Keywords.

Write about 100 words, choose some, then ....

I am not grokking that. What?! How?!

Someone point me toward a "Dummies guide" or something. Fate aspects, compels, tags are okay. Older abilities, modifiers are okay.

This? I cannot compute. Just a link. Save the "story game" heat for another time, I just need pointing in the right direction. If that fails I will come back and say "Nope".

The boardgame is a lot better.

Wait, there's a HeroQuest that isn't a boardgame?

Quote from: Doom;769391Wait, there's a HeroQuest that isn't a boardgame?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest_(role-playing_game)

BG: what specifically confuses you? I have to admit this threw me too (and I doubt I'll ever play the game) but eventually I think I saw that no matter how many keywords you took, you had a budget on how many good ones you could have. The rest are just flavor.

Or maybe I'm misremembering. I've got the book by my nightstand but I can't be bothered to open it now.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;769387Keywords.

Write about 100 words, choose some, then ....

I am not grokking that. What?! How?!

Someone point me toward a "Dummies guide" or something. Fate aspects, compels, tags are okay. Older abilities, modifiers are okay.

This? I cannot compute. Just a link. Save the "story game" heat for another time, I just need pointing in the right direction. If that fails I will come back and say "Nope".

The 100 word character creation is popular, although we've dropped it in the new HeroQuest Glorantha book in favor of the "As You Go" character creation.

Are you using HeroQuest 2 or HeroQuest 1?

Quote from: richaje;769415The 100 word character creation is popular, although we've dropped it in the new HeroQuest Glorantha book in favor of the "As You Go" character creation.

Are you using HeroQuest 2 or HeroQuest 1?

HQ2. I have the core and Mythic Russia.

It seems very loose and fluid, which is a bonus I suppose. But I am failing to see how I can nail it down to be a little more concrete.

The "abilities under a keyword" seems like it could be a little crazy. Are there limits on having too many? What is stopping me filling the start narrative with keywords like a website SEO?

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;769422HQ2. I have the core and Mythic Russia.

It seems very loose and fluid, which is a bonus I suppose. But I am failing to see how I can nail it down to be a little more concrete.

The "abilities under a keyword" seems like it could be a little crazy. Are there limits on having too many? What is stopping me filling the start narrative with keywords like a website SEO?

Think of a keyword as being analogous to a character class. So you take a keyword "Fighter" - the keyword includes everything a Fighter ought to be able to do. A keyword is always a broad ability and gets penalized against a specialized ability (or against a NPC who the GM has described with some specializations beyond just "Thug" or "Mook" or whatever). So for example, lets give our Fighter keyword a rating of 17 - the character can do whatever we all agree a Fighter ought to be able to do.

If you use the Breakout Abilities tool (which pretty much everything after HQ2 does), then you can pick specializations within that keyword. These specializations can be raised independently of the keyword but are linked to the keyword to determine their value. So for example:

Fighter 17
Awesome sword of righteous Justice +1
Tactical knowledge +1

This ends up being a lot easier and a lot less cluttered than the list of abilities approach taken in Mythic Russia (which comes from HQ1).

In HQ2 this tends to be self-controlling. Players rarely have lists of abilities that can't fit on an index card - especially since most abilities start at 13. What I normally see is that people focus on a couple of keywords and add some specializations and then take a few other stand-along abilities.

Brilliant. Thank you. That makes much more sense put like that.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;769429Brilliant. Thank you. That makes much more sense put like that.

You're welcome. A few years back we ran the old Fire Giant's Hall AD&D scenario using HQ2 but keeping to the "genre" of AD&D (with Fighters, Magic-Users, Thieves, etc). The scenario turned out to be far tougher, as the players concluded it would be Nearly Impossible to fight any of these iron-plated 12 foot tall, several ton monstrosities using mere swords, spears, and bows. So they snuck around, used magic to conceal themselves, jumped a single guard and looted the map room. And concluded that they were now wealthy enough to raise a company of mercenaries to fight those giants who left the Fire Giants Hall on raids, taking the scenario in a completely different direction with a good time had by all.

BG, you should have gotten Other Worlds instead of HeroQuest.

Other Worlds is the same type of game but with much better mechanics.

Here's a thread where I made a bunch of character templates for Other Worlds.

Quote from: richaje;769431You're welcome. A few years back we ran the old Fire Giant's Hall AD&D scenario using HQ2 but keeping to the "genre" of AD&D (with Fighters, Magic-Users, Thieves, etc). The scenario turned out to be far tougher, as the players concluded it would be Nearly Impossible to fight any of these iron-plated 12 foot tall, several ton monstrosities using mere swords, spears, and bows. So they snuck around, used magic to conceal themselves, jumped a single guard and looted the map room. And concluded that they were now wealthy enough to raise a company of mercenaries to fight those giants who left the Fire Giants Hall on raids, taking the scenario in a completely different direction with a good time had by all.

Of course, if you played the same thing in RuneQuest, you might very well come to the same conclusion.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769466Of course, if you played the same thing in RuneQuest, you might very well come to the same conclusion.

I've been playing RQ since the RQ2 days. I still enjoy the occasional RQ game (especially if I really am needing to scratch that tactical skirmish itch), but HQ has long been my (and my players') go-to game system of choice. Part of that is the flexibility, part of that is that combat is no more or less useful to overcome obstacles than anything else, and part of that is just that HQ is a heck of a lot easier for me to run.

Jeff

Quote from: richaje;769470part of that is that combat is no more or less useful to overcome obstacles than anything else

Glad you found that with HeroQuest, sorry you didn't realize you had that with RuneQuest also.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769472Glad you found that with HeroQuest, sorry you didn't realize you had that with RuneQuest also.

Well not really. In RuneQuest, combat is the heart of the rules engine. Its where all the whirly bits, the machine that goes ping, and all the other good bits of the rules system come out. It is clearly what the rules system is intended to focus on - providing exciting, SCA-style skirmish combat (by that I just mean single duels and aim missile attacks among relatively small groups of combatants) and a magic system carefully thought out to provide significant supernatural efforts for potentially every combat.

In HeroQuest 2, the rules engine for combat is exactly the same as using any other ability to overcome an obstacle. What you gain is that other abilities can end up being what generates the excitement, and you can get the whirly bits and the machine that goes ping out when a player says she wants her character to overcome a bunch of heavy cavalrymen with her "I am an Earth priestess" ability. Or gain the support of a bunch of dragonewts by successfully performing a "Graceful Dance" with them.

What you lose, of course, is the detailed SCA-style skirmish combats, since HQ2 simply doesn't try to model that. Additionally RQ is has an attritional mechanism to add excitement, while HQ2 focuses on pacing. Both are substantially different game engines with a substantially different set of strengths and weaknesses. But hey, different strokes for different folk.