HeroQuest Character Sheets

I put these together a while back and they are on the Issaries site. Word 97 and StarOffice/OpenOffice 1.0 format.

Forgotten Cults

One project that I considered was to use the Forgotten Realms maps for an alternative far future Glorantha, where Orlanth and the Red Moon fought to a standstill, and Jar-Eel ended up in a role akin to the Lady, out of Glen Cook's Black Company books. The campaign would be set long ages after the fall of the Red Dominion. The AD&D2 Complete Priests' Handbook is assumed. The inspiration was sparked when a player chose a priest of Strength with the Barbarian kit, and it looked a lot like a Storm Bull cultist…

Commentary

Mother Night is probably not an attractive choice for players; Lady Starbow will gather some women warriors; the Secret Moon is not really a player character option, given its secrecy and restrictions; the Blood Moon is a relict cult, found only in a few out-of-the-way places and usually despised. The Red Magic secrets it teaches are one of the prized posessions of the Red Wizards in their mountain lands, rumour of which makes them hated and feared beyond what their own efforts can achieve. Mistress Moon is a semi-fighting and partly mystic priesthood, suitable for player characters.

Mother Night

One of the nameless spirits of the Dark under the Earth, Mother Night first became noted when Thunder Father struck down Emperor Sun from his throne at Skytop. As the dying, bleeding Sun fell down the sky into the underworld, its inhabitants fled the sudden light. Mother Night led those who ascended into the sky, spreading her protecting cloak of darkness over the land, as she still does to this day.

She has only a small following, as she is content to spread her benefits to all, each night. Her importance is more mythological and practical than spiritual.

Alignment: True Neutral. Priests and worshippers may have any alignment.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 9

Races allowed: Any, though most common are creatures of the underdark.

Proficiencies: Recommended — Religion, Blind-fighting (no extra out-of-class cost).

Duties: Protecting those who are distressed by the raw light of the Sun.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, any club or similar blunt weapon.

Other Limitations: Function at -1 level in natural light, and half level (drop fractions) when in direct sunlight.

Spheres: major — All, Sun(reversed), Protection, Wards, elemental fire (reversed); minor — Healing, Necromantic.

The reversed form of Summon Fire Elemental summons an elemental of darkness, with similar stats to a Fire elemental, whose attack has the effect of a Cause Fear along with regular damage.

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Darksense (sonar based sense, including “acoustic daylight”, rather like dolphins); Hide in shadow 50%+5% per level, modified by race, armour and Dexterity as thieves; Carpe Noctem: Once per level per night, the priest may cause a 10' radius sphere of night's darkness around him or herself to become fixed, and endure through the coming day. If the priest has cast any spells during the day, one of the priest's choice is renewed at sunset.

Symbols: A black disk.

Lady Starbow

As Emperor Sun fell dying into the underworld, splashes of his burning blood fell onto the sky. When even Lord Gloaming, the least and last of the sons and retinue of the Emperor, had followed his master beneath the Earth, the spiritual nature of these bloodstains quickened them to life. Nurturing these last remnants of light came a hitherto nameless and despised sister of Lord Gloaming (the Sun having considered the only feminine spirits of worth to be the fertile Earth, and then worthy only for their fertility).

Defending Heaven and Earth against the encroaching Night, she took up the great Sky bow her father had let fall, defending each remaining spark until the Sun was finally freed from Hell.

Alignment: Neutral Good. Priests and worshippers may have any good alignment.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 12, Dex 12, Cha 12

Races allowed: Human, elf(except drow), half-elf; only women may advance beyond 4th level, and only those who have quested for and won a Unicorn mount beyond 8th.

Proficiencies: Required: Riding(land-based) Recommended - Religion, Blind-fighting, Tracking. Crossover: Priest, warrior.

Duties: Protecting the weak and oppressed, especially women.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, spear, lance, javelin, shortbow, short sword.

