Glorantha gaming: Heroquests and Cows

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Glorantha gaming: Heroquests and Cows

lessavini: Jun 22, 2017

I couldn't find a thread for this. If there's one already, feel free to delete this one.

So, anyone excited for the release of Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha?

The art in this new edition is outstanding, really bringing the setting to life.

Ive never actually played neither Runequest nor Heroquest but I appreciate what they attempt to do, and I love Glorantha since I've played King of Dragon Pass for PC, back in the 2000s.

So, thoughts?

lessavini fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jun 12, 2018

# ? Jun 12, 2018 00:20

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 09:45

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

I'm curious about how the new runequest works. I like percentile systems but from my limited experience with RQ the power level of your average PC is too low for what I'd want to do with the story. The Hero Wars are starting, but for now lets look at some mercenaries guarding a trade caravan who fight bandits, and get their arms chopped off by random crits. Maybe that's changed a bit, but I'd probably use the Heroquest system.

Also one day I'd love to do Around Glorantha in 80 Days, so you can cover way more of the setting than you'd usually get to do.

E: There's a new King of Dragon Pass game coming out soon, where you play as Hyalorings in the early days of the setting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXl7zCaRI9M

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Jun 12, 2018

# ? Jun 12, 2018 01:47

lessavini: Jun 22, 2017

rumble in the bunghole posted:

I'm curious about how the new runequest works. I like percentile systems but from my limited experience with RQ the power level of your average PC is too low for what I'd want to do with the story. The Hero Wars are starting, but for now lets look at some mercenaries guarding a trade caravan who fight bandits, and get their arms chopped off by random crits. Maybe that's changed a bit, but I'd probably use the Heroquest system.

Also one day I'd love to do Around Glorantha in 80 Days, so you can cover way more of the setting than you'd usually get to do.

E: There's a new King of Dragon Pass game coming out soon, where you play as Hyalorings in the early days of the setting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXl7zCaRI9M

Are you sure about these Hyalorings? I was hoping we would see some Lunar/Pelorian culture in the new game.

About the Runequest, I agree with you. I may end up buying it (together with the Bestiary supplement thats coming too) just for mining ideas and inspiration (that art!) for Heroquest games.

# ? Jun 12, 2018 16:54

lessavini: Jun 22, 2017

By the way, I did something..

When a grave danger threatens the clan, go to your Godi and ask for help. He will tell you how an ancestor or God dealt with it in the distant past and then ask of you 2, 3 or 4 of these:
- seek further knowledge of this story with another gruop or clan
- seek an artifact similar to what the ancestor/God used;
- reenact a amending deed of the ancestor/God by making peace or allying with another group or clan
- reenact a violent deed of the ancestor/God by attacking another group or clan
- sacrifice something of value just as your ancestor/God did
- enact a Heroquest overcoming a great challenge your ancestor/God faced.

Thoughts?

# ? Jun 13, 2018 00:27

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

lessavini posted:

Are you sure about these Hyalorings? I was hoping we would see some Lunar/Pelorian culture in the new game.

About the Runequest, I agree with you. I may end up buying it (together with the Bestiary supplement thats coming too) just for mining ideas and inspiration (that art!) for Heroquest games.

Yeah, preview stuff for the game says it's set roughly 2000 years before KODP.

# ? Jun 13, 2018 03:20

mossyfisk: Nov 8, 2010; FF0000

unseenlibrarian posted:

Yeah, preview stuff for the game says it's set roughly 2000 years before KODP.

Which notably places it 700 years before the invention of time.

# ? Jun 13, 2018 03:47

Archenteron: Nov 3, 2006

mossyfisk posted:

Which notably places it 700 years before the invention of time.

When they invented time, it went both ways :engleft:

# ? Jun 13, 2018 04:40

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

I picked up the new runequest and have some thoughts. I thought it was great overall, it definitely wears it's age on it's sleeve though.

