A quick question about equipment "abilities" and flaws

[AzureaSkyes]

Hello everyone,
I have a question about equipment abilities and flaws. I'll ask the flaws part first.

If you have a "keyword" flaw rated, for example, at 17. What does this really mean? Does the flaw rating simply provide a circumstance bonus to any action when the flaw might come into play, in our example -2, or can they be used as direct resistances for a test... and if the latter, what would an adventurer test against when faced with "Fear of Heights 17" for example.

The second question, fuelled by something I read for Star Wars Quest, is equally applicable for any equipment that might have special abilities. If notible equipment is given a rating, for example, Monoknife has Ultra Sharp 10. Is this another case of the weapon giving a bonus when used, or is it supposed to be tested on it's own, and if so how?

I was also wondering about Area of Effect weapons. For example, the Frost Dragon in the creatures chapter has a breath magic attack. How do you use this in an extended contest? The rules don't appear to cover this kind of attack. Do you make a simple test for each person caught in the "blast" on the opposing side?

In general, I am wondering about how "non-common" magic is used to inflict damage. If you have "Fireball of doom 1W" does this simply imply that you make a normal contest and get the regular wound, impair, injure etc.

Finally, much has been made on the forums about death being the result of the story and not the mechanics, and while I agree with this for human vs. human conflict, what about when the heroes face off against a monster that wants to eat them for lunch? Clearly, if a hero gets a wound result, being "out of the fight" seems to indicate that the monster can simply eat them. Or if a monster is "hurt", if it runs away and the heros give chase, does this start a new extended contest where the new goals are to "escape" and the heros goal to catch up?

Sorry for asking what are probably very obvious questions, but I'm new to HQ, and I find that some of the concepts are a little difficult to get to grips with. Previously, I've been playing games like WFRP where the outcome of a pure combat situation is often the death of a nasty.

Azu.

[droog]

Hi and welcome to the Forge (I always wanted to say that).

On your first question, you can use any ability directly or as an augment (except for magic, which has certain special rules). A flaw might be applied as a negative augment or as an direct contest, depending on how you wanted to portray the event (you'd oppose Fear of Heights with something like Brave, I imagine). You could even use a flaw as a positive augment in the right circumstances (eg you use Fear of Heights to augment your Orate when trying to persuade some tribesmen not to go over the mountain pass). The system deals with all these applications.

The same flexibility goes for equipment. So the best advice I can give you is to remain open to different applications and not to overthink it beforehand. Ultra Sharp might augment an attempt to get through a lock or it might be used as the active Ability. And so on.

And again with the breath weapon. Maybe the dragon can attack several characters without the multiple opponents penalty. Maybe the breath weapon attacks the characters as a single entity (group contest). The dragon attacks from the air with its breath – the characters need ranged Abilities against it.

You need to be alert to the imagined content of the game and use contests, augments etc in the way that best reflects that content.

Is that useful so far?

[kurukku]

Clearly, if a hero gets a wound result, being "out of the fight" seems to indicate that the monster can simply eat them.

Well, I handle it that way, that death is only then possible, when you get the approriate results. So if the character comes out of the fight with just a temporary penalty, he got away somehow. May be he escaped into a crack between rocks out of the reach of the beasts, or may be he tried his luck in jumping into a rough river, etc. etc. Just use your imagination, think like a director or writer would and don't get bogged down by things like "realism".

Or if a monster is "hurt", if it runs away and the heros give chase, does this start a new extended contest where the new goals are to "escape" and the heros goal to catch up?

I would say it's still the same contest, unless the circumstance change radically.

[sebastianz]

Hi, Azu.

Jeff already gave a quick answer and Sven another. I am going to make it a bit longer, though.

To answer your questions...

