Doubts for duelling using an Extended Constest

[Barna]

When I started my conversion of 7th Sea to Heroquest, duelling is one of the situations I thought would be perfectly covered by extended contests. AP are a neat mechanism to represent positioning, general advantage and all the rest, and also helped in avoiding the "you hit, I hit, we hit each other until one dies" approach under which many combat systems fall (and does not represent movie OR real life duelling situations at all).

However, when skimming my brand new HQ book yesterday, I was a bit puzzled. Say my castillian swordsman defeats his nemesis and reduces him to -9 AP. That would count as "Hurt" result. However, if these was a duel to the death, this does not effectively "end" the conflict. I understand that loosing an extended contest means exactly that: you lost. However, if my PC's original intention was "kill the bastard", either the contest is not over & must continue (because there has not been true resolution) or I am missing something.

Summing it up, I guess my question is: can the recently-hurt opponent continue fighting even if he just lost the extended contest. If so, which mechanism should be used in order to do so?

[Eero Tuovinen]

This is a general question for all expicit-stakes type systems that deduce mechanical results from conflicts. Theoretically, the problem stems from the system having two separate effects for the win or loss of a given conflict: the damage suffered by the loser (or in general, any mechanical changes), and the literal stakes of the conflict. The most overt way this problem represents itself is when the system has formal expectations over the fiction, like a character with statistics being alive; then you're left to wonder what happens if the narrative has him dead, but mechanically he's still kicking. Other games that have the same problem (and resolve it in different ways) are Dust Devils, Universalis and Fastlane, to mention a few examples that pop to mind.

As for the specific question regarding HQ: it's been a while since I last read the book, but from what I remember it's a bit unclear on it's formulation of the above problem, and rather prefers to sidestep the issue. In other words, no clear answer. Here's two ways to deal with it, both equally valid:
- disallow conflict stakes that run counter to the mechanics in this manner. In practice that frequently means downgrading "I kill him" to "I do whatever it is that I hope to accomplish by killing him", and letting the mechanics indicate whether the character lives or dies. This method usually results in healthy developments in entrenched rpg groups, as they tend to rather homicidal gamer-think in their play action. But it can be a problem when you genuinely want a character dead, and the system insists on keeping him alive.
- allow any stakes, and run the system subordinate to any statements by the stakes. That is, if the stakes say he's dead, he's dead. Some systems continue from here by allowing the player of a dead character to continue play via flashbacks, memories and similar, but that's by no means necessary. Some times dead is dead, and that's that. Shouldn't have gone into that conflict, should you?

For your case I suggest (remember, I've not read the book in a while, so I'm specifically not a HQ expert) looking carefully at both of the above ideas and using both. That is, when a "duel to the death" comes up, discuss seriously whether it's death that the players really want. Surprisingly frequently the real goal is to "win her heart" or "humiliate him" or "ensure that he'll never give up the secret" or even "win the duel", and death is just the only convenient means a traditional system gives for the player to reach the goal. In those situations there's no need to have death as the stakes. Only if and when death is really what the players want, by all means give that to them - whichever party loses is dead as a doornail, and that's that. The result categories in HQ are abstract anyway, and can be easily overridden - like, you're dead due to the stakes, but you're just "Hurt" as the result. What's up with that? Maybe you're not as dead as you'd be with a bigger result? But that doesn't matter, because dead is dead most of the time. Other characters can use the "degree" of the death as a resource, like perhaps your death penalty (-1 for Hurt if I remember right) is now a penalty for your friends trying to step up and take your cause forward. But you're dead, so it's not your problem.

--

Realise, I answered the general question about a duel to the death, not your specific question at the end of your post. For that: no, an opponent can't just restart a fight after losing. To re-establish conflict, you have to change the situation substantially in the fiction. Thus, if the stakes were about "who wins the fight" and you lost, it doesn't matter whether you got hurt bad or not mechanically; it's assumed that for some reason the fight already ended. Whether it's because you're too tired to fight, or too scared, or the opponent gained overwhelming positional advantage, it's all up to the narrator who explains the result. But the fact stands - you never flount the stakes, otherwise the game comes to naught.