Other Limitations: Often despised by patriarchal Sun worshippers (her worship being most common in areas that revere her father and brothers).

Spheres: major — All, Sun, Protection, Combat, Elemental Fire; minor — Healing, Necromantic.

Special spell: Shooting Star: as the mage spell Flame arrow, but the spell is cast on the weilder's bow, which then transfers the spell's effect onto each arrow fired and lasts until the maximum number of arrows have been affected, or one hour has elapsed. Detect Silver and Gold (1^st level)

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Infravison 60' (120' for elves and half-elves); May track as a ranger if there are stars visible in the sky if she has the Tracking proficiency. At 4th level, if virgin, may quest for a Unicorn mount (stats as for a Paladin's war horse). May choose one melee and one missile weapon to have Warrior THAC0.

Symbols: A silver bow; a labrys (double bitted axe) — note that this is a weapon that the Starbow priests may not actually use in combat.

The Secret Moon

Only initiates of her mysteries know any but the barest rumours of her past and current actions. She was the barely visible moon only glimpsed in the radiance of the Unfallen Sun, and who fled beyond the sky at his fall.

Alignment: True Neutral. Priests and worshippers may have any alignment, but usually tend to Lawful Evil.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 13, Cha 13, Dex 15

Races allowed: Any, though usually from outcast populations.

Proficiencies: As the Assassin kit from the Complete Thief's Handbook, plus Recommended — Religion, Blind-fighting (no extra out-of-class cost). Crossover: Priest, Thief.

Duties: Furthering the cryptic purposes of the Secret Moon; ensuring that things best kept secret remain so.

Weapons and armour: As thief; weapons of quiet death like the stiletto or the garotte are preferred.

Other Limitations: Must obey their superiors without question. All aspects of the Assassin kit.

Spheres: major — All, Summoning, Divination, minor — Healing (both normal and reversed), Necromantic (reversed), Sun (reversed).

Special spells: Glow: A variant on Chant. The priest glows with an eerie blue light, which gives him and all his associates +1 on all their defensive rolls and -1 to be hit. Lasts 6 rounds, plus 1 per level of caster. Summon Secret Moon Elemental: As Summon Fire elemental. The elemental is invisible.

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Gain thief skills as a thief of the same level and the benefits of the Assassin kit.

Symbols: A wavy-bladed dagger.

The Blood Moon

After the first War in Heaven, and the return of the Sun from the Long Night, there was at first no moon. How the Moon later arose is not known. She may have been the Secret Moon returned, or a once-mortal sorceress who attempted to fuse Solar might with the feminine principle, or even a synthetic construct built through arcane engineering as an anti-Sun either by creatures of Darkness or as a weapon against them. Whatever her origin, the presence of a new power enthroned in the sky led to a Second War in Heaven, culminating in a battle between the Moon and the Thunder Father from which both took sore wounds, and in which the world was shaken and remade.

The worship of the Blood Moon is a weakened survior into historic time of the days before that final war; and is without doubt a debased form of the original worship

Alignment: None. Worshippers may have any alignment (but see below). The worship of the Blood Moon is often appealing to mages of an appropriate mindset.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 12 Int 13 Cha 15

Races allowed: Any.

Proficiencies: Required — Spellcraft, Astronomy, Recommended - Religion, Reading/Writing, Ancient Languages, Ancient History, Astrology. Crossover: Priest, Wizard

Duties: Spreading the liberating and enlightening message of the Blood Moon, if desired.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, Sickle, Scimitar, Shortbow, Scythe, Rhompia (crescent bladed axe).

Other Limitations: Receive only D6s for hit points; subject to the equivalent of Ravenloft Power Checks, and hence may often sport some malformation (power checks may occur for any essentially selfish act): with freedom, such as the liberation from alignment, there comes a corresponding responsibility, and those who succumb to temptation wear their failures externally. The Blood Moon is also regarded as a demonic figure from myth, so her followers also labour under that burden of prejudice, especially in areas that were once conquered by, or under threat of conquest by her Dominion.

