Setting the scene

The following are some tips on using the Heroic Tales rules to craft a compelling game.

Tone

The Heroic Tales mechanics are adjusted to support a game that is heroic in tone, and heroes are expected to win in the end. Chance still very much plays a role — on their journey to heroic triumph, the character is likely to experience disappointment and failure — but fortune, in the form of probability, is very much on their side.

For that reason, Heroic Tales does not do grim and gritty well. Life is not fleeting and characters are not a dime a dozen. Danger comes in the form of setbacks that can be overcome, not, generally, in abrupt and abject failure.

Success is not guaranteed, though. When designing your game, you may wish to include the option for forcing a character to retire from play when it makes narrative sense — perhaps the character goes permanently mad from witnessing eldritch horrors or gets eaten by a wendigo. In this case, make the retirement a consequence of failing a challenge chain.

In Heroic Tales, character retirement should almost never be the consequence of a single challenge, but rather the culmination of a long string of bad luck and poor choices.

Crafting challenges

As the game designer, you get the opportunity to craft the challenges that the players will attempt to overcome. A challenge can be anything from fighting a colossal, tentacled, city-devouring monster to developing the antidote for a magical zombie-creating poison. It could involve persuading the Grand Duchess to sponsor a voyage to the Islands East of Forever or it might involve helping an old, friendly vampire rescue his beloved spider-cat, Whiskers, from the Haunted Mines of Terror and Dread.

As a result, creating an engaging challenge is more of an art than a science. Therefore, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. First, make sure that your overall selection of challenges gives characters with different strengths a chance to shine. If every challenge is based on Spirit, for example, then characters who favor Body and Mind will be at a disadvantage.

Second, give the narrative a chance to ebb and flow. If every challenge is arduous, then monotony will set in. Varying the challenge level helps create a rhythm to the story — the players will get a chance to feel like champions when they complete an easy challenge and vulnerable when they tackle a tough one.

To create a compelling challenge, spend some time thinking through the following items:

• Objective — what is the character trying to accomplish?
• Elements — where and when does the challenge take place?
• Obstacles, Timeframe, and Constraints — what’s standing in the way of success, and what could cause them to fail?
• Success and Failure — what are the results of completing a challenge, both positive and negative?
• Inertia — how difficult is the challenge?

Objective

Understanding the primary objective of a challenge is crucial for the player. What is their character trying to accomplish and why? Ambiguous goals will result in confused players.

Elements

What can you describe to the players so that their characters have a sense of place and purpose? What does the location of the challenge look like? Sound like? Smell like? Are there people present? What are their names and personalities? Are there creatures? Monsters? Self-aware, super-intelligent math formulae?

You need not use flowery prose to describe a scene. Depending on the tone of your game, sometimes simple bullet points will do.

Obstacles, timeframe, and constraints

First, what’s going to make the challenge a challenge? Something should be standing in the character’s way (sometimes literally) in order for there to be a chance of failure. There may be multiple obstacles. Fighting the giant demon on a slender bridge above a pit of bubbling lava is much more cinematic than fighting it in the middle of a featureless cavern.

Second, how long does the character have to successfully complete the challenge? Tasks that are, if not trivial, then straightforward when not constrained can become an extreme test when a tight deadline with serious consequences looms. For example, developing a magical potion that cures the crown princess’ petrified court might be important, but if a character can take their time, it will feel much less urgent than if they have to complete it by the next dawn.

Finally, what are the other boundaries of the challenge? Does the character need to sneak into the rival gang-leader’s lair without being spotted? Do they need to navigate the minotaur’s maze without attracting its attention? Creative use of constraints can elevate a mundane challenge into one the players will remember.

Success and failure

The player will eventually reduce the inertia of the challenge to zero or they will exhaust their momentum. What happens in either scenario?

Success should mean that the character achieves their objective in one form or another. If they are battling a great dragon, the dragon might surrender, it might die, or it might offer to trade its treasure horde for its life. If they are exploring the endlessly deep Höhle der Winde, success means making it through to the next waypoint without getting lost.

Failure can mean many things but it should always propel the narrative forward; failure should never mean that the story comes to a halt and the character gets stuck. Perhaps the great dragon physically picks them up and tosses them out of its lair. Perhaps the spelunkers wander, lost in the crevasses of Höhle der Winde, and make it to their checkpoint three days late, missing a key contact by a few hours.

Inertia

Because the inertia of a challenge is determined both by the size of the group and the difficulty of the challenge, avoid using numbers directly in your game. Simply use the descriptive word (easy, normal, hard, tough, and arduous) and the players will be able to reference the target number based upon their group size during play.