How can we make Highlander work?

[Dean]

So it's a well established fact that Highlander is awesome but gets worse with every single expansion everyone has ever made to it. The primary reason for this is no one really understand how Highlanders work, so there's lots of undeveloped conceptual space that needs to be filled.

So lets fill it in. As I have always wanted to play some sort of Highlander-esque RPG.

Now to be clear I don't need to play exactly Highlander. But I'd like to remain close to the source material whenever possible (That is, immortal warriors fighting across centuries with swords in a worldwide battle royale) while still being functional.

So some questions come up immediately as to why the Highlander universe looks like it does. Questions we'd need to answer are....
*Why do people use swords (or at least melee weapons) and not guns?
*What kills Highlanders exactly?
*Can they regenerate limbs? If so how quickly?
*How does "The quickening" operate? When you murder someone do you level up, or is it like "The One" where everyone levels up.
*Who's enforcing the Holy Ground rule? What are it's stipulations?
*Why don't Highlanders use thugs or assassins? Or at least hang around with Brute squads
*Is Sean Connery's "White man with a scottish accent in spanish clothing with a japanese sword on an arabian horse claiming egyptian descent" the most confusing character background in film?

[hyzmarca]

It doesn't get worse with every expansion. The TV show was awesome.

The problem lies in trying to explain things. Every time they do an origin of the immortals movie it sucks horribly. Every time they try to magic it up it sucks horribly.

Highlander works best whe you keep it simple. Immortal dude having adventures. That's it. You don't need to explain how or why they're immortal, it ultimately doesn't matter. You don't have to explain what the prize is or why immortals have to fight for it. That doesn't matter.

Highlander isn't about the origins or the destination, it's about the journey. It works best when you keep the journey in focus and ignore the big metaphysical questions.

In the movie the Holy Ground rule was handwaved as "tradition". That's good enough. You don't want to explain how it works and you don't want any cosmic being enforcing it. That way lies The Source and you very much want to steer clear of that steaming pile of shit. It's tradition. That's enough.

Keep things vague and mysterious. Give no real answers to the big questions.
The same goes for all the other rules of the game.

[Dean]

But none of that works for an RPG. Like, at all. See in an RPG all the characters are rational creatures. So you actually do need to provide reasons and explanations for things. This is why so many DM's get in trouble when their finely honed story is ruined by someone saying "We're gonna fly the eagles into Mordor, I'm not going into that tunnel". So you actually do need to know why Highlanders are fighting so you can tell your players, you do need to know if they can regenerate because it WILL come up. You need reasons, answers, and explanations because in an RPG your characters are also your audience. And if they're lost nothing happens.

[John Magnum]

See in an RPG all the characters are rational creatures.

????

[Desdan_Mervolam]

See in an RPG all the characters are rational creatures.

????

By this he means 'Not bound by narritive contrivance'.

If your system allows Immortals to be knocked unconscious by gunfire, you're going to see PCs carrying around machine guns and a camp hatchet instead of the big ass swords they are supposed to be carrying.

[Winnah]

I saw the original script for Highlander somewhere on the internets.

There was no quickening when another highlander was killed.

Ramirez was an actual Spaniard, not an ancient Egyptian.

There was no massive change once the Kurgan was killed. McCloud just came to the shitty realization that he was the last immortal, his prize was to watch everything he knew and loved eventually die.

[virgil]

For the swords over guns, make them mechanically superior. Have guns miss more easily.

For the rules concerning duels and Holy Ground sanctuary, give them appreciable penalties when breaking the rule, with a larger one for the aggressor.

For the lack of brutes, thugs, or assassins, emphasize superiority of Highlanders over mooks.

For the regeneration and quickening effects, that's going to require some real thought in terms of how you want the feel of the game.

Interesting trait about the first draft of the movie

Also, there are no quickenings in the first draft. When an immortal kills another, nothing special occurs. Nor is there mention of a "prize". When Connor finally kills the Knight, he feels a sharp burning pain. We are not told if he remains immortal.

[kzt]

For the swords over guns, make them mechanically superior. Have guns miss more easily.

Swords miss pretty consistently at 600 meters.

[Juton]

The first thing will be to define the canon. I recommend the first movie and parts of the TV show and animated movie, nothing else. Going from there:

*Why do people use swords (or at least melee weapons) and not guns?

