Extended Contests - Mining HQs Narrativist core

[Web_Weaver]

In Heroquest the address of premise can be an active companent in a contest, particularly in EC that are not combat oriented. Its the enumeration of narratavist elements (such as character relationships) that makes Heroquest such a powerful facilitator of narratavist play.

Yes, yes and yes. In my first post I edited out most of this sentence but it applies here:

The contest also encourages qualitative and quantitative decision making, as the player is forced to confront how much his character wants the goal and what he is prepared to risk in achieving it.

You are correct that the relationships and character traits that really hit home here, but also HQ Keywords are a direct nod to premise, as they ground the character, providing background themes of clan, family, homeland and profession. The stated goal on the char sheet also ticks the premise box (We enumerate three of these for each player), leaving only overt themes for the campaign to be provided. (Ideally goals would be consistant with overt themes or extrapolated from them.)

From that furtile bed, all one has to do is throw these elements into an extended contest, sit back and watch the story develop.

It is especially potent when augments within an extended contest are considered as risk, to use my earlier analogy of a tribal moot, if a player wants to use his character's relationship to his family to augment, then I would assign added APs and make it clear that by talking on their behalf he runs the risk of contradiction or hurt feelings. In this way the family background of the character is introduced directly into the narrative hand in hand with the mechanical effect.

If the mechanics can be shaped by the story and vice versa then this perfectly facilitates the agenda.

[Vaxalon]

Robert, what do you see as the advantages of extended contests?

Well, I don't think it is that extended contests are intrinsically superior to simple contests. Its all rooted in the story and the drama really, as far as I am concerned. As per the rules, if its simple task resolution then I defer to the simple contest, or if it is a contest that doesn't seem worth taking the time to work out with an extended contest. Thus for me the default is the EC, with the simple contest as a very useful game tool to move the game forward quickly when required or desirable. If you know what I mean.

I find that simple conflict resolution in HQ has a moderate amount of handling time... it's not quick, but it's reasonable, and it has the right amount of granularity.  If I want to make a fight into a Big Deal, I can pull elements out and resolve them as individual simple conflicts, all of which can drive augments into the final "Who wins?" resolution.

I find this a far more flexible and dramatic system than EC's.

What you seem to be saying, here, is that you don't find EC's to be any better, you just use them because... you use them.

[Web_Weaver]

Quick side question, what's the deal with the cards? I'm not familiar with Hero Wars. . .is the card thing a different EC mechanic, or a method for reducing handling time on an EC? Either way, I'd be interested in learning about it as a potentially useful tool.

Its a a method for reducing handling time.
Sorry for delay on reply here, had to dig out HW for the quote:

You may find it helpful to keep a pile of scrap index cards on hand. During any group contest, write each participant's name on a separate card. At the beginning of each round, arrange the pile of cards according to that round's order of action, so you can just look at your stack of cards to remind yourself who's up next.

I do the above and list on them current APs and notes on their current goal and relevent skills used. You then place them all in action order (usually AP order but can vary as per the rules), and run through them from top to bottom adjusting the AP and notes as you go. It is very quick and intuitive once you get into the flow.

I stack them a little like air traffic control stacks, with all names and APs showing at all times, so AP exchanges are made easy. I also prepare some contests in this way, although preparation is a little contrary to my style as player actions tend to dictate scenes.

[Lamorak33]

Hi

I find that simple conflict resolution in HQ has a moderate amount of handling time... it's not quick, but it's reasonable, and it has the right amount of granularity.  If I want to make a fight into a Big Deal, I can pull elements out and resolve them as individual simple conflicts, all of which can drive augments into the final "Who wins?" resolution.

I find this a far more flexible and dramatic system than EC's.

What you seem to be saying, here, is that you don't find EC's to be any better, you just use them because... you use them.

What I am saying is that I like Extended Contests because they take a certain amount of "to'ing and fro'ing" between contest participants that I enjoy, if that  "to'ing and fro'ing" is right for that scene, and its not all about melee, though it is always (of course) about conflict.

An interesting aside is that as a GM I have on occassion declared an extended contest and had the players say "Wouldn't that be better as a simple contest?" On those occasions I deferred to the players. Converesly was a player in a game the other night involved in a simple contest that I think would have been better done as an Extended Contest.

Regards
Rob

[Vaxalon]

A string of simple contests has "to-ing and fro-ing" too, in fact moreso because it doesn't have a simple optimal strategy.

[Mike Holmes]

I don't think that Rob was saying that EC are neccessarily better than the method in question, Fred. Simply that they work fine.

