Roles and Holders

From: Charles Corrigan <charles_at_...>
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 02:41:43 -0000

• In HeroQuest-RPG_at_yahoogroups.com, Light Castle wrote:
  > On Wed, 2005-27-07 at 13:29 +0000,
  > donald_at_g... wrote:
  >
  > > There's a position for an Eurmali
  > > on the ring. I suspect it is
  > > often vacant even where there is
  > > a bonded Eurmali to fill it.
  > > If needed for ritual purposes the
  > > clan may use a child to fill
  > > the place.
  >
  > > With all these rings I think
  > > there's a lot of substitution
  > > anyway. The Lightbringer Ring
  > > also requires a Chalana Arroy
  > > worshipper which many clans don't
  > > have. Substuting an Ernaldan
  > > healer will be common.
  >
  > Since I don't have BA, I have to
  > ask the following question... do
  > the roles need to be filled by the
  > appropriate person? In all
  > published things I've seen so far
  > with rings, the positions are not
  > matched exactly. I thought the
  > roles were named according to some
  > mythic view of the role as
  > adviser/consultant/leader/whatever.
  > I didn't think you needed
  > worshippers of those specific
  > deities to inhabit those roles.
  > It certainly seems to me that
  > substitution is the norm, not the
  > exception. Does BA imply otherwise?
  

My opinion...
I agree that substitution is the norm. The more appropriate the holder is for the role, the more the magical bonus they get (there is a table somewhere in HeroQuest that suggests the kind of bonus). So there is some pressure to have a substantial number of holders match their roles.

And, of course, despite the rules, some substitutions work very well. For example, an Earnaldan Healer holding the Chalana Arroy position would not get the same kind of bonus as an actual Chalana Arroy worshipper but would get more than a Ernaldan Kev worshipper. These are the kind of combinations that are too extensive to make rules for but should be tweaked to match the needs of your story.

Going off on a tangent... thinking about it this way suggests that a clan ring or tribal ring, just by its existence, is performing an ongoing ritual - the object of which is (roughly) to survive or even improve the position of the larger group.

regards,
Charles