The best answer is that guns aren't 'sporting' or they go against the rules. In the TV show there was even an arc where an evil immortal had a team of thugs with machine guns who would kill the victim immortal so the bad guy could decapitate them. In the 2nd movie (bad I know) MacLeod and Ramirez got riddled with hundreds of bullets and where better literally seconds after. So you could make bullets really ineffective at downing powerful immortals.

*What kills Highlanders exactly?

Decapitation. One immortal got fully mummified (brain in a canopic jar and everything) and got better as soon as she was brought out of her sarcophagus.

*Can they regenerate limbs? If so how quickly?

Yes, but it takes years in the series. You can speed that up or down to make a better game however.

*How does "The quickening" operate? When you murder someone do you level up, or is it like "The One" where everyone levels up.

It varies I think, generally the person who gets the killing strike gets the power.

*Who's enforcing the Holy Ground rule? What are it's stipulations?

The who is never stated. In the TV series they insinuate that the last time the holy ground rule was broken it was in Pompeii and caused the eruption.

*Why don't Highlanders use thugs or assassins? Or at least hang around with Brute squads

In the series some do. Packs of thugs, or gangs of other immortals. My favourite had a pair of large dogs and would use them to hunt down other immortals. If you made this an RPG you'd need a way for a bunch of immortals to get along (the PCs) and fight a bunch of bad guys.

*Is Sean Connery's "White man with a scottish accent in spanish clothing with a japanese sword on an arabian horse claiming egyptian descent" the most confusing character background in film?

It's only surpassed by his character in Highlander II in which he's all those things and an alien.

I would embrace all the vagueness of the universe presented in the first movie because it allows you to make rules that will work in an RPG. I always imagined that there is other paranormal activity in the Highlander universe, maybe you could add in some tropes from urban fantasy to flesh out the universe and the rogue's gallery.

[Prak]

I always figured you could lump Highlander into a world of darkness type game. Hell, After Sundown/Set/Whatever even has, essentially, immortals.

[K]

I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I did watch the entire series and at the time I thought it was awesome. All seven or so seasons.

Here are some things you missed:

-The holy ground thing is totally in the "Highlander Lore," as in all the immortals get taught it by the mentor that finds them. It's the same with two immortals not trying to share the same Quickening.

It freaks immortals out when one of their own doesn't play by the rules (as in, any rogue immortal gets hunted by everyone if he breaks the rules). It stands to reason that they can sense holy ground since even Native American holy ground from a tribe that was dead for centuries still "counts."

-Immortals apparently get supernatural levels of skills, stuff like being a superhuman hunter or crazy sneaky. You can get those skills by killing the immortal, but you can also learn them from the immortal in question.

I assume that being crazy good at fighting and other stuff is a default for almost all of them, and that's the reason why bringing mooks is generally a loser's tactic since normal guys never seem to win against immortals.

-Some immortals regenerate super fast and guns don't do enough damage to them. This makes melee weapons the choice of guys who actually survive more than a few fights.

I also think that the Quickening has a better than average chance of igniting any ammunition considering the pyrotechnics involved. It generally fucks up everything nearby with lightning and sometimes animates things unnaturally, and that sounds bad for someone carrying explosives.

-Immortals can also tell when a weapon has been used by another immortal for a while.

-Immortals are constantly being born at some fixed rate, and all are orphans. They become immortal when they die for the first time.

Immortals can sense these "pre-immortals."

------------------------------------------------------------

Now, if you were doing a game, you'd have to do a dual-narrative where half the adventure takes place in the past and half in the present. That's the only way it works with flashbacks that are part of every Highlander story.

[ishy]

I assume that being crazy good at fighting and other stuff is a default for almost all of them, and that's the reason why bringing mooks is generally a loser's tactic since normal guys never seem to win against immortals.

Can't it just be that if they suck at fighting mooks kill them in their sleep so you never see anyone suck at it?

[Aryxbez]

For the swords over guns, make them mechanically superior. Have guns miss more easily.

Swords miss pretty consistently at 600 meters.

Why then make swords have a range of 600 meters or more, of course!