It doesn't have any monster stats so you can't run the game with just it. I guess you just make soldiers with PC stats, but even then there's too much detail and you'd need more Lunar cult write-ups than just the Seven Mothers. Broos and Trolls are in the bestiary preview so you can work off that for those guys, at least. Also there's nothing on Heroquests so even if you tried to run it with the book you're missing out on that.
The Family History part of character creation is really cool. As well as generating some useful backstory, it places your characters in the world and helps introduce new people to the setting. They added a basic version to generate some passions if you want to get through it quickly or play as someone foreign
None of the backgrounds are super terrible, since you get a decent baseline in culture weaponry so you aren't useless in a fight, but it's probably not worth taking Farmer or similar. Watch out for Philosophers though, they get some starting access to sorcery
Stats are still randomly rolled, which is annoying when POW and CON are incredibly important and players may have an archetype in mind. It does have a sidebar of a bunch of ways to mitigate that but I'd definitely get a stat array or make everything 2d6+6 like SIZ and POW and let people assign where they want
POW is a pretty serious God Stat, appropriately enough. A high enough POW helps most skills a bit, but it's also a resource for advancing in your religion, your magic points for spirit magic and sorcery, hit points in spirit combat and is used for both attacking and defending a lot of magic. It's the main point of interaction for most of the game's really cool parts. You want as much of it as possible, even if you're going to sacrifice it to get more Rune Power. You effectively need 20 at the very least to become a rune-priest or god-talker. On a side note I have no idea why you need Charisma to be a Rune Lord, the skill gating is high enough and I don't want to stop people from painting themselves blue and flying around, blasting lightning everywhere
There are a lot of skills but it's not so bad with how Augmenting works. Definitely emphasize augmenting to your players, its very important for getting successes and advancing as characters. Watch out for Dancers because they're going to have some powerful magic. There's definitely a lot of cruft, like 3 different unarmed skills, Listen and Scan being seperate, Library Use and Funeral Rites in a book that mentions only rolling when it's interesting. A lot of them are specific to cults and cultures and should probably be blank spaces rather than there for everyone
You can augment rolls with passions and runes now, which is really handy in a pinch and helps integrate characterisation into play
Combat is really brutal, which I don't especially like as a concept because it butts up against the emphasis on being big heroes or the talk about Maximum Game Fun. I'd give people a bit more overall HP, since hit locations are a big thing and let you have serious physical consequences to getting hit without having the character die. There's explicitly no Fate points, which was unexpected after Call of Cthulu put them in. Easier access to Rune magic does mitigate this, pretty much everyone can heal and get magic armor. The actual rules are pretty good, aside from being a little more book-keepy than I'd usually like. I'd probably move the mention of Chalana Arroy resurrection up a bit as well, it's a useful stopgap. Dual wielding should also be cooler and a little less complicated imo, although it does get very good at higher skill ranks
Rune Magic has been overhauled to be more common and simplified. I'm not experienced with it in earlier editions, but looking at it now as a guy who has played D&D 5e, I'm a big fan of it. It's fairly even across characters, it's flavorful and powerful without being an absolute narrative breaker, and they had the genius decision to give really fundamental spells, like Heal, divination, and other cantripy things to basically everyone. The actual Rune Point economy is pretty tight and you increase it by sacrificing a stat, which isn't great, slows down advancement and makes it a really important stat for a lot of people.
Ernaldans love getting they titties out
I don't really know how the spirit stuff works, it was getting late when I was reading it. I'm kind of worried that spirit combat will be like Hacking in cyberpunk stuff where only one guy really interacts with it but I'm probably wrong. Cool art though
Sorcery is neat, although it's not emphasized much in the book and there's only one background that grants it and one cult that grants it. No Heathens allowed

Overall I think it's pretty cool, I'd play it, maybe with a HP increase, stat array and a buff to Ducks. I'm not sure I really can run a game until the bestiary and GM guide comes out though. Maybe it's backwards compatible with that stuff, who knows.