1. Flaws
First, a flaw is just an ordinary ability like every other a character has. It can be used as a primary ability or to augment. That depends on the contest at hand. The point about a flaw being a flaw, though, is to hinder the hero. So usually it functions as a negative augment. Let's take your fear of heights 17 as an example. If a character wants to climb for some reason really high, the flaw should provide an automatic penalty of -2. Lets make another example: Vangard the Berserker has the flaw Easily angered at 5W2. That's clearly a hindrance in most social situations. Romancing and counselling will be harder for him. On the other hand, interrogating someone may well be improved.
In an extended contest things can change from round to round. So, lets assume Vangard is fighting someone who provokes him with witty remarks to rash action. Easily angered will penalise Vangards resistance. Of course, he is than angered and if he goes berserk, easily angered may very well augment his fighting abilities as he ignores fatigue, doesn't care for wounds etc. This flaw might even be a primary ability. If someone tries to talk sense in Vangard he might try to resist with his easily angered, perhaps with an improve modifier. Also, if he tries to "persuade" someone, it may be his active ability, making him fear to anger Vangard.
Second, flaws that come with keywords do not have to start at the keyword rating at all. A player does not even have to take that flaw. It's a typical personality quirk characters with this keyword have.
Third, the rating of a flaw can be as high as the player wishes it to be. They are "free" abilities but can be used against a character. Of course, the higher the rating the more prominent the flaw. So a 1W4 flaw is a flaw poems are composed about. See also p. 29 of the HQ book.
Finally,

what would an adventurer test against when faced with "Fear of Heights 17" for example

is a question that depends on the situation, again. Is it an internal conflict, the character asking if he can do it? Than a relationship may apply, a different personality trait (like brave), or any such thing. But if that isn't the question and it is certain that he will try to climb up a mountain, for example, then it simply provides a penalty.

2. Equipment
What Jeff said. There are many ways to portray equipment mechanically. If you have it listed, than you could use the ability listed like any other ability the character has.

3. Area of effect
Again, there are several ways. First, in an extended contest, the dragon could attack several opponents at once, thus suffering the multiple opponent penalty (see p. 79). Or you ignore it for him, cause it's just his natural way of being. But, keep in mind that there is no measuring the width of the breath or something. It could be a single blast directed at only one opponent. Or he corners one opponent, using his breath to scare the others away and cut off an escape route. It all depends on the feel you want to portray in a situation.
Fireball of doom and somesuch is already covered on p. 99 under "pompous magic". It's just a normal ability. Why does it not instant kill a hero (though mooks are a different matter)? Perhaps your magic is weak and you couldn't muster all the necessary power. Or the opponent could jump aside and just scratched his arm. Or made countermagic. Or ran away and left the battlefield with only his pride "injured". What happens in the game world to match the result of the contest is up to the narrator and the players. And just because a "deadly" ability is used doesn't mean that the result will be a physical injury.

4. Monsters are hungry, too!
Sure, there are such situations. Again, you have to match the narration to the results. Perhaps the monster likes to keep his victims for awhile, like a spider. Or the characters can retreat wounded. Or another monster, enemy to the first, happens to attack the monster, not caring for the heroes.
Concerning the fleeing monster. It depends on the goals pursued in the original contest. The following contest should not lead to the same goals again. So no "We tried to kill it and it flees? We follow it and kill it then." That's not to say that the couldn't follow. But that doesn't mean they catch up with it. Perhaps they lack behind. And once found again, they find a whole new situation, like a big number of monsters or its mommy. A good rule of thumb is to up the stakes so that the players have to reconsider their goals.

I hope some of it helps

Sebastian.

[Mike Holmes]

I have largely the same advice as everyone else, but I'll try some different angles.


When setting up the resistance for a contest, there is really no specific method to doing so. That is, if you read closely, you just pick a number. Now, yes, it often makes sense to base this on an ability. But, at other times it does not.

The point is that if a contest comes up that involves a character climbing something tall and he has a fear of heights, then there are multiple ways of dealing with this. Is it the sort of contest where you'd want everyone to roll? Then set a resistance rating, and then the "Fear of Heights" is a penalty augment. If it's something where only the one character in question is challenged? Then maybe use the 17 as the resistance.


