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HeroQuest Review
by Fabian Küchler
I recently had the chance to run a Glorantha HeroQuest game at the Chimeriades Convention in Aix-en-Provence in France. It was a privilege to run a game to a group of experienced Glorantha fans and active RuneQuest players who did not have the opportunity to play HeroQuest yet.
The scenario we played is a high-brow Glorantha Heortling story that I had been working on for some considerable time and that even got some enthusiastic last minute feedback and ideas from Jeff Richard and Greg Stafford himself on the spot. I had the pleasure of being able to draft Jeff Richard as my Co-Narrator for the introduction into Sartar (from the new Sartar Book), the new Clan and Character Generation and especially the new magic system. Jeff also got a cameo appearance as Joh Smith the trader. It was a pleasure to be able to shoulder some of Jeff’s burden to narrate HeroQuest that day and I thank all my players for their participation and the fun I had running the game for them.
I also had the chance to discuss the scenario but more importantly the new HeroQuest rules afterwards with part of my group in the distinctive social environment that our European Conventions are famous for. I would like to recapture the 2 main topics of this conservation because I think that these nail what HeroQuest is all about. Since there are already many good reviews about HeroQuest out there that describe its rules and mechanics I will omit these here. I rather want to portray why I think HeroQuest does revolutionize the way we play roleplaying games. Knowing Robin D. Laws he would prefer me saying: 'HeroQuest is a game that caters to the taste of players that prefer storytelling RPGs.' But I am honestly convinced it is more than that and here is why.
Most beloved RPGs present a set of rules that portray one or more important features of the game’s theme or background. These give us the chance to bring these features to live by just applying the rules in gameplay and rolling the dice. These features are the games hard currency and can be used and enjoyed by every player and GM no matter how much skill he or she might have as a roleplayer. That way everybody can interact with the game and have fun. Good examples of these features can be found in the Sanity Rules of Call of Cthulhu or the Character Traits of Pendragon. It seems producing these features belong to the design philosophy of Robin D. Laws. In HeroQuest Robin presents us with two features that, in my mind, reinvent our hobby.
Words instead of Numbers
The central element or main building blocks of stories are not characters, setting, background, theme or plot but words. Without words there are no stories. The same holds true for roleplaying scenarios aka stories. This simple discovery seems to be the central idea in the design of HeroQuest. In HeroQuest you focus more on words instead of numbers.
It starts with the character generation. HeroQuest does not provide you with a fixed skills list that distinguish your character from the next primarily by skills available to your character class, your skill rating, level of your class or the number in your characteristic attributes. In HeroQuest your character is almost solely defined by words written by the players. The player creates the skills he wants his character to have! The game relies on your creativity and imagination to come up with skills and their descriptions, keywords (a roof description from which several skills can be distilled automatically) items and flaws. By creating the skills of your character you basically create him, her or it. In HeroQuest you typically end up with a character like:
Madrax the Mad, crazed Warbot of the Flaying Legion with his Glowing Steel Claws of Agony and his Merciless Tracks of Mashing.
The main difference to Eglas the Wise, Elven Mage Level 17 with his Wisdom of 19 Agility of 21 is obvious.
A skill in HeroQuest eventually gets a numerical rating as well to show the characters competence in the skill but more importantly by using words over numbers to describe a character and his abilities I can portray a much more defined and vivid picture of a character and give an idea what he is all about at the same time. The player and everybody around the table (!) now has an idea how Madrax looks like and how he is likely to act or react. We gain some sort of anticipation for the character and the plot he might find himself in.
The possibility for skills are endless, it can be anything from Swim in Armor, Hard to Kill, Practical Joker, See through Walls, Burn Lies, Always having the last Word to Been to Heaven. Players are challenged to come up with unique ideas and descriptions of their character that make them stand out.
Having words, descriptions or almost a complete sentence already written on your characters sheet enables you to jump into a story by using them and contribute easily to the narrative with words instead of abstract numbers:
Madrax heats up his Glowing Steel Claws of Agony ready to wheel into action. His Merciless Tracks of Mashing wheel spin eagerly, grinding themselves into the ground.
Basically it means that you do not need to be a talented or experienced gamer anymore to be able to portray your character or participate meaningful in a fun story. With HeroQuest you have this ability built into the rules.
Contest Resolution
Whenever you roll the dice in HeroQuest it is to achieve a Contest Resolution. The 3 forms of Contest Resolution are also detailed in other reviews. I rather like to focus on why I think this is the other breakthrough HeroQuest accomplishes.
In classical RPGs rules focus mainly on the resolution of combats or physical action. Their rules describe en detail how they are conducted and what their outcome looks like. But anything apart from combats and other physical challenges is rarely covered in detail by the rules and so almost never gains real significances in play, except through roleplaying efforts by the players and the GM.
This is especially true for social conflicts like romance, debates, arguments, negotiation or less instant actions like healing, farming, building, gathering resources etc. Even though the classic RPG rules don’t give much detail, the outcomes of these actions are often more important than simply defeating your foes in combat. They are also commonplace in the fantasy stories and legends that are the roots of RPGs.
In HeroQuest any skill can be used to resolve a contest against other skills or obstacles if they are appropriate story-wise. The more crucial the contest is for the scenario plot the more detailed the resolution will be. What is gained hereby is nothing more then a gigantic enhancement to the GM toolbox. We can now create meaningful and thrilling scenes without the need to constantly plan ahead to another round of combat. The range of obstacles becomes wider and much more interesting.
A player can pitch his skill Hard to Kill against a fast advancing Massive Garbage Truck.
A player can use his Swim in Armor to cross a Moat Infested with Biting Things.
Or Burn Lies can be pitched against the Shrewd Tactics of a villain in an interrogation.
Practical Joker can be used against a serious Summoning of Otherworldly Horror.
Always having the last Word can mock the authority of a Stone Cold Mafia Boss.
See through Walls can be used to look inside Unbreakable Safe.
Been to Heaven can enable a character to cross a Deadly Crossfire.
As you can see we instantly end up in Storyland and vivid scenes and tales pop up before our eye. If we exchange ‘Contest Resolution’ with ‘Conflict Resolution’ we can jump right in to apply HeroQuest to the rules of dramatic construction. One rule in drama is that each scene needs to advance the plot in a meaningful way and that each scene ideally should include a conflict of any kind to make the scene interesting. That can be anything from a clash of opinions or attitudes to a bare-knuckle fight. The possibilities to achieve this have become endless with HeroQuest. A new job for the GM is now to think up conflicts that advance the plot and the possible outcomes if the players succeed or more importantly how the story advances if the players fail. The new job for the players is now to set clearer goals what they want to achieve as an outcome of a Contest.
Role-playing just got easier
With HeroQuest Robin D. Laws does not simply add an elegant Storytelling RPG to the shelves. With the two described features alone Robin innovates the way stories can be told in a game. Even a group of new or unskilled players can create colorful characters with a little bit of imagination and add meaningful to the game story just with the help of their descriptive skills. Thanks to the main rule mechanic and the concept of Contest Resolutions GMs are finally free to create stories filled with scenes of conflicts and obstacles of all kinds and resolve them in an interesting way that push the plot forward. Best of all is that these achievements are not something theoretical or esoterically they are the hard currency of the game that can be applied by everyone. Role-playing just got a lot easier and more fun.
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