Michael Schwartz wrote:
>
> One important factor in determining community support which the rules
> have overlooked, in my opinion, is the hero's relationship scores with
> those communities upon which he or she might call for assistance.
...
> In order to acquire community support, a hero may be required to succeed
> in a contest.
...
This is what I did in the recent HQ I narrated.
The quest was to help some Dundealos refugees, traditional enemies of
the clan. I worked out how many people were available. I assumed the
refugees themselves would give extraordinary support, whatever the
outcome of the contest. The degree of success in the contest
determined how many of the clan gave each level of support, using a
table I prepared especially for the purpose. From that I could
calculate the community support bonus using the table in the rules.
IIRC, the Heroes had a major success in the contest. Some of the
clansmen threw in their lot with the refugees, giving extraordinary
support in the hope of sharing in the benefits of the HQ. No
clansmen opposed the HQ.
Of course, my table was a one off, suitable only for the particular
HQ in question. A consensus on some general rules is useful. I
suggest a good set of rules for determining the degree os support
from a community meets the following criteria.
- Mixed levels of support should be possible.
- The rules should work for any types of HQ, including the following:
clan initiation HQs, the Sacred Time ceremonies, Harvald's (spit)
Helm, Harmast's LBQ.
- The rules should work for any size of community.
- The degree of support for clan initiation heroquests is always
extraordinary support (as Greg has just definitively stated).
- The degree of support for a quest that directly and obviously
benefits the community tends to be higher than for quests that
benefit individuals.
- A quest that directly and obviously benefits the community should
never have opponents.
- The degree of support for questers who are popular with the
community (that is, have high relationship abilities) should be
higher than for unpopular questers.
- A member of the clan ring gaining support for a quest that directly
benefits the whole community should have a high chance of gaining
extraordinary support from the whole community. That is, someone with
a clan relationship of 1W or more should have a probability of 80% or
more of that level of support.
- A typical thane gaining support for a quest that will benefit him
alone should have some small chance of success.
- A typical carl gaining support for a quest that directly benefits
the whole community should have a moderate chance of success.
- It should be possible to determine the level of support using any
type of contest.