TEXT: Sharper 
  Adventures 
  in HeroQuest 
  Glorantha
   ROBIN D. LAWS
  THE KRAKEN 
  Chapbooks
  
  AUTHOR
  Robin D. Laws
  IDEA & DEVELOPMENT
  Fabian Küchler
  DESIGN & LAYOUT
  Claudia Schille
  FONT
  Vollkorn by Friedrich Althausen 
  (vollkorn-typeface.com)
  –
  This Chapbook PDF is a fundraiser for THE KRAKEN, published by Tentacles Press, 
  October 2014. For more information about THE KRAKEN visit the-kraken.de
  This publication uses trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Moon Design Publications LLC, 
  which are used with license from Moon Design. For more information about Moon Design Publications and 
  Moon Design Publications products, please visit glorantha.com. Glorantha is a trademark of Moon Design.
  
  4
  Sharper 
  Adventures 
  in HeroQuest 
  Glorantha
   ROBIN D. LAWS
  You’d think that the richness and variety of Greg Stafford’s world 
  of Glorantha would lead to scenarios that write themselves. In a 
  surprising twist, though, those very qualities add an extra layer of 
  challenge when presenting players with a string of situations that 
  cohere into a compelling roleplaying storyline. Let’s look at some 
  techniques to harness that overwhelming flow of inspiration into 
  adventures that leave your players demanding sequels.
  
  5
  CORE ACTIVITY
  Crisp, specific adventures take place within a clear series frame-
  work. Lay the groundwork for your initial scenario, and its fol-
  low-ups, by defining the core activity the characters pursue. This 
  tells you who the heroes are, and what they are doing.
  Examples from non-Glorantha games include:
  • 1920s investigators uncover the mind-blasting secrets of the Cthulhu  
   mythos.
  • Freelance operatives enforce order in an otherwise lawless space  
   frontier.
  • Vampires struggle for power in the undead hierarchy that secretly  
   controls the world’s major cities.
  •	Plucky	rebels	fight	a	star-spanning	empire	in	a	galaxy,	far	far	away.	
  • Superheroes protect the innocent from supervillains.
  Note the sentence structure in each case: the heroes are X, and they 
  do Y. The subject of the sentence defines who the heroes are. The key 
  verb tells you what they do.
  Much like Traveller, Glorantha offers a huge range of possible core 
  activities, implicitly requiring that the group arrives at one of them 
  during play. Both debuted during what might be called the second 
  wave of RPG development, which sought among other things to wid-
  en out the D&D experience. Where D&D presents a very strong de-
  fault core activity, raiding dungeons, Traveller gave groups broader 
  latitude to choose what they were doing. Most if not all of the PCs 
  formerly belonged to space navies. Entering play as civilians, they 
  might decide to be traders, explorers, mercenaries, pirates, body-
  guards, xenoarchaeologists, or what have you.
  RuneQuest went even further by leaving the “who” part of the equa-
  tion up for grabs as well. Characters defined themselves by the gods 
  they worshiped, which might belong to a number of disparate and 
  sometimes competing cultures. Or, for that matter, species – here 
  
  6
  you were no longer limited to a relative handful of nonhuman identi-
  ties, but could be a troll, duck, morocanth or, for that matter, intelli-
  gent spell-slinging iguanadon. You could still invade and loot under-
  ground complexes, as in the Big Rubble. But the world background, 
  with its looming wars between divine proxies, implied something 
  bigger. 
  Since those early days, the range of possible core activities in Glo-
  rantha has only multiplied. Groups have set campaigns in its many 
  regions and key historical periods. You might be:
  • key members of an Orlanthi clan, protecting its people from enemies  
   ancient and new.
  • trolls scavenging food for hungry relatives.
  • dwarves seeking to restore an all-too-unpredictable world to a con- 
   dition of blessed stasis.
  •	 traders	bridging	divides	between	cultures,	all	in	the	name	of	profit.
  • elves avenging crimes against the natural world.
  • religious enforcers hunting heretics against the one true Malkioni  
   doctrine.
  •	 misfits	and	outcasts	bouncing	between	picaresque	exploits.
  Any seasoned Glorantha fan can reel off a dozen more of these at 
  the drop of a bronze helmet. Pick one, and you’ve got the solid foun-
  dation for an adventure or series. Without a core activity, you risk 
  the syndrome that strikes roleplaying games set in rich worlds – that 
  the characters, rather than driving the action, are taken on a tour of 
  the world’s many features.
  We all know the problem of agency. You don’t want the heroes to 
  become bystanders watching from a remove as the key figures of 
  the Hero Wars go through their historically foreordained paces. But 
  even when the players do occupy center stage and make the key deci-
  sions throughout a session, their exploits seem aimless if they’re not 
  doing something very specific that brings them into contact with the 
  world’s people, places, events and mythologies.
  