Casting of priestly spells is affected by the phase of the moon as follows:

• Dark of the Moon — 1st and 2nd only
• Crescent Moon — up to 4th
• Gibbous Moon — up to 6th
• Full Moon — any

This does not affect casting of wizard spells for split or dual class Wizard/Priests.

Spheres: major — All, Law, Chaos; minor Sun, Charm

Special spells: Moonbeam (Sun 5th), Summon Moon Elemental: As Summon Fire Elemental. The Moon elemental attacks for only half the damage of a Fire elemental, but those attacked must save vs Death Magic or make a Madness check.

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Worshippers may follow any alignment, but its value is hidden. Alignment detecting spells yield only "Neutral"; and take no damage or other adverse effects from magic items based on their alignment; and gain benefits as the better of their own alignment and Neutral. When casting any spell, may modify it with metamagic spells (as per Tome of Magic) as follows:

• Dark of the Moon — none
• Crescent Moon — level totals equal half spell's
• Gibbous moon — level totals equal to the spell's
• Full Moon — level totals equal to spell's + 2

without memorising the metamagic spells or using extra spell slots. If the priest is also a wizard, these benefits transfer to casting wizard spells as well. Spells so affected glow bright red, even if normally not visible.

Symbols: A half-red, half-black disk.

Mistress Moon

After the War in Heaven between Thunder Father and the Blood Moon, when calm at last returned to Earth and Sky alike, and the clouds that had long blocked sight of Sun, Moon and Stars alike parted, a white moon was revealed, rolling along the same path as the Sun. Perhaps this was the conquering Blood Moon washed clean by the storms, but broken like the Sun before her to wheel between Heaven and Underworld.

Worshippers of Mistress Moon align themselves according to their age into the appropriate aspect — maiden, matron or crone.

Alignment: True Neutral. Priests may have any part-neutral alignment. There is no restriction on worshippers.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10, Cha 12

Races allowed: Any surface dwelling; only women are permitted into the priesthood; few men even join the worshippers.

Proficiencies: Required Astronomy; Recommended Religion, Navigation, Astrology, Spellcraft, Reading/Writing.

Duties: Guidance, Marriage, support of women in the transitions of their life.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, Sickle, Scimitar, Shortbow, Scythe, Rhompia (crescent bladed axe).

Other Limitations: The secretive and nocturnal nature of their worship can cause a negative reaction from non-worshippers.

Spheres: major — All, Charm, Divination, Summoning, Sun; minor - Elemental, Healing (and Necromantic if you use the unrevised spell spheres).

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: A priestess of the moon as maiden has Charm/Fascination; a priestess of the moon as matron has Soothing Word; a priestess of the moon as crone has Turn Undead. Saves against any of their magical effects are at -1 during the appropriate phase of the moon.

At 5th Level, all gain Inspire Fear (as per the CPHB).

Symbols: A silver disk.

Mountain Daughter

The martial daughter of Mother Earth, the patron of warrior women, and especially those who fight to defend, or, damage done, to avenge.

Alignment: Chaotic good.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10, Str 12 (gain +5% xp if both are 16+)

Races allowed: Human, elven or half-elven women.

Proficiencies: Required Tracking (as Ranger); Recommended Religion, Reading/Writing, Riding, Healing. Crossover Priest, General and Warrior

Duties: Defending, especially other women; avenging harm done to them.

Weapons and armour: Any armour and shield, any axe or axe-like pole arm. May specialise in one chosen weapon.

Other Limitations: Joining this priesthood separates a woman from her normal society. In particular, she may not marry

Spheres: major — All, Healing, Protection, Elemental Earth; minor - Necromantic, Guardian.

Followers and strongholds: TBD.

Powers: Bladethirst, level times daily, castable on her own axe. Incite berserker rage in self or other members of the cult.