As everyone says, use a weapon ability as you would any other ability. Note that some "internal" character abilities see to be what some people call "augment only" abilities. But the only real "augment only" abilities are unconcentrated common magic and the like. All the rest are, at best, "unlikely to augment" abilities. And that's only true if you don't think outside of the box.

For instance, let's say that you've got "Staff of Doom 5w" as an equipment ability. Well, for doomlike magic, perhaps that's an augment. But let's say that somebody is trying to destroy the staff. If it's just a normal bit of wood, this shouldn't be too hard given enough time - I wouldn't even have somebody roll. But if it's a special staff, then, in fact, I'd require a Complete Victory against it to destroy it. This makes magic items and such quite resilient. Oh, you can damage them easy enough, but actual destruction is difficult.

There are probably other cases where the ability rating can be used as primary as well. Maybe the Staff of Doom casts fireballs. In which case you use the rating directly. What other rating are you going to use?


Instead of trying to answer your question about the fireball of doom as others have, let me put it this way. Why wouldn't you use the same method for such a spell to determine what it does? What about the magic rules or fireballs makes you think that you'd need other rules for this?



Why doesn't the hungry rhinogorgasuaruasadon eat the player hero when he's out of the battle? I dunno, why not? That is, the mechanical result of the contest is that the character was injured, but not killed. Now it's your job as narrator to come up with a plausible reason why this happened.

Think of it this way, the HQ rules don't tell you what happened in the fight, they only tell you where the story goes after the fight. The details of the fight are up to you to decide upon. What's fun about this is that you can have things happen in the fight that could never happen in most RPGs. Like a character slipping and falling inadvertently, and the foe accidentally falling on their upraised sword. Name one RPG that resolves tasks where that's a potential outcome of the resolution system. Yet, in HQ, it's no less likely to happen than any other result of characters brandishing sharp objects at each other.


What's going on here is that you're thinking of HQ in terms of other RPGs you've played and how they work. In those games, the resolution system tells you what happened in terms of certain tasks. HQ tells you what happens in terms of the character's goals. Did he achieve them overall, or didn't he? Death is simply not allowed by the HQ system. No, seriously, go look again. The worst that a character can do to another is to put them into a "dying" state. Not dead, dying. Meaning that if you don't want the character to die, all you have to do is narrate some believable reason that the character does not die.

So, the Dracosauramagilich got a Complete Victory over your character and is hungry? So there he lies, sans help, a million miles away from anywhere, dying, and you don't want to kill the character? What do you do? Well the creature decides to enslave the dying character with a bonding spell instead, and to send him off to find the people that sent the character to get him. Oh, it's an unintelligent Behemasauramaxidont? Then it wanders off distracted by larger, tastier prey right then, accidentally dragging the dying character along by his sword-scabbard thong entangled on the things left dewclaw, and ends up falling off just in front of a witchdoctor's hut (and now he owes doc a favor).

Or...if it's a cool place for the character to die, you have him die. After all, the player decided to get his character into this situation and said it was OK to roll for it.

What's that? You didn't ask if it was OK to roll? Then you're not playing by the rules - after all, if this was a situation that the player feels that "no self-respecting hero would fail at" then the character automatically wins.

OK, yes, I'm beeing cheeky. But to make a point. If you don't want death to be on the line, then don't make that the goal of the creature in question. I mean, you're the narrator, you created this hungry Archeoglobulamastaferret. Why did you throw that up in front of the character with death on the line if you didn't think that the character dying there would be an interesting thing to happen.

Put in reverse, when you're considering the contests you want to create, only put death on the line when you think that the player would be fine with it. Instead, the Arthrosporiforvernaculus isn't really hungry, but just spoiling for a fight. Or maybe it wants the character for nest-building material. Or to feed to it's young!

