Post originally by Scripty at 2003-10-19 08:53:07
Converted from Phorums BB System

Glorantha is still kind of intimidating to me. It's huge, and I really wanted to get a grasp on the setting before running a a game in it. I think I'm starting to gel with it. Couple that with my own difficulties grokking the rules, and you'll see that I've had quite a chore ahead of me. It's been a "labor of love" so to speak and I have rarely been more than 10 feet away from my HeroQuest book since purchasing it over a month ago.

I love the system, or at least what I think the system could do. I'm beginning to appreciate the setting. It's easily the best value in an RPG I've ever gotten. IMO, it ranks right up there with the D&D cyclopedia. The book is thick with info. I still haven't read/processed it all. There's just so much there. This review was very fair in describing many of my own difficulties in understanding HeroQuest from a beginner's perspective. It took three readthroughs and a detailed synopsis of the different magic forms for me to finally grasp them. Facing that, I was really under some confusion when I approached Glorantha. It's not that the setting is that alien to me. But it is definitely rich and I'm glad I've waited before running/playing it.

Needless to say, one of the first things I did was adapt other settings to the HeroQuest rules so that I could run my group through familiar backdrops while we came to terms with the dramatically different ideas put forth through HeroQuest's system. I just didn't feel comfortable explaining new cultures and cultural terms to players who were still struggling with Advantage Points and Theism.

So, I put a great deal of work forward in doing a conversion for the Midnight setting from FFG. Lael Buchanan helped out a great deal with inspiration/analysis/ideas/criticisms and has been very patient with me on this one. I have also adapted Captain Spaulding's super-heroes setting into a very loose Mutants & Masterminds conversion. This allows me to use my Freedom City material with the HeroQuest rules. From isolated playtests, it appears, at least to me, that the HeroQuest rules fit the flavor of Freedom City better than the d20 lite of M&M in that there was less power-mongering and stat-tweaking and more four-color action. I would advise, however, that a simple d20 ==> HQ conversion does not a HeroQuest character make. Although I have had no problems at all running creatures in HeroQuest straight out of the Monster Manual, it's imperative, IMO, to look at them beforehand and also their HeroQuest equivalents. A lot of color and flavor is given in HeroQuest abilities that D&D/M&M just don't match in their stat lists. It's important to either be really familiar with the NPC/monster write-ups or review them beforehand to effectively use a d20 creature in HeroQuest, IME. Sure enough, when faced with the prospect of being drained dry, a PC will try to debate the Vampire Lord. It's important to know if that will work and how well. From what I've seen, that's hard to do by just eyeballing stats. But other, more mentally nimble, GMs or those more familiar with their settings or HeroQuest would conceivably have no problem.

I have also been working on an odd, cyberpunk-influenced setting on the side which has developed into something cross-between R.Talsorian's Cyberpunk 2020, FASA's Shadowrun and Atlas' Unknown Armies. This isn't a conversion per se, like Freedom City and Midnight, as much as it is just another setting for HeroQuest.

To top it all off, I have a very loose HeroQuest in Hyborea setting which I am currently using for a weekly game at my FLGS. The main problems arising from this game have been mostly my own in understanding the system and inter-personal difficulties between a number of players. The rules themselves have held up on their own, although it's taken me a while to understand where the "sweet-spots" in the system are. Unfortunately, switching to HeroQuest (from d20) cost me over half of my players, but, in the end, I think this could be a good thing as I'm having an easier time learning the system (I think) with a smaller group of newbies like myself.

I will say this much, however. HeroQuest seems to be most at home in settings/genres that emphasize relationships and personal connections to the setting. Hence, my run-throughs in Freedom City have seen more of the "HeroQuest style of play" than my adventures in Hyborea. It's difficult for me at this point to see how a band of wandering adventurers absent any connection to the setting (as I have played/run ad nauseam) can really make efficient use of the mechanics of HeroQuest. This is a good thing, and a bad thing, IMO. It's good from the standpoint that characters are keyed into the setting. It's bad in that players who are used to playing the lone wanderer may be a bit, well, bored. Because the action, at least as I have seen it, is so quick (even the Extended Contests I've run have rarely gone over 15 minutes) HeroQuest allows for sessions to focus on things other than combat. Players who prefer number-crunched combat monsters, IME, may feel rather out-of-place. It's not that a combat monster couldn't work in HeroQuest, but it's more that they won't get the spotlight as much as they may have in other games. Instead of shining over a period of a half-hour of dice rolling or more, the combat monster fighting a group of mooks shines for, oh, a minute or so and then the game moves on to other things that are likely to be more important to the story. On the other hand, the group's diplomat could see his Court Etiquette skill get far more "screentime" than the group's brick's "Sword and Shield Combat", depending on the dramatic situation. In other systems, the group's brick would get much more attention through the sheer length of combat, while the diplomat's big climactic moment would be reduced to a single roll. HeroQuest flips, thwips and tosses that out.

For these reasons, I'm having to rethink how and what I prepare. The adventures in the book have given me good guidelines, I think, to the scale of challenges available and also to where you should focus your energies. Individuals at the Forge and the Yahoo! groups have also been very patient and helpful.

From my experience, I think HQ is great for converting settings/genres. It's easy. The Hyborea conversion took maybe 3 hours max and building a Freedom City conversion from Captain Spaulding's supers document took less than 45 minutes. Both have worked great thus far. I would recommend to others considering running "HQ in Hyborea" or other settings in HQ to emphasize the characters' relationships more than I have, however. The way HQ handles them and gauges other abilities along the same scale is one of its strong points.

I'm hoping to finish up a final draft of Midnight/HQ soon and then move on to detailing the Cyberpunk setting, which focuses more on the war between social classes prior to the Eschathon than the typical "Street Ronin does a hit for a corporate guy who then betrays him" type of game. It also incorporates Theism (cyberware), Animism (third-world mysticism) and Wizardry (cultism and also programming/hacking) forms of magic from HeroQuest. HeroQuesting exists as well along a similar power level to "Ascending" in an Unknown Armies game and involves either gaining god-like power or changing the "myths" of history. Add to that the supernatural agents of the "Fourth World", which are a combination of the demons/nasties you might find in Buffy and the source material listed in "GURPS Cabal", and I think you have a good example of how HeroQuest can be used in a wide variety of genres. It is very flexible and portrays heroic/cinematic/dramatic genres quite well, IMO.