[Barna]

I understand your point and analysis. I beleive that I did not express my question clearly enough. What puzzles me is that a combat conflict (let's keep the duel as an example) ends with a character wounded, the other victorious and the contest finished. That is, looser bleeding in one arm, winner unhurt. In a duel to the death, this is quite odd. According to the mechanics the conflict has ended, but the result indicated by this mechanics as an ending condition does not represent the player's objectives.

A simple solution I've just considered is the idea of the opponent continuing the fight even at negative AP. After all, the "to the death" nature of a duel such as this does include the notion of keeping on with the fight even when you are wounded and your condition (outcome) can worsen a lot. Still, I beleive I am missing something here, both from a narrative and system POV.

[Der_Renegat]

HeroWars had a different coup de grace rule:
when youve brought your opponent to zero Ap you can perform a parting shot.
Every success results in death if the player wishes so.

[Vaxalon]

In a conflict-resolution game, if the stakes are "who lives and who dies" and you win the conflict, then it doesn't matter whether the "fallout" has left the loser dead or not... he's dead.

[Barna]

I've just realized that there's yet another way to look at it. If the character has beaten his opponent in combat, even if the result is not actually "dying" (bur rather "hurt", "wounded", etc), one could consider that the actual victory implies that he now has his opponent at his mercy. That is, ready to be dealt a killing blow. I beleive that aside from the penalties associated with loosing the contest, once the character wins he has indeed accomplished his objective. In this particular case, the opponent may be wounded, hurt or the like, but is now "killable" as he has lost the contest.

One might argue that the result should be in actual effect rather than a choice (that the opponent should be dead instead of defenseless). However, I beleive that in this particular contest the choice over an opponent's death should always be given to the PC, if not at least for narrative reasons.

[Mike Holmes]

This is a complex problem, so the solution is not at all evident. Eero has stated it correctly, you see, you're just not getting quite what he's saying.

You've correctly identified the seeming paradox. The rules say that if I win a contest that I get what the stated goal, no matter what the level of the victory. But they also say that a character can't be reduced to dying unless I get a complete victory. The solution to the paradox lies in something I hit on in one of my recent rantings on how to make failure successful, stemming from observations that we've discussed previously here.

Most people help with this only by stating the "solution" to the problem in play which is to have the contest end "inconclusively" for dramatic reasons. That is, in the example duel, the legal authorities come in time to break it up before anyone is killed. Or the losing character runs off (if he's cowardly), or the characters are separated by an earthquake splitting the ground open. Or whatever you want to say has happened before the supposed final stakes are accomplished.

But, you're right that this simply explains how to get out of the problem, not why this is consistent.


The key for me to understand how to successfully interpret the rules here was to look at the non-life-or-death situation, and how the resolution system deals with it. That is, "dying" is merely one step on the otherwise generic penalty ladder for failures. So in a contest where two characters are trying to discredit each other, say, what do the different levels of victory mean? A minor victory means that the opponent is discredited, and now has a -10% to related further conflicts. Which implies, in reverse, that he still can compete in such conflicts. As a source of conflict the opposition still exists. He's defeated only momentarily, and otherwise remains a potential opponent.

A dying result in such a contest would mean that the character had been altered in such a way that we don't need to give a penalty, because the character could no longer compete in said arena due to the modification. Basically he's been altered so that if he did try to compete, he'd suffer an improv modifier that would result in an automatic failure.

This is not an uncommon circumstance, such contests are simply rarely declared. That is, if you have no wings (or flight magic, or other means of flying), and you try to fly to the top of a building, the narrator should have no compunction about saying that flying is the relevant ability, and that the nearest thing you have is so far off that you simply automatically fail. This is so obvious that nobody attempts such things in the first place.

Similarly, if you had wings, but had them chopped off, the character has now been altered such that he can no longer do a flight contest. As opposition, he's no longer any good. That's what dying means - the target that gets this result is being altered in such a way that they'll remain unable to compete in this realm indefinitely until repaird (note that this result has a TN just like the others in the healing table). This matches dying, correct? The character can't respond in any way to contests once he's in this state.