Symbols: A bloody axe.

Sir Sword

Once a brother of the Thunder Father, now the wielder of the archetypal sword, and that sword itself, that first brought death to the world.

Alignment: Lawful Neutral.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 9, Str 13

Races allowed: Any.

Proficiencies: As CPHB war god, including crossovers

Duties: Excelling in martial prowess, separating the living and the dead (including laying to rest those who should be dead, but are not - the undead).

Weapons and armour: Any armour and shield, any sword. May specialise in all swords.

Other Limitations: May not be raised or resurrected or even turned into undead (though the physical remains of the priest may be animated as a skeleton or zombie). Any transition to undeath e.g. by level draining by high level undead, results in the character's death rather than transformation into undead.

Spheres: major — All, Combat, Necromantic (but may not raise the dead); minor Healing, Protection.

Followers and strongholds: TBD.

Powers: Turn Undead; Sense Assassin ( WIS based proficiency ); CON bonus vs poison and such as a dwarf (doubled if you are one).

Symbols: A sword.

Volcano Brother

The youngest brother of the Sun, who fell into the Earth, not into the Underworld. As the CPHB Fire god with the following changes:

Proficiencies: add bonus one forge-related and one farming-related

Duties: Aiding and being an example to the workers on the land.

Spheres: major — All, Healing, Elemental Fire; minor — Healing, Necromantic, Protection.

Symbols: A burning spear.

Thunder Father

The son of Sky and Earth, who fell in the Gods War long ago. This is how his priests of that age might have appeared.

Alignment: Neutral good.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10, Con 12

Races allowed: Air-breathing males.

Proficiencies: As CPHB Sky/Weather god

Duties: What a man's gotta do; to be an exemplar of the role of man as father, provider, protector, and, as needs be, warrior.

Weapons and armour: As the CPHB ruling god.

Spheres: major — All, Weather, Elemental Air; minor — Healing, Combat.

Special spells: Add the following mage spells at their original level — Fly, Dimension Door, Teleport, plus Conjure Air Elemental (as Conjure Fire Elemental).

Powers: Incite berserker rage and Inspire Fear as CPHB.

Symbols: A thundercloud.

Desert Storm

A brother of the Thunder Father, patron of berserk warriors who strive against unnatural monsters. As the CPHB god of Strength, with the following changes

Alignment: Chaotic (urrr... Disorderly) neutral.

Duties: Destroying unnatural monsters.

Special spells: Replace Flamestrike with Conjure Air Elemental.

Symbol: A bull's head.

Mothers of the Moon

The wizard-priests who created, empowered or restored the entity whose remnant is now the Blood Moon were at one time worshipped as demigods in their own right, and in their collective role as those who brought the moon into being, as a fully powered god-equivalent. This is how their worshippers might have appeared

Alignment: Neutral.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10

Races allowed: Any.

Proficiencies: As CPHB god of Everything

Duties: Spread the word. Bring civilsation to the barbarian and savage.

Weapons and armour: Any armour and shield, scimitar, sickle and scythe. May specialise in scimitar.

Spheres: major — All, Charm, Necromantic, Sun; minor — Healing, Combat.

Followers and strongholds: TDB.

Other Limitations: Casting of priestly spells is affected by the phase of the moon as follows:

• Dark of the Moon — 1st and 2nd only
• Crescent Moon — up to 4th
• Gibbous Moon — up to 6th
• Full Moon — any

This does not affect casting of wizard spells for split or dual class Wizard/Priests.

Special spells: Summon Moon Elemental: As Summon Fire Elemental. The Moon elemental attacks for only half the damage of a Fire elemental, but those attacked must save vs Death Magic or make a Madness check.

Powers: Turn Undead.

Symbols: A silver moon.

Emperor Sun

The first ruler of the cosmos.

