Children of the Grave

A HeroQuest 2 Swords & Sorcery game run by Sam/Mandacaru. Recruitment IC OOC

Premise: Heroes of past ages have been resurrected by the Witch Queen Aziria to do her bidding. Diminished in power and held in thrall to Aziria, the Revenants stride across a world of decaying empires. Even as they wrest from it the treasures their mistress covets, they chafe at her dominion and plot rebellion.

Player Characters

• Aerfal, cultured thief-among-mages, played by RoadScholar
• Lrall, noble Pathfinder, played by coyoteboy
• Terman Pellas, Cambrisi rakehell and soldier-scholar, played by Nexusl
• ?? demon-hunter, played by Asen_G
• ??, ???, played by Megazver
• ??, plains nomad and archer, played by ZenDog
• Chargen & Template - go here to see how to make a character

Players who have confirmed interest:

• Asen_G
• Nexusl
• ZenDog
• RoadScholar
• coyoteboy
• Megazver

House Rules

House rules we will be using are below. I have given my reasons for some of them here. A brief explanation of how contests work is further down. Chargen is explained on the template character sheet. Further possible house rules are even further below.

Keywords

• No special dispensations. Keywords cannot be raised at chargen. They can be raised subsequently, quite how to be determined. Two options are (1) tied to in-game events; (2) I allow it every now and again.

Ability Advancement

Back to Runequest

• When you use an ability, note it on the character sheet (under notes or after the ability if you prefer); more than once if you use it more than once. This is the basis for improvement, as in RQ. (Note that you may fail, so use of skills just to get ticks has an associated risk.)
• Between adventures/sessions or what have you, roll under on a d100. Base chances are:

Ability Advancement

Level or Other	Base chance
No masteries	60%
One mastery	40%
Two or masteries	20%
Each additional use of the ability	+10%
Rune Ability	Chance is halved

• If you roll under 20% of your ability, you get two points. If you roll under 5%, you get 3.

Hero Points

• Hero Points work as before for bumping but are rarer - start with 1. Receive 1 per new session. depending how the first session goes, I may make them be worth two bumps.
• Note that under these house rules, there is no relation between hero points and advancement; they may only be used for bumping.

Contest Outcomes

• States of Adversity. I rarely see these states mean anything in game and I think they should mean more. Accordingly, When characters are hurt, impaired or injured, the negative modifiers (-3, -6 and bump down) apply to all ability uses.
• Lingering Benefits. This too applies to all contests - the book-keeping is easier and we can say a character is on a roll.

Brief Rules Explanation

1. Abilities can be pretty much anything, including contacts, personality traits and so on. However, some abilities are tricky and need discussion (e.g. 'Lucky'). We'll sort this out via discussion. Above 20, an ability is called a Mastery, so we go 19, 20, 1M, 2M and so on. You might see me write 1W, but I mean 1M when I do that.

2. Contests and Target Numbers.

• Setting up Contests It helps if we know exactly what you are trying to achieve. We will be setting up and resolving contests rather than tasks. Thus, we might use a single roll to decide if you defeat your enemy. There is no difference, a priori, between combat and other contests. We might decide some contests are automatic successes.

• Target Numbers are based on your ability rating +/- your 'Vitality' (see below). I may add 'improvisational modifiers' (you are using 'Sword and Shield Combat' but only have a club and shield) or 'circumstantial modifiers' (terrain, weather, you are trying something particularly easy/difficult/cunning). I may also add modifiers if abilities are very specific and hence (in-)appropriate, or are very broad.

• Augmenting You may use a second ability (or another player may) to try to augment your ability. We will roll your ability against a target number of X (it is in the book) to determine how successful this is.

3. Contest Resolution.

• Rolling for Outcomes. Two opponents have 2 opposing TN's. If each has a mastery, these cancel (i.e. 2M vs. 13M equates with 2 vs. 13). Each tries to roll under the TN on a d20, so we have a pair of outcomes to match up with eachother:
  • 1 = critical
  • equal or less = success
  • over = fail
  • 20 = fumble

• Bumping with Masteries or Hero Points. If you have a mastery, you improve your result ('bump') by one step (e.g. I have 4M and roll a 3, I get a critical rather than a success). You may also use a hero point to improve a result in the same fashion.