The combat-centric nature of the descriptions of the penalty levels confuses the fact that they're actually generic in nature. "Dying" is actually "being changed into some form which doesn't allow opposition from this point on."

So, you might think that I'm just making things worse. That, in fact, this means that the character never really gets his goal in any situation, not just combat. That if you're not removing the character as a foe, that you're always coming up short on the goal. But, in fact, I think that you get your goal in addition to the penalty outcomes. The penalties are additional, and in fact explicitly optional (the narrator "may" apply a penalty). What I think that the rules are doing is saying that in a physical conflict, the goal being generally to harm each other, that usually the interesting stakes are simply to not be harmed yourself. To retain the winning ground. Usually there's something else that's being fought over.

Isn't a duel more about honor than killing? Aren't the real stakes of a duel all about who ends up with their honor intact? The question of who may or may not be killed somewhat secondary to that? Why else risk one's life for a duel if honor is not what's at stake? So what's won or lost there is the question of who ends up standing.

That's not to say that the characters can't state that the contest is to the death (though I'd think that rather rare). But that, as players, we know what's the important thing to dramatically have at stake. What I think the whole "Dying" thing is about is the HQ rule system saying to us that it's almost never appropriate to have life or death be the actual stakes of a contest.

Except when it is. Somebody once asked here, "Do I need a complete victory to kill a deer for dinner?" Won't hunters starve to death? But let's play a semantic game, and say that the contest goal is to "obtain game." That doesn't require a complete victory, does it? Even though something technically has to die.

Again, the question is what's the opposition, and what does "Dying" meaning "being changed into some form which doesn't allow opposition from this point on" mean in this context? If I kill a deer, will there be no more deer to kill? Nope, it'll still be a challenge next time. If I had to assign a penalty in this case as narrator, I'd say that the -1 would apply to the deer of the forest avoiding being killed next time. Would complete victory in this case mean that I've killed every deer in the forest (or the forest)? No, the challenge in this case is merely eliminated. Next time I come back to this woods, I don't have to roll to aquire game. It's become a task that "no self-respecting hero would fail" (the Automatic Success rule).

Actually, I'd argue the same thing for "mooks," the nameless villains who you come across. If the Dark Lord is listed as having "Many soldiers" as followers, does killing a few mean that they're gone as a source of conflict? Nope, more will be along in a moment. So killing a few with a marginal victory is just fine. For a particular group, "Hurt" might mean five men dead. Until they can recriut some more.

The "Dying" thing applies to player heroes and villains. It's saying that for these characters, physical contests all have injury as their stakes, not death except as a result meaning that the character can no longer participate. This also means, I think, that any other result that makes the character unable to resist something is suitable for a dying result. Like getting your wings crushed so you can no longer fly. Death is only one option.

Actually dying isn't death (I think you figured this out). Dying leads to death if and only if the GM says it does - he's explicitly free to save the character in a number of dramatic ways. there is no mechanical result that leads to "Death" as a state as the result of a contest. Truth be told, being put into bedrest indefinitely satisfies the conditions of a dying result in terms of the ongoing penalty just fine.

This all said, I think that there are times where you can, in fact, put death on the line. Interestingly, the rule is that death should be on the line only when it means less than something else that's on the line. If the stakes are so high that the character dying would be a cool side effect of a loss, then, sure, take away the plot immunity, and allow them to die on a marginal defeat. Death should only be on the line when it would be extremely dramatic for the character to die.

When in doubt, ask the player. Otherwise your stakes, no matter what the character intent seems to be, are something more interesting for the current situation. Victory determines if those stakes are obtained with a marginal or better victory.

It may simply be easiest at times to think of the stakes that come from the goal statement as the following:
What the player wants as advocate for the character vs.
What the narrator wants as an advocate for the plot.

Note that both the narrator and the player want what the other wants. That is, if the player wins, the narrator is happy for him. If the narrator wins, the player is happy that the plot gets more interesting. Everybody wins all the time with HQ resolution if you interperet it this way.

So there is no paradox here, as Fred says, conflict resolution means you get the stakes. In HQ, however, the stakes are never death, unless you make a specific exception for this. This special rule exists for these stakes, because death is the only situation where the player is actually penalized - by being no longer able to participate in play. So death should only happen when it's worth that penalty.

