[HeroQuest] Hero Quest: the next generation

[doug]

Has anyone here been keeping up with the de-gloranthafication of Hero Quest? I've always liked the rules, but I've mostly been a swords-n-sorcery person. What do the "veterans" think of it?

I'm not asking from any particular desire to go setting hoping, just from a sense of curiosity. I saw that Darrin Sims is running all sorts of odd stuff using the existing HQ rules, and was wondering if he was a genius, or just making life more difficult for himself.

- doug

[fmitchell]

Mythic Russia is pretty good, although I've only read half of it.

One suspicion I have about HQ, though, is that it needs a very detailed world to make it work. Players and GMs invent dozens of abilities more-or-less as needed, unlike most systems which have predefined skill and attribute lists. (PDQ-derived games generally have no preset list of "qualities", but characters generally have only three to six of them.) Keywords also rely on a fairly solid understanding of cultures, professions, and "magic" in the game world.

So, HeroQuest excels in Glorantha, and works well in either well-researched historical settings (e.g. Russia) or well-understood fictional settings (e.g. Firefly). But I would expect a GM who tries to invent his world as he goes might want to look to another, more structured system.