> If you play day to day, wont you will by and large be
> accruing too many Hero Points too quickly.
Er - why? I thought we've just been told that GMs who have these gaps when the characters are left to their own devices award them HP to spend for them, too. So advancement in terms of HP/game time should be the same. Shouldn't it? Well, in proportion to risk taken, perhaps...
> Day to day stuff
> should get you relatively little in the way of Hero Points
> IMO. The heroic stuff is what nets you the big HP.
But in what way is the stuff we do not at least partially heroic?
Looking at the last complete plot-line the Swords crew did, with HP award at the end, just part of a campaign in which we play through every day, with no "and then a season passes" gaps.
The previous day, incidentally, we'd been defending the Cradle. Now we need to get to Horn Gate.
To get there, three days march across Prax, with conversations about comparative sub-cults, advice to a follower hoping to be initiated soon, training sessions at dawn and in the evening (including discussion of tactics). No, not all that heroic so far. But every day accounted for and major incidents RPed out. Anything we did here counts as "in-game" for later HP spend.
Arrive at Horn Gate, arrange to get two of our number healed. While they're absent, get mixed up in the local politics (Bison riders v. oasis folk, and find out what's happened to another of our number we'd left here earlier (not good). No, still not all that heroic.
Payment time for the healing. The water in the wells is running dry. Investigate, please. We think it's linked to this cursed hole in the ground that's rumoured to have undead in it... So off we go to monster-bash. This was when we did that classic of reducing an entire "dungeon" to a single dice roll. I think about three days elapsed as we went down the tunnel and explored (yes, we do know what tactics we used and where we camped and so on).
And at the end of that, complete with detailed map, we did a heroic leap across a chasm while chased by several hundred undead (yes, running away, but there were six of us plus followers, and we'd been fighting them off for most of a day!) Getting heroic enough yet? The last person across, holding the undead off single-handed, didn't get to say "fly, you fools!", because I failed to fall in. Sorry.
So then we found out why the water was failing - it was dependent on this river-god who'd been trapped down here for a few thousand years. Until, that is, we'd partially freed him two plots back, and promised to completely free him if we could. Oops....
Much ethical discussion later, which didn't quite turn into a duel (due to critical successes in leadership), we did an improvised ritual based on a myth we'd heard from the healers, to free the river completely. And, as agreed, he helped us find a replacement. He washed us away...
So here we are on the HeroPlane. Nice river hands us a magic sword, and
points out the direction of the dragon who's swallowed his
granddaughter. If we rescue her, she'll be very grateful. But he's off
now...
Yes, we are still doing this day-to-day, even hour-to-hour or minute-to
minute. Our characters would quite like a break (and say so), but they
aren't getting one.
So we dredged our memories for all the dragon-slaying myths we knew (there are no Orlanthi present!), and started wandering in the vague direction of the dragon, wondering which one we were in. (And the players merrily writing new myths as we went). Got attacked by a sand-storm. Improvised a few feats, spent a HP or two, survived it. Found an obvious "next station" encounter with some old ladies. Retreated, muttered to ourselves, decided which myth we could *make* this fit with a bit of concentration, and then gave the HeroPlane a Hard Stare and told it which direction it was going in. It went. So now we're on a Vadrus myth that we barely know, with no Vadrus rep. present. Heroic enough for you yet?
It gets worse.
We knew we couldn't follow the Vadrus myth all the way to the end. We
could do some bits of Vadrus between us, but the final station we had no
chance. So once we'd found the dragon and had a chat with it (don't try
this at home, kiddies), we got to the intersection point with another
myth (here's one I'd prepared earlier), swapped protagonists, took a
sharp left on the Hero-Plane (Any Arkati looking? Oh, good) and headed
down a Humakt kills a dragon myth. A Humakti kills a dragon in one blow
myth. What twit wrote that in??
This was where we did some serious stacking of augments, stacking
magical items, calling in outside support that we shouldn't have been
able to reach (remember how much prep. we'd been able to do?), spending
of HP and crossing of fingers. I think the final TN was in the W5s
somewhere (our current highest CC is around 11W). The dragon died, in
the prescribed one blow. Complete victory. Happy river, who agrees to
come home with us. And with a burst of magical SFX, there we are being
washed up in the pools in Horn Gate.
That was all played day-to-day. We know what we did the day before, we know what we did the day after (it involved excessive alcohol, and possibly gagging a bard).
Yes, we got HP for it. Quite a lot of them, though many directed, in some cases to interesting new flaws, in others to relationships.
But it was all played day-to-day. There was no gap between that and the "scenario" before, nor between that and the "scenario" after.
In what way are you saying our HP were undeserved?
And without checking, I think that took about six months of Real Time, or thereabouts.
> In fact I
> would go so far as to say I would disallow the use of Hero
> Points to bump results on crop tables! To quote someone from
> a con game I run, 'Hero Points are for heroic actions not
> damage limitation!' But judging by the style of game some
> enjoy that may be a little mean.
I can see that. But it all depends on what you mean by a hero. If your game is based around keeping your clan alive, HP spends for crop tables would make perfect sense.
> In order to give Jane's calculator the night off
The calculator can cope, what passes for a brain can't, so thanks!
> Following Jeffs regime of giving a couple of HP at the start
> of the game and maybe 2 at the end,
Did he say two at the end? I thought he said "some".
> Thats 294*2 Hp per year
If you assume that one "session" = 1 day. Where did this come from?
> Imagine that character was Kallyr.
Who has all the hallmarks of someone who *has* been adventuring continuously for twenty years or so, yes...
Though she's been gaining and then dropping skills, and cults, and all sorts in that time, as well. Acquiring and buying off flaws. The end skill set is not the result of a straight-line rise.
> thats 19 x 588 = 11,172 heropoints to spend. Say she
> never put any points in her affinities at creation, she could
> theoretically gain the cult secret in movement week, 6 weeks later!
If she was a devotee, yes. And if anyone did anything as unbalanced as that, yes. Take a look at Salinarg's son, who founded the House of Death at age 8 or so.
> However I suspect the Narrator will enforce the 60% rule so
> it would take a minimum of 125 days to learn the cult secret.
> This seems extreme.
It is. Not impossible, not unheard of, but extreme.
> So lets say you only give hp once a week.
Which is probably a more sensible time for a "session" to cover.
> This means that the average player would be accruing
> something like 16 hp per season, which is 84 hp per year.
> Kallyr after 19 years would then have spent around 1596 hp.
I'd have to look through all the skills on the (very abbreviated) character sheet to work out if that's reasonable or not. It may well be. Especially if you look at the first nine years of her career spent developing "initiate of Vanganth" related skills, which she then dropped. And allow for all the relationships that aren't on the character sheet (because she'd need a lot more pages in a very small font)
> Played another way, you ould say she accrues 2 to spend per
> adventure. She plays one adventure a season - not unreasonable.
> She spends half the 95 seasons time not adventuring.
Then what do you see her as doing in those times? Not farming, I suspect... And why is she not advancing during them?
> Thats still 750+ hero points through her career.
>
> I'm not sure if these number prove anything,
They might if we had some idea how many HP it takes to get to where she is now. But I suspect there're just too many unknowns involved to be able to work it out.
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