Robin D. Laws - HeroQuest Genres
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HeroQuest Genres
The new version of HeroQuest is both a rules revision and a generic core rules set, giving you the basic tools you need to play in any setting. It contains the copious examples and exegesis that space considerations have kept out of past editions, which also had to perform the mammoth task of introducing the reader to the riches and depths of the Glorantha setting.
Here, as a bit of a teaser, is partial list of genres and/or settings referenced in examples appearing in the MS as it currently stands:
50s juvenile delinquent drama
Action movie
Anime / mecha
Battling businessmen
Boy’s science adventure
Chinese fairy tales
Circus drama
Colonial adventure
costume drama
Cyberpunk
Depression-era social drama
Eerie grand opera
English boy’s school
Espionage (Le Carré)
Espionage (Fleming)
Fairy tale
Gangs Of Five Point
Glorantha
Greek heroes
Incan nobles
Hardboiled detective
Modern military
Nanotech gladiators
Post-apocalyptic
Pulp
Roman gladiators
Romans vs. Britons
Rugged adventure
Samurai
Science fiction
Show biz saga
Slasher horror
Soap opera
Space opera
Spartans vs. Persians
Superheroes
Swashbuckler (Dumas)
Swashbuckler (pirates)
Sword & sorcery
Twilight Zone
Urban crime thriller
Vikings
Western
Wuxia
WWII
Tags: gaming hut, heroquest
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All the usual questions spring to mind: who will publish it, what will it cost, where can I pre-order it, and when do you estimate its release?
I second this...where can I order (pre-order) this game?
It will be published by Moon Design. Price, release date and pre-order details TBA.
Is there a webpage, website or anything else I can bookmark and watch for further information?(besides your journal of course, Mr. Laws)
Until Rick gets a chance to delegate the Moon Design website to someone, this blog (or the HeroQuest yahoo group) is your interim best source of information.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/62210385/4292459) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hub_ |
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| Date: | March 19th, 2008 03:24 pm (UTC) |
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My biggest sadness was when I realized that I couldn't buy HeroQuest anymore[1]. And the reviews didn't convince me to get the Mongoose version yet. (I have the French version published by Oriflam in Frnace in the 90's which is RQ3 rule system with Glorantha).
That's an awesome news.
[1] just back to RPG after a very long hiatus
| | From: | hub_ |
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| Date: | March 19th, 2008 05:27 pm (UTC) |
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Hardcopy. This ain't hardcopy.
| | From: | hub_ |
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| Date: | March 19th, 2008 06:47 pm (UTC) |
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I was sure to get that reply. I wish more people where providing stuff through http://lulu.com as an alternative. I'm not a fan of buying PDF, for various reasons including the fact that PDF is not a suitable e-book format[1] and that there is still nothing that beats the paper when it comes to longevity (I have lost a lot of digital documents from that era, including my custom-made character sheet sacrified to the deities of proprietary formats). [1] I'll keep the long debate for another time
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/90609120/11129439) | | From: | nemloen |
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| Date: | March 19th, 2008 06:44 pm (UTC) |
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| | From: | hub_ |
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| Date: | March 19th, 2008 10:59 pm (UTC) |
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And when I try the first two in the list, I get:
We're sorry. The item can't be shipped to your selected destination.
Apparently shipping book from the US to Canada is big big trouble.
(hint: I works fine directly from Amazon)
The third one want to charge $13 just for shipping !!!! (and as a rating much lower than I like)
*sigh*
Well....damn! That's going to be a fun read, yessir.
Not to be a party pooper, but for me, generic rule sets that cover many areas tend to be a little TOO general, and fail to provide the joy that a deep setting with rules that fit that setting provides.
That said, I never played HeroQuest or in Glorantha, so for those who are interested in this, sounds really neat.
Yay! I hope there will be a toolbox to help GMs implement these various genres. I'm very much looking forward to this book.
for the hopeless ingenue like myself, where does Heroquest fall on the crunchiness scale, between GURPS and Storyteller?
I loves me some generic rulesets, as long as they're quick and slick. Much as I like the deep linking in GURPS, I find its crunch is one fo the things keeping me from running my unpublishably obscure low-concept campaign with cross-genre leanings.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/85148224/2335379) | | From: | wyldelf |
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| Date: | March 19th, 2008 05:58 pm (UTC) |
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Based on the older version, it's less crunchy than Storyteller. And very fast. I've been running HeroQuest Exalted at lunch for some coworkers and in the last hour we played we had: one player train sailors and upgrade four sailing ships, another attempted making a magical sword, and a third player got into a fight with a Dragonblood. All on a lunch hour. At the same time, it's broader. You have stats for skills, personality, relationships all working together, taking things like disads from GURPS or backgrounds from Storyteller and making them a real core part of the game. So even though its simpler, I find you can do a lot of stuff with it, still and have good meaty support.
