Re: [HeroQuest-Rules] Augments and arithmetic are irritating...

From: Ashley Munday <aescleal_at_...>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 07:52:00 +0100 (BST)


Even with a single augment there's a lot of "Is that narratively interesting?" flying around the table. In HQ1 it was actually easier to narrate multiple augments without breaking and, as you could stack them up, it was less likely that anyone would roll for them. The only rolled augment I saw was in a con game where Rob (who used to post to this list - can't remember his surname, sorry Rob) had a crack at one in a con game back in 2004. In HQ2 it's not really worth using an auto-augment as you can only have one of them.

In HQ1:

"I'm going to tell him he's quite wrong and an idiot for thinking it. I've got a good relationship with him, the queen and I are, ahem, so she's whispering in his ear. I've got my cheeky grin which the ladies love. I'm pretty good at rhetoric so the lawspeaker is nodding in agreement and I'm loved by the weapon thanes which from last round are bellowing with laughter."

In HQ2:

"I'm going to tell him he's quite wrong and an idiot for thinking it and as the queen and I are doing the ecky ecky ftang behind his back she'll support me."
"Whoa, you've overused your relationship with the queen and quoting the Goon show only goes so far. Especially when you an me are old enough to understand the quote."
"Okay how about I use my relationship with the queen and augment with my relationship with him? " [Awooga! Game speak alert! Narrative broken, narrative broken!!]

"Nope, you augmented with that last round to support convincing the weapon thanes and using the queen when you're trying to convince him is a bit of a stretch."

"Bugger... Okay, how about..."

Ad nauseum.

You could say my bar for augmenting is a bit high in that example compared to the HQ1 one, but the rules say an augment has to be fresh and interesting. In the end you get people spending far more time on augments than they do on selecting the main ability to use in a contest/round of a contest. This is especially true when they really want that +20 in an extended contest and are thinking of blowing a hero point, although in that case you could at least ask for an unrelated action. Or you could end up forgetting them entirely - as my wife does, she can't be arsed.

And the point still stands that failing an augment is singularly uninteresting. What happens on a failed roll? Where's the tension? What's the player risking by trying to roll the augment? Very little - generally less than a 1/400 chance of getting -6.

As you may gather I've gone off the implementation of augments. I'm going with unrelated actions and lingering benefits (take an unrelated action in an extended contest to grab one) as:

 - Everything works the same way
 - There's a real cost of failure so the player has to decide whether it's worth it [1]
 - They stack rather nicely and can flow in the narrative - they've got names that show whether they're applicable to the contest unlike abilities that often don't
 - Most lingering benefits that are contest specific aren't going to have a lot of life outside the contest
 - In extended contest they're an unrelated action against the opposition rather than against moderate difficulty


I know this doesn't help the arithmetic side of things - it probably makes it makes it more complicated as every benefit won't be applicable each round of an extended contest FREX. However I'm hoping it's going to make the narrative flow a bit easier which is my primary objective here. I want my HQ games to flow as easily as my Dogs or MHR games do.

Anyway, that's me out of breathe again! Must be the Manmolaning.

[1] I've still got to see if the no benefit on a marginal success is a cramp on the idea, haven't tried it in anger yet. Might turn out to be complete rubbish in the long run.



 From: David Dunham <david_at_...>
To: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 16 October 2012, 4:08
Subject: Re: [HeroQuest-Rules] Augments and arithmetic are irritating...  

On 7 Oct 2012, at 06:01, Ashley Munday <aescleal_at_...> wrote:

> Yesterday with HeroQuest II augments and arithmetic made the narrative very fractured . Streaming the selection of augments into the narrative was harder.

Selecting a single value is harder?

> Even the equivalent of spending Hero Points is easier, I very rarely mention I'm one. I just skate it across the table to the narrator, narrate how the trait helps me achieve my objective and grab the die for it. In Heroquest II I have to explicit call out the augment so the narrator can do his bit. Also If the augmenting contest fails it's a real "what was that all about then?" as nothing interesting happens mechanically. And you can only use one at a time, even if you have loads of abilities that'd flow into the narrative [2].

You can only use one at a time so you can focus on it.

And, I strongly suggest you use quick augments and not roll. (If a player really wants the possibility of a high augment you could let them roll, but your game will be much, quicker, with the calculation.)

Or are you saying that adding +3 or +4 is complex arithmetic?

David Dunham 
Glorantha/HQ/RQ page: www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein


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