  7
  Character is action. By establishing and keeping in 
  mind the core activity, you can ensure that the heroes en-
  gage with the world in the most active possible way. 
  Absent group identity and collective goal, meeting a morocanth 
  slave trader, then a sun-crazed group of bison riders, and then a pack 
  of salvation-seeking baboons seems colorful but not really a story. 
  If instead the group members encounter them as a series of impedi-
  ments to their core activity, the disparate events fuses into a narrative 
  that builds as you go along, with the consequences from each contest 
  relating to a broader whole. This remains true whether you’re trying 
  to extract taxes from them on behalf of the government, to convert 
  them to your transcendent cult, or because each leads you a step clos-
  er to the magical poultice you need to revive your clan’s dying wyter.
  HOW TO FIND IT
  In a one-shot or standalone, you only need to define a core activity 
  for the scenario at hand. It essentially becomes your premise. You 
  can generally count on players to accept the core activity you throw 
  at them as you kick off the session. This allows them to get on with 
  the action right away. Given the time constraints of a quick session or 
  mini-series, a clearly delineated core activity helps everyone get on 
  with the business of moving the story forward.
  If you’re creating an adventure to kick off a new series, you’ll be 
  defining the core activity that will link together an entire arc of fol-
  low-up scenarios. Increase player engagement by letting them choose 
  the core activity. Then build the adventure around that choice. In an 
  ongoing series that lacks drive, you might kick it into high gear by 
  retroactively zeroing in on a core activity. You might plan to let the 
  heroes explore their corner of Glorantha, sandbox style, until they 
  arrive at a core activity naturally. Depending on how proactive the 
  dominant players in your group are, they might acquire their moti-
  vating force intentionally, or fall into it.
  
  8
   
             PREP OR IMPROV?
  All of these techniques work whether you prepare your 
  scenario ahead of time, or improvise it in response to play-
  er choices. HeroQuest makes the latter approach easier 
  than it would be in, say, RuneQuest, which requires de-
  tailed game statistics that are hard to generate on the fly. 
  But that’s really a side issue.
  If you prefer to know where you’re going ahead of time, 
  or are writing an adventure for others to run, you can still 
  use the structural tools given here to sharpen your story-
  telling.
  You can establish a single core activity as part of your ad-
  venture premise. Or you can write a scenario that supports 
  a wide range of likely core activities, with notes on how 
  each of them informs or changes the action.
  Have your cake and eat it too by writing to a single core 
  activity, then adding an appendix or sidebar laying out the 
  adaptations the Narrator might make to fit it to a list of 
  alternate activities.
  EMOTIONAL STAKES
  Either in the text of your adventure, or on the fly as you run it, add 
  further interest by asking players to set out the why behind the who and 
  the what of their core activity. Establish why the adventure matters to 
  them. Even if they’re just doing a job, their success or failure at it must 
  exert the profoundest possible impact on their lives. If the heroes des-
  perately care, their players will, too. Otherwise, the heroes remain im-
  personal cut-outs taking part in an empty problem-solving exercise.
  
  9
  Encourage players to phrase their characters’ emotional state-
  ments in a brief first-person sentence. The heroes can all have the 
  same default reason for performing their core activity. Contrasting 
  or separate motivating factors add color to the proceedings, especial-
  ly if they lead to low-level conflict within the group. A character’s 
  reason for engaging in the core activity might have an external com-
  ponent, or be purely internal.
  For example, let’s say the core activity is: 
  “As Orlanthi champions, we protect and strengthen our clan.”
  Possible emotional stakes for various members of this group might 
  include:
  • HENGIST:	“I	want	to	be	chieftain	one	day.”
  • BORLANTOR: “I aspire to emulate my god, who risked all to aid the  
   Storm Tribe.”
  • GESTAN: “I want to prove that my mother was wrong about me, and  
   that I can amount to something.”
  • ARKORA: “Doing this will bring about the lasting peace I so  
   fervently desire.”
  • THORL: “Clan champion duty lets me do anti-social things, yet be  
   treated as a contributor to the community.”
  • RANALLA: “I hate being bored. I need thrills like others need to  
   breathe.”
  Most of the time, players will already have worked out their  
  heroes’ motivations. Here they’re simply restating them in reference 
  to the core activity.
  AVOIDING PREMISE REJECTION
  By setting out emotional stakes, you also avoid the problem of 
  premise rejection. Sometimes players fall into a mindset in which 
  they start to see their characters as resources to be protected from 
  
  10
  harm, rather than the risk-courting protagonists of an exciting  
  adventure tale. If someone balks when confronted by a particularly 
  terrifying obstacle, the Narrator can bring in the emotional connec-
  tion to explain why his character takes a deep breath and steps up to 
  confront it. 
  The balky player might say, “I’m not going down into that cave of chaos!”
  To	which	the	Narrator	replies,	“But	you’ll	do	anything	exciting	–	the	more	
  exciting	the	better.”
  To which the balky player can only say, “Darn, you’re right.”
  If you follow some of my other designs, you might recognize this 
  idea as a version of Drives from Trail of Cthulhu and Ashen Stars. These 
  also remind the players to do interesting, dangerous things by hav-
  ing them sign up to do that during character generation. Having done 
  this you rarely have to worry about it again. (For most players you 
  never had to worry about it in the first place, but every so often some-
  one forgets the point in a bout of character protectiveness.)
  SCENARIO PREMISE
  Start your scenario proper by settling on a premise, the prob-
  lem that activates the characters’ need to engage in its core activity. 
  The heroes might fully understand the premise from the outset. In 
  a more typical storytelling pattern, they sense only the outlines of 
  the problem at first. By dealing with its initial manifestations, they 
  overcome obstacles and learn more about the true problem as they 
  go along. 
  Let’s say the core activity is “Protect my Orlanthi clan.” and the var-
  ious character motivations are given as above. We’ve already men-
  tioned a cave of chaos, so let’s make that our central problem. A fis-
  sure in the earth, inside which chaos creatures lurk, opens up in 
  the border region between the characters’ clan and the next. This is 
  the force the clan must be protected from this time around. In other 
  words, our premise = chaos cave. To complete the adventure suc-
  