I think that ECs are, in fact, a series of simple contests, with some extra rules added on to ensure that the goal is eventually achieved and the contest doesn't go on interminably.

Could it be better? Yeah. But I don't see anything wrong with them as they stand.

Mike

[Ian Cooper]

(Note I'm not using conflict in the specific sense of conflict resolution here, but the broader sense of opposed goals)

One thing to note on the simple vs. extended debate is that simple contests between evenly matched opponents tend to result in a minor victory or defeat. If you want to be sure of getting a complete defeat or victory you need to go to an extended contest. Why does this matter? Because it means that when you want to run the big takedown on the villain you may want to use an extended contest, because it is most likely to allow us to resolve the conflict permanently. In game when you default to running as simple contests you get a pattern of a set of minor victories or defeats over a specific aspects of a conflict. When player frustration builds they tend to plot to 'end this once and for all' and then you bring in the extended contest. By now hopefully everyone wants to savour the big takedown.

So the engine naturally mimics the usual pacing of stories. Stick with simple contests until its time to end that conflict when you bring in the extended contest climax.

The difficult usually comes when a simple contest produces a complete defeat too early and there is a dissatisfaction with the way that the conflict ended with a whimper and not a bang. Because this tends to be forced by hero points though, it often means the player was bored with the conflict and is using hero points to bring it to an early end. The natural 1 vs 20 roll is rare enough that it shouldn't phase on this.

I can probably give some Actual Play if it would help, but I'm stuck for time this weekend.

[Web_Weaver]

I am stepping in with "my thread authority" here to try and bring some structure to a discussion I think can be productive. I'm not comfortable pulling rank here, but I feel it is needed before the thread degenerates. I am thankful for ALL contributions so far, but I am keen to halt any potential entrenched arguments.

In short, If people want to have an Extended v Simple debate please open a new thread.

The thrust of this thread is, for me and my group, Extended Contests are the best option in certain situations. And that far from detracting from the narrativist agenda of my game, I feel that they enhance it.

I am happy for us to talk about those situations where they have worked or not, pull in actual examples, and even analyse if they would work as linked simple contests, either equally or better. So, lets get specific and productive.

Some questions to participants so far:

Vaxalon (not sure what your real name is sorry, is it Fred?): Can you provide an example of play where you handled a complex scene with chained simple contests so that we can examine which elements of play would be emphasised with each technique? Not too much detail, as that can be hard to produce on demand, just an overview of the contest and goals, the thrust of the narrative through the contest and the resolution. Please see this request for what it is, genuine enquiry, not an opportunity to snipe at your chosen methods.

Also, I think this quote may indicate where we differ in style:

A string of simple contests has "to-ing and fro-ing" too, in fact more so because it doesn't have a simple optimal strategy.

I certainly do not present extended contests as having an optimal strategy, the narrator has a lot of leeway within the contest to introduce elements and provide situation and goal changes, I find these helpful in stopping the contest becoming ritual mathematics. If your experience has been the latter then you may have dismissed the technique without good examples of play. For a narrativist agenda to really take hold, one needs to be able to map the mechanics onto the actions in the conflict. Or to put it another way, the dice must have dramatic meaning if they are to tell the story. You obviously find this easy in strung together simple contests, but the same can hold true in extended contests, its just a different skill.

Ian Cooper: Am I correct in assuming that your agenda is a more traditional one. That when you narrate, you provide a co-ordinated opposition for the players to overcome? Your comments are valid and would perfectly represent how one of the other narrators in our group handles extended contests, but curiously, despite your agreeing with me in principle I don't see much common ground in our styles of play. I am still interested in any actual examples though as they may help clarify the issue.

Rob: I am interested in your aside:

An interesting aside is that as a GM I have on occassion declared an extended contest and had the players say "Wouldn't that be better as a simple contest?" On those occasions I deferred to the players.

Could you expand on the details here, specifically what the contest was and what the players reasons where. I agree that it should be open to discussion as to which style of conflict is used, if the players are not invested in the extended contest then they will not usually work well. I will provide an example where this happened to me in my next post.

I also get the impression that far from "using them because you do" that you use extended contests because they offer somthing to your game, can you define what it is that you feel they offer? I know you have been asked a similar question before but I am interested in the answer here.

[Lamorak33]

Hi

I am interested in your aside:

An interesting aside is that as a GM I have on occasion declared an extended contest and had the players say "Wouldn't that be better as a simple contest?" On those occasions I deferred to the players.

Could you expand on the details here, specifically what the contest was and what the players reasons where. I agree that it should be open to discussion as to which style of conflict is used, if the players are not invested in the extended contest then they will not usually work well. I will provide an example where this happened to me in my next post.

