple as people learn a power at one and use it on a quest in another. Where cultural contact breaks down, magics don't get circulated, and myths diverge over time. On founding a new temple, you have to run through the complete cycle of myths known to your culture to get the full panoply of spells.
And free will? That's simple - work out the fraction of your POW (inculding fetch, active spells like the above, etc.) that is really _yours_, as opposed to coming from supporters, gifted to you by other gods, or whatever.
If 95% or more of your soul is not actually _you_, how much influence can you expect to have over your own actions?
If 99% of your soul remembers the version of events it experienced on a heroquest, how do you expect to reliably remember what really happenned?
If 99.9% of your soul pronounces your own name wrong, can you even say the original?
Most sorcerors, who know all this, would sooner be swallowed by the void than allow themselves to become a god.
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #530
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