• Contest Outcomes. If you have better than your opponent, you win the contest (low roll wins ties). How much better decides victory level. The victory/defeat level has a numerical effect in terms of lingering effects or states of adversity and narrative results, which I will explain in-game.
  • Equal results (e.g. two successes) but low roll decides the tie = Marginal victory/defeat
  • One result better (e.g. critical vs. success) = Minor victory/defeat
  • Two results better (e.g. critical vs. fail) = Major victory/defeat
  • Three results better (e.g. critical vs. fumble) = Complete victory/defeat

• End of the Contest. In principle, the contest is now finished. It is possible we will carry things on when there is a particularly important contest. This is a 'chained contest' and runs until one party opts to leave the contest.

• Group Contests. There are some neat rules for this now. Beyond these, I will fly by the seat of my pants. It has always worked (or looked like it from where I sit) so far.

Optional House Rules

1. Vitality.

• Contests Affect Vitality.
  • Defeat - Marginal -2, Minor -4, Major -6, Complete -8 (represent wounds, despondency etc)
  • Victory - Marginal +1, Minor +2, Major +3, Complete +4 (represents being flushed with victory. Note: these will not apply if there is a 1 or more mastery imbalance in favour of the eventual victor).

• How Vitality Works. Vitality is an amorphous mix of physical and emotional state. It starts at 0 and is limited between -10 ("dying") and +10 ("incredibly full of yourself"). Your current level is cumulative/additive; thus, if you are on +3 and score a minor defeat, you drop to -1. Likewise, victory can be a way to get "healed" (or to get a boost before a contest, if you think about it). Vitality is added to the Target Number for every roll you make!

2. Healing.

• Natural healing - your vitality moves one step towards 0 every day (e.g. after sleeping).
• Active healing may be attempted once per day, using a skill appropriate to the cause of the wound. The default is an automatic success which heals one point in addition to natural healing. A more aggressive healing effort is a contest against (10 + the square of the vitality) and includes the active party's vitality (i.e. healing yourself has a negative effect of vitality). Any success level restores the victim to -2 vitality. Failure worsens the condition by -2.
• Example: Jim has been bitten by a venomous snake and is on -7 vitality.
  • He is alone so rests up for a day, scoring a +1 natural healing shift to -6.
  • At the same time, he applies a moss poultice using his very own Survive in the Wild 3W2 ability to score an automatic success of +1. He is now on -5.
  • Next day, he has to move on so he uses the same ability at 3W2 -10 improvisational modifier and -5 for his sickness. His TN is 8W, facing (10+5^2 = 35 or 15W). He scores a success so heals 3 vitality and is now on -2, ready to move on but feeling the after-effects. Had he failed, he would have been on -7, so back where he started.
  • Seems to make sense to me :) Let's see if it works.

3. Hero Points & Character Advancement. Start with 5 Hero Points. (Note that one aim of the limited pool of abilities is to make character advancement more meaningful.) HP can be spent thus:

• 1HP to bump a result post hoc (e.g. you got a success but want to change it to a critical, or fail to success, or fumble to fail)
• 2HP to raise an ability by 1 (this indirectly makes bumping more expensive)
• 1HP to raise an ability by 1 with a concurrent increase of a weakness by 1
• 2HP for a new ability at 14

4. Magic. You may have magic abilities or items. Each time you use an ability (or item? thoughts?), take -1 Vitality. Prior to a contest, you may also increase your magical ability rating by 3 at the cost of an extra Vitality point. Thus: +0 costs -1V; +3 costs -2V; +6 costs -3V; +9 costs -4V and so on [we may adjust this scale later]. Magicians have ways to defer this cost, via sacrifices, captives and so on. This whole magic thing may need revising.

NPCs

• Aziria, the Witch Queen.

Notes

• "Children of the Grave" is taken from a song of that name by Black Sabbath.