Okay here are the settings I have ran HeroQuest* with at RPG Conventions in the UK.
Glorantha
Serenity/Firefly
Dad's Army
Heroes
Also settings planned by myself.
The Shield
Ultraviolet
Tekumel
Battlestar Galactica
*Current published edition.
Got any notes on HQ BSG you'd be willing to share? Looking at doing that one myself.
Not yet but keep an eye out on my blog as I will post up keywords and other bits there.
Darran
Two magic words in one sentence!
I hope you'll share your notes on that setting. Please?
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/62921609/13103168) | | From: | darransims |
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| Date: | March 20th, 2008 04:42 pm (UTC) |
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| | Re: Heroquest Tekumel? | (Link) |
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Just doing the research into this detail rich setting so it will be a little while yet. I'll post up on my blog once it is done!
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/85137450/2335379) | | From: | wyldelf |
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| Date: | March 19th, 2008 05:59 pm (UTC) |
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This and some of the planned improvements you posted on RPGnet has me even more excited about the revision than I was already.
Replace Boys Science Adventure with Boys Adventure. The former is really a sub-genre of the latter. As a matter of fact, the numerous Boys Adventure sub-genres are really companion to adult genres. Boys Detective Adventure, Boys Spy Adventure, Boys Vampire Adventure, Boys Mystery Adventure, etc.
Will this version of HeroQuest have more detailed, er, heroquesting rules in it? The sequel to my Shakespearean dramaturgy HeroQuest game won't run itself, you know.
I'm trying to avoid special case rules, so you should be able to run heroquests with the same structures you'd use for any other narrative. What detailed rules do you feel you require?
You're probably right that the heroquesting stuff is too setting-specific to go into the core book, but I remember feeling rather at sea when it came to: gauging the proper level of opposition for the heroplane, beefing up PCs' in-hero-plane abilities, and specific mechanics for translating success in the heroplane to results on the material realm. I specifically noted a big disconnect in the abilities of PCs and the suggested difficulties for heroquesting, enough to make it simply impossible without a lot of special pleading and Widgets Of Planar Might. This, again, may be down to setting-specific deficiencies, though.
I have no doubt that the re-improved version will be yet greater, though, regardless of the degree to which you cater to my arcane whims.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/73861384/10983929) | | | Shakespearean Dramaturgy | (Link) |
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The same game you described on your blog?
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/4013308/917038) | | | Re: Shakespearean Dramaturgy | (Link) |
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That's the one.
To bring the game to new audiences, assuming that is one of the goals, I hope that a number of disparate settings are 'written up' with copious keyword ideas as immediately playable 'out of the book'.
Either that or Moon Design publish a thick settings book that provide the traditional minded and hard pressed for time GM/Narrator with lots of vivid trait examples to get them going very quickly.
I'm looking forward to this. One of the most exciting releases this year!
The main focus of this particular book are the core rules -- which make the point that you don't really need keywords or copious background material for a genre everybody around the table knows.
However, Moon Design does intend to subsequent publish genre packs to provide the level of detail you're talking about.
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: | March 20th, 2008 12:30 pm (UTC) |
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| | Good luck ! | (Link) |
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It looks very exciting ! I look forward to reading all this and have it play... Good luck for the final straight, Robin.
Gregory
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: | March 20th, 2008 01:01 pm (UTC) |
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| | Heroquest | (Link) |
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Can you give us an idea as to what revisions you are making to the rules.
Bearing in mind that it's still a work in progress and subject to change, new and different things include:
* completely revised extended contest system
* group simple contests
* scaled resistances
* Pyrrhic victories
* costly successes
* community resource tracking
* streamlined augment system
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/37237074/8762789) | | From: | maerson |
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| Date: | March 23rd, 2008 02:11 am (UTC) |
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| | Re: Heroquest | (Link) |
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Many thanks - greatly looking forward to it! I haven't tried HeroQuest, but I've been looking for a generic system for a game I have in mind, and this might just work (depending upon timing).
Thanks for the information. I'm running an Ars Magica-to-Heroquest conversion right now, so I'm very much looking forward to this book. Are you going to include the Chained Simple Contest rules Mssr. Galeotti expanded on in Mythic Russia?
Not per se, but the new rules tackle the same issues that chained contests address. |
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