Slightly silly but largely right on the money.
One thing Ash didn’t emphasise was: if it suits your story then Kallyr can be a Moderate or even Easy difficulty obstacle one time and more difficult another.
Let’s say that, during a rescue, she’s tied up and your hero wants to steal a kiss before he unties her. Can’t expect that to be nearly impossible, can we? Of course, after she’s free, the difficulty of avoiding her right-hook might be closer to her pay-grade! The players get a handle on the difficulty by listening to your narrative of the situation/conflict.
You could also say: “hmm the players have been having an easy time of it recently (what with all those conflict-victories they’ve been having), it must be getting less exciting for them. Let’s put in something to spice up the evening – a very difficult resistance”. [never forgetting to read the faces at the table]
We don’t do this without narration though, so we look at our Very Difficult and express the obstacle in those terms (remembering that defeat can be at least as much fun as victory and lead to even more story!).
“Your heroes come around the base of the cliff and get their first look at their goal. The stinking, misty marsh encircling the Necromancers Tower chills the bones of even the most hardened among them. It’s going to be a lady-dog getting the horses and equipment through there!” [notice I didn’t use the words “Very Difficult to cross the marsh” there – the players don’t need to know exactly what the resistance values in contests are every time, might make for a bit more mystery! They will know it’s not going to be easy, at least J]
If we think back, we have been doing relative difficulties at times, since the earliest days. It’s been part of the GM’s craft. At least, it was done during scenario prep.
Btw, Ash is not splitting hairs over the difference between a skill and a HQ ability. Not new information, I know.
Just a couple of points I’d like to pick up on from Kevin’s post:
Anaxial's Roster (great descriptions, silly numbers)
Great descriptions is what we get in HQ2 supplements now. This is all we need to run our obstacles. Regardless of the setting, as long as we have descriptions of things, we can use HQ2 to run games.
As Ashley points out: the numbers your players have on their sheets are very meaningful. They are a reflection of what the player wants to do in a game. If there are high numbers on abilities, the player likely wants to use those abilities – it’s where they have concentrated their HeroPoints, they have invested in having fun with those.
If players want to know up-front how tough someone else is: describe that person to them. Use: a sensory description, someone they respect to tell them what they think, or someone they trust to lie to them. You get the point, I’m sure. Far better and replete with story potential and infinitely superior (imho) than them knowing the clan champion is 10W in close combat – describe her beating up an enemy clan champion, they will have no more doubts that she’s hard!
Yep, if the heroes are known to be savvy, then you can tell them even more detail about their potential obstacles, you can even use contests if they have the right abilities for gleaning information. I would avoid telling them numbers – base everything on descriptions and let them make up their own minds. I detect that your players want to win a lot – perhaps they aren’t finding failure fun? There’s a lot to be said about the whole “failure is fun” idea. If you want to know more – let us know?
In answer to your question about HP spending habits: people I’ve played with (and it’s a fair few now) use any and all methods of spending/saving their HPs. In a single game I usually get some players saving for bumps, some spending all on abilities or some doing a mixture. This happens from the beginning to the end of scenarios. Some people are cautious, some flagrant, some fluctuate.
Mini-maxing has no real place in HQ2. Can you think of a way to do it?
About player projection. I’m a little confused: Do you not have access to their sheets? Players don’t set a relative difficulty in HQ – only the Narrator does that. Players have abilities on their sheets, Narrators do not.
Pardon me but I think I recognise your point of view on a lot of these issues. Could it be that you made the transition from RuneQuest (2 or 3) to HW and then HQ and are using the newer systems in the same way you used RQ?
Oops! It’s 3am. Bedtime for Mattthew!
Looking forward to your reply – enjoying this discussion greatly!
Cheers, take care
M
p.s. just thought of something while re-reading my post: A lot of the stuff I’ve written here is my own way of understanding the advice written by Robin Laws in the HeroQuest2 book. Quite a lot, he wrote good-GMing into the rule book.
Sent: 12 August 2011 23:10
To: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Re: DnD4e to HQ2 (was Greetings)
"Dad, how good am I?"
"What do you mean son?"
"Who can I take in a fight! I've got my spear, hat and a shield - look, it's got an air rune on it, I painted that - and I've practised with the fyrd a bit. And when I faced the challenge of the bad dogs in my initiation I ran two of Narga's pups through."
"Look son, you're a bloody farmer. Who do you expect to able to beat in a punch up? Elinor the clan champion? Ari the Black Bastard?"
"What about Elinor?"
"Not a chance kid. Sorry, shouldn't call you that now you're an adult. But you are behaving like one a bit. Okay, man to man, she'll have your balls off before you see her draw her sword. She's wrestled Tuskers to the ground and she's the only person in the Clan's history that's dared lift Ubran's sword and lasted more than about 10 minutes."
"So out of my league?"
