Hero Wars (Re: Is Glorantha Dying?)

From: richard <richard.develyn_at_nwpeople.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 10:59:09 +0100


Simon Hibbs wrote:

>I played the Hero Wars playtest scenario and loved it.

Me too.

Both the play test and Robin's panel on the game made me feel very good about it. I wish I could use it now.

When we spoke about this before we talked about a paradigm shift (IIRC). I think there is one, but it isn't the one I thought it was.

(All this now IMO)

I don't think HW is particularly more "story telling" than RQ. What I think it does is change emphasis on where you're likely to spend time in the game. Let me give you an example of how I think I would do the Puzzle Canal in Big Rubble using HW:

You're asked to go map the thing. You've got somebody with boating skills, somebody with navigation/mapping.

When you check on a skill four things can happen: Success, Failure, Critical (natural 20) and Fumble (natural 1) (they're called different things in the game, I think).

You would need to succed with boating before you're allowed to check mapping. If you Critical, then you've sussed the Canal and need never check (boating) here again. If you fail then you run aground and may get an encounter (of which there are six planned). If you fumble then your boat sinks.

To succeed mapping the canal completely you need six Successes in mapping. If you get a Critical then you gain some inner understanding of the Canal which means next time it changes you'll only need five successes. If you get a failure you run into one of six possible encounters. If you get a fumble then you've sailed off into the hero plane (and may your heaven help you).

If you run out of encounters while boating, nothing special happens (you've run aground somewhere with nothing on it). If it happened while mapping, then it's like a mapping fumble.

Where's the paradigm shift? Well, I don't think you would ever actually map the canal as a player, any more than when you entered into combat you drew detailed pictures of your enemies showing all the cuts and bruises.

You have a challenge in front of you, which is primarily a boating and mapping one, and you have people with the necessary abilities. This type of challenege is qualitatively no different from a negotiation challenge, a magic challenge, or a combat one.

IIRC one of the encounters in Big Rubble Puzzle Canal is a water demon one. First of all there is the possibility of negotiation, then combat. You would resolve it all the same way.

You don't get involved in all those traditional dungeon bashy things. No mapping, no detailed tactical displays showing where monsters are in relation to the furniture, and so on. A HW game is a stream of role playing challenges, with the mechanism for resolving the challenges being basically the same. Combat, for example, just becomes one of the many exciting things you can do.

I think traditional exploration/combat style games/campaigns/scenarios encouraged you to put in a lot of detail into the explorations and combats. By de-emphasising these aspects of the game HW removes the depth there in order to encourage you to broaden your game by giving equal depth to everything else.

You can set a trek across the wilderness without you or your players ever having a map of it. Unless it's important to you, of course. I don't think it is anymore. You needed the detail before because the game was so focussed on exploration/combat that that's where you spent all your time.

In HW I would see a trek as a number of challeneges in survival, navigation, and so on, with a number of encounter type challenges along the way. I like the idea of not having to draw all those tedious maps, or spec out all those monster and NPC stats.

If a creature attacks you in the wilderness all I would do is detail the different options available to dispatch it - and I'm now likely to think of many more than just combat.

If you come across an old temple then, again, I wouldn't map it, Id just detail the different challenges within it. They might be devotional, magical, NPC-motivation related, and so on.

Of course non Role Players could still work with this "I use my negotiation skill on the chieftain - what happens?" but I think the breadth of challenges encourages you to spend more time on activities likely to provide good role-playing opportunities. I think this is excellent.

Cheers

Richard

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