Zee to the Hee in Gee ™️

Last year I ran a campaign that was a mashup of 13th Age Glorantha and Heroquest running the Sartar:  Kingdom of Heros campaign.   At the moment it is on the back burner as I got over excited about running forbidden lands and although I feel like the campaign was ok I probably should have stuck with 13th age backgrounds.  I choose to bolt on the hero quest skill mechanic onto 13G for everything but combat because 

    a) I don't think all my players enjoy rules light for longer campaigns.

    b) I wanted there to be some skill progression which isn't a focus of 13th ages class based system

    c) we had previously tried RQiG online(we ran the GamesMaster adventures as a mini campaign) and I found it a bit of a burden and some of my players found the mechanics frustrating.   

If I am honest I think that 13 age is a excellent system for running Heroquest Glorantha material if you want a bit more mechanical heft as the PCs are pretty much superheroes out of the box which fits the epics nature of the Sartar books but on reflection I would stick with 13th age backgrounds.

I am a big fan of Heroquests (now QuestWorlds) character creation using  keywords allowing the player to encompass there charcter concept in a few key words without being constrained to specific Skills but I struggle with setting difficulty and the mastery concept in  Quest world plus I am not keen on almost all rolls being apposed.  As a GM I am happy if I don't have to roll at all and if anyone has any ideas how to do that with the Year Zero engine I am all ears.  

I have a quite a bit of Runequest material that I would like to play through but I can't stomach running it online using RQiG but I feel that a mashup of the Year Zero Engine and more specifically Forbidden Lands would capture the gritty limb losing one hit and your done for combat of RQ with out all the tables hit locations and Strike ranks.

To that end I present to you the rough outline of the concept I have in mind running

Zero to Hero in Glorantha

• Use Zero Engine Mechanics 
• Do we use will power or Some narrative pool like Coriolis.  CHAOS POINTS.
• Replace occupation with the Abilities, Keywords and Break out Abilities.  This would cover such things as Culture (Lunar, Sartar, Praxian),  Community(Specific clan or tribe)  Rune affinity and Occupation. These combined might then point them toward a cult, .  My initial thought is that broader skills would either cost a lot to develop or have a low cap (Maybe 3?)
• For example
• Noble 2
• Read/Write +1
• Ambitious +2
• Golden Dagger +1

          Skill rolls would then combine Stats(choosen based on task) + Keyword + Breakout 

          So in the above example our noble would roll Str Based Dice + 2 for Noble + 1 if wielding a                  Golden Dagger, plus any gear dice for said dagger.

        

• Or keep skills as at the table negotiating over skills can be a pain
• Might, Endurance, Melee, Crafting, Stealth, Slight of Hand, Move, Marksmanship, scouting lore, survival, insight, Manipulation, Performance, Spirit, Animal Handling
•         Spirit magic: 
•  could be reflected by talents.  So Bladesharp would replace Sword Fighter for example.
• Alternatively perhaps Spirit Magic could Use WITS + EMPATHY = POWER.  This could and Replace Healing with a skill to reflect Spirit Combat and Proficiency is Spirit Spells.  Pushed rolls would damage Empathy.  
• Might need a cap on Spirit magic spells either POWER or EMPATHY but if POWER Then Power level counts so Heal 2 counts for 2 points.  Start with empathy pints of Spirit magic.  POW recovered by Rest/Sleep.
• Perhaps 3 power levels. level 1 = fast action, level 2 slow action,  level 3 full turn to cast.
• Rune Magic based on Empathy + Rune Affinity.  Needs to be more limited at least initially consider giving RP like RQ but a bit like WP.  Perhaps POW can be sacrificed for more Rune points and regained like RQ (How? XP, + Empathy Roll?).  
• Cast time fast action (Call to the gods)
• Sorcery would use the Forbidden lands Spell mechanics and your cult would replace occupation providing access to a mixture of reskinned and new Occupation paths with some occupations offering more spell based paths whilst others are more martial talents.  Bitter reach offer the new elemental spells that could easily mirror the common summoning spells uses in RQiG.  One alternative might be to ditch mishaps and make a spell role against your rune skill(Rune magic) or Wits(Sorcery).  If the later then maybe have different crit tables for Empathy and Wits.  Possibly have a skill per spell for sorcery.
• Use Runes as Pride dice. Each PC has 3 Runes at 3 ,2 ,1 and they map to d12, d 10, d8
• Culture provides Talent.  With Backgrounds as skills adaptive is semi redundant
• Kin provides stat limits
• Strongholds become Communities but have there own stats.
• Spirits have wits and Empathy only and mostly attack these attributes only.  Spirit combat uses Wits or Empathy as the state used, skill based on background, potentially gear can assist (Mostly shaman). 

Having had a think about it.  I'm tempted  go through some of the Starter set pregens and convert them, then maybe try to convert the adventures from the same for z2hig (as all the cool kids are calling it) and later fill out some of community ideas etc.. with a long term view of restarting my Satar:  Kingdom of Heros or Possibly running the red cow campaign.

Anyway that's what I have so far