Alignment: Lawful (= bureaucratic) good.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 12, Int 12

Races allowed: Men whose fathers were priests of Emperor Sun.

Proficiencies: Required Healing; Recommended Religion, Reading/Writing, Riding (horse), Play Harp. Crossovers as CPHB Sun god.

Duties: Governing. Being an example of austere virtue

Weapons and armour: As CPHB Sun god

Spheres: major — All, Divination, Healing, Necromantic, Sun; minor — Charm, Elemental Fire, Plant, Protection.

Special spells: Imbue with Spell ability — despite only having minor access to the Charm sphere.

Followers and strongholds: TDB.

Powers: Turn Undead, Soothing Word, Inspire Fear.

Symbols: A golden sunburst.

The difference between Old and New campaigns

How old is old? While 1960s rock stars may have talked the talk, my experience is of campaigns that actually did die before they got old. Usually I was introducing new campaigns (often also implying new systems) to old players.

The only longish running campaign with some later introduction of players was the Champions game from the mid '80s. There, the genre conventions were strong enough, assuming the players understood them, that they could hit the ground running. In the case of the genre-unaware player cited above coming in later, I guess that the campaign in mid-flow had enough momentum to ride through that sort of local difficulty, whereas a newly starting one, with less player investment all round, might have foundered in favour of something more attuned to the new consensus.

Working around Combat Patterns (he hits, I parry)

I didn't play Ars Magica for long enough for the variant “He hits, I soak” to become clichéd, though my converted high-CON ex-AD&D2 Uruk Hai was very good at that version of the old standard. And it depends what you mean by a pattern — if you take the software engineering meaning, that really means a stereotype, in the same sense that that word used to have in printing, of a ready made format Opening gambits are a source of behaviours that often get thus stereotyped — “Here come the flying feet of Kung Fu!” or “We Starsky & Hutch the door.“ — a reference from when they were on the TV (as opposed to the 2004 movie), not that long before the very early D&Ding days — the fighter knocks down the door while a mage stands ready to Magic Missile what may be revealed.

But I guess the real intent of the topic was on the behaviour that emerges when you actually invoke the game mechanics. At this point the fact that each entity in its turn — and that encompasses even the different turn rates for different entities that is part of the Hero system — is given an action that may be used to attack, and that usually meets some implicit resistance from the target. The underlying game mechanics will always drive you to some variant of the the “I attack, he defends” iteration; even in Over the Edge and Feng Shui, no matter what their respective authors would like to have you believe.

All that those games attempt to do is hide this inconvenient fact under layers of fluff. Such spurious detail has for me the effect of reducing both my immersion (as a distraction) and also the credibility of the action — I would rather hide detail I'm no expert in under the abstraction of the mechanics. Otherwise you get to the ludicrous things like in the Theatrix thread on r.g.f.a about 8 years back where what the acting player described in the belief that it is a strong move was resolved by the adjudicator taking the point of view that it was a weak one, or descriptions of a combat in terms of fencing stances (recalling a somewhat more recent thread on u.g.r or perhaps r.g.f.m). Not only am I not au fait with the technical terms, but I do not find it credible that such technically precise stances would be applicable to wilder melee — especially in the example I recall of a combat with a broo. This style of play also seems distressingly full of examples in which a player asserts what his opponent is doing as much as his own character.

No, either you go to systems that plot moves at the sub-100ms increment with Laban Notation, using complex transition rules to simulate physical limitations on how far you can move, and that you can't move one arm though another, and computing whether you'll fall over given that current stance, and how to recover, and then you have to learn how to fight properly, for real, to use it — something I contemplated over 25 years ago, and then drew well back from — or you're stuck with the abstracted action/re-action iteration.

