>First, I wouldn't go for a crew entirely of tyros simply because the
>relationships among the crew are such a source of good stories. Think
>about some of the great sea-going stories like Mutiny on the Bounty
>and Moby Dick. Here the power struggles aboard are important. A great
>example of this is Greg's scenarios in the RQ Viking boxed set. A crew
>with struggles among them, so that the players can choose sides is
>surely an important part of any game.
>
>
It certainly can be, but I'm not so sure that it must be, since we seem
to be doing well enough without it. The major downside is trying to
explain why its always the Player Heroes who get to decide where the
ship is going (assuming you're doing that sort of campaign, of course;
it isn't the only option) if they're not all that important on the ship.
>Second, don't roll for the Opening unless something is at stake that
>we care about.
>
That's generally sound advice, but wouldn't, IMO, apply if the
resistance really were 10w3 and the odds of the Heroes overcoming it
(absent a large community, as they typically will be) were therefore
relatively small. Players can accept that they 'just happened' to pass
their roll if its something they would reasonably expect to do anyway.
When its something that's quite unlikely, just saying 'well, we'll just
assume you passed anyway' isn't very satisfying - it leads to loss of
suspension of disbelief and verisimilitude and so forth. If, later on,
in apparently identical circumstances, they discover that they have to
jump through all sorts of hoops to do something that, until now, they've
just done automatically at the start of every adventure, the players may
get, at best, somewhat puzzled.
Of course, we now know that this problem doesn't exist with regard to the Opening. 14 isn't all that hard to overcome, once you throw in a few augments, and not rolling for it (so as to avoid adventure-destroying fumbles) is unlikely to be a problem for many groups that are willing to play a game like HQ in the first place. But for, say, entering the Hero Plane, handwaving a success when the players know that they couldn't really do such a thing would, IMO, present a problem. If your planned adventure relies on the Heroes being able to do something that you know they probably can't, it's time to rethink the adventure...
>In the same way I wouldn't roll for entering the hero plane on a
>common basis. If the interesting conflict will happen in the
>heroquest, just get to it. Unless the Lunar sympathizer chief opposes
>our heroquest and success will rally the fence-sitters in the clan to
>our cause and failure will stregthen his hold on the clan.
>
>
Of course, figuring out how to get a reasonable chance of success at
something you know that you won't normally succeed at could be, in
itself, an interesting challenge. This was the situation with the Hero
Plane scenario I ran for my group on Friday. True, if they'd failed to
enter the Hero Plane, the scenario would have been knackered, but,
equally, if I'd just said 'oh, well, you get in, now what?' we'd have
missed out on some (IMO) interesting RPing trying to figure out how to
maximise their chances of success. Which might not be interesting to
everyone, but is, I believe, at least worth thinking about as an option.
-- Trotsky Gamer and Skeptic ------------------------------------------------------ Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
Powered by hypermail