Here's a key tip, when the character fails, have it lead to some interesting new problem. Heck, I've written a whole article about the subject here: http://www.glorantha.com/support/na_defeat.html


Put more suscinctly, the problem you're having is thinking in terms of "what would happen" instead of "what would be cool to happen." And, if you'll excuse me, the likely reason that you're doing that is because in other games, if you don't play that way, because of the way the games are designed, players will cry out, "That's not fair!" or something to that effect. Well, if you play HQ in the spirit in which I, at least (and many others here), think it's written, you'll never have this problem no matter how obvious it is that you're moving the plot along using dramatic convention.

Note that I disagree with Sebastian in his use of the term "realism." Rather, the way I'd put it is that dramatic convention is realistic too. Nobody is saying to do anything that people just can't swallow. But if the mechanics of the game say that the character survives (and they always do), then unless you want to be mean and kill them from a dying state by fiat, then the rules say they survive, and it's up to you to figure out the most interesting/plausible way that this happens.

One last thing - avoid "what if this happens?" speculation with HQ. You're trying to buy trouble where there's really none to be purchased. I could have just as easily said, "Try the game out as written, and you'll see it's not a problem." That is, somehow, for most people who play the game at least, when you actually get down to using the mechanics, it all works out just fine. They only look problematic through the eyes of a person trained by other RPGs to think a certain way (newbs to RPGs have no problem playing HQ at all ever).

Not sure if this is helping or not, and I probably should have waited to hear your response. But I hope this makes some sense.

Mike

[soviet]

What everyone else said.

I think the thing to bear in mind with HQ is that it doesn't really provide you with a complete game in the traditional sense. It's more like a toolbox for you and your group to use to make the game that's exactly right for you at that particular moment. The way that keywords and flaws and all the other abilities work is just to put a load of tools 'out there' on the character sheet for you to use how you see fit. It won't ever fill in the blanks for you about how and when you should use them, because that will always flow naturally from the developing situation in play. As the guy who wrote that Star Wars Quest conversion I can tell you that's exactly how I intended all those different abilities and flaws to work, in any event.

You know when someone tries to do something really cool but not completely covered by the rules in, say, D&D? Like swinging across the room on a rope and karate kicking the spell components out the bad guy's hand? Well in my experience, what tends to happen is that everyone sits up in their chairs and starts brainstorming loudly about how it should be handled. 'Maybe it should be an attack roll using your tumbling proficiency', 'Do I get +2 for having those boots of wizard bashing?', 'OK but if your attack misses you take d6 falling damage', all that stuff. I really like those situations, because no-one, not even E Gary Gygax, knows what would be most fun right there, right then better than me and my group. HeroQuest is basically always like that.

In terms of the carnivorous monster question, one popular interpretation of HQ is that the rolls are always about the heroes. So what the monster actually wants to happen isn't so important as what the laws of good drama dictate should happen. Think of the moment in Empire Strikes Back when Luke gets ambushed by the Wampa - pretty clear cut complete defeat, right? He should be lunch, right? But what happens instead is that the danger and drama is escalated - he wakes up, hanging from the ceiling and about to be eaten, while his friends are now risking their lives in the cold to try and rescue him. If George Lucas had just kind of shrugged and said 'Well, I guess the Wampa eats him', it would be a pretty crappy movie, wouldn't it?

Mark

[AzureaSkyes]

Thanks everyone for replying.

It's true that up until now, my players and myself are used to crunchy systems to handle situations, in particular combat. We've been playing a fair amount of WFRP and Serenity and even Star Wars d6. I like that HQ does offer an alternative. As Mike says I think some of the issues that I was having stem from thinking about how to make HQ behave like other rules-centric games.

We haven't actually tried a full adventure based on HQ yet. Unfortunately, since I was struggling a bit, we got sidetracked by a board game (Arkham Horror), which co-incidentally resolves encounters a bit like a HQ simple contest. We did however begin our little forray into HQ. The characters were the players themselves and they had all gone to a theme park. The characters took their wives/girl friends with them as a sidekick. One of the rides (Oblivion) has you held at 90 degrees over a hole for 45 seonds before dropping you down into it from a fair height. The adventure speculated what would happen if that hole was really a portal to another place...  Anyways, we got as far as the first encounter before we stopped.