What do you use for genre sources

The one time I found I really needed to get players into the groove for anything I ran was Shadowrun when few if any of the players had read anything even vaguely cyberpunk-ish. To remedy that, I handed around the first accompanying volume of fiction, the Into the Shadows braided anthology, for them to read in advance of the character generation session. In other cases, my players seem to have already had some idea of the genre or at least conventions typical of these games absorbed by osmosis from the surrounding culture. The main exception I recall was a player who just wasn't into superheroes who joined in one session of Champions. I don't think a reading assignment would have helped in the short time available.

The time I really went looking for genre material (as opposed to things like historical references for period context before finally not getting around to joining the Saxum Caribetum saga) was when running Vampire — and there it was easy enough to find source material in the usual bookshops — which I then plundered for NPCs.

Kill or stun — which to do

One reason to kill is when you cannot deal with the opponent in any other fashion. The last game I actually played had just about come to this point - the mind warping powers of the elves out of paratime were such that they couldn't be kept prisoner by mere humans for any length of time. So, for our own security, the only good pointy was a dead one.

Saintly PCs — what makes them, what game mechanics might they use, and

I think we have to distinguish between pious characters and those who are merely holier-than-thou; and also have some ground rules on what the piety is being measured against to do this topic justice. How would a character that's not following something close to one of the Faiths of the Book be judged as saintly?

It is true that many characters that say “pious” or “holy” on the character sheet actually turn out aligned simply Lawful/Obnoxious — the one I remember from local play being an LG dwarf cleric by the name of Aman Naug who came over as very austere and puritanical, and noted as to be one of the first against the wall when the CG revolution came. Most interestingly, when dusted off post AD&D2, as a priest of Aurochs, lord of berserk strength (the CPHB Strength specialty priest type), he became the rather lighter-hearted Noggin the kung-fu barbarian dwarf in very short order. And he was doing a lot of righteous smiting as befitted his faith. Was he saintly?

In a more familiar style, I remember affectionately the write-ups from long, long ago of the Tale of Two Clerics, two pious characters and their unfortunate companion, the rather more self-interested Frank (and all his relatives — replacements — of the same name). They sounded saintly, and certainly seemed to work.

Had I actually completed character generation for Saxum, my character there would have been inspired by Roger Bacon, as portrayed in Blish's Doctor Mirabilis, and would have had a definite background from the Church, even if a mildly heterodox one, from time spent in the University at Paris, a pious inquirer into the majesty of Creation. As it turned out, I don't think he would have fitted the rest of the group, so that's saintly character that wouldn't have worked, but in that case only due to the particular context in which he would have been set.

Why are some players reluctant to GM

I can't say for sure about the habitual player-only type, but I might share some of the problems. For me, my reluctance to resume after burn-out was, and remains, centred about the problem of excessive GM authority in anything adjudicated. It's about not being able to sustain the necessary illusion of player free will from my PoV, while keeping the amount of GM prep needed to a manageable level. For a fully live quasi-simulation, a world that “runs itself”, in which the players can really do what they want, the workload is enormous (at least compared with the amount of time and energy I feel I can devote to it these days). That's before one faces the possibility that every player takes off on a separate agenda (as helped crash my V:tM chronicle). For anything constrained, I have to guide the players, and this feels wrong.

On top of that, choosing a system, choosing how to customise it, can all lead to analysis paralysis even before getting to the crunch point of selecting a setting, and trying to set it in motion. And then you have to worry about whether your players will be happy to consume what it is you have to offer, whether they will propose characters that you can handle, and that won't do violence to what you wanted to run.

It was all so much simpler when a satisfying evening's gaming could be put together by selecting opponents for two fight scenes and a skeleton of narration to join them up. Things started to go downhill when gaming evenings had to stop at half ten rather than one a.m., and violence had to be suppressed after the 9 o'clock watershed and/or speeded up by abstraction, and other things had to be introduced to fill the space. Nearly as good are the few very best pre-packaged adventures where the GM can just play the hand he's been given without needing to rewrite it to eliminate crass bits, and allow the time for the game system to produce results, rather than have to also make them up.

