Another AP question

[issariesguy]

Getting back to weapon augments and disarms, should there be a difference between descriptive actions and keyword or magic based actions?

For instance, a number of combat affinities include things like "break sword, break cudgel" and a fighting type could definitely develop a "disarm weapon skill."  Given that these specifically remove particular augments, should they be more permanant then "I try to knock the sword from his hand."?

Rylen

Not an official Issaries answer here, just Stephen's opinion. But I was discussing this issue the other day. I personally think that any individual roll in an extended contest can have such an effect. That is, if I roll in one round and get a critical while my opponent gets a failure, in a simple contest that would be a major victory. In an extended contest, it just indicates a certain amount of AP transfer. Depending on the ability I used, however, I think it is perfectly acceptable for the narrator to declare that there is an additional effect. Thus, if I have this result with a Lightning Blast feat, and you had Magical Shield up, the narrator might rule that my success in that round was so great that my magic blew away your magical protection, and remove the +4 you get from it for the rest of the contest, or until the opponent takes an action and casts the spell again.

Similarly, if I reduce my opponent to -12 AP during the round, and he then immediately gets back to positive AP, I think it is perfectly reasonable for the narrator to declare that, instead of him being impaired, instead I have blown away his Magic Shield spell, and he can't cast it again for a couple of days. Unless, of course, he uses some appropriate ability to "restore" the magic immediately. Or maybe until he gets his own "major victory" in the next exchange involving appropriate abilities.

This is where MGF comes in -- if it is more fun to have special effects of this nature than to inflict Hurts or make the opponent Impaired, then the narrator is well within her rights to do those special effects instead. It should be an option if it makes the game fun, and the narrator shouldn't worry about whether or not the rules allow it.

So, to disarm someone, you have lots of different ways it can be done, and the story will help determine which is which:

1. Specific ability
2. Great roll in an extended contest
3. Instead of inflicting an appropriate wound

As I see HQ, it's all about options that make the game fun. If I can extend the YGWV mantra, YHQWV.

Stephen

[Mike Holmes]

I honestly can't tell if you're joking here. I mean, I agree that HQ seems to have such a real toolbox that you don't need to make more rules (it's more a question of how you and your players choose to interperet said rules) but I still think MGF is a general principle.

Dead serious. If I sold you a car, and said, "Hey, if anything turns out to be broken, you know what? We give you permission to fix it!" What would you think of that? If the car broke the next day, you'd be pissed knowing that I'd said that because I knew it would break. If it never broke, you wouldn't need my permission to change it. In fact, you don't need permission to fix things, and it's insulting to suggest to a person that they might not have the right.

These sorts of rules came from two things. Way back, Gygax in an attempt to unify play under his vision told folks that if they modified D&D, that they weren't playing D&D. He was right, but it was a pointless thing to say. At about the same time, people were noting how often their systems didn't make sense in certain situations of play, and how they had more fun if they didn't use the rules in these cases. So they figured, hey, lets encode that, and be anti-authoritiarian at the same time!

Drivel. People can and will alter RPGs when they want to, and don't need to be told that they can. OTOH, what should not happen, is that the rules should never be suspended in play. The rules exist as a framework to cause people to imagine things in-game in a shared way. If you dump that mid play, you're violating the agreement to use that framework. Which can happen innoccuously in most cases, but which ends up in terrible dysfunction in other cases.

So, sure I make modifications to the rules that make the game more mine. But I never, ever, in game do something that the rules, as we all currently understand them, do not support. It's a slippery slope to bad play. HQ has plenty of options built in to ensure that you're never stuck _ it's a brilliant design that way. So I don't see why you'd need to go outside the system to get Maximum Game Fun. To me MGF is achieved by using the rules, not changing them.

Thus I'm not sure where the "problem" is in Rylen's case. If you cause AP to a character that are described as breaking his sword, then presumably you bid enough to make this seem right. And so, yes, it will be permenant until he gets a new sword. Gains and losses of bonuses are the GM's right per the rules (thus I don't see how Stephen's first idea is outside of the rules). Can't see how that would be interpreted any other way. As for Stephen's second example, I can't see how this is more fun than just saying that the impairment applies to the character casting spells.

As for "wounding" even simpler - again wounds go away when the GM thinks they should. In the case of a broken sword about the time that he finds a new sword, (or fixes the old one, or finds a reasonable substitute, whatever).

What more "permenance" do you need than "until the GM says so"?