Joking aside, as much as I like sword lasers and like, don't recall any supernatural skills they all had, seemed stuff they could do was fairly standard (figured all immortals could sense each other). So it made me curious as to all the supernatural skills Immortals have been shown, or mentioned to have.

Also, describing Sean Connery's character sounds like a good backstory for a PC to have in an RPG.

[echoVanguard]

I can't believe I'm posting in this thread, but....

- There was a lot of different ways to interpret what the Quickening was about - but in my opinion, the easiest way to interpret it is to view it as the transfer of Narrative Importance. In other words, a character with more kills has more power to declare that certain things happen the way they want, up to and including metaplot stuff like "I declare that my minions already uncovered his plan and alerted me". This could take a bunch of different forms, from a stack of spendable Fate Points to just increasing dicepools. This is totally consistent with how the universe works, too - characters with lots of kills are generally considered hard to take down to despite the fact that things such as 50-caliber Sniper Rifles exist in the highlander world.

- re: guns - a couple of the bad guys in the TV show did use guns. There was a redneck immortal who blew people's heads off with a shotgun, as well as shooting them then chopping their heads off with a hatchet. Guns on mooks tended to be ineffective though because immortals used their "years of experience and skill" (ie narrative powers) to trick or ambush them.

- As for the actual in-universe explanation of things like why highlanders only die when decapitated, the only appropriate explanation is "magic, you guys". This explains how things like conservation of mass occur when somebody has their liver blasted out their back but then it's mysteriously there again a few minutes later, as well as the whole "Holy Ground" thing. Fighting on Holy Ground is probably considered a violation of the Magical Rules which results in bad stuff such as 1) losing some or all of your Narrative Powers, or 2) a giant explosion which kills everyone irrevocably. It's really not that important other than to give players a reason not to do it.

echo

[Neurosis]

You could check out this game by David A. Hill.

: P

But none of that works for an RPG. Like, at all. See in an RPG all the characters are rational creatures. So you actually do need to provide reasons and explanations for things.

I don't think all the characters in an RP need to be rational actors, unless you meant "all the PCs". Even then, I'm not sure I agree with that kind of creative elimination. RPGs can have crazy/irrational/passion-driven characters too.

On the topic of "balancing" swords and guns to be highlander appropriate, Highlanders should shrug off all firearm damage at the beginning/end of each turn. Sword damage i.e. "progress toward decapitation" should only heal between scenes. Maybe getting shot a lot causes a little fatigue over time.

[UmaroVI]

I'd argue that step 1 should be figuring out how you want things to work, and then step 2 should be figuring out an in-universe explanation for why they work that way, and step 3 should be rules that enforce that.

Do you want guns to be useless, useless against immortals, ineffective but not totally useless against immortals, a niche weapon against immortals, or an option on par with but not better than swords that most immortals don't use because they grew up before gunpowder?

Likewise, mooks. Do you want mooks to be not a thing? Do you want mook killing to be a thing, but mooks not to be a serious threat? Do you want "the guy who spent more time learning how to build a criminal empire and has a lot of mooks" to be on par with the guy who just studied sword-jutsu for centuries?

[hyzmarca]

Joking aside, as much as I like sword lasers and like, don't recall any supernatural skills they all had, seemed stuff they could do was fairly standard (figured all immortals could sense each other). So it made me curious as to all the supernatural skills Immortals have been shown, or mentioned to have.

Garrick (Highlander the Series 3x09: Shadows) Had Clairvoyance and telepathic projection (he could cause disorienting and distrubing hallucinations).

Peter Kanis (4x04) Could telepathically control dogs.

Cassandra (5x01) Can telepathically project illusions and implant suggestions with her voice. One of her favorite tricks is to appear as a wolf.

Roland Kantos (5x01) Has the same suggestion power as Cassandra, only far stronger. He can order people to commit suicide and they have no choice but to obey. Immortals are slightly more resistant than mortals are, but he can render them helpless with ease.


The original movie had the Power of Stag (Connor somehow connects to a large male deer telepathically using the Quickening, but it's unclear what advantage he gains from this and is just a one-off thing) and the Prize itself (global telepathy, he can literally read the thoughts of every person on the planet with he concentrates).

The Third Movie, which is probably best forgotten, had Nakano, who had the power to project illusions, and Kain, who inherited that power.