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Jun 14, 2018

# ? Jun 14, 2018 02:14

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

Bumping a thread to ask about encounter design. I had a look around online to get advice on planning a balanced combat encounter and the general consensus is that you don't. Is there a recommended benchmark for combat stats compared to players, or would I just say gently caress it and play by ear?

# ? Jul 14, 2018 07:18

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

The bestiary just came out so this system may now actually be playable, I guess we'll see next week when my group tries to run it.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 00:02

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

does the bestiary come with human enemies to crib or is it just a stat-as-pcs deal because I hate that poo poo

# ? Jul 21, 2018 00:08

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

Wrestlepig posted:

does the bestiary come with human enemies to crib or is it just a stat-as-pcs deal because I hate that poo poo

You're able to stat every single creature in it as a PC but it also provides pre-rolled "average" stats if the GM just wants to throw it in as an enemy. Unfortunately none of the entries are humans so yes, any human enemy would have to be statted by the GM I think. It does also come with additional rules and spells for playing Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls, Dragonewts, Tusk Riders, Men-and-a-Half, Trollkin, and Telmori if any of those are up your alley.

# ? Jul 21, 2018 01:40

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Based on past experience expect pre-statted human enemies in the GM pack. In earlier editions they'd have a little gazetteer with "Poor, average, good, better, and elite" statblocks for some standard mooks, or the adventures themselves would have a bunch of pre-written statblocks for mercenaries, broo bands (Usually with like one base statblock and what the variations from the baseline were for their chaos features), etc.

unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Jul 21, 2018

# ? Jul 21, 2018 01:50

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

My basic impression is that the RuneQuest system is fairly crunchy in a dull way and I'd much rather be playing HeroQuest and going full storygame, but maybe somebody who's actually used it has more valuable commentary?

That said, the art is gorgeous and I appreciate their getting the bestiary out very quickly.

# ? Jul 24, 2018 04:05

nomadotto: Oct 25, 2010; Body of a Penguin
Soul of a Hero
Mind of a Lazy, Easily Distracted, Waste of Space

One of the challenges I've found with trying to get folks together for a Glorantha-set game, is it's hard to give people enough of an info-dump that they can "get into" the fiction without having a huge amount of homework. Is that just the situation with the setting, or is there a good resource to point people to?

# ? Jul 24, 2018 22:22

Josef bugman: Nov 17, 2011; Pictured: Poster prepares to celebrate Holy Communion (probablY)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

nomadotto posted:

One of the challenges I've found with trying to get folks together for a Glorantha-set game, is it's hard to give people enough of an info-dump that they can "get into" the fiction without having a huge amount of homework. Is that just the situation with the setting, or is there a good resource to point people to?

I always find setting up a clan beforehand helps as it gives lots of cool hooks. Then just lead into it whilst mentioning all the weirdness as it goes on.

# ? Jul 25, 2018 00:03

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

nomadotto posted:

One of the challenges I've found with trying to get folks together for a Glorantha-set game, is it's hard to give people enough of an info-dump that they can "get into" the fiction without having a huge amount of homework. Is that just the situation with the setting, or is there a good resource to point people to?

The new book is pretty good about handling it. Do a session zero for character creation, and start with a really basic explanation (bronze age fantasy, the gods are separated from us by Time and magic comes from there. The Orlanthi are barbarians who worship the Storm God Orlanth and the Earth Goddess Ernalda, and are at War with the Lunar Empire, who are like Mystic Romans that consort with Chaos) and go over the specifics as they come up in character creation. The book's focus on the anti-lunar alliance means you don't really need to go into detail about big history stuff since you don't really care about it at the start and can roll it in as you go.

I wrote an intro to the setting a while ago for an aborted heroquest game. some of the mechanic notes are specific to those mechanics. It's handy to share if someone's interested in the setting and wants to do some reading before the game starts, but players are lazy bastards who love to check their phones so you'll have to do it at the table

Josef bugman posted:

I always find setting up a clan beforehand helps as it gives lots of cool hooks. Then just lead into it whilst mentioning all the weirdness as it goes on.

