>
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 16:08:13 -0800 (PST), joshua
> neff
> <joshua_neff_at_...> wrote:
> > Gandalf kicks all kinds of ass and is, in almost
> > every respect, far more powerful than any hobbits.
> But
> > he could *never* have taken the ring to Mount
> Doom,
> > whereas Frodo could. And Frodo couldn't have done
> it
> > without Sam.
>
> Are these facets achievable in HQ, and if so, can
> you provide examples?
The One Ring corrupts, right? And the more powerful one is, the worse the corruption will be. Let's say Gandalf is a PC with all kinds of masteries. He's really damn powerful, far more than Frodo is. But what Gandalf isn't is *innocent*, and let's say Frodo has Innocent 17. Now, even at 17, that Innocent is enough to resist the ring--at first. Of course, Innocent isn't enough to resist the ring completely, especially not over the long run, but he augments his Innocent with his relationships to Sam and the Shire. And Frodo's player puts a lot of hero points into his Innocent. (Of course, Frodo doesn't get *more* innocent at the story goes on, he gets less. But his initial innocence becomes more important story-wise, it has more narrative oomph. And the trait's score doesn't necessarily imply a realworld level of ability, but it does mean more story oomph.) Sam, of course, starts with a good rating in his Devoted to Mr Frodo--maybe even 1w or 5w. And the player pumps loads of hero points into it, so that by the end of the story, Sam's devotion to Frodo has reached epic proportions. He can lend mad APs to Frodo in an extended contest resisting the ring or climbing up Mt Doom.
I actually had a hero in a similar situation in Mike Holmes' Shadow World game. My character had gotten possession of a powerful magical item, and everytime I used it, I had to roll against it to resist its corrupting influence. My Ambitious trait was a negative modifier against my roll, in that being ambitious helped the artifact corrupt me. But my relationships to mundane things--my relation to my mentor, the love of my life, my temple--helped me resist the corruption.
> Wouldn't it be near impossible to set up a situation
> that X character can
> do this, but Y character cannot.
Sure, but it's not hard to have a situation in which character X can do something *better* than character Y. Any character has a *chance* to do something in HQ, but sometimes it's a really slim chance and sometimes it's almost a given. That depends on the characters abilities and the nature of the conflict, obviously.
www.goblin-cartoons.com
Powered by hypermail