In response to your thanks - you're welcome, it's a pleasure. Nice to have something to sharpen my claws on (as a distraction from my own game prep)!
One thing gives me concern about all this development that's going on. HeroQuests are supposed to be both dangerous and difficult; from what I know of it, the LBQ is one of the hardest imaginable. Now, I noticed that you wrote that "the group probably isn't fully ready for a HQ" so I've got to ask: Is this Elmal hero such an important character that everyone else would risk their lives (or more!) to get him back?
I mean, I know you want to run the bringing-him-back-from-the-dead bit
dramatically but it strikes me that, if you want to retain some sort of
balance in your game (as far as mythic achievements go), the sort of
level of quest you are talking about may be something to save for later
(when they are more established).
I'm not being a canon-only-guy but (at least IMG) resurrection is a really BIG deal.
If you wanted to entertain a different idea for achieving the same goal, whilst still retaining the dramatic essence, perhaps there could be some sort of practise-run level of heroquest that the hero group could perform for someone that could restore their friend to them? Maybe the elves don't have access to something/where that the heroes do and would consider an exchange?
Another suggestion could be the kind of lifetime-quest idea. This is where a much-loved hero dies at the beginning of the campaign (when the characters are all fairly new) and where, sometime near the end of the first book (when they have all grown and changed etc.), he is brought back from the underworld {this might mean that the story would be subject to a lot of compressed time etc - like in the various otherworlds}. Of course, you know that gloranthans travel a certain route after a week of dying (?); well you could have a future enemy somehow interrupt that route - nasties could have visions of the future and quest against your good guys.
Yet another idea could be that a story-important enemy, somehow (*) getting wind of what your heroes are intending, decides to stand against the heroes success. If this was done pro-actively, the enemies could draw your characters into a different quest than the one they plan. This could (>activate bigger picture mode<) acually cause the heroes to be successful, should they actually win out.
(*) a nice opportunity for recursive heroquest initiation here: the
heroes could be drawing the enemies (intentionally or not) onto their
quest and thereby be causing them to 'get wind ..'; the enemies actions
could (because of something they have done in a previous or future
quest) then draw the heroes onto this different quest - which actually
aids their goal (because the heroes beat them) and even makes the aim
possible (when it might not have been). {for the english version of
these two paragraphs please see www.chewtalkssh1te.com/translation :) }
Never can have too much complexity going on in the background! :)
Something else:
I noticed something in the HQ rule book today: you can have your dead
buddy as your Guardian in your HeroBand! Strange I know! Just thought
I'd mention it.
Well that's all from me for now, so 'Good night from me!' 'And good night from him!'
Matthew
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