Mike

[Barna]

I understand what you mean, but the problem seems to be player intention. If the PC wants to kill his opponent but the contest ends with a "Hurt" result, my main question is "what happens?". The opponent is supposedly wounded, the PC (and probably the opponent too) wants to keep on fighting to the death. Yet the contest has ended, so conflict has been resolved. I guess my question is really "what do you narrate to your players?". The "epic fight to the death" contest ends up with the opponent "Hurt". Where do we go from there?

Take into account that I am not really concerned about the "instant kill" phenomenon, so to speak. That is, I do believe that death should always be a choice made by the PC. But again, IF the character states death as his objective, in spite of any other results which end the contest (Hurt, Wounded, whatever), can the PC decide to kill his opponent and be able to do so with no further mechanical implications?

[Der_Renegat]

Barna, did you read what i posted about the coup de grace rule from HeroWars?
I think that is what you are looking for technically !

And Mike, on the whole "what contest consequences mean" discussion, id like to add that the rulebook says:

a total victory with momentous consequences

and

the repercussions are often permanent or irreversible

It doesnt say dying !
The whole "dying" thing comes later and relates specifically to combat. I think thats a pity because it suggests somehow traditional roleplaying views: the binary thing: win or loose.

You get very much confused into thinking a total defeat means death for your character always !
Which is not true and counterproductive for making up interesting contest consequences.

best

Christian

[Hobbitboy]

I understand what you mean, but the problem seems to be player intention. If the PC wants to kill his opponent but the contest ends with a "Hurt" result, my main question is "what happens?". The opponent is supposedly wounded, the PC (and probably the opponent too) wants to keep on fighting to the death. Yet the contest has ended, so conflict has been resolved. I guess my question is really "what do you narrate to your players?". The "epic fight to the death" contest ends up with the opponent "Hurt". Where do we go from there?

Is it really that tough to figure out? If the GM is okay with the opponent getting what's comming to him/her at this juncture AND if the player is determined to fight the duel to the death then surely any result of Marginal Victory (or better) to the player character results in the death of the opponent. Of course it may then be interesting for the character to acquire some sort of trait or reputation as a consequence of the killing (c.f. the 'To Kill or Not to Kill' box on page 76 of the HQ book), though this ought to have been discussed with the player before they committed to the contest AND the closer to a Complete Vistory they got the less severe the consequence should be!

Take into account that I am not really concerned about the "instant kill" phenomenon, so to speak. That is, I do believe that death should always be a choice made by the PC. But again, IF the character states death as his objective, in spite of any other results which end the contest (Hurt, Wounded, whatever), can the PC decide to kill his opponent and be able to do so with no further mechanical implications?

If you're saying that the player was okay with the rather extreme scenario where the character and the opponent (NPC) are clear that they are both determined to fight till either one or the other is dead then, I would definately have no qualms about narrating a Marginal Victory (or better) as resulting in the death of the loser.

Not all villains escape to fight another day and not heros live to enjoy the fruits of their actions. Note that if Mike can say...

then, sure, take away the plot immunity, and allow them to die on a marginal defeat.

about character death then how can the death of the 'baddie' be an issue if the time is right?

Thanks,

- John

[rstites]

One way to handle this is to use the final level of defeat as a measure for what the winner sacrificed to win the contest.  This would work with either the extended or simple contest mechanics and addresses one common complaint about HQ:  that the winner suffers nothing from a conflict.  So, just reverse that if your contest is going to be a final all-or-nothing contest (fight to the death, or even similar social conflict).  To push hard enough to acheive that final result cost the winner greatly on a margin victory and cost them virtually nothing on an all out victory, and scale appropriately inbetween.  Of course, the cost can be anything reasonable.  By fighting to the death on a ship, the ship ran aground during the duel and is heavily damage, the PC lost an important follower to win the battle, or the similest is that the PC took an actual wound themselves.

Any thoughts?  By the way, hello everyone.  I'm new.  Mike has been preaching HQ to me for a few weeks via email, so I thought I might as well sign up an participate here!