The website has a quiz thing for forming a Sartarite clan from the creation of the universe to just about the start of the Runequest Ancestry stuff. The mechanical side isn't relevant, but it's a good way to form a detailed history. It's too much detail for first timers, though. You could introduce it later on if you want more on your clan.

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jul 25, 2018

# ? Jul 25, 2018 00:11

ross the boss: Oct 26, 2017

I really want to love the Heroquest rules but for some reason for it being billed as a rules-light game I just cannot understand them. Like the contest system just is confusing as hell to me. Maybe I'm just really dumb. Can someone explain it to me? For all of the examples in the book, they are never really clearly written.

# ? Jul 31, 2018 06:48

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

ross the boss posted:

I really want to love the Heroquest rules but for some reason for it being billed as a rules-light game I just cannot understand them. Like the contest system just is confusing as hell to me. Maybe I'm just really dumb. Can someone explain it to me? For all of the examples in the book, they are never really clearly written.

It's not a well explained system, and I can't say I have it down perfectly, but essentially you roll under a relevant quality while your GM rolls against whatever difficulty is appropriate. Every 20 points gives you a level of mastery or weird M that upgrades your result for each one more than your opponent (A normal success becomes a crit, failure becomes a success, etc. Since you can't go higher than a crit, once you reach that point it downgrades your opponent's roll), and then you and the GM compare results on the chart. With a Simple Contest, you just do the one roll, like a standard skill check. If both rolls are the same level of success, the highest roll can act as a tiebreaker.

The other tests are harder to understand, but they all work on the same principle: A series of Simple Contests where winning gives you Resolution Points, which determine who wins at the end.

With group contests, everybody involved rolls and the GM rolls once for each. Depending on how well they did, they get some Resolution Points, and each side of the conflict adds all theirs together. The bigger the difference, the more of a success/failure it is.

Extended contests work in a similar way to the group contests, except it's one person doing opposed rolls multiple times. The first to 5 points wins rather than comparing sizes. You want to use Extended contests if the conflict needs more focus and has more narrative weight, rather than how mechanically complex it is like in other games.

Extended Group Contests are a little bit more confusing, but basically it's everyone doing an Extended Contest at the same time. Instead of comparing the sizes of results, the loser of the individual conflict is eliminated, and the winner can start engaging with other opponents and assisting other party members. Each extra opponent you're dealing with gives a -3 penalty to the stat being tested, so it really adds up.

I'm not entirely sure how Rising Actions work, but essentially it's a way to have harsher consequences for extended contests as you reach a climax, like the end of your session. Climactic consequences are an optional way to handle the end of the entire story, where you add up every resolution point scored against the PC and compare it to a chart to get a different set of consequences.

You can also Augment a roll with a different keyword. These tend to be a test at moderate difficulty, and modify a keyword's value depending on the result, kind of like assisting another player but you can also do it to yourself. There's also a Quick augment variant where you just divide the thing you're augmenting with by 5 and add it on, which I recommend although it's a little less dramatic. You only get one of these per Contest.

Keywords are easier to understand. They can be pretty much anything, and you roll under the number in the contests. Everything is categorized as a Keyword, from followers to gear. Some Keywords are Breakouts, which are more specific parts of a keyword that get higher numbers. There's penalties and benefits depending on how specific a keyword is, so stretching something to fit everything doesn't work super well. You need to be an initiate to use your Rune scores for anything other than Augments most of the time. Character creation is clear enough, at least.

You also get 3 Hero Points per session, which can be used to bump up a roll like you had another point of mastery, and to create and upgrade abilities (+2 to upgrade a basic form, +1 for a breakout or a new ability). I really recommend having the bump up a result thing count towards upgrading, so players don't have to pick between short and long term success.