Rules that players disagree with

Long, long ago, the real biggie was the wizards and swords one. We cured that one when one time the mages and thieves, the sole survivors of a mêlée, started to squabble over the division of the loot, drew swords and axes, and slaughtered each other tout de suite. Then they saw the wisdom of the arbitrary ruling. By the early 90's, it had even become one of the bits of antique charm of the *D&D rules (another thing to dislike about 3e) that made it attractive to pick up AD&D2 and play that rather than RQ.

And nobody liked the fire-and-forget magic system, so we replaced it almost from the get-go.

I can't remember any other focussed little rules that were contentious, though there must have been many. More often it was whole-system things not amenable to single-point changes (bricks über alles in Champions, the system sagging by about 8-9th level in *D&D, the unreasonable effectiveness of mages when played with a little thought in Shadowrun). The nearest to a point problem was with Pendragon (which we used in a Glorantha setting), where no-one liked the number of shots a slinger could get off on an opposing foot-soldier charging at him, a combination of range, rate of fire and movement rules conspiring together, but that was washed way by the other problems with that particular campaign.

Have you tried hitting PCs with a baby

One time, this was almost literal - a small child was used as a missile by a supervillain (Malice, of the Bad Girls) in a Champions game. It's not a very effective thing to do, as they are limited in the damage they can inflict by their low BOD and zero DEF. Paving slabs are more effective.

As for the idea of inflicting parenthood, even adoptive or something like, and transient, it was never explored while I was involved. Heck, we didn't even have any “spunky kid” PCs (thank goodness, worse than kender…) The only episode I can recall in which children actually appeared was an almost off-screen incident in the Glorantha/RQ game where the PCs had returned to their home steading, and my Babeester Gor axe-murderess was co-opted by the Voria nursemaid as an assistant. This being a cult obligation, she grimaced, went along, and into an off-screen interlude.

Subsequently in the same GM's Saxum Caribetum saga, I gather the mages get involved in orgies, sparked off by faerie wine, which have resulted in offspring as well as points of vis, but I get the impression that the grogs are left to deal with the sprogs. There may be more sordid details on the campaign web page than I wot of.

Creating a home base for PCs

In many cases, PCs were peripatetic, where not simply garaged somewhere abstract between weekly dungeon delves, so the issue rarely arose. In the earliest days, some characters had (off-screen) castles - something spend six figure fortunes on. My MU, Ororo, was planning to create a demi-plane, a cottage in an eternally summer garden in a small valley magically hidden in the middle of a howling snowy waste, the way in being through a gate in the wastes, but the campaign folded before she could organise the magical wherewithal. It would have had home comforts, defence in depth, and, most importantly, significant swank value.

The one home base that had significant time invested in — both design and play - was Doc Savage's lab in the London Watch Champions campaign, but despite the fact that I did the job of putting it into a CAD system, the passage of the years has eroded memory of the design process. In that game I did have a PC with a defined pied à terre; Pushover had a flat [never detailed] in the block containing the Women's Centre where she worked, but having been developed as a character, decided that the macho super-hero thing wasn't for her and faded out of play. [I'm getting my revenge now — an alternate version of her is co-starring in my latest fiction, and she's going to have to deal with being faced with the problem of saving the world this time.]

There was a home base in the last AD&D2 game, a castle, but as that was the holding of the NPC Baron for whom the PCs worked as elite forces, it was a given, rather than being chosen. In the paratime/60's spy game, we were also eventually given a base, an alternative where a paratime capable civilisation had been wiped out. The most involved base-like stories with off-beat design criteria would have come from the local Ars Magica saga ( Saxum Caribetum ), where founding the covenant took most of the first realtime year's play, and it took a resolving a lot of squabbling about the library before construction even began.

What tips can you give about starting a gaming group

Thinking about it I guess I was always lucky, I always joined existing groups, already accumulated by someone I knew from university, so it was more a case of finding a group than founding it.

