>From: Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
>
> >You know, after many (~80) sessions of HeroQuest with the same characters
>and heavy HP distribution, I begin to see a disturbing trend.<
>
>Trouble is that I suspect that HeroQuest will produce abilties in that
>range at that point. After that kind of play you should be able to take on
>the heroes of te day and shape the Fourth Age. Most people will never play
>the same characters for that long.
>
>So I think your choice is either up the campaign to that level, or make new
>characters.
I agree with Ian, but let me put it another way.
All of your ideas about how to keep things going are accurate, Philippe, but I note that you seem to approach them with distaste. And well you should. What's going on, I'm guessing, is not so much a problem of character power. You can always create foes and challenges for any character, and plausible ones as well. That's not really the issue.
The problem, I think, is that you can't really think of anything new for the characters to do. Which, I'd further guess, is because their story is over.
Consider the placement of this post. It was OK to play them through this climactic "god level" heroquest in play. But now that they've resolved that...where do they go from there?
Think of this as the end of a story. Sure, you can do a sequel. But you don't have to. If you can't see a clear rout to some new overall problem, then consider that it might be time for new characters, and a new story.
In any case, if you have to go on, one note about the scale. They're nowhere near as tough as Harrek. Harrek is noted as having high abilities in the 10W4 range or more. If you're allowing augments to pile up to several masteries for the PCs, you can certainly allow that many masteries or more augment for Harrek - why assume he has fewer abilities? Further, you're not required to stat him out to figure it out. Just select a resistance for him that's reasonably higher than that of the players characters.
If he's supposed to be tougher, make him tougher. Does that put his resistance in the 8 mastery range? Now he seems like he can take on gods all day (which he's done once at least)? Well, then the gods are also higher with augments than the sample resistances.
Or, if circumstances are right, perhaps they're the equal of Harrek. The problem with that is??? Even if they're a mastery more or less than Harrek, even two, there's still a chance of a conflict going either way. Don't avoid this conflict because they might beat Harrek. If it's time for them to confront him, then have them confront him.
It's OK for the player heroes to wreak havok with Glorantha. It's the Hero Wars, that's the idea. If they don't end up knocking the red moon out of the sky by the end, if you're really into playing big heroes, then that would be a shame. Some heroes put that thing up there, and it's causing problems. Time for somebody to do something about that, no?
It seems to me that people are afraid to deal with the large canon elements, for fear that their Glorantha will cease looking like everyone else's. Well, just stop worrying. When, finally, somebody has knocked the Red Moon out of the sky, and they've figured out what the new regime will be, then you can start a new game at that point.
But I think that's the key. Don't think of the game as the lives of the characters, but as their stories. Which can end not when they die of old age, but whenever they've settled the interesting dramatic issues in their lives. Not willing to end things because in D&D it would have taken 400 sessions of play to get to the "level" where they could take these sorts of adventures on? Do you really want to play out the other 300 sessions with these same characters? 100 is plenty enough. Or even 80. Or, heck, even 20.
Wasn't it you or somebody else who reported a while back that their group had taken out the Red Bat? Now there's a bunch of heroes. Are they at 4 masteries for abilities? Probably not. But they figured out a way to do it anyhow. That's what makes them heroes - not because they're the most powerfully rated characters, but because they go out and do heroic things that Kallyr won't do, because she's not destined to do it.
Put another way, the Player Heroes, if you stat them high enough like this, *ARE*, in fact, the most powerful beings in Dragon Pass. Beause they have a will to risk everything to create the changes they want to see. That's far more important than mere ability. I recently had a bunch of characters nowhere near as powerful as the ones you mention bind a 6 mastery majestic spirit. Took them a lot of planning, effort, and sacrifice. But when it was done, it was very cool. There were lots of more powerful characters around them who could have done it in theory. But the difference is that only the player heroes were willing to take the risks.
Took, let's see...about 80 sessions...to tell that story. Now it's done, and we're largely on to new characters.
Mike
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