>The concept that I should take control of the PCs and tell the players
>what to do with them, on either a game-level in meta-game level.
>"Directed" HPs, for instance. I'm used to saying "yes" to my players.
>I'm gradually getting the hang of adding "but". Saying "no", or "you
>WILL do it this way" is still alien to me.
I tend to think of it more as a bonus than anything. You get X HP, but you also get to improve some specific things without spending HP. I'm not sure I've been explicit, but I think this is usually not mutually exclusive -- if a player wants to improve the same thing that was improved by GM directive, it costs them 1 HP.
Jeff sometimes uses directed HP as a constraint -- "and get 3 HP to use on stuff you did along the journey." But that's not a very narrow constraint. (I think it's more to reflect things like the fact that we don't really mention the journey, but it was one of the longest rides my character's been on, so it makes sense to improve her Ride ability.)
In play recently, my character was given a directed HP to Hate Pharaoh, to reflect the way I was playing her. This is is broadly similar to the way Pendragon gave you checks on personality traits -- yes, you could earn a check with a roll, but you could also do so by roleplaying.
Like Stephen, when I'm the Narrator, I try to give a point to something that stood out as important or interesting, but might not be what the player would pick. The idea being to round out the character and not merely contribute to their best skill getting better.
-- David Dunham Glorantha/HQ/RQ page: http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein
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