In the first fifteen minutes they encountered some critters that wanted to eat them. And so I began the extended contest. AP was bid, and the final outcome was that one player was "Hurt". It was at this point that I realised I wasn't very sure what to do next. HQ was saying, "hey the encounter is over!" and I was having a bit of trouble working out what that "hurt" result should mean. (Which just reminds me of another question.. if one player helps another, adding their augments, and the player that is being helped loses getting a "hurt" result, does the assisting player get counted as a "follower" and suffer an impairment? or do you all feel there is some other way to handle that?)

I think in my case, what should have happened is that the heroes perhaps managed to find a place to hide where the critters could not get to them, or I could have had the critters distracted by easier prey (thus, leaving the heroes to lick their wounds, realise that "something isn't quite right here", and plan how to get home).

The other question about equipment bonuses, was largely brought on by the Star Wars gadgets, since their ability scores are mostly lower than a starting hero 17 for a keyword. If someone has "Stab my foe" at 1W and the weapon has a rating of 15, I was just wondering that that 15 actually represented in terms of it's use. I'm not so sure I got that question answered exactly, but I can see how I might apply equipment abilities for some situations.

I know at some point my players will find some way to do damage to more than one opponent at a time, and the only example of an area effect, besides the multiple opponent penalty on the magic table, was the frost dragon which stated that it "froze" it's opponents. Now, it was my own thinking that made me suppose that being frozen was something that would only happen on a complete defeat, and something else happen on lower results. In any event, the act of attacking more than one hero at a time had me stumped. Because by rights, an area attack to my mind should have a number of AP transfers from affected targets at once, even those who were doing something else (as long as they were in the area). But it says in HQ not to nest extended contests. So would you all feel the best way to do this is make one roll for the dragon, and one roll for each affected character and then compare the placements, or resolve each player using individual attacks and a multi-target penalty. (The latter will make the dragon run through it's AP like it's going out of fashion).

Clearly, running adventures using HQ will require a change in focus for me and my players. It is difficult to unlearn 25 years of doing it differently. Everyone has made good points to help me along the way in this process. I liked Mark's comment about the Wampa, and of course, a minor encounter, like my critters, shouldn't be a show stopper. To respond to Mike's final comment, I don't think HQ is broken, in fact, I think it's really very elegant. I just don't always see how to apply it..... yet!

Azu.

[sebastianz]

The Forge is really great to get your questions answered. You should look through some of the older threads where many of your issues have already been treated. Anyway, here it goes.

In the first fifteen minutes they encountered some critters that wanted to eat them. And so I began the extended contest.

That is one of the things to avoid in my opinion. I understand that you only tested the rules, therefore it's no problem. But to overcome reflexes from other systems one should not make combat an extended contest on a regular basis. Only the most dramatic events deserve resolution through an EC. Many combat encounters don't fill that bill. Also note: There is no combat in Heroquest. I don't remember who said it but this is important to understand. There are only goals to accomplish and the way how to reach them. And fighting is only a method of getting your goal.

and the final outcome was that one player was "Hurt".

(Emphasis mine)
This depends with the next point treated below. Is it a group extended contest with every player having his own pool of AP? Then the contest is not over but goes on. The "hurt" character can get back via a final action. Or is the group acting in concert and in effect just one entity? Then the contest would indeed be over.

(Which just reminds me of another question.. if one player helps another, adding their augments, and the player that is being helped loses getting a "hurt" result, does the assisting player get counted as a "follower" and suffer an impairment? or do you all feel there is some other way to handle that?)

My take on it is, that PCs are NEVER to be treated as followers. By default, HQ assumes that PCs are special and important. Followers are not. Even sidekicks not. Therefore, nope. Don't treat them like followers. You rather have two other options: 1) Treat the PCs as a group, that is as a singe entity. Therefore the group suffers the result, everyone receives the penalty (or only the group as a whole. That depends on the contest). 2) Treat everyone individually. Especially in an EC each character could have its own AP pool. Augmenting is just the action of the character.

