Ye Olde Inn

Question: How do you all feel about quests in which the heroes are sent to "remove a problem"
in which the problem is another human...not necessarily aligned with chaos?

For example - a quest idea I wrote down a few weeks ago, and we looking at again today:
Wizards' Guild head wants the heroes to go to a young noble of the Empire. This noble is
trying to have magic banned throughout the empire, or at least in his region. This would
be bad, both for the people and for magic users, creating an entire class of outlaws in
that region. If he can't be reasoned with, deal with it another way.

That is the basic idea. How would you feel about playing that sort of quest?

Personally, I have no issues with quests like this. But I don't view the world (fictional or not) as "black and white" as some people do.

Also, I'd say go for it anyway. If someone has issues with the morality of it, they don't need to play it. Nobody is forced to download anything.

Weave something through it. Medieval morals, blurred bloodlines. Take something from Game of Thrones and set it as your gray tone.
Let the heroes find out he's a bastard and make him go into exile volantarily from the shame.

I think it's a very excellent idea torilen!

Isn't this the very heart of RPG? To be able to explore this kind of situations without it affecting yourself as a person? Perhaps even learn something?
However I think it will be tough to pull of as just a straight forward quest. To really make it work and get the players involved you could give them some tough choices.
Unlike kk I don't think this quest should have an easy resolve (the noble was a bad guy after all).

The noble could offer a large sum of money if you join his cause instead. (The heroes won't be allowed to use spells anymore but their morals will be intact - and they were given a choice).
Meet some peasants who feel threatened and suppressed by the wizard society. Magic is powerful. Those who wield is wield power over others.
Explore why the noble wants magic banned.
Show the heroes his wife and children.
Do everything to make this a we-must-eat-shit-for-the-greater-good-scenario

Also if you go with the idea of giving them a choice, make them play the next two quests without spells, then give them a quest where the matter is resolved back to normal.
Perhaps NOW he has evolved into a bad guy? He could be prosecuting people suspected of wizardry SS-style? NOW it's time to take this psycho out. But I think it would be wasted potential to just make him a psycho in the first quest.

Sounds very interesting. Some good ideas from above people too. Gives a lot of depth to the story.

Goblin-King wrote:I think it's a very excellent idea torilen!

Isn't this the very heart of RPG? To be able to explore this kind of situations without it affecting yourself as a person? Perhaps even learn something?
However I think it will be tough to pull of as just a straight forward quest. To really make it work and get the players involved you could give them some tough choices.
Unlike kk I don't think this quest should have an easy resolve (the noble was a bad guy after all).

The noble could offer a large sum of money if you join his cause instead. (The heroes won't be allowed to use spells anymore but their morals will be intact - and they were given a choice).
Meet some peasants who feel threatened and suppressed by the wizard society. Magic is powerful. Those who wield is wield power over others.
Explore why the noble wants magic banned.
Show the heroes his wife and children.
Do everything to make this a we-must-eat-shit-for-the-greater-good-scenario

Also if you go with the idea of giving them a choice, make them play the next two quests without spells, then give them a quest where the matter is resolved back to normal.
Perhaps NOW he has evolved into a bad guy? He could be prosecuting people suspected of wizardry SS-style? NOW it's time to take this psycho out. But I think it would be wasted potential to just make him a psycho in the first quest.

Well played. I do have a Game of Thrones shtick, though, now that I've watched three seasons withing two weeks and read the first one and a half novels, so that I finally know who's who and what's what.
I agree with GK's idea of some background story for the bad guy that's in your head and could be alluded to during the quest. Maybe a child of his died because of a peculiar illness that a wizard offered to heal which didn't work quite the way as expected.

Basically, you can go two ways:
1) Vanilla HQ:
a) The Soft Way - Offer the heroes a reward for straight-up objective; defeating the guy in combat and one hero escaping to the stairs with 1 die for movement means he's captured and brought to trial.
b) The Hard Way - Offer the heroes a no-other-way possibility to kill him. Maybe a machination during the quest where they can't escape only after killing him.

