Deciding scope for conflict-based resolution.

[Mike Holmes]

Thanks for the feedback and examples everyone.  I'm sure you're right that when I play it will feel quite natural. (I've been ummin and arring about running a game using The Pool for ages but never quite found the motivation/conquered my fears!)

Egads, well that's a horse of a different color. The thing about The Pool is that it really gives you very little framework at all. I mean, depending on the variant, success may not at all be determined by the roll. That is, in this case it's not a Conflict Resolution system, it's a "Who gets to narrate the resolution" system. That is, it doesn't decide the resolution at all, the system just decides who gets to decide.

By comparison, HQ feels a lot more like the games that you're used to. The Pool isn't hard to get used to, or use - it's just way further out there from your typical RPG.

I'm also interested though in how multiple skills can come to bear on one conflict 'roll'.  I can see situations where the GM breaks up a conflict into a series of mini-conflicts each using a particular skill.  This more a question of system mechanics I suppose in the sense "how do we deal with that mechanically".  Perhaps that's something that has confounded me when I've tried to develop a game using conflict-based resolution.  I don't want the game to decompose complex conflicts into lots of separate little conflicts - I think the temptation in this case would be for the players and GM to slip into treating it as task-based resolution (certainly for my group who are mostly born-and-bred Gamist task-resolvers!).

Do check out HQ soon. As Ron mentions, there are the two methods, simple and extended. But in either you can use as many abilities as you like. The mechanic is called augmenting, and it's really just a well presented version of mechanics for "aiding" and the like that games have had forever. Basically, each augmenting ability gives you a bonus to the level of ability of the "primary" ability. You then roll against the total TN.

I can also see that if I allow players to employ multiple skills in one conflict there would be a danger of characters' most impressive skills never really standing out because they often get averaged in with their less impressive skills.  I want my game to promote the incredible abilities of characters (the supernatural perception of an elf, say).  Have I made sense there?

The way the augment system works, you tend to use your larger abilities as the Primary abilites, and smaller ones augment. So the big abilities are highlighted, and the small abilities are featured as well. There are no limits to how many abilites you can augment with, they're only limited by applicability.

In extended contests, actually things do tend to look a lot more like traditional task resolution. Because in breaking down a conflict, the sub-conflicts tend to be on a scale that's typically similar to what task resolution tends to be at. But it's really like mini-conflicts, as you say, because the mechanics don't let you dictate tasks in an input gets output sort of manner (it's really still all about goals).

As an example, Character A attacks character B bent on killing him. Character B want's to run away. First round of the extended contest, character A uses his sword skill to lunge at character B intent on his ferocity causing problems for B. He could narrate, "I'm going for the throat!" which sounds like a task. But when a player says that, they implicitly understand that they're really saying that they intend to cause an amount of AP loss that matches their maneuver. So, if A bids only half of the AP out there, less than will put his opponent out of commission, then he knows that the outcome of the attack will not be slashing the opponent's throat out in a lethal fashion. Basically the player has to keep in mind (or be reminded) that the overall goal is to kill the opponent, and that all of the sub-goals must just be lead-ins to that. Thus a result of a loss of half your APs on such a thrust might be narrated as, "Your lunge is on target causing B to backpedal for his life. This puts him very off balance." Or anything else that's a reasonable consequence of the declared action, the bid, and the overall goal for the contest as a whole.

You can get all the rules you need to understand how this works here:
http://www.glorantha.com/support/GameAids.pdf

Mike

[Ben Miller]

Great post Mike!  I'm starting to 'get it' a bit more now.  I think perhaps reading stuff like The Pool has taken me too far out to the other extreme of roleplaying to what I'm used to.

I'll check out the HQ game aid you suggested, and possibly purchase HQ.  

(BTW, how easy would it be to use the HQ rules in a completely different setting?  I'm familiar with running Robin Law's Dying Earth game, in which the system is very closely tied to the genre and setting.)

Thanks again everyone for humouring/helping me!  Hopefully this discussion will have been light-shedding for some other readers who are trying to get their head around conflicts actually in-play...

Cheers
Ben

[Mike Holmes]

Well, relevant to your question I think is the fact that I don't run HQ in Glorantha. I play with Josh in Glorantha (first adventure may wrap up tomorrow), but the game I run online is set in ICE's Shadow World as it happens. It takes some work in a way to make a conversion, but it's all very creative, and actually very fun. And the result of the work is that you'll actually like your converted world a lot better. At least that was my experience.

Mike