Re: When heroquests go too good

From: Peter Larsen <plarsen_at_uri.edu>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:26:44 -0500

At 5:59 AM -0800 1/31/04, Chris Graham wrote:
>future). However, there's a part of the path where you win by
>seducement. You could go over the top with the seducement and end
>up practically raping the opponent. Pure speculation this could
>range from increasing your ability to sway persons thoughts of you
>to turning you into a broo (rape and all that). Anybody else have
>any thoughts on being too successful on a heroquest. Yeah, also the
>Hill of Gold quest for yelmalio.

        I would say that getting a complete success in a heroquest would be doing that quest as much like the original as possible. In HeroQuest (as I understand it), your "success" is measured against what you were trying to do, not some absolute scale. Assuming you are trying to get the quest "right," a complete success will do it pretty much perfectly. If you're some weird Godlearner experimental heroquester, a complete success would mean getting whatever part you wanted "wrong" exactly the way you wanted it (good luck, buddy). I suppose the Narrator might decide lesser successes or failures were a case of "too much" rather than "not enough" on a case by case basis. (e.g. You set out to gain a heroic death in battle to erase your shame. On a complete success, you die a beautiful death, and everyone forgives your crime. Lesser successes might lead to a less glorious death, or survival. Failure might be ignominious survival, increasing your shame, and complete failure means that you survive, increase your dishonor, and accidently kill your best friend/destroy the clan wyter/wound your god/whatever.)

        At any rate, I would never treat an "excessive seduction" as a rape. That would be like having a player score a complete success in a bargaining contest and saying "OK, you murdered the customer and took all his stuff." Rather, if you wanted to use the idea, perhaps the Dark Woman becomes infatuated with the quester and tries to bring him back to her on other quests, or the union produces a child who later on complicates the quester's life. That's at least a reasonable outcome of a seduction.

        Similarly, the Yelmalian goal in the Hill of Gold (as I recall) is to lose but survive. A complete success should accomplish this exactly like in the myth -- the quester gets the maximum benefit and minimum loss (exchanging a Fire ability for ?). On lower successes, perhaps the quester gets the desired benefit but ends up with some sort of unhealing wound. Failure on the quest might lead to defeating Zorak Zoran, keeping your Fire powers, and gaining some Darkness ability. This might make the quester "stronger," but it would probably be viewed as a terrible taint by his cult -- heavens knows how he would get rid of it.

Peter Larsen

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