  11
  cessfully, the characters must seal off, destroy or otherwise neu-
  tralize the cave. 
  Having invented a premise, take a moment to consider how it re-
  lates to each character’s emotional stakes. In an adventure written 
  for others to run, include a note encouraging the Narrator to do this 
  during play. You could suggest to the players why each of their heroes 
  might respond to the adventure’s central problem. Even better, invite 
  each player to explain why they want to solve it. They might invoke 
  their standard motivation, or surprise you with a new reason to en-
  gage specific to this particular situation.
  When you run this introductory section, then, the players might 
  respond as follows:
  • HENGIST: “Defeating this threat will burnish my credentials as  
  	 future	chieftain.”
  • BORLANTOR: “My god battled chaos, and so will I.”
  • GESTAN: “If I defeat chaos, Mother will have to admit I’m tough and  
   smart.”
  • ARKORA: “There is no peace where chaos reigns.”
  • THORL: “I’ve never hit chaos creatures before. Let’s go!”
  • RANALLA:	“Nothing	more	exciting	than	a	battle	against	chaos!”
  DEVELOPING THE PREMISE
  After the heroes discover the premise, prepare or improvise a 
  scene or two in which they encounter obstacles arising from it. If 
  the heroes know what the problem is, the first obstacle can simply 
  be a decision-making scene in which the players decide how to start 
  dealing with it. Otherwise, it might be one in which they gather the 
  information they need to start grappling with it.
  
  12
  CREATING AND ORDERING OBSTACLES
  Certain obstacles may be implied by the premise. If the premise is 
  a chaos cave, the first obstacle must somehow involve signs of chaos, 
  or of the opening of the cave. Where many possible obstacles arising 
  from the premise come to mind, decide what order they appear in. 
  You can do this in two ways:
  Logical Progression: Some obstacles might logical-
  ly grow out of the consequences, positive or nega-
  tive, of others. Place these subsidiary obstacles in 
  chronological order, after the ones that lead to them.
  Impact: Arrange obstacles that can appear inde-
  pendently of one another in ascending order, from 
  least to most intense. Intense can mean dangerous, 
  or moving, or startling, or visually arresting – what-
  ever feels to you like it makes a scene a grabber.
  You might use index cards to shuffle obstacle order, devoting one 
  card to each obstacle. This method becomes useful when ordering 
  for impact. If you always order by logical progression alone, a point 
  form list should do the trick.
  I use a virtual index card when outlining, by using ProFantasy 
  Software’s Campaign Cartographer for one of its unintended purpos-
  es, as a crude diagram maker. Its CAD-based design allows the easy 
  reordering of text boxes representing each an idea. You might find 
  another program that better fits your budget or way of thinking. (Be-
  cause they’re often used for business, dedicated flow chart programs 
  remain weirdly expensive compared to other types of software.)
  If you invent more obstacles than needed for a single adventure, 
  keep the ones you don’t use in reserve. Allowing for alternate or 
  optional scenes keeps the demon dog of railroading at bay. By lay-
  ing in more than one possible route to the solution of the central 
  problem, you grant the players the chance to make meaningful 
  
  13
  choices that dictate the story’s overall shape. 
  When inspiration lags, think of ways to connect the premise to the 
  common supporting character types, situations, images, and pat-
  terns of the Glorantha setting. In the end, you’ll still wind up draw-
  ing on the cool world elements that make you want to play in Gloran-
  tha. This way, though, they’ll all serve the central premise, creating a 
  whole that exists as more than the sum of its parts.
  POINT OF NO RETURN
  Roleplaying permits a structural looseness you’d never get away 
  with when plotting a novel, movie, or TV episode. In fact, looseness 
  works. It gives the players room to insert their own choices and 
  surprises in between your obstacles. Having established your core 
  activity, emotional stakes and scenario premise, a collection of ob-
  stacles, some directly connected to each other, which lead to a likely 
  climax may well be all you need.
  That said, you can sometimes get satisfying results by pulling from 
  common structures of other forms. Movies, for example, often keep 
  their hold on our attention with act changes. These add momentum, 
  intensity and variety by sending the story in a new direction. 
  The first act change in a movie can often be encapsulated as a Point 
  of No Return moment.
  • Ilsa arrives at Rick’s place in Casablanca.
  • Luke meets Obi-Wan.
  •	Jeff	accidentally	blinds	an	innocent	bystander	(The	Killer).
  •	Frodo	and	the	gang	realize	the	Nazgul	are	after	them.
  • Peter Parker gets bitten by the genetically altered spider.
  Here the protagonist’s situation is altered forever. He can no longer 
  go back to the previous status quo; he can only move forward, toward 
  a resolution.
  