I think in my case, what should have happened is that the heroes perhaps managed to find a place to hide where the critters could not get to them, or I could have had the critters distracted by easier prey (thus, leaving the heroes to lick their wounds, realise that "something isn't quite right here", and plan how to get home).

Well, what did the critters want? Why did they attack the PCs in the first place? You can determine consequences so much easier if you answer that question for you. It makes quite a difference whether they simply want to scare the characters or sacrifice them to their dark goddess of doom. 'Cause in the latter case they probably would capture the characters and bring them to their temple.

The other question about equipment bonuses, was largely brought on by the Star Wars gadgets, since their ability scores are mostly lower than a starting hero 17 for a keyword. If someone has "Stab my foe" at 1W and the weapon has a rating of 15, I was just wondering that that 15 actually represented in terms of it's use. I'm not so sure I got that question answered exactly, but I can see how I might apply equipment abilities for some situations.

Again, abilities of equipment are normal abilities. If the character has a skill Stab my foe 1W and the weapon has Stab my foe 15, than you can use the skill and augment with the weapon for a total of 3W (you could do the opposite and augment the knife rating for 17 total).

I know at some point my players will find some way to do damage to more than one opponent at a time, and the only example of an area effect, besides the multiple opponent penalty on the magic table, was the frost dragon which stated that it "froze" it's opponents. Now, it was my own thinking that made me suppose that being frozen was something that would only happen on a complete defeat, and something else happen on lower results. In any event, the act of attacking more than one hero at a time had me stumped. Because by rights, an area attack to my mind should have a number of AP transfers from affected targets at once, even those who were doing something else (as long as they were in the area). But it says in HQ not to nest extended contests. So would you all feel the best way to do this is make one roll for the dragon, and one roll for each affected character and then compare the placements, or resolve each player using individual attacks and a multi-target penalty. (The latter will make the dragon run through it's AP like it's going out of fashion).

Being completely frozen would happen on a complete defeat. This doesn't mean death, by the way, as Mike pointed out. But even if the dragon uses its freezing breath and gets a complete victory: that doesn't tell us anything about what happens to the characters. We only know two things. The dragon gets its goal and the character doesn't. And the dragon used its freezing breath to achieve that result. Just consider the character wants to get to the dragon. They roll and the player suffers a complete defeat. Is the PC frozen? That is one option as he then can't get to the dragon. But just as easily the dragon creates a wall of ice so that the character needs years of picking at the ice to get through. Again he cannot get to the dragon but the outcome is very much different for the PC in terms of a changed situation. Therefore, it's necessary to think about the result. What would be appropriate? What would make more fun, be more dramatic. What's a dead end and what evolves the story further. That sounds more difficult than it actually is. But the mechanics simply don't tell you what happens. Rather they empower you to make something happen.
Concerning multiple opponents. The rules allow you to go for more than one target at the same time, p. 79. In my book, using magic on multiple targets uses both modifiers. You need more magical power and go for more than one. But I think other solutions are just fine.
Also, you don't nest EC. The area effect draws all you want to effect in the contest. But, again separate what actually happens from what the mechanics say. Just because the dragon goes only for one opponent, doesn't mean that other characters won't be affected. They suffer no AP loss, but there sure is an improv modifier for a change in the environment.

I hope I could clarify some things for you.

As an aside. Hey, Mike.

Note that I disagree with Sebastian in his use of the term "realism."

That comment made me reread my post several times. I don't use the term realism at all. So we only disagree because you use that term and I don't. ;)
I suppose I'd like a sentence of clarification if it doesn't cause to much trouble.

Sebastian.

[Mike Holmes]

Oops, maybe somebody else said realism.

In any case, that quote is from me, I say that there is no combat in HQ all the time. In fact, you're saying so much of what I would say in this case, that I don't have much to add at this point.