Ross

[Barna]

I have been considering several ways of dealing with this.

The first thing I thought of is using the old Hero Wars coup de grace rule to replace the "Parting shot" rule in the current HQ ruleset. I think it would enhance the notion that, in combat, a defeated opponent is at your mercy.

The second option is just bypassing the system in a way and do as Mike & others have suggested: IF the stakes were actually death AND it is dramatically appropiate, then the character can choose to kill his opponent if he beats him on the extended contest.

Last but not least, one could opt for a more general change to the Extended Contest rules. I very much like Mike´s idea that dying means "unable to further present resistance in such a conflict". Therefore, choosing death as a stake would be equivalent to choosing a "conflict-depleting" objective for any other extended contest. "Beating the forest" or so to speak, following the deer example Mike gave.

These "depleting" conflicts (always approved by the GM) should be harder to win. Therefore, in such Extended Contests being reduced to less than 0 AP does not mean defeat; your opponent must reach -31 AP or less to be beaten. Of course, once reduced bellow 0 AP you cannot recover above 0 AP (since your injuries are lasting), but you may be able to bring the attacker down. I still have to think this out, but I guess it could work...

[Mike Holmes]

John has the essence of it.

But, being me, I'll elaborate. :-)

One way to think about this (call it the Edwardsian method) that can get you to mentally cut through the trouble, is to remember that the characters are fictional. That's shorthand for saying that you can view the rules of heroquest as being "only" for the players. The "goal" statement is made by the player, and can be considered a player intent. Not a character intent. That is, the rules don't resolve character efforts or goals, but player ones. A character may intend to kill somebody, but we normally don't allow that to be the player goal, just because it's the character goal. You're simply not allowed to select it, even if the character wants somebody dead.

Normally. As I said, you can make an exception to this, if you like. But the standard in HQ is to assume that a "combat" means that something else besides death is at stake for the players, and will be what's won if less than a complete victory occurs.

Think of it this way - we're all playing this game together, collaborating to create a fun plot. Then it happens that two Player Heroes turn out to have opinions on a subject that conflict. Both players say that their characters want the magical whatsis, for a classic example. Now, in most RPGs, the solution is for players to lay into each other in metagame style to browbeat each other into giving up. Because "PvP" isn't allowed, and if it escalates in-game to combat, then the characters fighting is actually the players fighting over the object, with the potential result that one of the characters is eliminated from the game. Neither player really wants that to happen (or the game is really gamism based, if they do), so they try to find other ways for their characters to get the item from each other. Usually devolving to somebody altering their character in metagame ways to allow for it to happen peacefully.

Well, wouldn't it be nice if the characters could get what they want, to fight, and the players could get what they want, which is for the stakes in question to be resolved, the question of who gets the treasure settled, and everybody's character survives? Well that's what HQ does. It says, sure, we'll narrate them fighting, but we'll make sure that the only thing that's really resolved is the question of who gets the whatsis. The characters can even become enemies then, and everybody has fun, because the players are collaborating in making their characters fun enemies of each other. Just as the narrator isn't out to kill their characters, but to provide fun challenges and interesting situations for the players to have their characters respond to.

Make any more sense now? In practice, this doesn't get explicitly negotiated. I think Fred thinks I'm fudging when I just rule this way. Because I don't care to explain all of this when it happens in play. But it's quite effective at creating story because nobody worries that they might be hurting another player, or getting their character killed. The only time that happens is if somebody who understands this principle asks me to suspend the rule for good reason, or I do it myself (mook rule, etc).


As for what to narrate, I tried to cover that above. You simply narrate something happening that makes it impossible for the characters to continue attacking each other immediately. Reasons a duel might end early:
- Act of God - the rain becomes so heavy that nobody thinks it's a good idea to continue.
- Distraction - suddenly the PC notes that his home, with his children inside, is on fire.
- A worse danger appears - a giant is heading towards the duelists.
- The opponent runs away - this is really common. Sensing he's on the ropes, the villain chickens out. Again, it's really honor that the players want to see resolved, and the villain is losing here.