The Second movie, which is certainly best forgotten, had Connor bring Ramirez back to life somehow. And also Ramirez doing that thing that somehow pushed the giant spinning blades back up.

The The Source, which does not exist ( do not let anyone claim otherwise, there is no such movie) had that guy with superspeed, but he was apparently cursed somehow.

I can't believe I'm posting in this thread, but....

- There was a lot of different ways to interpret what the Quickening was about - but in my opinion, the easiest way to interpret it is to view it as the transfer of Narrative Importance. In other words, a character with more kills has more power to declare that certain things happen the way they want, up to and including metaplot stuff like "I declare that my minions already uncovered his plan and alerted me". This could take a bunch of different forms, from a stack of spendable Fate Points to just increasing dicepools. This is totally consistent with how the universe works, too - characters with lots of kills are generally considered hard to take down to despite the fact that things such as 50-caliber Sniper Rifles exist in the highlander world.

It's stated in many different places that the quickening transfers "knowledge and power". This includes immortals actually becoming more skilled when they take a quickening, though it's rather vague.

The Animated Series went all the way with it, however. When Quinten took a Quickening he imediately gained useful skills that he could put to use on the problem at hand. Taking the head of an immortal doctor would give you all of his medical training and experience, for example. But that's really hard to balance.

I always figured you could lump Highlander into a world of darkness type game. Hell, After Sundown/Set/Whatever even has, essentially, immortals.

I really don't think you can. Highlander works best when Immortals are the only supernaturals around. Ultimately, highlander is a swashbuckling romantic adventure about these superhuman Princes of the Universe. Other supernaturals detract from the Immortals status as epic heroes and villains who are just plain better than everyone else.

[erik]

TV series is probably your best bet for any answers since the movies are totally bonkers batshit nonsensicality and even where there is supposed to be continuity, there really, really isn't.

As for Immortals in RPGs...

Back in the late 90's I downloaded some fan rules for Immortals in WoD and played such a character with DM approval. Quickening was kind of doing diablerie, except instead of raising generation you collected up quickening points and bought various Immortal disciplines (generally crappier than Vampire Disciplines). I imagine it is still on the interwebs somewhere. I recall my character in particular wasn't terribly impressive. I was basically a guy with celerity, a sword, and piles of money who was angsty over killing people in duels instead of being angsty over drinking blood or angsty over wolfing out and eating people.

I'd always imagined that quickening was supposed to transfer the knowledge and powers that were previously held by the guy you killed, except that in the TV series Duncan never seemed to get all those powers despite killing guys with dog-control, suggestion, etc. That was disappointing. It really seemed like whatever power you got for killing someone was pretty trivial, even if they were a total badass.

Folks answered most of the questions pretty well. I thought that Holy Ground was mostly tradition until I saw one guy who tried to violate it and he got screwed somehow by unseen forces (his sword breaking for no good reason or somesuch). Of course, maybe I imagined that episode as it has been a good long while since I saw any.

[hyzmarca]

Folks answered most of the questions pretty well. I thought that Holy Ground was mostly tradition until I saw one guy who tried to violate it and he got screwed somehow by unseen forces (his sword breaking for no good reason or somesuch). Of course, maybe I imagined that episode as it has been a good long while since I saw any.

That was the third movie.

[JongWK]

I played in a long and pretty successful Highlander campaign set in the Roman Empire, using the True20 system. It is amazingly well suited for it, once you make a few tweaks.

Conviction & The Quickening

Conviction is not recovered each day. Rather, you earn one after each session (we also vote the best role-player of the night, who gets a second point). You still get a Conviction point when gaining a level.

You can trade 10 Conviction points for a level.

If an Immortal beheads another Immortal, and is of equal or lower level, he gets a level. However, if the loser is of lower level, then the winner gains Conviction = loser's level (maximum 10). Hello Quickening!

After a Quickening, those affected must roll Fortitude to avoid exhaustion. It's not a good idea to drop unconscious right next to a beheaded body...


Mortals

Mortals are limited to 4th level, though exceptional characters can exceed that (Julius Caesar and Vespasian were 5th level, probably).


Flashbacks

Flashback Points: Depending on your starting age, you get a number of these. If you spend one, you get a useful flashback about whatever you're talking to /thinking about / looking for at the moment. The GM comes up with the flashback, and you can roleplay it.

