Brand had an interesting thought in another thread about deer hunting. I wanted to expand on it in a new thread. He said, that instead of having "Kill a deer" as his goal for the contest, he'd have "Hunt Successfully" instead. That way, a success would mean that you had some number of dead deer. Seems cool, and avoids the problem of the extreme difficulty of actually killing a deer.

Now, what this seems to be is just a different framing of the conflict. That is, instead of saying that its about killing the deer, we say it's about hunting. But isn't that a slippery slope? I mean, what if a player tries to frame killing someone as performing assassination correctly?

Basically, the rules provide plot immunity to characters by making them only permenantly altered (dead) if/when somebody scores a complete success against them. This is an exception to the rule which states that in a contest that the winner gets his goal. If I'm trying to kill you, and get a Major Success, then I don't get my goal.

So, where does the plot immunity exception extend? Any and all killing? What if my goal is to cut off your arm only? Is killing of an animal exempt, or potentially exempt?

Are there any other ways to look at it than in terms of plot immunity? Is it a restriction on certain kinds of goals?

It seems to me that this an important job for the GM, but that it's been left to extrapolation to determine how the job is done. I mean, I can't fault the poster on the deer thread for assuming that you'd need a Complete Success - I'd probably require that, too, if Brand hadn't mentioned his idea. Maybe it's what the game warrants.

So what do you see as the guideline?

Mike

I don't quite understand the problem, Mike. Maybe you could post a link to the parent thread so I could get the context?

It seems to me that it's just one of those cases where the players want to expedite a part of the game action so as to spend time on things that interest them to a greater degree.

I can definitely see the same method used for assassination if the act isn't something the players wish to focus on or it isn't of primary dramatic importance.

As a GM I don't think I'd require a complete success to achieve the goal. I'd just alter the results as normal for varying degrees of success. Should the character fail badly enough, or the player decides to pursue the issue more deeply, I'd have complications resulting from lack of success creep into center stage.

-Chris

Here's the link to the parent thread.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10594

-Chris

The parent thread isn't terribly relevant.

The question (no problems here) posed is what the guideline is for when you use the plot immunity effect to protect something from the normal results of a player succeeding at getting his goal. Normally, if I said I was going to kill Character A, I would succeed on any level of Success. But, because it's death on the line, I can only succeed with a Complete Success. When is it a good thing to use this, and when not?

Chris suggests that it's about proper framing of conflict, and I think I agree. But how can we state that? Is it just a "use your best judgement" thing? I'd like to see what support we can come up with from the rules for this interpretation, too.

Mike

Mike:
I think it all depends on the importance of the scenario to what's happening. Surely, if the PC is squaring off against a major villain, you don't want to just kill him off for a Marginal Success.

If the PC is squaring off against a bunch of Mooks, however, a marginal success might drop one and send the rest running for cover, or regrouping/rethinking their attack.

Scott

I like how that sounds.

But is it supported by the material. I think, perhaps the best support may be in interpreting the Mass Combat rules. That is, if you lead a bunch of people in a war, and your side kills many, that's precedent for killing "mooks" without complete success.

Hmmm.

I just don't want to start talking about this method without knowing that the rules really do support it. That is, I don't want to seem like a rules revisionist spouting my own strained interpretation.

Mike

Mike wrote: Chris suggests that it's about proper framing of conflict, and I think I agree. But how can we state that? Is it just a "use your best judgement" thing? I'd like to see what support we can come up with from the rules for this interpretation, too.

Scott wrote: If the PC is squaring off against a bunch of Mooks, however, a marginal success might drop one and send the rest running for cover, or regrouping/rethinking their attack.

I don't know, it seems to me that you are skirting around the issue somewhat. The real problem is that first the rules say that any success indicates that the character gets his goal, and then they say that killing another character is possible only on a complete success. The deer isn't relevant to this, and neither is the assassin. They are both examples of general situation versus definite individual, but that's easy to resolve the way you just did. In the general case the resistance is effectively the lowest survival skill of the weakest example individual, and that is what you get on a marginal success. No problems there.

As to the main question, I, too see it as problematic in some situations. It's certainly easiest to always when possible define the goals of the characters to not include killing, and then the rules work fine. The problem comes from when killing something specific is unavoidable. It's a major problem if killing Joe the neighbour is statistically harder than besting the chief's champion in arm-wrestling, just because killing requires the most optimal result possible.

I don't have the book here in Easter land, but let me give one uncanonical interpretation: the ban on killing is meant to ensure the survivability of player characters and other heroic individuals. When it's a mook or other insignificant individual one is killing it should be easy (except for possibly the moral component), though the GM may still institute the psychological flaws proposed in the rules.

The problem that remains is the decision about who is special and who isn't. This could be decided by simple GM fiat, so that when someone has more role in a story by getting killed than living he can be killed with any success. We can however go even more uncanonical and institute a new rule: whenever a character loses a conflict that would result in a permanent change (like death), the player can nullify the change by spending a hero point. It's assumed that the character tricked his opponent or escaped or just is so tough. This cannot be done if the win was a complete success.

The benefits of this change in rules are a multitude: it's a law of scenario design in HQ that really important characters tend to have at least one hero point, so this solution automatically tells us who is simply killable and who isn't. It also doesn't discriminate against mooks any more than the rules already do. Most importantly, it frees us from the near subconsicious, constant worrying about the type of goal a player is proposing: no need to think about whether a goal results in death, or if something is death-like permanent condition, or any of that hassle. If the loser doesn't have hero points he is fair game for permanent changes, and if he does have one, well, if he wants to nullify the permanent change, he can.