  14
  The Point of No Return often follows an introduction that estab-
  lishes the main character’s status quo, generally one of stasis or stag-
  nation. This doesn’t work so well in roleplaying, which tends to fol-
  low the iconic hero pattern in which the leads solve problems on an 
  episodic basis. These stories tend to start with the hero encountering 
  the problem and setting out to solve it. The Point of No Return pulls 
  him deeper into a problem he has already been actively solving al-
  most since the outset.
  In our example adventure, the Point of No Return might be the ar-
  rival at the cave, where the heroes find definitive proof that chaos 
  stalks their clan lands. Now they can’t putter off to deal with some 
  other subplot or story thread. They’ve uncovered a true emergency, 
  and must set aside all other concerns to address it, or die trying. Fur-
  ther obstacles follow the Point of No Return moment, invented and 
  ordered just as you did the ones that led from the premise to here.
  ESCALATION
  The third act twist in a screenplay escalates the action to another 
  level. The situation turns out to be even more serious than previously 
  understood. Or the bad guys make their big move. Or the hero recov-
  ers from his lowest point, rallies, and heads out to initiate the final 
  confrontation. Whatever the details, the escalation marks a tumble 
  of incidents leading like a slide to the big climax.
  • The attack on the Death Star.
  • Mount Doom.
  •	The	final	battle	with	Mordred.
  • Hamlet agrees to duel.
  • Closing arguments in the big court case.
  In an adventure, the third act twist is a big obstacle that changes 
  the situation and puts in play the forces that will contend with each 
  other in the climax. This might impose very high resistances, allow-
  ing for the heroes to enter the next oscillation of the Pass/Fail Cycle 
  
  15
  on the upswing. All obstacles after the escalation flow from one an-
  other. The choices that matter have all been made. Now it’s time for 
  the heroes to pay the costs that come with them – or better yet, make 
  their enemies pay.
  In our example, the most obvious escalation would be the discov-
  ery that the cave houses a bigger and badder chaos beastie than pre-
  viously imagined – and that there is no one to fight it but the heroes. 
  Sometimes players want exactly the most obvious choice. All along, 
  the presence of a chaos cave has implied a huge battle against a nasty 
  monster. Here’s where you give it to them. Sometimes players prefer 
  a surprise to the thing they expected all along. 
  Other escalations might be:
  • the discovery that the heroes’ neighbors summoned the chaos cave,  
  	 and	that	the	real	final	boss	villain	is	the	chieftain	next	door.
  •	the	big	bad	chaos	creature	freeing	itself	from	the	cave	and	lopes	off	to	 
   attack the clan hall.
  •	the	decision	to	seal	the	cave	by	undertaking	a	heroquest.
  RESOLUTION
  In any adventure, the resolution is the final obstacle allowing the 
  heroes to claim victory and conclude the scenario. Relatively simple 
  adventures make the nature of that obstacle obvious from the outset.
  • Save the Earth consort from his hostage-takers.
  • Steal the everlasting turnip from the Mostali vault.
  •	Show	the	Lunar	authorities	the	consequences	of	not	paying	their	debts	 
   to the Black Horse Troop by attacking the palace in Sartar.
  • Convince the conclave to adopt your faction’s theological reforms.
  Other adventures might offer several alternate climaxes. Player 
  choices dictate which one occurs. The climax that plays out might 
  be completely different from the one the adventure author planned, 
  
  16
  because the players came up with their own inventive solution to the 
  central problem.
  • Save the Earth consort from his hostage takers or, if your attempt fails  
  	 and	they	kill	him,	find	a	new	candidate	for	Earth	consort	and	get	the	 
   priestesses to accept him as suitable.
  • Steal the everlasting turnip from the Mostali vault, or the crates full of  
   tinned food from the Mostali storeroom, or the regenerating tree from  
   the Aldryami glade, or the sheep herds of the Genadari clan.
  •	Show	the	Lunar	authorities	the	consequences	of	not	paying	their	debts	to 
   the Black Horse Troop by killing a member of the royal family, or raiding  
   a trade caravan, or striking a deal with a rival power.
   
  • Get your reforms adopted by convincing the conclave, or getting the king 
   to intimidate them into agreeing, or by making a demonstration of  
   magical power.
  Whatever the climactic moment winds up being, the Narrator, aid-
  ed by the scenario writer, uses all the tools at her disposal to grant 
  this climactic moment scale and intensity. By allowing a suspenseful 
  extended contest of any ability, HeroQuest makes it easier than other 
  game systems to completely reconceive a climactic sequence on the 
  fly. Written adventures generally can’t make the space to fully flesh 
  out the range of possible final showdowns. Your scenarios for publi-
  cation can however include sidebars to list a few radically different 
  conclusions. As a Narrator, you can think ahead to anticipate alter-
  nate ending sequences, making marginal notes as needed.
  The	example	map	shows	the	four	milestone	
  story points of the three-act structure, and how 
  various pathways between obstacles might 
  connect them. No two scenarios will have the 
  exact	same	configuration	of	obstacles.	At	the	
  table, players choose some obstacles and not 
  others. Their choices introduce new obstacles 
  the Narrator must improvise on the spot.
  
