>Our bunch are trying out some of the beginner
>scenarios in HQ. Our pre-rolled PC's have various
>magical possessions, e.g. thunderstones and in
>Aileena's case, a sword.
I don't recall this from HQ -- is it in Hero's Book or is my memory just poor?
>We have found no
>descriptions of the powers of these objects in the HQ
>book. We are feeling very uncomfortable about this,
>as it leads to much confusion when trying to use them.
> I know that thunderstones certainly existed in RQ3,
>but their power would presumably differ somewhat in
>HQ. The sword's features are a complete unknown.
I wouldn't worry about them being the same as RQ3.
>Is the narrator expected to look at these and define
>them ahead of time with the players? In that case,
>including that info for the beginner narrator would
>really help!
No, not ahead of time. One of the best ways to do this is to give the player possible ideas (if necessary), and then have them define the item during play.
One my early characters (so early it was in a Hero Wars rules playtest, but the principle is still the same) had "a boat, Snapper" on her sheet. I think the first time I used it, we needed to go fast. That seemed a reasonable power, so I rolled for Snapper's rating. Another time the Narrator didn't think we could fit the entire party on it. But he agreed that it was a reasonable thing to roll for when I asked (and succeeded in the roll). Another time my character had gone inland, and had to summon Snapper. Again this seemed reasonable (and again I succeeded -- I'd been putting points into the Snapper ability, since clearly it was useful).
I don't think any of us knew exactly what Snapper was (indeed, I don't think I even knew it was a magical boat when I wrote the description). We all learned during play.
I think if I'd failed one of the rolls, then we'd have known that Snapper couldn't come when called, or couldn't hold lots of people. It's possible we were a bit lenient -- you could argue that this was an awful lot of cool stuff for one item. But it always seemed to be relevant to the story, and even as I kept adding to the Snapper ability, unlikely to get out of hand. For a sword, you might want to allow it to augment a Sword Fighting ability and have one other power (glowing when Orcs are present, ringing when an enemy approaches, etc.).
>In fact, there seems a general tendency in the
>character generation phase to give new PC's magical
>items and powers, which was certainly not the case in
>RQ. There you usually started out pretty raw, and had
>to acquire them as you went. Is this difference
>because it is now universally assumed that all PC's
>are experienced?
I think the assumption is that even new players like the idea of playing powerful characters. Since in many respects the rules aren't as important (i.e. you don't need to know how every battle magic spell and rune magic works in order to play a Rune Lord, the way you did in RQ), why not let anyone play one? Everyone knows what powerful people are like, and the game system works pretty much the same for them as for anyone else.
It might be easier for new players not to play the most powerful magicians (devotees, shamans, etc.) but then I think the rules already say this.
Paul
>Swords are described on p78 (it gives a +3 bonus in combat).
If you want. I've never worried about the standard bonuses. They all pretty much average out (if everyone has a sword, everyone is +3, so why bother?)
-- David Dunham dunham_at_... Glorantha/HW/RQ page: http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein
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