Once spent, Flashback Points are gone. You can double your FPs through the Eidetic Memory feat, and you can get a few more as time goes by (say, every 100 years or so).

Example: Leonidas the Spartan had more than 500 years. That gave him 20 Flashback points, more or less.


Starting level

Starting level depends on special check (d20 +1/100 years old). 1-5=1, 6-10=2, 11-15=3, 16-20=4, >20=5. Thanks to the excellent True 20 system, the difference in levels is not really felt (besides, a few heads in your Immortal account will get you the levels you want).


Age & Time

Speaking of age, every character role-plays bits of his/her "Prior History" (and keeps record of it) before entering the campaign. It can be fun when a new character meets another PC and they both start bitching about the time they were killed in Parthia because of Crassus.

Each game session takes place every few years, sometimes just one and sometimes almost a decade. For example, three consecutive sessions under Tiberius took place in 29 AD, 31 AD and 37 AD.

As time passes, PCs might need to fake their deaths and spread rumors about children living somewhere else (that is, if they want to pretend they are of a certain family... a problem for Immortals who belong to Roman nobility). Usually, you have to wait between 5-15 years before going back to the same social circles. Reputation (see below) can affect this.


Wealth

Wealth checks are only made between game sessions. If enough time passed, two or more checks can be made.

Your wealth limit and skill used for the check depend on the jobs you have (an Imperial Favourite gets better opportunities than a minor merchant, but his position is more dangerous).

You can have several jobs. You could be the Emperor's favourite, an olives merchant and a corrupt tax officer at the same time. Each job has a different maximum Wealth and requires a different skill. You only have one Wealth score, though.


Reputation

We used the Reputation system from Green Ronin's Eternal Rome. We keep track of two ratings: Mortal Reputation (your current life), and Immortal Reputation (depending on who you fought and how old are you). Get a high IR and headhunters will be knocking on your door.

Level-dependant Reputation is added to your Immortal Reputation. Mortal deeds usually go to MR. Get enough Mortal Reputation and you might have to disappear for a while until enough people forget how you looked.


Weapons and armor

Gear is adapted to those of that time. A Gladius does +3 damage instead of +2, a Spatha does +4 damage rather than +3, and a barbaric Greataxe does +4 damage rather than +5. This was done to reflect Roman superiority in warfare technology, as well as making combat it a bit deadlier for most characters. And yes, Tribune bronze armors are worse than what your Centurion uses.


Canon characters

Series and movie characters are there: Cassandra was making a living as a seer in a Roman temple (got tired of Delphi, y'know), Mythos is only a myth (though we, the players, had our suspicions about a certain NPC), Kurgan is a very scary dude in Scythia, and Ramirez was last seen in India, duking it out against Immortals serving Alexander the Great.


Holy Ground

No one had tried fighting on holy ground at first, so we began the campaign not knowing what would happen. Eventually, we found out that you can take a head in holy ground, but it will hurt immensely: the next 10 Convictions Points you use after the scene are wasted. Kinda removes the incentive of going after first-level Vestals if you know that it could cost you dearly in a real fight, eh?


Adepts

You can only become an Adept if you train under one, or get his Quickening. You can only learn Powers they knew, though it might be possible to make your own.


Combat

Immortals are tough to kill and they regenerate (though they don't grow back limbs), so there were a few changes...

First, Hurts heal after one round. Thus, they only matter in the round they were inflicted.

Second, Wounds are cumulative. The -2 to all checks isn't cumulative, but the -1 to Resistance rolls is. A good way to win a fight is to inflict several Wounds to wear down your opponent. Also, since a Wound stuns a character for one round, you are basically getting a free action.

You can heal a Wound after ten rounds of receiving it. You just make a Constitution check against 10. If you fail, you have to wait another 10 rounds for that one.

You can also spend a Conviction point to automatically heal one Wound, go from Disabled to Wounded, or from Dying to Disabled (basically, it's like making a check and if you fail, you still rolled a 10).

Healing from Disabled takes about 3 minutes, IIRC. You don't want to get there in combat, trust me. If you do, make sure you're standing next to a mountain cliff or a river that can carry you away from the other opponent.