Augments and other worlds - to Mr Laws and the other HQ'ers

From: clanmorrell <keme_at_...>
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:58:04 -0000

I did write this earlier, but it didn't seem to post.

I was wondering whether anyone has tried tackling a 'Cyberpunk' genre adaptation, or even a 'World of Darkness'? Having ran HQ games in both settings my group found the HQ rules exceedingly versatile, and we faced no compatibility problems. 'Cyberpunk' was in fact the most popular conversion, using 'equipment/implants' in place of the magic keyword.

The following comment is more directed at Robin, who I am assuming is still reading the digest.

One thing we found during use of the HQ rules in Glorantha and other settings, was of course the often game slowing aspect of the augment hungry player. For all of the advantage of augments, they can really destroy the atmosphere of the game when misused.

Has anyone else had problems with top-heavy augmenting? Well it appears you have, as per the thread "QW - How many augments (to Mr Laws)." The issue in controlling it is in limiting the spirit of the game, you can't place a ceiling on appropriate augments because why bother with all those abilities in the first place. In combat we had players who had say 3 or 4 companions, who had 'strong', who had ' agile', who had 'know enemy', who had 3 appropriate affinities they could throw in. Then, they adorned their magic armor, and rushed forward with their magic sword, crying out 'down with trolls' (Hate Uz.) All this takes them up from 7w to 19w2. This would be a starting character, the same player who tactically places a score of 15 on this abilities, because that gives him a +2 augment rather than +1. The same player who keeps a log of the best combinations of augments so he can call them out depending upon the situation. How do you control this without stealing some of the spirit of the game? One rule we had, which of course made very little difference, was that only one personality augment could be used at any one time. Anyway.

A couple of things we changed to the rules that we felt didn't work.

1. Community Support. This table never worked, as it was far too complex. We set a difficulty, depending upon who the hero was speaking too, and the size of the community involved. Then when you got a complete victory, you got the entire 'full' support of the community (x3 the base community augment.) A marginal victory gave you x1/2 the normal support.
2. Wounds. We quickly dropped 10% and 50%'s as being too 'math' intensive. Rather we used 10w or 30 as the base, and applied penalties associated with that. Marginal wounds are -1, minor wounds -5, major wounds -15, and finally 'dying'. It took 5 Marginal Wounds to make a minor wound. 3 minor wounds to make a major wound, and 2 major wounds to make a 'dying'. We used natural healing as removing a -1 per day. So, after 2 days, a major wound has moved down to 2 minor wounds, and 3 marginal wounds. This then affects the resistance of any healing attempted on the Hero.

Anyway, I thought Robin and the group may want to hear about some rule adaptations that have been used in the field.

I'm also available for play-testing duty, if there's a need. I have a group all lined up.

• Chris