  17
  From the Premise, the heroes 
  may have multiple ways to kick 
  off the adventure, choosing 
  to tackle obstacles that 
  move them toward their goal. 
  They can skip obstacles or 
  circle back to tackle as many 
  of them as they can find.
  After the Point of No Return, 
  they may find themselves on 
  one of several possible paths, 
  each composed of linked 
  obstacles. Some crossing of 
  paths may still be possible. 
  Obstacles lead tightly to one 
  another after the Escalation. 
  Choices already made have 
  narrowed the heroes' options.
  Premise
  Point of 
  No Return
  Escalation
  Resolution
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  Obstacle
  
  18
  Chained in Cerngoth
  Mother of
  Monsters Egg Hunt
  Patriarch of Nikosdros
  Worlathi Shipwrights
  Monster Attack
  Conscripts
  Volunteers
  Going it 
  Alone
  Forced 
  Alliance
  Manageable
  Acclaim
  Before the
  Harvester
  Playing
  Catch-up
  with the
  Worlathi
  Ignominy
  Victory &
  Rewards
  with the
  Patriarch
  vs. the Brown
  Vadeli
  vs. the
  Sedalpists
  Over-eager
  Celebrants
  Escape
  Acceptance
  Exile in
  Vralos
  Celebrated 
  in Song
  Glory
  Egg Harvester
  To the City
  Run Away!
  Fair 
  Enough
  Reprisals
  Postponed
  Ally: fanatic 
  Sedalpists
  Hatching I:
  Screamer
  Hatching II:
  Bleeder
  Hatching III:
  King Eater
  Dead 
  Allies
  TPK
  TPK
  Ally: Brown 
  Vadeli
  Coup vs.
  the Patriarch
  
  19
  THREADED STRUCTURE
  Even when properly nonlinear, published adventures tend to stick 
  to a single storyline. Including useful support for one plot eats up 
  enough space as it is. In improvised play, especially during an on-
  going campaign, players often wind up tackling largely unrelated 
  problems in parallel. This gives you a threaded structure similar 
  to an ensemble serial TV show like Game of Thrones or Mad Men. The 
  heroes may split up into smaller groups or act entirely individually, 
  advancing various agendas. Each represents one thread of a complex 
  ongoing narrative. 
  Now and then the threads cross each other: Claudia’s character 
  goes off to the mountain to petition a shaman for a powerful charm, 
  while Philippe’s character remains at the tula in an attempt to re-
  build the ancestor shrine. Meanwhile, Fabian and Camille’s char-
  acters decide to go off on a bandit suppression run. Claudia’s hero 
  might come back with her charm and bump into the bandits Fabian 
  and Camille’s characters are hunting down.
  This mode requires less in the way of a de-
  fined structure than play centered around 
  group effort. If each player feels that his 
  thread moved definably in one direction 
  or another, that’s probably enough to keep 
  everyone happy. Able to pursue individual 
  goals, players create emotional stakes sim-
  ply by deciding what to do next. When play-
  ers pursue low-drama agendas, the Narrator 
  might realize that they’ve found the degree 
  of investment they prefer. Some players 
  wind up more satisfied in the long run if you 
  take their simple pursuits and up the ante, 
  adding suspense and danger the character 
  didn’t knowingly seek.
  If you and your players improvise easily, 
  How	a	specific	adventure	
  might map out using the 
  three-act structure. In this 
  one, the heroes wind up on 
  the shores of Pamaltela and 
  decide to eke their way out 
  of trouble by taking on the 
  chaotic spawn of the Mother 
  of Monsters. As they track 
  its eggs through the jungled 
  wilds, they uncover a plot to 
  send one of the titanic hatch-
  lings rampaging into the city 
  of Nikosdros in hopes of de-
  posing its patriarch. As with 
  any adventure, players will 
  steer clear of certain optional 
  obstacles, and introduce 
  others by making decisions 
  the	text	cannot	anticipate.
  
  20
  threaded structures generally take care of themselves. In place of a 
  written adventure, the Narrator might come to the table with a few 
  potential directions for where each thread might go. Savvy players 
  think ahead, too, working out where they want to drive their threads 
  – or whether they prefer to drop them in favor of new ones.
  Although this style lies outside the main focus of this Chapbook, it 
  bears acknowledgment as a rewarding alternative to the preplanned, 
  focused adventure.
  MODIFYING EXISTING ADVENTURES
  When reading an adventure you may note that it doesn’t use the 
  structures discussed here. You may find it beneficial to build them 
  into it after the fact.
  TAILOR TO YOUR CORE ACTIVITY
  Even a scenario that uses an core activity might not match the one 
  you’ve chosen for your series. Taking your core activity as a starting 
  point, look for a way to add it to the adventure at hand, or to modify 
  the assumed activity to fit yours.
  Let’s say that the heroes are Aldryami avenging crimes against the 
  natural world. You pick up a published adventure featuring a raid on 
  Cragspider’s lair. It assumes that the heroes are typical wandering 
  mercenaries who get hired by a patron to stage the assault. “You are 
  a bunch of wandering mercenaries.” is a default core activity you might 
  find in any adventure. Where it occurs, you can treat it as a place-
  holder for the more specific idea you and your players have settled 
  on. Replace the opener with one in which the heroes discover that 
  Cragspider has committed a crime against the natural world. This 
  knowledge leads them to an opportunity to strike back against her 
  by attacking her lair.
  
