Hero wars/jeffs game

From: Colin Phillips <cphill12_at_ford.com>
Date: 09 Jun 1998 02:53:12 -0400


TO: glorantha-digest_at_chaosium.com

Having now read a couple of days on people idea's of hero wars, I thought I would add my 2 pence worth.

The system is simple and straight forward and takes virtually no time at all to do most basic things. The complexity arrives when either you attempt combat or magic against someone or something, or you try a heroquest.

I have never personally found a system that could allow an easy transition between the mundane gloranthan world and the Hero plane. This system made (in Jeff's game at least) the move flawlessly, one minute the players are about to have a duel with the stormbully of the village, the next we are on the hero plane performing the orlanthi arming ceremony and then watching Humakt kick stormbull's butt.

Of course our characters believed that this what had always happened (we made the myth after all) and this cowed (no pun intended) the enemy Stormbull without killing him.

Now both tribes have a small myth about how Humakt had to tame Stormbull and he did so by placing death through the ring in his nose and driving it into the ground. Compliments to Jeff for a great game.

 The discussion afterwards was probably more interesting than the game. If the Stormbulls tribe wanted to change this myth how should they do it? Well the best answer we came up with in a the five minutes after the session, was as Humakt drove the bull to the floor, as in other myths, the earth would help and give Stormbull her powers allowing the strength of the bull to pull the sword out of the ground and presumably giving the bull enough strength to kick Humakt's butt. Would it have worked? who cares, but with some rudimentary background of glorantha, it is with hero wars very easy to attempt these type of heroquests.

If it had of worked for the Stormbull, I personally would have made that clans lands far less fertile for several seasons. In fact I can see this game perpetuating adventures, once the players perform a heroquest, they will either need to reinforce their new myths or have to perform new ones to change the outcome they originally wanted as a badly thought through HQ will result in bad things happening, re my example.

Anyway my thoughts on this play test can be summed up rather neatly, This is a good game, its different, and it won't appeal to everyone.

However I say give it a chance and try and not get to tied up with this like a movie or a book thing, remember the hero's of fiction don't know they are in a book or a movie and it all makes sense to them.

Oh yea, it is definitely not Conan. Although I was not lucky enough to hear Stafford read, my take on the game is you would have to play it a hell of a lot to get anywhere near Conan standards.

Hope that helps!

Regards,
Colin Phillips


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