I also get the impression that far from "using them because you do" that you use extended contests because they offer something to your game, can you define what it is that you feel they offer? I know you have been asked a similar question before but I am interested in the answer here.

One situation that springs to mind is a combat situation. The opponents were simple guards (mooks if you like) and they were confronted by the best fighters in our game at the time (Arya Twinblades and Olend. Arya had extreme skill, extreme weapons and a player who had a knack of rolling great dice at importantmoments). I wanted to see if they could take the guards out before they raised the alarm. Hence the extended contest notion. I was going to give them a 3 rounds of fighting before the alarm was raised. The players just said they thought that they didn't feel the situation merited an extended contest, so I certainly wasn't going to enforce one. The interesting thing was that Arya was about to meet the evil wizard who had kept her and her twin prisoner since the invasion of their land years previous. Arya had managed to escape and become a player character!! Her goal of course was to rescue her sister).

What do EC's add? Drama, pure and simple. Extended drama. I am not fond of this notion of running consecutive simple contests. If its what I think it is then my opinion is that its clunky and not the least bit elegant. Also, Ian is spot on when he says that sometimes you want a decisive end to the contest which is just not possible with SC's.

Regards
Rob

[Web_Weaver]

An example where an Extended Contest failed for me and my group.

In the early days of playing HW I was still climbing the learning curve, and back then I felt that the main advantage of extended contests was that you could portray non-combat scenes in a similar way to combat. This really did not suit my overall agenda, which was proto-narrativist without having any idea what that meant.

I decided that I should reserve Extended Contests for contests I felt were important to the game, and would endeavour to have at least one per session. One week a debate/interrogation of a prominent NPC with an opposing hidden agenda to the players was deemed to be this weeks 'big thing'.

The players seemed un-convinced that this was suitable for an extended contest, but I pitched it as an opportunity to expore how the system worked in these instances and we started calculating opening skills. The first oversight was not bothering to analyse the goals aside from "we try and convince the NPC to tell us what we need to know". So, in our rush to the mechanics we were already somewhat task orientated. Next, a debate ensued, and we tried our hardest to frame what was effectively an "in character" debate into AP bids and die roll outcomes. This was where we made our second mistake, we didn't really tie the dice outcomes back into the conversation, it was effectively two concurrent activities. A mathematical / mechanical contest, and an in character discussion.

Not surprisingly, one of the activities came to a natural end before the other. The players had deduced the information from the NPCs reluctance to discuss certain elements, well before the EC had worked its way through. We ditched the contest, and I was left wondering what had gone wrong.

It took many months and discovering the forge for me to learn the lessons from this, but the lessons were:

Don't decide unilaterally on extended contests.
Don't force extended conflicts for pacing reasons alone.
Make sure that goals are clearly defined as meaningful conflict, especially before an extended contest.
Be mindful of changing the goals or the situation if the contest begins to become abstract.
Discuss the meaning of the contest with the players throughout, prompt them to change goals if required.
Make sure that the actions in the contest map to the mechanics with dramatic meaning, not as a gauge of who is winning.
Ensure that all dice rolls have impact and import to the conflict.

[Web_Weaver]

One situation that springs to mind is a combat situation. ... I was going to give them a 3 rounds of fighting before the alarm was raised.

Getting past guards is such a classic example that you could probably find hundreds of discussions of this on the web.
In this instance it seems the players were right, based on the mechanical way you framed the contest. Infact, linked simple contests would be ideal here. You would roll for the "Get past the guards without raising the alarm" conflict and then apply the appropriate modifiers from the contest consequences table to the next conflict.

If, however you had pitched the whole thing as an extended contest with the initial goal of "rescue Anya'a sister with stealth" then the get past the guards roll could have been a perfectly framed opening exchange. And, you could have focused on the "at what cost" or the "how far are we prepared to go" angle to stay focused on the dramatic meaning.

What do EC's add? Drama, pure and simple. Extended drama. I am not fond of this notion of running consecutive simple contests. If its what I think it is then my opinion is that its clunky and not the least bit elegant. Also, Ian is spot on when he says that sometimes you want a decisive end to the contest which is just not possible with SC's.

I agree (unsurprisingly), one can maintain a clear focus on the dramatic import of the contest, and its clear resolution, by utilising ECs. By dividing it up into smaller contests it can become both artificial and less focused on resolution. But, I am drifting into "which is best" without specific examples so I will slap my own wrist and stop here, as I do use linked simple contests for some things.

[Web_Weaver]

An early example of where extended contests worked well for me.

