From: Steven E. Barnes (akuma@best.com)
Date: Tue 01 Jul 1997 - 07:05:10 EEST
I guess to start off, I'll state my biases up front: The PCs are the
I don't care whether the GM believes in Dragon Pass super heroes, with
The PCs are just as much "Men of Destiny" as Greg's NPC heroes.
HQ Will Accounting Systems:
I don't think anyone is advocating these failed ideas anymore, but
Linking Will to POW or points of divine spells could work. The problem
Trait Based Systems:
Lets say I have a rune lord candidate, with all 5 cult traits at 16 ("legendary"
The more I think about HQ, the less I like dice intensive sytems. There is
Also, my limited experience with Traits as a GM was that despite being
heroes. From greenhorn initiate status, up to rune lord and beyond.
Harrek does not "violate the rules", there is no special case for him.
Anything he did, a PC should be perfectly capable of (potentially) doing.
Whether the PC hero has the support of a community, or wants to
be a solo rogue like Harrek.
the Infinity Rune and CF of 20, or the Greg revisionist version, where
heroes are less powerful than gamers previously had believed.
I did notice a few references to the pecularities of such systems.
One is linking Will to the number of mastered skills a character has.
This is a Silly Idea. It is, I also believe, the source of the idea that
your Will value never increases after your first trip on the heroplane.
(Problems would arise, for example, if you spent Will to raise your
stats on a HQ, then due to increased stat bonuses, now are a master
of more skills. Similar problems if the hero lost stats on a failed quest).
I have is that I think the RQ POW gain roll is a bad game mechanic.
status or whatever it is called). His test is an Orlanth re-enactment HQ, and
has to roll all five traits. His chance of success is 33%. If his traits are
18, then his success chance is still only 59%. Lastly, if there is always
a 5% chance of failing a roll (as in RQ), then the chance of making 5 rolls
is only 77%, no matter how good your traits are.
just too high a chance of a character failing some critical roll, and either
looking like a fool, or hosing up your carefully planned scenario.
generous with checks, not much progress was being made towards having
Rune Lord level traits (score of 16 or more). Perhaps the players were being
unlucky, but it adds yet another requirement for character advancement.
Negative checks (in Cowardly, for example) are also a good way to
start arguments with players, since they are awarded by subjective GM
decisions.
Will Roll Systems:
My experience playing heroquests has been with such a system. It seemed
The system could be summed up as: "GM requires a Will roll to succeed in
to work OK, although required a large degree of GM creativity to work.
The GM did have a complex formula for determining your success chance,
but when he actually used it, he always seemed to come up with an
absurdly low number.
some task. If you fail, think up a reason why you can make another roll.
Repeat."
- -steve
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