On the point of equipment, we're going in circles. We keep giving the same answer, which means that we're not understanding the question. So let me try again. You ask, "...I was just wondering that that 15 actually represented in terms of it's use." And I can only answer, "nothing." The 15 is a number that says to the player how likely the inclusion of that ability is in a situation to steer the character closer to getting his goal. That's all that number does. It doesn't say anything at all about, for instance, how potent the object in question is. Neccessarily. Any such attribution is up to you, and not neccessarily supported by the system.

Same thing with the "Area of Effect" thing. You're still thinking "If he breathes, then everyone must save." That's not how it works in HQ. It's "If in a round his goal is to get as many people frozen as possible, then if he uses a breath weapon, then his chances of that happening are increased by this much amount."

Put this another way, how do you know any other characters got caught in the blast? I mean, really? How did you determine that? The ability doesn't say that it's a cone of frost that's 30 feet across at it's end, and we don't have miniatures to determine whether or not the characters are in the blast area. Any such attribution is made by you.

Put it this way, they're in the blast area if and only if they're in the contest. Otherwise they're somehow outside of the area. Now, that said, a character can change their goal in a contest to include freezing others. But that doesn't change who's in the contest. You still only roll against those who started out in the contest. Everyone else you can just do what you want to based on the outcome.

Or, yet another way, every ability is "area of effect." You can say, "I swing around like a dervish and attack everyone" and you just take the multiple opponent penalty. If the narrator likes they can penalize this for some reason, but I've never found that neccessary. You could rule that a breath weapon doesn't take the multiple opponent penalty because of it's nature if you like (or, better yet, give a bonus to offset the penalty - that's mechanically different in HQ). But no ability is automatically "area of effect" and gains such a bonus. That's just your interpretation of how it happens.

Consider that the fight with the dragon could be, as Sebastian says, a simple contest. In that case, the dragon is breathing left and right, the hero is swinging his sword multiple times. Keep in mind that each "round" of an extended contest still has goals involved and is not neccessarily, "I swing my sword to try to hit it." More like, "I'm going to leap through the air, attempting to land on it's back where I'm going to rain down a flurry of blows if possible, and then grab on to it's tail so it can't turn on me." OK, cool, now aI get to add on my acrobatics, my Dragon Physiology, etc, etc. The more action the more AP bid, sure. But there's no penalty for doing more in a round. Just more risked.

And you'll note that as the player narrates a harder thing to do, they actually have a better chance at succeeding. That is, as they incorporate more elements of the character, you find that they have a higher TN, not a lower one - unless you want to penalize them for some reason (I'd leave your game if you did). Is that "unfair"? Yep. HQ is in no way a "balanced" game system in terms of power. In fact it's not about winning at all. I see players forgo obvious augments all the time, because they're trying to get their character to lose in a particular situation. Augmenting is not about winning (too easy), it's about showing off how cool your character is. Reward that, don't penalize it.

If the contest is cool for the character, in that they can bring all sorts of abilities into the narration, then that's a good thing. It's not a really great contest until your player is brining in +40 or so in augments.

Are we shedding any light here? I'm trying to give you more radical statements to give you an idea of where the paradigm shift lies in HQ. It's not resolution of tasks with some story elements thrown on for good measure. It's story as the driver, and you can give whatever details you want on top to suit. The mechanics are precisely like those in Arkham Horror - they don't tell you what happened in the contest, they only tell you the story outcome.

You get to fill in the blanks any way you'd like as long as it fits the mechanical outcome the dice give you. They'll never tell you if the dragon "hit" or not. They'll only tell you whether or not it got it's goal of having some new ice statues for it's living room. I'd call that a marginal victory, with the characters having a -1 Cold when they thaw. When do they thaw? When the heat fairies come and rescue them of course, duh. ;-)

Mike

[Mandacaru]

Mike - I just thought it worth pointing out that I think your examples in your first post, the Dracosauramagilich ones, are about the best I've seen, so I think ought to be included in that article or else elsewhere.
Sam.