This is the same principle that I talked about with making failure fun. Sure it might seem from the goal statement as in-game description that he goal is to get some information. But on failure we decide that the goal was to get the information without making an enemy instead. The resulting enemy being, we assume, more interesting than failing to find the information in this case. Actually I don't do this very much because I prefer to simply allow missing information to become part of the plot. But it all depends on the situation, and what's more interesting for the players. Not what the character's goals are, but what's more interesting to resolve for the players.

Now, as to the question of the foe who has been defeated, and is at your mercy, the answer is no, you're not allowed to kill him automatically because you won the previous contest. You're extrapolating a solution to your problem that's not at all intended, and has dangerous ramifications. It smacks of the "I am my character, and I can have him do whatever I want" attitude. You are not your character, you're a player, and by the rules we agree to limit the outcomes of contests. One of those limits is that we don't narrate deaths for most contests, even if that's what the characters want. Because it's more fun not to do so. This is the reasoning for the "no repeat contests" rule - players are not allowed to say that their character "just tries again," every contest ends with all of the attempts that the character is allowed to take at the prize using this conflict.

Now, that all said, sometimes killing somebody is an automatic success. If the character is strapped down, for instance, and no aid is on the way, and the character killing him is a sociopath, then it just happens. What this means is that, if you believe that a character would kill another, then victory of the killer over the other that does not result in a dying result, means that the narrator must narrate some reason why the attempts to kill stop. One of the reasons above, for instance.

On the other hand, if new stakes are raised, then you can, in fact, allow a new contest to kill the "down" character. For instance, if the player hero is a moral sort (as it says as an example in the book) you can have the NPC brought low by a contest just to set up another one in which the player has to roll to see if his character has what it takes to kill in cold blood. Because the stakes here are no longer really about who dies or lives, but about whether or not the character in question is ruled by his morals or his hate or something. Principles are at stake, so this is allowable as a new contest over the old physical stakes.

Maybe in such a case, you only allow on a Complete Victory, too, representing the PC changing into a killer. A very dramatic moment. Or, maybe you allow this to be one of those exceptions, and allow the villain to die off here on a marginal victory, because death is appropriate in this case. Note the exception to the "no repeat attempts" rule. Sometimes you should allow this - because what's really going on is that the stakes have subtly changed. And maybe it is time for death.

At this point I have to stop and say that these are interpretations of the rules, but I don't believe that any of this technique is actually voiding any of the rules as written. That is, according to how I read the rules, allowing death (not just dying, but plain old death) on a marginal victory is not a violation of the rules in any way. I tried to be rigorous above in explaining why, and I'll do so again if I have to. This is important, because what I'm advocating here is playing by the HQ rules system just as it's written. That it's not at all anything like broken, but, in fact, brilliantly powerful without modification.


I'm not sure how I gave the impression that it's never the right time for a villain to die. I think there are ways to get there without having to use any exceptions (extended contests with the villain doing comback attempts are good, for instance, to say nothing of the parting shot rules). But, sure, especially if the player is really willing to put his characters life truely on the line as well, then quite often it's fine to have the villain or the character die on a marginal victory. Because what's at stake at this climactic moment is probably the whole village. Or the temple. Or true love. Or the whole world. In which case, life becomes secondary, and if the game ends for that character right then, it's plenty dramatic enough.

There's no bravado, no coolness, in unneccessarily risking the lives of characters on random die rolls. HQ is intentionally capricious, and you can't really control the outcomes of contests - Hero Points notwithstanding. So players are simply not allowed to risk ejection from the game, unless it's done very, very thoughtfully. HQ enforces this rigorously - you could read the rules as saying that only Complete Defeat means dying which might lead to death.

Which would make it extremely rare. In the games I play, characters die more often than the "dying" rule would normally allow for; but they usually die because a player plans for it to happen. And never when it's no fun for it to happen.

Note: this was cross-posted with Ross and Barna's last posts. But I think it still stands up fine.

Mike

[Web_Weaver]

Just a quick chip-in, which may open a can of worms (I am concentrating on the games theory issue so beware non GNS readers).