  21
   A scenario written for a more specific core activity can also be ad-
  justed to fit your needs. Maybe you’re poaching the assault on Crag-
  spider’s lair adventure from a Mostali campaign pack. The original 
  features dwarf heroes seeking to return the world to stasis. Replace 
  the scene where the Mostali heroes learn about a chance to add in-
  ertia to Glorantha by attacking Cragspider by the one above, where 
  Aldryami heroes learn about a chance to land a righteous blow on 
  behalf of the plant world.
  ADD EMOTIONAL STAKES
  Sometimes you’ll find it simpler to keep an adventure’s generic 
  “wandering freebooters” core activity. You might be running a one-
  shot, or a short series. Your players may want to play in a classic 
  style reminding them of their RuneQuest salad days. Each player 
  might want to play a character from a wildly different culture, re-
  quiring you to go with the simplest possible common denominator: 
  loot and glory.
  Sharpen this approach by making sure the heroes have a strong 
  reason to want to succeed at this particular mission, as opposed to 
  any other random assignment they might stumble across. Ask the 
  players to specify why this might be. Or introduce the adventure 
  with a prefatory sequence in which they find personal reasons to 
  complete its goals. You might find a motivation that fits everyone, 
  or several different ones keyed to the disparate heroes.
  A look at the group’s character descriptions will almost invari-
  ably lead you to strong emotional stakes. Glorantha helps you out 
  here; every cult affiliation implies a set of goals, as do cultural alle-
  giances. The stronger the hooks in each description, the easier time 
  you’ll have fitting them to the premise. If you can’t see any reason 
  why a particular hero would do anything, that character either isn’t 
  drawn vividly enough, or the player has an idea but hasn’t quite ex-
  pressed it yet. Talk to the player to get a better sense of what spurs 
  the character to action, and why.
  
  22
  Alternately, create opening scenes in which the heroes learn how 
  the mission stokes their desire for justice, redemption, glory, respect, 
  mythic communion or whatever it is they happen to pursue. Even if 
  you can count on the heroes to care about the mission, showing is more 
  powerful than telling. Instead of having a wood nymph show up to tell 
  them of the importance of attacking Cragspider, they come across a 
  dying wood nymph being eaten by a pack of Cragspider’s trolls.
  (Apologies	to	any	Cragspider	partisans	out	there.	It’s	just	an	example.)
  SHARPENING THE INTRO AS A PLAYER
  Though the above tips work for Narrators, players can always as-
  sume their responsibility for making the game more fun for every-
  body. If introduced to an adventure that doesn’t do much to emo-
  tionally engage the heroes, find a reason to care. Remind yourself 
  what your character wants and seek cues from the Narrator to con-
  nect the adventure premise to those aims. If stumped, ask yourself 
  what, if it were true, would make you want to fulfill the mission. 
  Then ask your Narrator some leading questions to help you connect 
  the dots.
  “I’m a trader, and I want to open up safe caravan routes in 
  Dragon Pass. I don’t suppose I’ve heard that Cragspider 
  has been interfering with commercial travel, have I?”
  An alert and collaborative Narrator will grab the ball you’ve help-
  fully thrown her and say, “Absolutely!” Even if her notes say nothing 
  about Cragspider messing with traders.
  Sometimes even the most sagacious Narrator fails to pick up a hint. 
  Or your suggestion might contradict another plot point she needs to 
  establish. Ideally she’ll still give you a “No, but...” response that will 
  lead you to a way of making the mission personally matter to your 
  character. If not, don’t be shy about directly explaining what you’re 
  looking for: “I’m not sure why I would care about this. Any suggestions?”
  
  23
   
              CHOOSING CORE ACTIVITY AS A PLAYER
  To back up a bit, during character creation you can also 
  do your part as a player to see that the group engages in a 
  rich, specific core activity that will inspire adventures you 
  care about. 
  If you notice that everyone has created disconnected 
  characters, ask them to help figure out what common pur-
  pose unites them.
  While you’re at it, look for reasons to care about the oth-
  er characters. That way, when one hero wants something, 
  you have instant motivation to help – he’s your comrade, so 
  of course you want him to get his vengeance, or his glory, or 
  whatever else it is he seeks.
  Make it evident that you’re doing this. Collaborative 
  players will see what you’re doing and follow suit. Evident 
  bonds between characters give you room to turn even a rou-
  tine adventure into a memorable one. That random battle 
  with the dragonewts takes on a new dimension if you’re 
  worried for your boon companion, or hoping that the rival 
  for your sweetheart’s affections gets himself clawed.
  
  24
  MORE ON OBSTACLE CREATION
  Together the premise, Point of No Return, escalation, and reso-
  lution comprise your adventure’s structure. As mentioned already, 
  the middle two items are optional. 
  Structure is just a supporting framework for the incidents that 
  test the heroes. That’s why we call it structure. Ideally, players won’t 
  spot it. After each session, you want them to instead remember 
  the obstacles they confronted, how they tried to overcome them, 
  whether they prevailed or were set back, and what happened as a 
  result. When players notice the structure, it’s a sign that they’ve 
  disengaged. Because GMing is tough work, and the consensual il-
  lusion of RPG storymaking is delicate, a player who does see the 
  structural wheels and pulleys turning will have the good grace not 
  to call them out. Frown vigorously at anyone who says, “Hey, this 
  must be the escalation!”
  Obstacles serve as stepping stones. Player choices dictate which 
  ones they use to navigate their way from premise to resolution. 
  Memorable obstacles challenge them intellectually, emotionally, or 
  both. The best ones lead in at least two directions, depending on the 
  grit, smarts and luck the heroes muster when tackling them.
  To better understand how to sharpen them, let’s break obstacles 
  down into their component elements.
  Dilemma: Text for the Narrator, which she will para-
  phrase for her players, describing the nature of the 
  problem.
  Choices: What meaningful decisions do the players 
  make in tackling the obstacle?
  Consequences: What happens if the heroes succeed? 
  If they fail?
  