As an addition to my above actual play example I will detail the very next extended contest in my game, as it also helped me in the HW/HQ learning curve and highlights other aspects of their use.

One of the players had taken it upon himself to fight against an animist weather front, simply because it wasn't theist like his character. I decided the storm was actually a part of a ritual, and ensured that a local village witnessed the conflict, and in the course of the story the character became engaged in a staring contest with an NC from the fishing village which had just had its rituals disrupted.

The player in question took on the contest as a "step up" moment, where he could make himself look good to the group, as he was a relatively new player. (Some alarm bells may be ringing here for theorists.)

For me on the other hand, it presented an opportunity to emphasise differing religious outlooks between players. How this conflict differed from the previous one was mainly in me being prepared to go with the flow, and also my being active in shifting and expanding the conflict to highlight the drama.

The contest started innocently and with little real conflict implied, I narrated that the village champion was unimpressed by the newcomers and was staring at the most obvious fighter in the party. The player took up the gauntlet and started a contest, and I decided as before that this would be the weeks "big thing". Initial exchanges were straight forward with the goal from the player "I will stare him down". My proposition that this should be an extended contest was welcomed by the player in question but another player had some concerns as he couldn't see how other players could be involved.

I was careful to both illicit responses from other players and tie in their actions into the contest and the conflict rapidly escalated. It was always a "who will blink first" contest, but the actual actions in the round were focused on character traits, relationships and, as the contest stepped up, magical reserves. The battle of wills eventually transmuted into a magical battle with weather changes such as darkening clouds and rising winds, surrounding the two contestants, as well as other players augmenting various sides (depending on character outlook). The first to blink was the champion of the village, and the resulting major victory was narrated as a theist downpour of rain totally ruining the planned animist ceremony. The fallout was that two of the players took on opposing attitudes to storms as character skills, and the village both chastised their champion and framed the player characters as rivals who were ejected from the village.

Again I could not fully analyse what had happened at the time, and why this contest had worked where the first had failed, but now I can look back and see these lessons:

I didn't get distracted by the initial skills used, and allowed a dramatic escalation based on shifting goals (despite it appearing static).
At all times I kept focused on how the contest effected the overall dramatic situation in the village, narrating the villagers reactions.
I used the weather analogy as a focus to represent current AP totals, giving a clear story value to the mechanics.
I encouraged the other players reactions as leads into the conflict, both as augments and specific AP bids.
I embraced player character conflicts as a functional offshoot of the contest.
I was careful to make sure the players understood the ramifications and meaning of the conflict as it escalated.

Unfortunately I was too slow in learning all of the lessons from this, and we struggled on, sometimes getting the choice of EC / SC spot on and other times missing badly. A regrettable fallout was the eventual dropping out of the newest player due to major clashes of agenda. But hey, I didn't even understand what my agenda was and neither did he or the other players, so I look back on it as a learning experience.

[Vaxalon]

I am completely baffled by the last few posts.  I really have no idea how to respond; it's so far outside my own experience that I can just say, "Hunh" and stock it up to "different strokes for different folks".

As I have said before, I'm going to record my method of doing complex conflicts so that you can see what I'm talking about.

[Web_Weaver]

I am completely baffled by the last few posts...
As I have said before, I'm going to record my method of doing complex conflicts so that you can see what I'm talking about.

That's cool, if my examples seem strange it is probably in their presentation, the actual mechanics were identical to the book, I was attempting to highlight the actual thinking and dramatic play within the contests, as well as how I presented them at the time. I know from various threads that my style is different from some, but its not in a different ball park, honest. Besides, I would do both very differently now, the examples are over three years ago.

I am interested to see your examples, mainly because in my current game I haven't used any extended contests yet (two sessions) and therefore can't provide any recent examples myself to work through in terms of mechanics.

In a recent "big fight" I used linked simple contests as a waiting mechanism until the players understood what I was looking for, an actual dramatic conflict, and I was then able to resolve the whole thing with a simple contest. I am still in the process of explaining my agenda to my players, and they are on a learning curve of their own, and the last thing I want to do is come on strong with theory. Patience, scene framing, goal mechanics and one eye on reward mechanisms is my chosen method.

If you can provide an example with some basic maths (modifiers applied from one simple contest to another), we may be able to grapple with the mappability of system and drama.

If anyone else can detail a conflict that suited an extended contest with some vague figures and the concurrent dramatic detail that would be cool too.

[Vaxalon]

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20061.0

http://games.spaceanddeath.com/yudhishthirasdice/55   (scroll down to item 4)

This should give you a basic idea of what I do.