Barna,
Mike is not advocating a change or sidestepping of the rules, but he is attempting to re-interpret the rules in a coherent narrativist manner.

What we have here is a problem of incoherence in the rules leading to misunderstanding.

It should be enough to state that the goal of the players is what is at stake, but HQ has not been written with this level of coherence. However, with reference to other games with conflict resolution mechanics, we here at the forge, are attempting to define a coherent interpretation of the rules.

I believe the problem comes down to the writers of HQ. Robin Laws designed the core mechanics of HW as a conflict resolution game, but Greg Stafford was keen on including background specific material which resulted in a drift from the core rules. One example of this is Edge; Greg insisted on weapons having a mechanism built in to accommodate magical weapons or better reflect the old RQ battle magics. By the time Greg rewrote HQ he had realised this was not really needed except in rare instances, and relegated these rules to the back of the book. This is only one example, HQ is full of this incoherence (despite being very well written).

HQ is, by its background centric nature, an uneasy joining of Sim and Narr styles, it is possible to combine styles in this way but it is not easy. (Animist and Scorcery magics are examples of this combination with varying success.)

To add to the incoherence, we have scenario and background material that can further drift the system. Many of the background writers have a simulationist bent: wanting to create a realistic world at the game table, and introducing ideas that help this. (see NPC sheets)

Barna, you state that you have been reading the GNS articles, and you appear to realise the importance of deciding on style before the game. You say you have narrativist leanings, but it may not be as clear-cut as you believe, and this death question is a symptom of the issue at hand. Believe me, I know how difficult this stuff is, as our group are still struggling with these issues after three years of not fully functional HQ/HW play.

Many of your questions appear to reflect a simulationist agenda, not a narrative one. You may need to bend your mind around this core idea before you can apply it to the case at hand and the incoherence in the HQ rule set.

And YOU MAY DECIDE ON A SIMULATIONIST AGENDA which would not be incorrect, but may not sit well with the ideas expressed here.

If in doubt keep asking these questions - and of course that is exactly what you have been doing - but keep in mind at the Forge, answers may be different than those in the HQ-rules forum.

[Mike Holmes]

Good post. And, yeah, this is a case of the incoherence of the design manifesting as a seeming paradox. And, you've nailed it, what we're all doing here is trying to find readings of the rules that work for one agenda or another.

For the simulationism agenda, finding a solution is rather difficult. One of the reasons that I read the rules the way that I do is that in order to get to something that solidly supports classic simulationism, you must change the intent and design of some of the rules. As you say, there's nothing wrong with wanting to move in this direction. But I think that the resulting rule set that's created by just a few small moves in the sim direction will still be quite incoherent.

All this said, I think that adopting the HW coup de grace rules is actually pretty narrativism supporting, and really not very far off from my interpretation. That is, when I played HW, I saw the coup de grace rules as simply giving the player direct theme creating power in the case of life or death situations. That is, once an opponent was defeated in combat, the player had the explicit special power to move the contest results all the way up to Complete Victory (with whatever interpretation of Complete Victory he wanted, too - why, if he can kill the opposing character, can't he simply maim them or something?) This means that the player is given the dilemma of whether or not to kill in every case except for a complete victory. That's powerful stuff.

Basically, again, it means that the player or narrator gets to decide whether or not death is appropriate in this particular situation. It's almost like the game says, "OK, we know you said death was on the line, but are you sure that's really what you wanted?" Or, for the narrator having defeated the PC, "Yes, death seemed to be on the line, and the PCs may have taken their opponent's lives - but wouldn't it be more interesting for the heroes to remain alive and have the defeat mean something else?"

Now, the one slight problem with the HW method, and why I prefer the HQ method, is that doing this explicitly after the fact makes the cases where the player heroes fail and are not killed like they're being let off the hook. This happens in most games at some point. I recall one game of Fantasy Hero that I ran where a PC got crushed by a reputedly man-eating giant. Just mangled. I ruled that the giant put the PC in his backpack as a snack for later - as it happened, the PCs escape and eventual recovery were really fun to play out. But at the very moment of making the decision not to kill the PC, I could sense that the player felt that I had sorta fudged things. That he would have killed the giant, and he was being let off the hook after having accepted the death stakes of going up against it in combat.