"Son, you aint playing the same sport - she's Trollball and you're playing quoits. She's death personified. It's [drum roll] nearly impossible[/end drum roll]. Which reminds me, never drink out of the same horn that she has - everything goes manky pretty quickly after she's touched it. She's a scary one alright."
"How about Ari then? He's not a Devotee of Death is he?"
"Nope, He's not. But I wouldn't go up against him. He's only recently crawled onto the clan ring, slimey bugger that he is but in a straight fight he'd be [drum roll]very difficult[/end drum roll] to beat."
"How's that? They all say he's shit with a sword!"
"Technically he's not that competent a warrior. He wins by being a complete count with a silent oh. Don't let your mother here me saying that word to you, she still thinks you're 5 summers old and being beaten up by Murnings."
"Who can I beat up then?"
"Well I've taught you most of what you know so I'd be [drum roll]difficult[/end drum roll]. Pissed up Uncle Hrolf is still a bit competent so he'd be about [drum roll]moderately[/end drum roll] hard to take on. Killing a Murning would be [drum roll]easy[/end drum roll] - if you weren't scared of cats."
"So how many HeroPoints do I need to be as good as either of Ari or Elinor?"
"Shush! For Orlanth's sake you start spouting off like that and you'll be called an Illuminate and be torched or even worse have a gift giver coming after you. I told you not to eat red pills dispensed by black men in trench-coats and shades."
"But he looked so cool..."
"Forget him son! Now if you want to be able to take either Elinor or Ari in a fight you're going to have to practise hard. Get some decent weapons - that bronze spear head's been in family for donkey's years and has some magic - and armour as well. Go and fight whenever you can with different opponents. On the holy days watch how Orlanth and Destor fight."
"Sounds like a lot then!"
"Yep, say 20ish for Ari, 50 to 100 for Elinor. Now take this blue pill before the great Gods of Immersion come calling."
"Before I do that dad, as we've reached a higher metaphysical plane..."
"You mean disappeared up our own arses?"
"I think so. While we're up to our necks in colons then should I diversify my skills or save my hero points for bumps?"
"Wash your mouth out! Skills in Glorantha went out about the same time Japan were in the charts and mobile phones were the size of housebricks. Skills are things you can do, things you can practise doing. What you've got are abilities, things that you can use to overcome challenges. I mean, could you 'improve' your deathly fear of Murnings?'"
"I could practise. Perhaps have one jump out at me at regular intervals, catch me off guard and make me poo myself!"
"We named you incorrectly son. Should have been Clouseau."
"Can the Murning be called Kato?"
"Are you listening to any of this?? So you've got abilities - not skills. Most of them describe who and what you are, not what you can do."
"Got it."
"Now due to the way the challenges you'll encounter over your cliched career of farm boy to Argrath (they're really common, I met three one afternoon and I wasn't even drunk) keep becoming harder it's a good idea to focus on a couple of your abilities and use catch ups for the rest."
"Ketchups? Is that imported from the Lunar Empire? They're into red things."
"Orlanth and Ernalda! Give me strength Barntar! So, this is your father's wisdom. Listen and heed it well. Look at page 71 and beyond of the Abiding Book (translated and abridged by Rob the Laws speaker). Ask someone who can read to tell you what it says there, and all will become clear as to your questions."
"Okay!"
"Good. Now take the blue pill. Oh bugger, it's a suppository and I hate those."
Rule the First
The base resistance of any conflict depends on the length of time you've played your campaign. The base resistance starts at 14 and you add one for every two sessions you complete.
Rules the Second
The actual resistance of any conflict is the base resistance plus a chunk that describes how difficult the challenge is to overcome. They range from trivial (see a previous thread on that one) to nearly impossible (add W2 to the base resistance). Just describe how hard the challenge is to overcome (drum rolls optional) and match it against the table in the rules.
This Means...
The resistance of a challenge has nothing to do with the abilities [1] of a particular character.
If players don't focus their hero point spends then their character's best abilities won't stay ahead of resistances and they become less effective (although potentially more interesting). If you're trying to keep two keywords ahead of the game you're only going to have about 1 hero point to bump with every session.
So Kallyr could be "nearly impossible" to beat in a social challenge. This means that on session 1 she's got a whopping resistance of 14W2. Ouch, even Kindy Lingus the law speaker with "smoozing 7W" is going to have trouble (or have to burn some hero points) overcoming her.
What's more she gets harder to overcome. Every other session it (to quote Kevin) ticks up by one point. If a player wants to overtake this rate of increase they've got to increase their abilities at a greater rate and have fewer hero points to burn. As a first approximation characters get better at overcoming challenges which match their character's main focus and less able to overcome challenges outside that focus.
Cheers,
Ash
[1] Caveat here is that the character has an appropriate ability and isn't stretched or has a specific ability bonus.
Powered by hypermail