There aren't any hit points, but defeats give you penalties to relevant keywords as you go. Successes can also give you Benefits of Victory, which temporarily upgrade a keyword a bit until you're defeated.

There's a few other bits and pieces but they aren't super important. It's definitely a hard system to understand, since a lot of it feels like it was written as a treatise on how to design and run a role-playing game focused on epic narratives, and it isn't rules light, just heavily abstract. That said, it's a good system for actually running an epic campaign that matches Glorantha's fluff without detailed rules on how throwing axes weigh down shields or how every fight involves constantly losing legs, once you get past the poorly explained rules. Also you really want to bring poker chips.

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jul 31, 2018

# ? Jul 31, 2018 08:22

ross the boss: Oct 26, 2017

That's perfect, thanks friend. I guess I had it mostly figured out but it seemed wrong to me. The rulebook is so unclear too, it just looks like it's well designed in that respect.The setting material is great though (especially in the Sartar books). For some reason I just can't see my group getting loose (is that the right word?) enough to play this game, even if I gave them a setting primer.

Anyone have experience running Glorantha in a different system? The 13G book was bad or something, right?

# ? Jul 31, 2018 14:48

unseenlibrarian: Jun 4, 2012; There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

The 13G book wasn't so much bad as just kind of really laser focused on Sartarite Orlanthi than even most Glorantha RPGs are.

# ? Jul 31, 2018 15:16

JesterOfAmerica: Sep 11, 2015

Yeah the 13G classes are really cool its just more Dragon Pass

# ? Jul 31, 2018 16:59

ChaseSP: Mar 25, 2013

13G very much seems like it's going off people interested in Glorantha from KoDP and are looking for an up to date system they will probably be familiar with

# ? Jul 31, 2018 19:26

Ataxerxes: Dec 2, 2011; What is a soldier but a miserable pile of eaten cats and strange language?

I am planning on running Glorantha with Fate at some point, but we'll see if anything comes out of it.

# ? Aug 3, 2018 20:27

paradoxGentleman: Dec 10, 2013; wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

This seems as fine a place as any to ask this.

So I've been reading the Glorantha Sourcebook and it says in there that the Kingdom of Dragon Pass happens when a prince of Sartar marries a Feathered Horse Queens.
Does that mean that what happens in the videogame King of Dragon Pass is not canon? Because I'm pretty sure the Orlanthi clan that you play as has nothing to do with Sartar.

# ? Aug 4, 2018 13:42

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

King of Dragon Pass is based on the canonical migration to Dragon Pass and the rise of Sartar. He�s the guy who went through all the endgame quests. Sartar�s the name of the first king and they named the kingdom after him.

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Aug 4, 2018

# ? Aug 4, 2018 13:50

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

Finally played our first session of this, it runs pretty well if everyone knows the rules and the real fiddly bits are all after the adventure is over so you can look them up. Setting is great, it's fun.

# ? Aug 5, 2018 20:14

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

If I already have the Guide to Glorantha and Heroquest Glorantha (which is the system I'll be playing in), what additional information is present in the Glorantha sourcebook? I'm not opposed to getting it if it has a lot of information on deities I don't already know about via kodp but if it's just redundant Guide information and the Satarite pantheon I'll pass.

# ? Aug 7, 2018 20:58

OB_Juan: Nov 24, 2004; Not every day is a good day.; Dinosaur Gum

I picked up a copy of the game at GenCon. I read through it, and drat there is a lot of background, but at least it's interesting. It seems like a lot of character creation for characters in that kinda combat system, though. Am I getting the wrong impression? I've played a fair amount of CoC and DG in a similar system, but not exactly the same.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 04:29

Space Skeleton: Sep 28, 2004

cheetah7071 posted:

If I already have the Guide to Glorantha and Heroquest Glorantha (which is the system I'll be playing in), what additional information is present in the Glorantha sourcebook? I'm not opposed to getting it if it has a lot of information on deities I don't already know about via kodp but if it's just redundant Guide information and the Satarite pantheon I'll pass.