[soviet]

Azu,

We have all gone through exactly the same learning/un-learning process that you are going through now. I strongly recommend you search through the archives of this very forum, because there are a lot of very useful threads buried there that will really help HQ click for you.

I have two specific suggestions for you:

1) Ignore extended contests for now. If you don't know exactly what you are doing it's very easy to get stuck or for the contest to turn into combat rounds and task resolution. Concentrate on getting simple contests right first, especially if your players are struggling to make things click too. If you find you have a big dramatic scene that you want to focus in on I suggest chaining together 2 or 3 simple contests, treating the 'wound' from each as more a kind of augment to the concluding contest.

2) Set stakes in advance and roll everything out in the open. This is what made HQ click for me. As you have already found out, retconning the results of a contest to fit the situation and make everyone happy can be really hard. A much better way to do it is to add a kind of negotiation phase to the simple contest procedure. Ask what the player wants to happen if he wins, and then have kind of a group brainstorm about what ought to happen if he loses. Try to balance the stakes here, so that if the player wants a big result he must accept a big problem on a defeat (but remember it must be an interesting problem, and death or just being locked out of cool stuff does not count as interesting). This 'negotiation' phase may seem awkward at first but it will soon become second nature to you.

When the stakes have been established in this way, announce your target number and roll right in front of everyone. Because they know what's at stake this will be exciting for everyone, and because you have framed the contest so that something interesting happens either way there will be no need or temptation to fudge the result in some way.

Here's an example I vaguely remember from my star wars game:

(The heroes are being chased along a speeding hovertrain. They have barricaded the carriage doorway so that the Imperials on board cannot get at them, but 2 Stormtroopers are on the roof about to jump across)

Player: I want to climb onto the roof and force push them off the train.
Me: Both of them or just one of them?
Player: Both of them. I guess that means I have to expose myself for longer to line up the shot right.
Me: Okay, cool, that sounds pretty risky though. What happens if you fail?
Player: Um, I guess I fall off.
Me: Nah, falling off the speeding train and being left behind will suck. Something else?
Other Player: How about he drops his lightsabre?
Me: Sounds good. (looks at Player A, he nods his approval). OK, so if you win they get pushed off the train, if you lose the suppressive fire forces you back down and you drop your lightsabre, yeah? OK, let's roll...

Hope that helps

Mark

[Mike Holmes]

Good points, Mark. One of the advantages of doing all simple contests is that suddenly you realize that "combat" can be resolved like you've always resolved, oh, Painting contests in other games. It's interesting how goal oriented most contests other than combat are in other RPGs. "I want to make a good painting" is the goal, not, "I swing my paintbrush to create a definitive stroke."

I'd love to see a good painting extended contest. :-)

Explicit stake setting...is probably a good idea in the short run just to get the feel. But I think that there are subtle GM tricks that you can do to get to goals. The simplest that I always do when I'm not sure about goals is simply to ask "why?" a lot.

Player: "I'm going to push them off the train."
Me: "Why, what is it that you're trying to achieve?"
Player: "I want them out of the way so that I can get to the princess."

See, in doing that, and finding the goal behind the act, you can cut through a lot of stuff and simply make failure not getting your goal. In this case, the character migh be wounded, and have to retreat, unable to get to the princess through this rout. Quite often between the narration of the negative consequences (wounding or whatever), and not getting their goal, that's sufficient alone. As long as you have an actual goal, and not just some task statement to work with.

Anyhow, the point is that in the long run, if you have the trust of your players on this, you can get away without doing a lot of explicit negotiating.

Mike

[AzureaSkyes]

Many thanks to everyone for their helpful posts :)

I think I've got a reasonable handle on what is supposed to be happening now.

I think the key is to concentrate on the overall outcome of any situation, rather than the explict means to get there. I really liked Mike's analogy with a painting contest... :)

It can be hard to step away from the short term "I swing my axe and....", but I don't feel daunted by it. Time will tell, and I'll let you all know how we get on.

Azu.