> The biggest one is about being drawn into someone else's heroquest. I get the theory (I think) but have great trouble understanding what this is like from the perspective of the character being drawn in. <
I believe we have seen a couple of examples of this over time
- For a This World heroquest, sometimes people seed the terrain with opponents. They hope that these people will be the one to be drawn in. This is the Sun Dome Temple capturing Biturian Varosh and making him play the role of an opponent. You do this so that you can pick something you can beat. Sometimes you might find it is not these folks, but something else, more surprising, that that magic draws in. This is straightforward - someone captures the PCs and puts them in the ritual, playing the part of their god "or we'll kill you"
- Folks just rely on the magic of the ceremony to draw something in. The summons of evil is the Orlanthi way of doing this - pull in the enemies you need. The problem is that you really can't be sure who will show up to fulfill the role, which creates a lot more risk. For the participant who is drawn in, the skill would be in making this seem 'natural'. I suspect that in many cases people are doing their own myth, not participating in your myth, when this happens. It is just that the two have a cross-over point where you provide opposition to each other. To emulate this, I would give the hero's community a need to do their quest, I think that is more the nature of the magic, and that results in them being providing the opposition to yours. So the PCs enemy clan might be doing the Quest to Steal the Tin Ram's Fleece, but you need opposition from the "Bad Breath Vadrudi" who Destor beat. They try and draw the PCs clan in to being the Vadrudi, so they can beat them in a heroquest challenge there. Meanwhile the PCs herds are dwindling, and you tell them the priest says the clan should do Ulanin's Seven Raids heroquest, which always helps them birth better cattle. He tells them that they have a chance to beat up the Ram Men in a heroquest challenge and steal the tin fleece.
I don't think this matters if you are doing this world or other side, in both cases I think the quester decides what form it will take.
One issue with the other side version though is: how to the PCs know, that they were really facing up against their neighbors who weere on their own quest. Well one way is they hear about it afterwards; hey did you hear that the other clan tried to do the Quest to Steal the Tin Fleece, but it failed and so and so got badly beaten in a heroquest challenge and lost loads of his air magic. The other is the notion of a 'face dancer' that is someone who always tends to get drawn in to your quests, by symmetry and you begin to recognize through the mask of the gods that they wear. It's like your ability to recognize an old friend in a costume or disguise. Something about their mannerisms seems to shine through
> The other (lesser and more mechanical) problem is with deliberately failing stations on a heroquest. Assuming a band of PC's correctly identify a station as 'Orlanth was beaten up by Kygor Liter', how would you actually play this in a way that was fun for the players?
I think these kind of stations are best seen as choices over contests: what are you prepared to sacrifice to get your goal.