I'm getting the feeling that specifically taking out an ability or advantage (weapon, equipment, etc) I would do as an unrelated action most times. I'll have to see when I actually run something, but that seems to be what my brain keeps slipping back to.

Yeah, I tend to think of weapons as just other "augment only" abilities, so this makes sense.

Mike

[lightcastle]

So I don't see why you'd need to go outside the system to get Maximum Game Fun. To me MGF is achieved by using the rules, not changing them.

Gotcha. I see where you're coming from now on that.

Thus I'm not sure where the "problem" is in Rylen's case. If you cause AP to a character that are described as breaking his sword, then presumably you bid enough to make this seem right. And so, yes, it will be permenant until he gets a new sword. Gains and losses of bonuses are the GM's right per the rules (thus I don't see how Stephen's first idea is outside of the rules).

What more "permenance" do you need than "until the GM says so"?

What indeed? As you say, none of these options fall outside the scope of the rules, it is all subsumed in that interpretation.  I think for extra effects, I personally wouldn't let them happen just because you rolled well without including that effect as part of the goal of the bid.  But as I said, I think more and more my interpretation will lean towards an unrelated action.

Well. Thank you all very much. Because so much of this involves interpreting what makes sense story wise, it's great to hear how other people have wrestled with it. But I think I've learned about all I can on this specific question until I have a chance to pin some players down and try it.

So unless someone has some final piece of crucial advice that hasn't been covered, I can close the thread here since I started it, I beleive.

[rylen dreskin]

I'm still trailing a few posts behind and thinking mechanically instead of narratively.  (Should change when I get a game going...)

One of the ideas given in extended combat is supporters drop out w/ AP loss and recover w/ transfers.  I'm trying to square that with the idea of inflicting hurts.

1 -- you trade AP loss to impair the character, not necessarily damage them.  The hurt might be on the follower, not just the PC.

2 -- similar to disarming and weapon breaking, you trade AP loss for specific effects.  Is it easier to take out a PC mook, lower his AP total that way, and remove a follower bonus then it is to directly attack a PC.

Experience is the big teacher.   How have hurt, wounding, and followers getting knocked out been working in your games?

Rylen

[Alai]

One of the ideas given in extended combat is supporters drop out w/ AP loss and recover w/ transfers.  I'm trying to square that with the idea of inflicting hurts.

The main thing in narrating extended contests (whether combat or otherwise) is that you not make the resolution of any action in the middle of an EC both 'definitive' and 'irrevocable', in any way that'd cause suspension-of-disbelief issues if, as you say, you regained those APs back later in a transfer -- or as is almost endemic, when the winning side gets them back after the contest. (Welll, indeed both sides do, but the loser will indeed suffer some sort of 'definitive' consequence at that point.)

e.g., you don't in general want to tell a player (or indeed have him announce, if you're doing it Monologue of Defeat -style) that a blow's shattered his arm in five places simply because he's lost a shedload of APs. But saying 'feels agonising, like the bone's broken' is suitably deniable. And of course, much of what APs represent even in a combat has nothing to do with physical injury anyway: for example, your opponent has tripped you up and is about to lunge in for the kill, has gained some tactical or psychological advantage, etc.

Likewise, if you 'lose' a follower, it's unwise to establish beyond all subsequent dispute that he's been atomised and is Gone Forever. He may have been winded, or scared off, or simply not in the right place at the right time when you happened to need him (but when things swing back in your favour, picks himself up/is rallied by your valiant excample/turns back up in the nick of time).

OTOH, Hurt in the HQ game mechanical sense _does_ mean some (small) definitively established disadvantage, idependently on the course of the current contest. Say, you picked up a limp in that last melee, had your loyalty to your kin impugned while (otherwise) successfully debating in the tribal council, etc. So if a given action seems to most logically resolve itself in such ways, you may choose (or suggest to the winning player that he chose) to 'inflict' Hurts instead of AP losses. For example, if in a fencing duel one participant couches his actions in terms of trying to impair his opponent by nicking his arm, rather than going all-out for the 'kill' directly, this may be the appropriate mechanic.

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi Mike,

You are misreading Maximum Game Fun, I think. The rules it discusses is not the rules of the game HeroQuest, but rather the setting. Look at the examples:

Aeolians using veneration to worship gods; or because something exists that "should not be," like an origami-folding woman riding a shell deer; or because someone wants something "inappropriate," like wanting to go surfing

The MGF rule says that not everything in Glorantha follows the norm. Some things are strange weird, different, or whatever. Your want to play a character that tries to reach dragonhood without walking the mystic path? Maximum Game Fun says "Go ahead! Explore! Enjoy!"

