Yet More Stuff About Will

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_interzone.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 18:16:59 +0100 (BST)


Mike Cule disagrees not with me, but with Chaosium (and quite right too):
> I was basically saying that the idea of forbidding the increase of Will
> after you began HeroQuesting was not needed.

Ah, I see! I suppose that could be made to work, but it would require a fair bit of extra bookkeeping; you'd need to track both "mundane" and "heroplane enhanced" %ages, for the same skill. Add in arguments as to which is which (such as with Humakti +5% to weapon skill type geases), to taste. It still also admits the possibility that one'll never run out, if any Hero, however megalomaniac, can generate more Will by his (so-called) "mundane life".

> HeroQuesting (with the exception of reaching into the Infinity Rune)

"How do you do that, then?"

> doesn't provide increases in the Will of the Quester.

So sez you, and formerly Chaosium. But I think that some of the things Will is used for (in our system and theirs), are such that they _ought_ to be "improvable" by HQ. That is, the use of Will to alter the HP, essentially. Gloranthan HQers are known to quest for exactly that purpose, after all, and I don't think it's simply to "suck in" more "supporters", though that's a handy side-effect to have.

> But your personal Will is used up by this and you can't go on forever.
> If you could Arkat would now be God of the entire lozenge.

This can be equally well explained in terms of increasing "power", with "power" being used to alter the HP in many of the ways you're using Will for, but diminishing "free will", expressed as geases, fixed traits/passions, etc. Eventually, even Arkat paints himself into a paradoxical corner even he can't fast-talk his way out of...

("Greg, your Arkat character has reached 68 in almost every Trait or Passion he has, including both of several opposed pairs. He's bobbing up and down like a cork in the aetheric substance of the God Time, and I ain't lettin' him go mundane again."

"Dammit, I hate it when that happens. He was my favourite, too!")

> >(I'm ignoring "support" for the moment, and only considering ones
> >"inherent" power.)

> I don't think you can. See above.

Well, I can, because some HQers _do_. Ultimately, we may have to wave our hands and say "Harrek and co.: special cases", but I don't want to give up just yet.

> If you choose to leave the path and do something new then the price
> should be higher (MUCH higher) than doing what has been done before.

Perhaps the general terms we're discussing this in, are obfuscating more than they reveal. To take a more specific example: Say I, as a Yelmalio quester, try to avoid Orlanth on the HoG. This isn't going to require vast amounts of Will, or POW, or whatever, it just requires I deal with the consequences of that choice (which are likely to be altogether bad). Is that a reasonable example?

> With PENDRAGON mechanics though there ain't much point in having a score
> in anything above 40 (always criticals!).

This is largely because the Pendragon critical system is Rather Silly.

Example: Sir Insipid (relevant traits at 2), and Sir Puissant (ditto, 20) both attempt to ask the Fisher King the Grail Questions. (I forget the details of the adventure, but it's one of the published ones.) Their chances of critting their rolls, and hence succeeding in asking the right question, are _identical_.

> Type I heroquest: You become somewhat more like the person who did the
> quest first.

> Type II heroquest: You loose all ability other than to be heroically,
> all out and forever committed to one kind of course of action.

I don't think your distinction is correct, though. Any fool can walk a "new" path (which is effectively any path, pre-existing or not, he doesn't know about), the question is more: will he live to tell of the experience, if he doesn't know where he's going; and secondly, even if he does, will he have made any material change to the "landscape" of the HP? Equally, an extremely powerful quester can walk an "old" path, making a _big_ change to both himself and the HP (a sort of "more of the same" change, granted), without any real innovation.

As I posted before, I think the most important element is the "depth" of the quest; whether it's re-enactment or extrapolative has more to do with how good a "map" you have of the "landscape", rather than being instrinsically different. While it's undoubtably true that if you try to "push" the universe in some directions, it'll push back, hard, this is as true of some "known" paths, as it will be of many "unknown" ones.

Slainte,
Alex.


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