Something Wicked: Authorial anti-grognard moment
Musings on writing NPCs in HeroQuest:
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My play with HeroQuest so far has been in adaptation-using HQ characters and Pathfinder adventure paths to supply plots, NPCs, artwork, and all that good stuff. It’s fun. But there is a real joy in studying (reading, re-reading, breaking down, analyzing) adventures and campaigns prepared from the outset for HeroQuest. It’s just amazing stuff. There are no stat blocks.
This is something that can be fully appreciated only by those who have had to write stat blocks for, well, just about any other RPG, particularly for high-level magic-users in recent editions of D&D and NPCs like that. And perhaps even more fully by those who’ve had to edit such things. The numbers and entries go on, and then on and on and on, and it is frightfully easy to make mistakes that can rebound and really mess up people’s games, so there’s real responsibility and very little fun to be had at it. Furthermore, the kind of detail that accumulates around a 20th level d20 multi-classed magic user or a 700-year-old vampire is simply too great for most minds-certainly too much for mine-to keep track of in any sort of gestalt way.
HeroQuest NPCs, on the other hand…they’re people, with histories and motives and resources and like that. And they may be noted as being, say, Very Hard difficulty if the PCs bring to bear magical or physical combat. Or they may not have even that, just advice for the difficulty of the situation as a whole. It’s drama stuff!
This is me cackling like a fiend and looking forward to doing the sample campaigns and adventures for Something Wicked in a way I never have before, since I never had reason to feel this particular kind of anticipation before.
=-=-=-=-=
My play with HeroQuest so far has been in adaptation-using HQ characters and Pathfinder adventure paths to supply plots, NPCs, artwork, and all that good stuff. It’s fun. But there is a real joy in studying (reading, re-reading, breaking down, analyzing) adventures and campaigns prepared from the outset for HeroQuest. It’s just amazing stuff. There are no stat blocks.
This is something that can be fully appreciated only by those who have had to write stat blocks for, well, just about any other RPG, particularly for high-level magic-users in recent editions of D&D and NPCs like that. And perhaps even more fully by those who’ve had to edit such things. The numbers and entries go on, and then on and on and on, and it is frightfully easy to make mistakes that can rebound and really mess up people’s games, so there’s real responsibility and very little fun to be had at it. Furthermore, the kind of detail that accumulates around a 20th level d20 multi-classed magic user or a 700-year-old vampire is simply too great for most minds-certainly too much for mine-to keep track of in any sort of gestalt way.
HeroQuest NPCs, on the other hand…they’re people, with histories and motives and resources and like that. And they may be noted as being, say, Very Hard difficulty if the PCs bring to bear magical or physical combat. Or they may not have even that, just advice for the difficulty of the situation as a whole. It’s drama stuff!
This is me cackling like a fiend and looking forward to doing the sample campaigns and adventures for Something Wicked in a way I never have before, since I never had reason to feel this particular kind of anticipation before.