This is nothing at all like the stupid Golden Rule of White Wolf.

All the best,

/Peter N

[lightcastle]

Alai, since this has been re-opened, think you could give a quick jump over to a previous question I asked about followers?

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10700

I just want to make sure I wrapped my head around it correctly.

[Mike Holmes]

You are misreading Maximum Game Fun, I think. The rules it discusses is not the rules of the game HeroQuest, but rather the setting.

MGF=YGMV? I don't think that they're in there for the same reason. OTOH, I see your point that perhaps it's just saying that if you're not having fun that something is wrong. I'd buy that.

The problem is that people, even Stephen, say things like:

This is where MGF comes in -- if it is more fun to have special effects of this nature than to inflict Hurts or make the opponent Impaired, then the narrator is well within her rights to do those special effects instead. It should be an option if it makes the game fun, and the narrator shouldn't worry about whether or not the rules allow it.

Now, again, Stephen might be saying that for a particular group that this might be a change that works better for them, and that it would be good to incorporate it as a change in overall proceedure. Again, people change games, and I have no problem with that. But it seems more likely to me that he means that one should alter the rules as the game proceeds - one possible interpretation of MGF. And if so, I'm wholeheartedly against that.


Back to the real topic of the thread, however (I don't want to continue to hiijack the thread), personally, I stay away from any description in an extended conflict that might even potentially be thought of as a "durable" penalty to a character to describe AP losses. A couple of reasons.

First, it's actually more dramatic this way. Not at all realistic, but follows every drama convention. For example, watching a Kung-Fu flick, you see people get hit, and grimace in pain all the time, but it never really affects them until critical points. In HQ, your martial artist player would declare, "I use the thousand hand palm strike to nail him right in the midsection!" Upon gettin a major victory you narrate, "Your blow lands almost precisely where you'd aimed it, so quickly that it bypasses his attempts to parry, and the force sends him windmilling back ten yards before he stops with a look of pain on his face, but coninued determination." Another typical result, "Your cross contacts his face, and he spins away from you. When he stops himself, a small trickle of blood comes from the corner of his lip." It would just be totally inappropriate to say, "Your blow breaks many of his ribs, detaching them from his sternum." Sword fights are even more this way. In the famous scene where Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone fight it out as Robin Hood, and Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), the fight between the two of them goes all over the room, tables, chairs, candles and other scenery getting torn up along the way, with a battle raging all around them, and neither of them are scratched until Robin Hood does Sir Guy in at the end. Swashbuckling is all about the movement, nobody gets hurt until the finish.

Secondly, there's the "flesh wound;" if you really want blood, do like the "trickle" above (for those who want a more Rambo-esqu feel). "The sword grazes across your chest, mangling your shirt, and creating a thin red line of blood that slowly starts to ooze. The flesh wound is painful, but only strengthens your resolve." Hell, that could actually be the result of a winning AP bid (I'm going to have to do that). Basically, the idea is that you inform the player right off that the wound is superficial. Because you never "need" that wound to be real. That is, sure, at the end of the combat, you're going to go negative, and that'll mean an injury of some sort. And, sure, theoretically you could narrate something like, "You're morale gives out, as your opponent backs you into a corner - you note that the wound to the chest you recieved earlier is actually as bad as it feels (and accounts for the -10%)." I mean, you could do that, but why not, "with a deceptive flourish, his blade gets past yours and slips between your ribs (accounting for the -10% penalty)." Isn't it more climactic to have the injury (or whatever impairment chosen) be the result of the last action taken? So you don't need any "potential" injuries. If you really wanted to do something like this, it's perfectly valid to have them appear right at that point, and say that they'd gone unnoticed until that point or something.

Lastly, avoiding stuff like "your arm hurts like it could be broken" means that the potential "problem" with players wondering where the wounds went. Or, if you pull the "You find now that it's bad," then the player wonders why they didn't have the penalty all along. I mean, if you argue adrenaline, then wouldn't adrenaline in the next contest make it irrelevant yet again?

Nah, I say leave the descriptions of the stuff that could account for penalties for when the character recieves the penalty. (As a bonus it satisfies the sim guys more, too).

Mike