2) RPG HQ:
Explore background, motivation, NPCs, and then offer multiple rewardings for different decisions how to handle the given situation.

Goblin-King wrote:Also if you go with the idea of giving them a choice, make them play the next two quests without spells, then give them a quest where the matter is resolved back to normal.

This has many interesting possibilities. Suppose the Heroes make a vow to the noble not to use magic and then 'the next two quests without spells' includes a scenario where the Heroes absolutely must use magic for some kind of gain, although not making it essential to completing the quest. There are plenty of different moral questions you could pose the Heroes here e.g.

• The Heroes must defeat a monster that is only vulnerable to magic to collect a powerful quest treasure/artifact/treasure chest etc.
• The Heroes must break their vow to rescue a group of villagers from the same monster.

I think there is a half interesting article on this kind of scenario somewhere in this section of downloads

torilen wrote:Question: How do you all feel about quests in which the heroes are sent to "remove a problem" in which the problem is another human...not necessarily aligned with chaos?

The only real problem here is that you have to find a way of justifying this human commanding Orcs, Goblins etc.. or you are either limited to using the Men-At-Arms as the monsters.

The Road Warrior wrote:

• The Heroes must defeat a monster that is only vulnerable to magic to collect a powerful quest treasure/artifact/treasure chest etc.
• The Heroes must break their vow to rescue a group of villagers from the same monster.

Good ideas - But if you decide to go with a physical-immune monster, promise me to include it relatively regularly in some quests before.
Don't be going all "Oops we lost our magic powers - SUDDENLY monster that can only be harmed by magic out of freaking nowhere!"

The Road Warrior wrote:The only real problem here is that you have to find a way of justifying this human commanding Orcs, Goblins etc.. or you are either limited to using the Men-At-Arms as the monsters.

Well, men-at-arms obviously. But chaos warriors can also be used as armored knights. Wolves could be used as guard dogs. Ogres could be employed too (in the warhammer universe ogres are a neutral race). Alternatively it could be more of a trap/puzzle based quest.
I see no problem at all here.

torilen wrote: How would you feel about playing that sort of quest?

Depends if you want to keep HQ a boardgame or if you plan to develope your campaign towards a more rpg approach.

For a rpg (or a rpg- heavy HQ campaign), "grey" quests, where the heroes have to question their own morales, are the creme of them all. You don't have to include it every game, but as long it comes naturally to your story arc or background, go for it!

For the boardgame HQ essentially is, I would use it with care, however.
The game system works on the assumption that monsters are practically "pawns". The hero players and the Evil Wizard player both have some gaming pieces on the board, and those pieces can move and take pieces of the opposing party, as definde by a set of rules.
Storywise, this requires that orcs and mummies are just evil and deserve to die.

A quest that suspendes this overall rule by presenting a "morally good" (or at least ambivalent) opponent will make for diversion and excitement. It's a great way to put some fresh air into a camaign.
But I think you should use it very sparsely and very careful.

But this is only an answer to the OP's question cited above.
This thread has developed into a discussion of the actual quest idea of the magophobic noble, which I find very interesting and will definetely follow (not the time to contribute myself right now). Go for it, guys!

I think Big Bene hit on my problem...the idea that as a board game, could fighting humans who are not necessarily aligned with
evil or chaos really work? Sure, in a rpg environment, there would be no issues, and all of the suggestions given here would be
great, if I decide to go that route.

I've been trying to create quests to post here at the inn, though, that are treated more or less as HQ is supposed to be...as a
board game. I know a lot of the folks here don't go for the idea of turning HQ into a full blown rpg, so I try to tame my ideas
down to keep it as close to a board game as possible.

I suppose there could still be the options given...they don't HAVE to kill the young noble, and any men-at-arms that they fight
could be considered as knocked out and injured instead of mortally wounded. They could be given choices about what to do next,
and find ways to complete the quest without killing the noble and his people...

This could still be done without turning the quest into a full-blown rpg, right? Maybe create an ending sort of like a choose your own
adventure setup...with set choices and go from there?