From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Fri 04 Jul 1997 - 22:44:31 EEST
Michael Cule points out some problems with his ideas about HeroQuesting.
Hey! That's _our_ job! ;-)
> The idea being that when a change is made in reality it must be
> reinforced and restated or the universe reverts to its original state.
There's obviously some large degree of truth in this, but I don't think
a model of the God Time as a stretched rubber sheet, boing!ing back into
shape almost immediately (with "flat" being whatever its "natural" state
is, perhaps seething chaos) is the best one.
Think of it as being somewhat like clearing (or discovering) a trail
through a thick forest. You hack away at the bits where the undergrowth
is too dense, mark the trail, and if you want it to be followable by 14
year old kids without them breaking their ankles, put in some surfacing
and the occassional bridge or two. Now, if you come back a season or so
later, maybe the marks will have been destroyed or moved, but the trail
will be still largely intact, so you just have to locate it. In a
couple of years, the undergrowth will have grown back somewhat, and in a
decade the bridge may have fallen down. If in the meantime, other
people have been active in the area, you may find someone else has cut a
track running across or parallel to yours, or in extreme cases, put a
dual carriageway right across your trail, walled it off, and have
several lanes of traffic whizzing down it.
Now, how the timescales compare is very arguable, but that's a good
> That cults are founded to provide that re-inforcement.
Partly that, but also to _exploit_ the new reality (or the old one).
metaphor for the state of the mythic world. If you don't perform
the rituals, things may not fall apart overnight, but you'll have to,
to some extent, rediscover them. Neglect will likely cause them
to eventually inherently weaken. But other people have agendas too,
and you may find them horning in on your mythic turf, whether it be
your natural HQ enemies, Chaos, or processes you have no knowledge
or understanding of.
> And then it struck me: what about botched Quests? And what about effects
> that continue on after the God or Hero that created them is destroyed?
Well, often, they'll be reinforced by the "opposition" in an adversarial
quest. "Hah! We bet you last time! And we won't let you forget it!"
Not true in a direct sense in the Nysalor case, though perhaps the
various (then) participants in the God Project still maintain it in
some way. "Serves them damn trolls right."
> It strikes me that we need a mechanic for what happens when the change
> made by an experimental HeroQuest goes sour, as in the case of the
> attempt to cure the trollkin curse.
I don't think a "mechanic" is really possible. When a HQ goes wrong,
experimental or not, then Bad Stuff happens to any or all of: the
Questers; their supporters, in the broadest sense; and the "object"
of the Quest. Generically, you'll have some sort of warped or reverse
effect of what you were trying to achieve, and you'll lose some or
all of what was at "stake", in terms of magic, abilties, and however
the "support" was expressed.
The best mechanic really, though, is referee intuition (cum creative
malice).
Steven Barnes says of the idea that divine spells cast on a HQ are
permanently lost:
> 1) Priests are esentially being punished if they HQ.
Sounds about right to me. HQing is not really a normal Priestly
function. Where a cult has a RP/RL differentiation, I think HQing
is a more natural RL role.
> You might as well just send a initiate instead.
I don't think initiates are normally able to use RM on the HP _at all_.
If these ideas seem over-harsh, bear in mind that in the old Chaosium
rules, you couldn't use _any_ RM on a HQ. (Which they then immediately
subverted with the Truestone ruse, mind you, and what a Game Mechanic
Attack type of idea _that_ was.)
Michael Cule again:
> (By the way, let me say that I want to keep the word Hero for its
> specific Gloranthan theological meaning: Someone who alters the
> structure of Other World Reality.
That's it's specific HQ Game Mechanic meaning. It's "Gloranthan
theological meaning" is surely someone who's _worshipped_ as a Hero.
In my earlier "taxonomy" I argued that this was in principle
separate from the nature of the questing done by him, though in
practice, obviously strongly related.
> I was planning to rate each character from 1 to 10 in each Rune with 1
> being barely touched by it and 10 being 'I am the originating God of
> this Rune'. 'Normal' would be 3. A human would be rated at 3 in the
> Man Rune. Trolls at 3 in the Man and the Darkness Rune.
This is not unlike the G:tG prototype, and Sandy's [Element] Fame
mechanic, and YAHQS's Runes, so there's a fair bit of consensus
behind this sort of scheme. Of course, the scale ought to start
at _zero_, the purist in me insists.
Of course, it's shamelessly (somewhat GL'd) Theyalan POV, but none the
worse for that.
G'luck,
Alex.
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