>I haven't found much in the way of reviews for the latest HeroQuest
>stuff, and I'd like to canvas some opinions here.
>
>A bit of background: my group are a bunch of unapologetic power gamers
>(most definitely including yours truly) that have primarily played D&D
>in the past (though also Shadowrun, various White Wolf nonsense,
>Champions, Traveller, and probably one or two others). Our experiments
>with RuneQuest and HeroWars were very brief (largely because the GM -
>me - didn't do a particularly good job of translating my interest in
>Glorantha into something compelling).
>
>But there is light at the end of the tunnel - one of the players is
>intrigued enough to try running a RuneQuest game, and I've been given
>the go ahead to try a HeroQuest game. Since the other guy is going to
>be running something Prax/Sartar based (the old Sun County and River
>of Cradles stuff will probably get a look in), I figured I'd try
>Lunars.
>
>Now, I'm a Gloranthan novice by the standards of mailing lists; I own
>(and have read) most of the RQ2 and 3 stuff, King of Sartar, and so
>on; I own (but have not yet read) most of the current HeroQuest
>supplements.
>
>Given that:
>a) Not only the players but the GM will be HeroQuest novices.
This is tricky. The GM at least needs some experience of how the game plays as it's very different from most RPGs. I've met many people who say they've tried and don't like the system. Every time I've asked how much experience the GM has had of HQ the answer has been little or none.
>b) The group will want to play powerful characters (not necessarily
>Heroes at the start, but not the "stickpicker" level - I personally
>don't mind that, but I know my group).
Argrath was a stickpicker. At least in some Gloranthas. Starting character has little to do with what they achieve. Power comes from relationships. Kallyr as a tribal queen and widespread support outside her tribe isn't powerful enough to beat the Lunars. That takes Argrath uniting the whole of Sartar.
>c) The little Gloranthan exposure any of us have previously had has
>been Orlanthi in Prax or Sartar.
>
>d) The campaign will likely be run no more often than 1 3-4 hour
>session per month (we play LOTS of games). So I'll need something
>ideally with bite sized chunks; adventures that take several sessions
>to play are fine, but they need to have reasonable break points.
>
>What should we look for in terms of published adventures?
Barbarian Adventures is the ideal starter for Orlanthi. Don't try and follow it slavishly though. There's other useful stuff in Wintertop Fair if you can get hold of that.
>I don't like
>the idea of making my players read the Lunar handbook before play,
>either; anyone have any suggestions for a brief summary that will at
>least kick us off into the "create-as-you-go" character generation?
I'm dead against the "create as you go" option. It relies on the GM guessing what the players are going to want from the game. The GM has to write or take a scenario and the players will then choose abilities and relationships which will help them in that scenario. Give them several choices to begin with and take it from there.
When I started a game recently I ignored all the chargen options and set up a small stead of ten families. Various conflicts were set up between different people. Every player was to choose one of the young adults/children and when they had chosen filled in the rest with mostly younger children. The first thing a player had to do was describe their relationships with father, mother and other siblings. Then pick three other people in the stead and describe their player's relationship with them. Finally I got them to choose an occupation they wanted to learn. From that I worked out their skills and magic for them. That took about an hour and a half. Then I took them along to the tribal fair with a few NPCs. Everyone had reasons to be there and I improvised contests for all sorts of stuff to get the players used to the system. At the end of the session the players were thorougly involved in various plots and I had about half a dozen NPCs to writeup for the next session. Only about half the plots were things I thought up beforehand, the rest appeared from the choices the players made about their characters.
One thing I did find was that this method chews through an awful lot of plot in a few hours because each contest only takes a couple of minutes. Granted most of that plot isn't finished and will continue in later sessions but you want a lot of potential storylines given that at least some will be ignored.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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