> This is not really a rules question, but really about guardians in
> general. In our game we generally ignore our heroband guardian.
> Well forget about is more like it. We just focus on the players.
>
> One of our players, a newbie to Heroquest, has questioned why we
> have guardians at all. I don't really know what to say. I kind of
> agree. Where did the idea come from?? Had anyone got a game where
> they use the guardian extensively?
We finally formed our warband only a couple of months ago, but the guardian -- as Stephen described -- is an NPC with a personality, quirks, and probably some history that will show up as time goes on. That's making quite a difference to Newsbringer's impact on the game, and might be something to consider for your heroband guardian. (Heck, in our long-running RQ campaign the Rune Priest's sword was a strong NPC with a very dry sense of humour.)
For comparison, I don't have the same personal sense of what our bloodline or clan guardians are like. The clan wyter sometimes seems more like a perimeter security system than a personality, which might be because it tends to communicate through the chief rather than directly to us. As Víkka, I think I have a relationship with the wyter of my Mother's bloodline, where I was fostered for a time, and that the wyter is an ancestor. I'm wrong, but that only makes things interesting.
I can imagine examples where the guardian is more like a patron saint than a personality: have a shrine at your base, do the right rituals, feel the effect of being blessed, use the guardian's name in your speech and thought, try to hold to the guardian's virtues.
I found it hard to get my head around the idea of having an object which acted as the band guardian, unless that object is the standard ("the eagle") or in some way crystallises what the group does. And then it got really hard figuring out who would "hold" the object. We're a fairly egalitarian lot in our bunch...
Cheers,
Jennifer
-- Jennifer Geard
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