HeroQuest
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Not Heresies

Copyright © 2005, Mike Holmes

There are traditions that people have in playing RPGs. No surprise, the nature of such games is that a lot of interpretations of rules have to occur to get from the rulebook to actual play. As such, every group comes up with traditions on how to interpret RPG rules. Over time, a very "typical" standard has developed that's shared by most groups out there, being the result of the convergence of many RPG systems, and the advice that the rulebooks have on how to play. Actually this standard has quite a lot of variation to it, but there are some strong assumptions that the tradition holds.

HeroQuest is not your run of the mill RPG, however. This is not merely a fanboy statement, the text is substantively different from other RPGs in terms of what it implies (or does not imply, in many cases). What this means is that if one applies the standard traditions to HeroQuest, that one gets a certain sort of play from it. But the text can be read very differently from other RPGs, too, if one decides not to filter it through the gauze of that tradition.

Basically, there is another substantive alternative (possibly amongst many, actually) reading of the text. And it's one that produces a rather different experience of play. Not necessarily better than the form of play which tradition would produce, but definitely one that caters to a different set of goals for play. What follows are called "heresies" in a tongue-in-cheek way, because they defy a lot of common RPG convention (and the original idea of casting them this way came from the author posting them on a mailing list). If the reader finds that a tad too precious, just ignore the term and substitute "exception to tradition."

As such, these "heresies" are in no way an attempt to say that this is the "One Way" to play HQ. They are the way that the author finds works best, but every game has it's own unique requirements, and everybody needs to have their own interpretation of how to play the rules. In fact, it's unavoidable that this happens. And the "best" way is the one that works for you. As such, should you play the traditional way yourself, or some other way completely, this is not a challenge to your methods. It's just one interpretation of the text.

Before going on, the author acknowledges that a good portion of these ideas come from Ron Edwards either from his own direct observations of how to play, or from his game Sorcerer, and his expanded discussions of how that game is played. The concept of "scene play," "Bang Driven" play, playing the rules unfailingly, and the metagame nature of abilities all come from Sorcerer. And it was Edwards who pointed out several other things that lead to many of the conclusions below.

Given the origins of these thoughts, that is as an email, they are probably incomplete, and may even be incorrect in some ways (the rulebook may actually contradict some of them directly). The point is not to say that the rulebook says that this is how one should play - though there's a lot of support in the text for these methods. Instead it's to show a certain view of how to play that the rules do support well, overall.

Mike's Heresies of HeroQuest Play

Mike's Heresy #2 points out that, implicit evidence in the samples of play and adventures notwithstanding, there's no rule that says that the players have to play as a "party." Meaning that one is free to play using "Scene Play" instead. Meaning that instead of assuming that the PCs are all together all of the time, they all go off and do whatever is most appropriate to them at any given time. Given the virtues of HQ, this works amazingly well.

Mike's Heresy #3 points out that there is no way for a character to be taken from a player in HQ, without the complicity of the narrator. First, at no point does the narrator ever have to create a contest with potential results that would effectively eliminate the character from suitableness to play. Second, even if one does create such a contest, the worst result possible only indicates that the character is potentially damaged in the way indicated - that is, "dying," not "dead." Meaning that any manner of contrivance can be used to save said character from elimination. If this seems too metagamey, to save a character repeatedly, then one should consider that the problem is that they're placing the characters in a position of potential elimination too often (one could say that even once is too much), and that they should solve the problem at the level of selection of conflict. What this means is that no player has to ever worry about engaging in any contest, and no narrator has to worry about "accidentally killing the party."

Heresies #1 - #3 can be combined and summarized as: In HQ, Failure is Always an Option. Unlike other game systems where failure can mean the end of an adventure, or the end of the game even, in HQ, failure means more fun stuff happens.

Mike's Heresy #4 points out that a consistent reading of the rules regarding impairment implies that the "Dying" result really means that the source of the conflict is eliminated from the game. If one looks carefully at the dramatic source of a conflict, it's not always the most obvious choice. The source of conflict in a hunting contest is in getting game from the forest, not in slaying one deer. Thus, one can kill a deer on a marginal success, because the conflict will still remain. Should he try again, he'll have to roll again. Only once he has gotten a Complete Victory result will he be able to go into the woods and always come back with food again sans a roll in the future - the hunter has conquered that woods in this way. Similarly, killing nameless mooks, if there are more yet to slay, does not eliminate the challenge they pose. So a marginal success can mean the death of innumerable mooks (we're sure Mr. Laws knows what we're talking about here). In many ways, Heresy #4 is just the contrapositive to Heresy #3. (Though Dying doesn't have to mean removal of a PC, even a marginal victory can mean the death of anything else).

Mike's Heresy #5 points out that nowhere in the book does it explicitly say that ability ratings are direct indications of the potency of a character in-game. While it's convenient to think this way in most cases, in certain others it's very useful to be able to see that the numbers are just ink on a piece of paper that the player is holding, and meant only to generate interesting outcomes in play. Using this logic, all questions of things like appropriateness of abilities, and whether Big 17 is larger than Large 15, become very simple to answer. Be forewarned: Achieving understanding of Heresy #5 requires a Zen like approach that requires that one want to understand it first. If you don't want to understand it, you never will.

Mike's Heresy #6 points out that the book says that NPCs never have contests if you read it one way (or, rather, that only Heroes do). Basically NPCs can always be resistances to overcome, or augments for the Hero. Otherwise, if they are the "primary" characters in some conflict, the narrator should just narrate the result. Sans a Hero being involved, there can be no roll involved. This informs everyone that play centers around the Heroes. If you want a roll, find a way to get a hero involved.

Mike's Heresy #7 points out that the book says that the contests to become a member of a religious organization, and all of the contests in the adventures, etc, are actually examples, and not in any way "official" rules of the game. That is, one should feel free to skip these contests, unless they're an interesting part of ongoing play. Or should feel free to substitute in better conflicts, more suited to the heroes at hand. Put more succinctly, it's always better to construct a contest from the conflict at hand, or even better the conflict that's central to the character, than it is to railroad players into a contest in which they may not be interested.

Mike's Heresy #8 points out that there's nothing in the book that says that you are required to stat out an NPC, or any other resistance, before a contest. So, worried about making sure that the character is of an appropriate level of difficulty for the character to make the contest go like you want? Then simply wait for the players to add up all of their augments, and make up his resistance on the spot (which can be assumed to be his ability level, you need not give the NPCs augments unless the ability giving the augment has been established in play). Use good knowledge of the in-game scale, and whatever other tools you need to do this well, but once you practice a little, it becomes very easy to do. This has the advantage that you'll never do an ounce of unneeded game preparation again, and never feel the urge to railroad to a conflict in which the players may not be interested.

Mike's Heresy #9 points out that all contests are equal, despite some heavy examples that would seem to privilege combat. Better stated, there is no "combat" in HQ. There are some contests that involve fighting and such, but the rules apply to these contests in precisely the same way as any other contest. This should inform players that all contests are of equal value potentially. While there's nothing wrong with a good rousing fight, the appearance of said sorts of conflicts should be precisely as common as dictated by the needs of the story, and no more. Meaning that some will have not one fight at all.

Mike's Heresy #10 points out that, unlike most games, the way to achieve Maximum Game Fun in HQ is not to ignore the rules, but to apply them quite vigorously. In fact, ignoring MGF is the only Heresy that actually alters the HQ rules dramatically. Which is quite ironic. The only rule to ignore is the rule that advises to ignore other rules.