That's the whole benefit of a conflict resolution system, as Fred says above - that when you
are done, that the stakes change hands and there's no going back. Looking at it as task resolution, there's always the temptation to say last second that the stakes were not what people thought they were.

With the HQ method, the system simply takes the death stakes off the table as the basic resolution for a combat sort of conflict, understanding that it's problematic for play. But allowing them back in, explicitly. Again, there's the whole section in HQ about what sort of conflicts are good for having death as part of the stakes. Like what does it mean for the character if he kills a foe that's incapacitated.

In other words, you get the same effect in HQ as in HW's Coup de Grace rules - you can still put death on the line if it's well considered. It's just not an exception to the overall normal stake setting process allowed explicitly after winning a combat contest. Both systems take death off the table. HW allows it back in as an exception. HQ makes you go through the same mental process to determine if it's appropriate that you have to go through in any conflict.

Consider the case, again, of the tied up foe. Certainly you don't need to do a contest to be able, physically, to kill this character - it would be absurd to roll to see if a warrior accomplished this as a task (interesting how many RPGs still require it as a task, however - many games have the "auto-kill" rule to cover for this inadequacy). The only question is if there's some other sort of conflict that the character might have to overcome in order to kill the character in question. Which is the normal process with everything in play, the narrator calls for a contest if he thinks that having one is interesting (again, not "something no self-respecting hero would fail.")

If it's not a contest, then it's not a contest, and it simply happens, the same as if the declared goal was to have a character walk across a room.

Being able to kill is an interesting situation to put characters in, don't get me wrong. I often put players in a situation where they have the power of life and death over other characters (in the Green Lake game, the stockade is full of bad guys who are going to escape any day now). The plot immunity that HQ extends to certain haracters is not that they should never die, but, rather than they should never die unless the specific stakes of the contest are something more important than death. That includes a hero's soul. Meaning that a villain's life is worth less to the players than the question of whether or not the character is capable of killing. The villain only has plot immunity up until the point where the stakes are really about who can kick who's ass in combat. This allows a villain to get away to be nuisance another day. But if it should happen that the villain has run his course, then have his marginal defeat mean capture, and then put the question before the player as to whether or not his character is a killer.

In point of fact, how it works in my games for the most part is that players explicitly ask for other stakes. When I ask for their goal, they say that they're trying to capture or injure their opponent or something. It's very simply very rare for them to ask for death - the system informs them that it's generally not allowed, so they ask for other things. Understanding that, if/when it's appropriate, that I'll allow them to answer the question of whether or not they're killers.

Actually asking to capture is the player doing that themselves. Because once a character is captured, pretty much the life/death question is asked. In the Green Lake game, every character that Isadora has sent to the stockade has answered this question in showing that she's dedicated to upholding the rule of law even far, far from what she considers civilization. It would be very easy for her to go all Colonel Kurtz, and kill indiscriminately, but that's not what the character is about.

Yeah, there's a lot of player metagame involved there. That is, Adrienne (player of Isadora), probably thinks to some extent that the villains are cool and that it's fine if they come back to haunt her. So it's fun to play Isadora in a way that co-incides with this as long as it fits the vision of the character. But in one case, she captured a wizard who was causing terrible grief, and while nobody (well, OK, one person) was watching, she killed him after incapacitating him. So, apparently her willingness to uphold the rule of law applies only to cases where she knows that it will affect the colony's chances of survival, and her anger is not great. These varying responses from Isadora regarding her power to dispense death have given us a very clear idea about what is a very interesting character.

Again, in effect, this is the HW Coup de Grace rule. The difference is that I can set the stakes of a conflict (often simply by ommitting to state them explicitly), to anything I want for the player hero. So that if the player loses I'm not always left with the case where I have to let the character off the hook by playing the opposing character as merciful or whatever. I can have the player hero escape wounded or something.

It's a fine distinction, but I think an important one. I'd rather have a general rule that allows us to be flexible in these things, than a hard one that forces every physical conflict to result in a life/death question that may seem like a let down on stakes for a player who's character loses.

Mike