Hero Que^h^h^hWars

From: Hibbs, Philip <philip.hibbs_at_tnt.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 20:03:03 +0100


Things are looking up.

Convulsion 4 was a very confusing time for me - I went in with mixed feelings (I like RQ), but was reassured by Greg and Robin's talk. Then I played it. Oh dear. Every die roll required a table look-up. This was one of two 4x4 tables, with 17 results (one cell (success v success) has two possible outcomes based on who rolled the highest). I think most of those who were in the game thought "this sucks". I spoke to Robin after about it, and he says "Yeah, that table sucks, it's out of date, it's better now, it's easier to remember". PHEW! Other than that, it's a fine system.

The system is very loose. I don't know what the character generation system is like, but I think it could be quite difficult for a referee to enforce a desired power level on the players. However, the Clan Generation system is a great idea. The players answer a series of multiple choice questions about their clan's history, and this determines the attributes of their clan.

"Did your clan start in the Green age or the Storm age?" plus a bit of
explanation about the two ages.

"When did your clan join Orlanth?" plus a list of five or so major events in
the Storm Age

"When Lokaymadon tried to suppress the worship of Orlanth, what was your
clan's reaction?" plus a list of options (some of which I'm sure NO-ONE will choose)

etcetera. This ends up with scores for Magic, Crops, Valour, Tradition, Piety, Enemies, Shrines, etc - over a dozen traits.

This will give players a great sense of myth, history, and clan identity. Everything locks into place right from the start. I learned stuff about the Orlanthi doing this, and things definitely made more sense to *me* afterwards, and I've been playing RQ in Glorantha for more than half my life!

There's a lot of great stuff in the game, and it WILL be well supported.

Here's my suggestions, if anyone from Issaries Inc. is listening.

  1. The conflict resolution cross-reference must be memorable for nearly all occasions.
  2. Include lots of descriptions of keywords, and a section on converting RQ to HW, so a player can work out "I've got 'Strong 8/12', that's like having STR15 in RQ".
  3. Make and sell some little plastic tokens with runes on them, these can be used for action points during conflicts. That way the players won't know exactly how hard their opponent is until the number of tokens gets small enough to count.

<I use my "Magic Affinity: Flame-resistance 6/14 ability"> 4. License SJG to produce GURPS: Glorantha.

http://members.tripod.com/~PhilHibbs/
Any view of things that is not strange is false

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