This document walks you through the List method for HeroQuest character creation.
But first a bit of preliminary information on abilities, masteries, and keywords (there’s more on these things in the Rules Summary, but this is all you need to know for character creation):
An ability is any skill, knowledge, attitude, item, power, relationship, or magic that your hero can use to do something. They don’t come from some rigidly-enumerated list; they can be whatever you want (subject to Narrator approval). Every ability has a name and an ability rating. The ability rating is a number between 1 and 20, with higher numbers being better (or at least more impactful). You’ll write your abilities on your character sheet.
Especially powerful abilities will have one or more masteries in addition to the number in ability rating. We write this as, for example «10M» for a rating of 10 with a single mastery, or «5M2» for 5 with two masteries. Each level of mastery represents 20 points in that ability. When an ability rating goes up past 20, the number wraps around to start over at one, but you get a mastery. For a sense of how good a mastery is: if you have a single mastery advantage over an opponent, you’ll win against them 75% of the time; with 2 masteries above your opponent, you’ll win around 95% of the time; with 3 you’ll almost always win; and with four you are guaranteed to win.
A keyword is a sort of a template for a part of a character: it provides a package of abilities. If you have a keyword, then you have all the abilities listed for it at the rating of the keyword (or higher if you’ve increased them). You may also be able to use the keyword’s rating for other abilities that the Narrator agrees would make sense for you to have as part of the keyword. Keywords generally get used for occupations, homelands, religion, and magic in Glorantha games; we’ll keep occupation and homelandsworlds, but leave off magic. Keywords usually start at 17 and cannot be increased (although the abilities within them can).
The list method for character creation is pretty simple: basically you just list the abilities you want for your hero.
Here’s the process, although there’ll be more on each of them afterward.
You don’t necessarily need to decide this all at the start, and probably you’ll end up tweaking your concept as you go along, but it’s helpful to have at least a basic concept of what your character will be. In addition to a character concept and your keywords/abilities/flaws, you’ll eventually want to figure out your character’s name, appearance, and goals.
Your character’s name might be a traditional name chosen by their family, one they chose themselves, a nickname given by their friends (or enemies), or whatever. You definitely don’t need to nail down everything about your appearance, but a few details can be nice to have (both how your character sees themself and how others do).
Here’s what the HQ book says about selecting your goals (pronouns adjusted):
Think of our ordinary personal goals: graduate school, get rich, find a partner, buy a farm, and settle down to a leisurely life of breeding horses. Perhaps your hero has grander hopes. Do they want to be the best in his profession or die gloriously in battle? They might want to bring civilization to the barbarians or write a book about them. Do they burn to defend their people from the evil forces of the Chaos-tainted Red Moon? Are they determined to pursue a villain or right some wrong? Do they yearn to champion the weak and oppressed, or to conquer new lands? Do they want to train serpents to be pickpockets? Discover a new kind of ice? Perhaps found a college where the Elder Races have teaching positions?
When you play HeroQuest, you will discover chances for your hero’s dream to come true. It might be achieved or thwarted, and time will very likely change it, just as it will change your hero.
We’ll have an occupation keyword and a homeplanet/system keyword. Basically, figure out what you wanna figure out about where your character comes from and what their like, profession is, and hit the narrator up and we’ll figure out how to either adapt a keyword from the book or come up with one from scratch. We won’t have any magic keywords.
Essentially, just pick your occupation keyword and your homeplanet keyword. Once we’ve got the abilities and such for the keyword figured out, you’ll have all of those abilities for the keyword. For the typical personality traits and relationships, you can take some, all, or none, as you please.
This part’s pretty simple. You just pick 10 abilities beyond those your keywords grant you. However, there are a few special types of abilities that get somewhat special handling:
You can start out with up to three flaws, which are like abilities but they hinder you rather than help, typically by providing a penalty to your target number in contests. But they can help to express your character and their problems. They start at whatever rating you and the narrator agree on; 13 or 17 makes for a fairly minor flaw, higher can start to get more impactful.
Write down the rating for each ability next to it. Keywords and their abilities start at 17, additional abilities at 13, and flaws at whatever rating you and the narrator decided on. You also get 20 points you can distribute to increase the ratings of any abilities (but not keywords) at +1 rating per 1 point, but you can only add at most +10 to any individual ability. You can’t use these points to add new abilities; that’s what the list was for.
The kicker is a concept formally originating in Ron Edward’s game Sorcerer. It’s an event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins and that catalyzes them into action of some kind. It can be anything as long as it gets the character moving.
They might be a shocking event, an opportunity, or a mystery, for example. They should however not do either of: 1. present a total mystery with no personal significance, 2. dictate your character’s actions, or 3. present something you’ll react to casually. This is going to be your big opening conflict of the campaign, and at least the beginning of the campaign will probably heavily revolve around resolving the characters’ kickers. So, make it something you’re interested in!
Here’s a few examples from Sorcerer:
So, give your character a look over, think about them a minute, and come up with a kicker! Our first session will start out with playing thru folks’ kickers, so make it good and get us off to a good start.