Err, well how else are they to get one? Pay Issaries Inc for Power Up Packs? Kill Osama bin Laden? What goes on when YOU turn up to the game session every week?
Narrator: 'Well, the stead byre needs mucking out again, so we'll
spend this week describing that.'
PC : 'Ah, not again. Can't we go to the moot or a cattle raid, or
maybe hunt some chaos, or talk with our shifty cousins?'
Narrator: 'Not until you've done your chores'.
Or do you mean 'simply turn up and then fall asleep'. Such 'players' get very few HPs, and then leave from boredom.
> Surely heroes should preferably gain their
> advanced powers and magical super-abilities through heroquesting,
> not routine broo-bashing.
...
An powerful character will not be boo bashing in episodes. They will be doing magical super activities. HPs are not 'experience points'. You don't get a number of HPs based on the number of foes you defeat.
More or less, HPs represent that amount of dramatic (player) effort expended. If bashing broos is not dramatic (e.g. the characters are so powerful that bashing broos is easy), the Narrator will not be running broo bashing episodes. The characters might actually be spending time (perhaps even most of their time) broo bashing, but that activity gains no HPs.
Talk of 'fast' or 'slow' or 'easy' advancement requires care because of the dramatic focus of HW, rather than its simulation focus. A character might be putting most, even immense efforts, into an activity (mucking out byres in a farmers' campaign, bashing broo in a more powerful campaign), but the game simply fast forwards (or cuts to) the next interesting action.
The film of Doctor Zhivargo spans several decades of story time. Reservoir Dogs spans a few hours of story time. Despite the vast difference in scale of story time, the 'dramatic time' (as it were), the amount of film you watch, is not so different. The HW rules award HP roughly proportional to the 'dramatic time' spent.
Several people have pointed out that Heroquests provide 'sudden' increases in power. But what does this mean by 'sudden'? In the game world, someone leaves the tula (for the Otherside) and returns a few hours (or days, whatever) later bearing A Mighty Power, so from the point of view of someone in the game world it could well seem sudden (there are examples of HQers being away for years, but those examples are irrelevant to the point being made). But would it be 'sudden' if you were watching Heroquest, The Movie? The Movie might well follow the actions of the Heroquester in immense detail. From a dramatic PoV, the acquisition of the Mighty Power would not at all be sudden.
Back in HW terms, a Heroquest could be a long episode or even a series of episodes (after all, Logan's Run was also a whole TV series). That 'gradual' acquisition of HPs COULD result in the 'sudden' acquisition of a Mighty Power.
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