  25
  Rooting Interest: What impact, if any, might the ob-
  stacle have on the inner journeys of one or more 
  characters?
  DILEMMA
  This entry introduces the players to the obstacle briefly, but with 
  enough detail to provide atmosphere and context.
  For example:
  “You see that the road ahead of you is blocked by a party of 
  heavily armored guardians. Some of them wield longbows, 
  ready	to	pick	off	anyone	who	might	try	to	run	around	them	
  into the woods.”
  “The king emerges from his tent, his face a mask of drunken 
  fury. He’s waving his mace and growling that he’s going to 
  personally	execute	the	hostages.”
  “Ahead	in	the	city	square	you	see	a	troop	of	morocanth	sla-
  vers. They might be the ones who captured Joris.”
  CHOICES
  Compelling obstacles give the players choices that matter.
  Because HeroQuest uses custom abilities, you’re already more 
  than halfway there. By deciding what abilities they’ll use and how 
  they’ll apply them, players get to make creative choices. For ex-
  ample, the heroes might try to calm down the raging king with 
  flattery, distraction, the Mastery rune affinity, among other pos-
  sibilities. Particularly commonplace obstacles require less imag-
  inative responses. Intersperse them with unusual or surprising 
  problems.
  
  26
  Choices become richer when they allow for numerous solutions, 
  each of which gives success a different meaning. You needn’t select a 
  single choice as the right or best answer. Glorantha doesn’t offer easy 
  choices. Good and bad remains a matter of cultural perspective. Ad-
  mirable figures can fail ignominiously; the cruel often rise to the top. 
  Choices confronting the players can reflect this in microcosm. They 
  can be trade-offs, with each option bringing its own advantages and 
  drawbacks. Instead of the perfect solution, the heroes must choose 
  the murky one they can best live with.
  • Fighting the guards will get the heroes in trouble 
   with the authorities. But not fighting them will  
   lose them the respect of their supporters, who are  
   spoiling for a scrap and don’t think about political  
   fallout.
  • Letting the king kill the hostages will cement his  
   affection for the heroes. But that will kill the peace  
   deal the heroes have been working on.
  • Dealing with the morocanth while they’re in the  
   city will make violence more costly if the group has  
   to resort to it. But if they wait until they leave and  
   confront them in the wilds, they risk losing track  
   of them.
  Doing this every time can be wearying. Sometimes a simple prob-
  lem the heroes can address without thought gives you exactly the 
  rhythm you need. In Pass/Fail Cycle terms, having to make a com-
  plicated choice can be as taxing as a key failure. An easy choice can 
  provide emotional uplift similar to a success.
  CONSEQUENCES
  Though HeroQuest discusses consequences in depth, we can always 
  stand to think more about this tricky element of roleplaying storytelling. 
  
  27
  We can divide consequences into two types: Modifiers and 
  Branches. A branch determines which of several incompatible up-
  coming scenes occurs, as determined by success or failure – or in 
  some cases, degrees of success or failure. 
  Victory: The heroes get past the guards. Marginal or 
  Minor Defeat: The heroes are driven off and must 
  choose another route. Major or Complete Defeat: The 
  heroes are captured and taken before a tribunal.
  Victory: The king relents and puts the heroes in 
  charge of ensuring the hostages’ safety – from him-
  self most of all. Defeat: The king murders the hos-
  tages, leading to an angry confrontation with the 
  enemy camp’s negotiators the next day.
  Victory: The heroes find the morocanth slaver party 
  out in the wilderness, and can attack them without 
  legal complication. Defeat: The heroes lose the sla-
  vers, and must make a deal with greedy outlaws in 
  order to locate them.
  A modifying consequence doesn’t determine whether an upcom-
  ing scene occurs or not. It does, however, alter how a particular up-
  coming scene plays out. Usually, this makes one or more contests 
  undertaken in the scene harder or easier. Use of this consequence 
  type limits branching, allowing you to contain your preparation to a 
  non-infinite number of scenes. Yet it still gives the players the sense 
  that their victories and defeats matter, as they evidently reverberate 
  in later sequences.
  You decide that there’s nothing fun about having the 
  heroes kept from their destination if they fail to de-
  feat the guards. Instead of a possible branch where 
  they get hauled before a tribunal, you instead decide 
  that they bypass them on a victory or a defeat. But 
  on a victory, they earn the fear of other members of 
  