Some information is repeated but there is a lot of new stuff as well. It has a lot of extra detail for the parts which it does repeat. I think it makes a better intro to the setting than the Guide for someone coming to it fresh because you could read is straight through as it presents the creation stories of the world, ancestries and family trees of the gods, and the histories of Dragon Pass and the Lunar Empire in a chronological fashion.

I think they compliment each other really well.

# ? Aug 8, 2018 10:29

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

Are there any heroquests with a part for Maran Gor? I can't really find any in old edition books. I'm playing an initiate of her and I've been combing books for mentions of any deeds she's done that could maybe be made into one but all I have are:

1)Defending Ernalda during the dark age, probably similar to Elmal Guards the Stead
2)Has a fight with Hippogryph and smashes her legs into hooves.

# ? Aug 12, 2018 03:15

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

Nanomashoes posted:

Are there any heroquests with a part for Maran Gor? I can't really find any in old edition books. I'm playing an initiate of her and I've been combing books for mentions of any deeds she's done that could maybe be made into one but all I have are:

1)Defending Ernalda during the dark age, probably similar to Elmal Guards the Stead
2)Has a fight with Hippogryph and smashes her legs into hooves.

She tends to be an antagonist in most myths so there's not really much. I found a fan write-up for heroquest that gives a decent overview of her story and all you'd need to do is to give part of it a little more focus. Or you could make something up, which you'll probably have to do anyway. Something about fighting a Dragon and becoming The Mother of Quakebeasts comes to mind for Dinosaur Powers.

quote:

Mythos and History
Maran was born in the green age, along with her sisters, and was given rulership over the greatest powers of Earth. She took many lovers, and produced many children, these being the mighty quakebeasts of legend, which shook the earth as they walked. Maran loved her children, whose thundering movement brought joy to her heart, no matter the destruction they caused.
In the Stagnant Age, the Evil Emperor came to power. He saw the quakebeasts as pests, and commanded his warriors to destroy them. Jagrekriand and Vestkarthan destroyed many of them, including the new warlike quakebeasts Maran shaped to defend the others from the Fire Tribe. Seeing so many of her children slain, Maran took up her mace, and marched to destroy the fire tribe. From then on, the goddess knew no joy.
The remaining quakebeasts were no longer as many, nor as great, but Maran loved them all the same. Then the Elves came, claiming that the beasts destroyed their forests and destroyed all they found. Maran shaped some of them into enormous shapes, who fed on trees as a cow feeds on hay. The elves sold themselves to the godless sorcerer Seravus for aid, who provided an army of men-who-were-animals to fight the giant quakebeasts. Maran avenged her children with the aid of Finovan the raider, and slew the sorcerer's son with a single mighty blow of her club.
When the great darkness came, the remaining quakebeasts were no match for the armies of ice and troll, who froze and devoured the last quakebeasts. Maran wept tears of blood, before coating herself in black blood and taking up her great axe and marching on the ice demons and the trolls. She slew countless monsters, men and gods, until the trolls relented, and promised her worship in exchange for letting them survive. Maran relented, but from then on, the goddess knew no love.
When Nontraya came for Ernalda, Maran saw she could not protect her sister from his ways, and slew Ernalda to save her from being dishonoured. In the end Maran slew all the world to protect it from the ravages of Chaos, until there was no one left to protect her from Tekakos the stillness. When he confronted her, she did not resist, and went to the Underworld to meet her kin.
When she met her sisters, they once again vowed their bonds of sisterhood, granting Maran the strength to provide life to her sisters, who used this power to return life to the entire world.

http://zzabursbrownbook.blogspot.com/2015/02/maran-shaker-goddess.html

you can also do heroquests of gods you don't worship, although you probably wouldn't know the secrets behind it and you might not be a good match. You can probably manage Babeester Gor fighting Zorak Zoran and even some Troll heroquests.

Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Aug 12, 2018

# ? Aug 12, 2018 06:03

SunAndSpring: Dec 4, 2013

In general the rules for HeroQuesting seem to be rather diffused across books or absent. Are there any of those Chaosium 2e reprints with rules for it?

# ? Aug 12, 2018 15:16

Parkreiner: Oct 29, 2011

SunAndSpring posted:

In general the rules for HeroQuesting seem to be rather diffused across books or absent. Are there any of those Chaosium 2e reprints with rules for it?

I don't believe there ever were any RuneQuest-era rules for Heroquesting as a thing PCs could actually engage with (though I dunno if any of the post-Chaosium stuff from Mongoose etc touched on it); IIRC the HeroQuest game began as an attempt at an "epic-level" rules expansion for RQ suitable for use during Heroquesting (to avoid the anti-mythic aspects of base RQ as noted upthread) and Greg basically said "You know what, why don't we just use these rules for the whole game." I dig both RQ and HQ but they do kind of emphasize different takes on the setting.

Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Aug 12, 2018

# ? Aug 12, 2018 19:44

cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

Ironically the Heroquest game only devotes like two pages to Heroquesting, which are both very confusing rules-wise and don't really provide any explanation for what a heroquest is or why you'd want to do it

# ? Aug 12, 2018 19:47

Space Skeleton: Sep 28, 2004

I'm not totally convinced that Heroquesting needs its own rules if you're running a RQ game. If the RQ game I am working on has it show up as something for the players to do then I think I can come up with a choose-your-own-adventure set of challenges using info from the guide and sourcebook to build upon. Coming up with good curses and boons to have persist after the quest seems like the hardest part.

# ? Aug 12, 2018 23:37

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

With the Heroquest system, a heroquest just works like everything else, with the option of a Heroquest Challenge to gamble one of your abilities for something new at a higher level with an extended contest. I'm pretty sure it's the same with Runequest, although I'm not really familiar with the GMing side of it.

# ? Aug 12, 2018 23:40

Nanomashoes: Aug 18, 2012

Space Skeleton posted:

I'm not totally convinced that Heroquesting needs its own rules if you're running a RQ game. If the RQ game I am working on has it show up as something for the players to do then I think I can come up with a choose-your-own-adventure set of challenges using info from the guide and sourcebook to build upon. Coming up with good curses and boons to have persist after the quest seems like the hardest part.

The game says you can heroquest during sacred time so it would be weird not to do it!

Anyways how the heck are you supposed to get enough POW to be a rune priest considering your chance of succeeding at a POW gain roll goes down every time? To get it up to 18, the last roll will be a 1/5 chance. That's gonna take forever at my current rate of success (Four failures at 50% chance).

# ? Aug 13, 2018 04:39

Wrestlepig: Feb 25, 2011; my mum says im cool; Toilet Rascal

Nanomashoes posted:

The game says you can heroquest during sacred time so it would be weird not to do it!

Anyways how the heck are you supposed to get enough POW to be a rune priest considering your chance of succeeding at a POW gain roll goes down every time? To get it up to 18, the last roll will be a 1/5 chance. That's gonna take forever at my current rate of success (Four failures at 50% chance).

it's pretty badly done and designed for long-rear end campaigns. I think there's supposed to be ways to increase your POW with heroquests and magical stuff, but there's none of that in the core book. Also you effectively need 20 since you have to burn some for Rune Points, which you should do as early as possible.

It's even worse for Rune Lords. The skills are rough but mainly charisma is hard as balls to increase, especially if you aren't using the optional boost stuff.

# ? Aug 14, 2018 00:14

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cheetah7071: Oct 20, 2010; honk honk; College Slice

I mean it makes sense in-universe that the people who make it high in the cult hierarchy are the people who routinely make it to a prayer session every single holy day without fail for years and years, and also get a little bit luckier than average in achieving their god's favor. It's also tremendously boring to try to navigate as a PC.

# ? Aug 14, 2018 00:27

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Glorantha gaming: Heroquests and Cows

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