What do the players want the PCs to accomplish

I don't really recall having much in the way of grand PC-level goals. This was one of the difficult things about trying character play. The satisfactory games tended to be the ones in which what was to be accomplished was limited and tactical — goals like “Clear out the deserted Wiri colony on 3rd level”. Such goals, of course, arose on a player level, answering the question “what do we want to do tonight?”. The episodic nature of the games — dungeoneering, superheroics — lent itself to such tactical play. Adding continuity did tend to replace the answer of “whatever we feel like” with “whatever we were lumbered with as a leftover from last week, again”. This, in retrospect, may not be an entirely unalloyed plus.

Pulling heartstrings — friends and family as levers

I never did much with this. On the family side, starting RPGing at college when leaving home was a big step just being taken, characters had automatically done much the same thing. For those of us who stayed close to University, and especially those who have also refrained from breeding, the same lifestyle decisions seem natural. The only vestiges of such things were the DNPCs taken for a few odd points, when other disads have been mined out.

But then much F/SF writing has the same conventions.

Restarting old games — whether to and how

That's restarting as in a car, though one could have written revive, to avoid the sense of reinitialise.

Ignoring essentially stillborn games, in my experience games falter most often for one of two reasons. The most prevalent is that the game mechanics have given way under play; restarting means porting to a different system, in which characters don't work like they used to, and it soon needs to be put out if its misery (after seeing it happen a few times, we stopped doing it).

The other is that some of the players — often the GM — can't get out enough to justify what is being put in. This may manifest as the thread getting lost, perhaps due to pushing past a logical stopping point, or an acrimonious terminal session where divergent goals can no longer be smoothed over. In this situation, admitting that this is dead, and burying it is the only way.

What rôle does Party pressure play

This is more a player level set of agreed — even unspoken — conventions in my experience. The characters work together as a genre given; so I can't really comment on in-game effects.

What helps players stay in character

I'm not sure my experience is typical. In recent years at least, the problem, when gaming in the evening after work, was keeping players from lapsing into a comatose state, rather than dropping to player level. Caffeine has little effect on the habituated. Worse, when players were out of the limelight, multi-tasking happens as people took to maximizing the use of their free time (reading, checking e-mail on laptops), to the extent of needing to prod people when their PCs' actions came round in combat.

At that point a simple “Your turn” and a pause for context-switching sufficed.

No-one violated character, but were active only fleetingly.

How do you treat anachronisms like Futuristic Wizards

Futuristic Wizards are entirely OK if the genre accepts them (e.g. ShadowRun). Things like the Arduin Techno class are, as written, much more of a problem as their tricks would really need a large technological and industrial base to support, and thus don't ring so true. Like the old “mages can't use swords” argument, it's best if the players just take any limits as one of the canons of the game, and the worst is to respond to provocation with a tantrum — “I'll ban it forever!”

Does your GMing style vary by the rules set you're using

In hindsight, I can't see much difference in my own style in broad, save perhaps in some slight and gradual maturation over the years. There may have been a selection effect, in that games that didn't gel with my style I simply passed by.

I also tended to treat games more as different ways to slice reality, and impose different limits on the possible; and can't off-hand think of any game which came with an associated setting that I have ever used the setting from, at least without having customised it myself, until at the very end when I used the Planescape setting.

Even the late slide into a style which was more low-dice, narrative with adjudication came more as a response to trying to fit more than just a fight scene into an evening's play, and happened as much with AD&D2 as with V:tM! It was an exploration of what I could do to improve the execution of the game based on current received wisdom rather than being tied to the actual set of mechanics or genre in play.

What to do about occasional players

When in the past players have been unable to show up for one or more sessions, the characters have by default been played by the other players by committee, and somewhat in the background. In some genres (cyberpunk, superhero) it is easier to agree that the character is doing his/her day-job or similar schtick and can't respond to “Avengers Assemble” or whatever.