  28
  the guard corps, while on a defeat, they leave behind 
  a purse full of gems, making it harder to bribe their 
  way to success in subsequent scenes.
  Strive for a mix of branching consequences, which alter the sto-
  ryline in a big way, and modifying consequences, which give weight 
  and meaning to previous successes and failures.
  Surprise player choices may mean that in actual play the conse-
  quences you anticipated for an obstacle go by the wayside, replaced 
  by story branches you didn’t foresee. Roll with this when it happens; 
  it shows that the players have agency and that their decisions matter. 
  Sometimes you may feel that a consequence of unexpected actions 
  robs them of the chance to take part in a cool upcoming scene you 
  had planned. Remember that cool scenes are a renewable resource. 
  Keep it in mind as they go off in their unexpected direction. If you 
  wait long enough, you’ll often spot a smooth, logical way to place in it 
  front of them, now transformed by what they did previously. 
  ROOTING INTEREST
  As viewers or readers of traditional entertainment, we engage with 
  the action when we care whether the protagonist succeeds or fails. 
  We hope for his success and fear for his failure.
  Players engage when they care about the obstacles they’re trying to 
  overcome. When designing an obstacle, check to make sure that they 
  have reason to care about its outcome. The chance to participate in 
  a roadside archery tournament won’t excite them much, unless you 
  make it clear how they stand to benefit from success, or how it might 
  hurt them if they don’t enter and win.
  By specifying a rooting interest, you promote an obstacle from a 
  casual opportunity to do something, to a choice that matters to the 
  heroes’ lives.
  
  29
  In Glorantha we can sometimes forget the need for a rooting in-
  terest when we give players the chance to interact with established 
  figures and places. If you want the heroes to outwit Bundalini, pro-
  prietor of the famous Skeleton Band, remember to build an obstacle 
  around him, one that will mean something to them, whether the en-
  counter moves them forward or sets them back.
  When obstacles all relate to the same adventure premise, the root-
  ing interest entry can get repetitive. After establishing it, you can 
  resort to shorthand. The first sentence in the example entry below 
  might eventually be abbreviated to “Hurts Stormpeaks.”.
  EXAMPLE
  An obstacle written in this format looks like this:
  Dilemma: The heroes need the allegiance of the duck 
  village to push back against the expansion of the rival 
  Stormpeak clan. But the ducks worry more about ban-
  ditry than the clashing ambitions of local Orlanthi.
  Choices: They might win over the ducks by coercion, 
  the payment of tribute, rational persuasion, or by 
  attacking the bandits. Or they might decide that 
  the favor of ducks isn’t worth currying: maybe they 
  could instead court the bandits as an ally against the 
  Stormpeaks.
  Consequences: Success recruiting the ducks adds 
  their aid to a battle sequence with the Stormpeaks 
  later in the scenario. Success recruiting the bandits 
  does the same, though is less likely to succeed due 
  to the fickleness and cowardice of the outlaws com-
  pared to the indefatigable Durulz. This is a modify-
  ing consequence.
  
  30
  Rooting Interest: Everyone in the group hates the 
  Stormpeaks. Also, by gaining an ally against them, 
  they’ll win the approval of their elders back home.
  In additional text, you can then go on to flesh out whatever you 
  need about the duck village, its leadership and their needs, as well as 
  the bandits: who they are, what they want, and so on. 
  When writing adventures you might find it instructive to liter-
  ally present obstacles in this format. Or you might prefer simply 
  to keep these elements in mind as you write in the traditional qua-
  si-fictional style we’re all familiar with from years of reading pub-
  lished adventures. Writing in format clarifies your thinking and 
  ensures that you have all the elements in place, but may be less fun 
  for others to read. Conversely, tightly formatted entries like this 
  make adventures less fun to read for pleasure, but easier for Narra-
  tors to reference during play.
  
  31
  SUMMATION
  To recap, use the following steps to punch up Gloranthan HeroQuest 
  adventures.
  Define the group’s Core Activity.
  Establish Emotional Stakes.
  Structure the adventure with a Premise and a 
  Resolution, possibly connected by act breaks: the 
  Point of No Return and the Escalation.
  Connect these points with Obstacles, 
  consisting of:
  a) Dilemma
  b) Choices
  c) Consequences
  d) Rooting Interest
  2
  3
  4
  1
  
  32
  Robin D. Laws (born October 14, 1964 in Orillia, Ontario, Canada) 
  is a writer and game designer who lives in Toronto, Canada. He 
  has has been a professional game designer and an author since 
  the early 1990s.
  Robin D. Laws designed the GUMSHOE investigative roleplay-
  ing system, including such games as The Esoterrorists and Ashen 
  Stars. Among his other acclaimed RPG credits are Feng Shui and 
  HeroQuest.	Recent	highlights	of	his	nine	books	of	fiction	are	New	
  Tales of the Yellow Sign, Blood of the City and The Worldwound 
  Gambit. As Creative Director of Stone Skin Press he has edited 
  such	fiction	anthologies	as	The	New	Hero,	Shotguns	v.	Cthulhu,	
  and The Lion and the Aardvark: Aesop’s New Fables. Recent 
  projects	include	Hillfolk,	the	first	game	using	the	DramaSystem	
  RPG	rules	for	riveting	personal	conflict	and	Feng	Shui	2.	With	
  longtime collaborator Kenneth Hite he runs an ENnie awarded 
  podcast,	Ken	and	Robin	Talk	About	Stuff.
  
  TENTACLES  PRESS
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Runequest and Glorantha (d100)/RuneQuest (d100) [multi]/HeroQuest/The Kraken - Chapbook #01 - Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha.pdf