Re: HQ2: A Game for Beginners?

From: John Machin <trithemius_at_...>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:30:21 +1000


2009/4/14 L C <lightcastle_at_...>:
> (Which is something I think it has well over HQ, which has never had a smooth
> advancement system in my humble opinion.)

I tend to agree; I use HP as a weird sort of "reward mechanic", characters are rewarded for acting heroically, not for success. If you are a hero, then HP are your due. This may have been the intent of rules as written but I never really got that feeling from them.

If I give rewards for in-game occurrences I give "directed-heropoints"; i.e. I say "The Hoar Herons feast you mightily! Raise that Relationship and Wealth rating by a point apiece".

> This I will agree with to some degree. Rather than making the beliefs
> mechanically powerful, they are the drivers of the reward system.

I think this makes them tremendously mechanically powerful! You need to interact with them to get the the best kind of mechanical rewards. There are also some great bits in the text about how Beliefs encode character (and thus player) priorities for the game. E.G: the Narrator knows I want to have a hard time winning the princess because I have a Belief about winning her.

> That are obviously the love of the system.

They are good if you want to have a white-knuckle fight. We've used them twice in a game we've been playing for months now so they are not as integral as the combat systems in Certain Other Games.

-- 
John Machin
"Nothing is more beautiful than to know the All."
- Athanasius Kircher, 'The Great Art of Knowledge'.

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