It should be noted that there is no canonical answer in the rule book as far as I know. I noted the discrepancy when first reading the book, but as far as I saw there was no solution.

It's also important that not killing is a strong setting element in Glorantha, it seems from the book. The GM is encouraged to institute repercussions for needless killing ranging from vendettas to psychological problems. From this viewpoint giving death immunity to all (non-foodsource) individuals is possibly defensible. I for one think that demanding a complete success and playing up the consequences relegates play to almost sunday-cartoon level of violence. It's doable, but I prefer to have other options at hand for other styles.

It should be noted that I would still keep to the idea of killing being a deliberate choice if instituting rules changes. This would mean that if a player declared simple victory as his goal, the opponents would largely live and escape. In the case of mooks it'd be mechanically identical with the intention of killing them (or most of them at least), as it should be. In the rules as they stand the assumption is that the killing is done as an automatic action after the conflict, but as long as the intentionality is preserved this change should pose no problem.

Mike, as you know, I don't have the HQ book, so the exact text of the rules is unavailable. But, given my pervy-nar-monkey tendencies, I would be inclinded to apply that rule only to PCs. The players will decide which NPCs are important through their statements of goals.

Hi Mike,

I think this is one of those points where the book would have done well by giving a more solid example of Social Contract in play. It seems to me that the idea of Plot Immunity from certain effects at certain results relies mostly upon the group. I think any permanent change to a hero without the player's consent is problematic.

Although there are no written rules to support this, my take on it is that a permanent alteration to a player's character has a bigger effect on the player's experience in play than changes to any Narrator character will have on a GM, so heroes should receive that extra level of Plot Immunity.

The way I've been handling it is during the initial set up of the conflict, is having a "Free and Clear" period in which Goals and possible Outcomes are negotiated. For example, if a player wants their hero to kill the Dreaded Knight, and the Narrator makes it clear that failure will have permanent consequences, perhaps the player might negotiate to only fight the knight to a standstill, with lesser consequences for failure.

Unfortunately, this is one of those grey areas which could have benefited from some guidelines.

Chris

Eero Tuovinen wrote: We can however go even more uncanonical and institute a new rule: whenever a character loses a conflict that would result in a permanent change (like death), the player can nullify the change by spending a hero point. It's assumed that the character tricked his opponent or escaped or just is so tough. This cannot be done if the win was a complete success.

Bankuei wrote: I think any permanent change to a hero without the player's consent is problematic.

lightcastle wrote:
I don't think this is actually a rule change, is it? I might be misunderstanding what you're saying, but it sounds like you are saying a player can save his character from death with a hero point expenditure, not applicable in case of a complete loss.

But since spending a hero point bumps one level of success, that's already there, including in the case of a complete loss. They just bump it up one stage from the original result - preventing death.

To counteract this added lethality, where any loss in any conflict could result in death if it would be logical, I instituted the rule earlier referenced: any character that happens to have a hero point handy can use it to stave of death. All the other concequences are unaffected, but the character crawls from under the bodies later. Thus the GM doesn't have the burden of deciding case-by-case if someone is killed with a less than complete success, as he can just consult his (presumably) earlier decision about how many hero points that character has. As only player characters and great heroes have hero points, this works out to the self-evident solution of allowing death-immunity only to important characters.

Hope I made myself clear this time.

I see a lot of support for the idea that it's OK to kill off any non-PC assuming that they don't have some special plot importance. And that makes sense to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm on that side in theory.

But the rules don't support it, in fact doing this leaves a sort of glaring problem. Which is, if I kill a lone NPC with, say, a Minor Success, then what do I do with the -10%? I mean, the consequences do leave you an out here in that they do say that consequences are something that the narrator "may" assign as a result of a contest.

But doesn't it seem odd that the same success that would kill a particular sort of NPC, might only result in a -1 to another? That's a huge difference in plot immunity.

Mike

I'm not really seeing the problem, Mike. In essence, we're not dealing with two different types of NPCs. We're dealing with a situation/task and an NPC. Perhaps I'm taking a fairly loose interpretation of the rules, but for me it comes down to a matter of perception.

Regardless of whether death is on the line, I view a "generic" roll (for lack of a better term) as just a simple conflict resolution roll. If it's so unimportant that you're not playing it out scene by scene (and you quite likely don't even have the NPC participants statted out) then it's certainly not important enough for it to fall under the killing rules.

It doesn't explicitly state that such a situation can be handled that way, but it doesn't say it shouldn't either. There's lots of room between those lines which is, I think, what constitutes the main difference between rpgs and many other types of game.

-Chris

C. Edwards wrote: It doesn't explicitly state that such a situation can be handled that way, but it doesn't say it shouldn't either. There's lots of room between those lines which is, I think, what constitutes the main difference between rpgs and many other types of game.

Mike, I think in someway you are making this harder to understand, just because there are aesthetic choices that make it playable. I understand your desire to find a way to grapple with it that makes it smooth and all integrated in your head. (I usually am like that, for whatever reason this particular problem isn't triggering that in me.)

If you ever have an epiphany that suddenly clarifies this you, please do come and shout "Eureaka!" at us. :-)

(I for one, would love to hear it.)

I don't see this case as any different from the use of any other skill.

If someone starts a seduction contest wth the goal of 'I want to have that man fall truly madly deeply in love with me', would they succeed in their goal on a minor victory?

If they wanted to write a timeless classic play, that would change the way their culture thought about what it meant to be human forever, would they reach that goal on a minor victory?

It's pretty much the same issue as pompous abilities like 'instant-kill death glance 13', it's the skill rating, not the name, that determines effectiveness, similarly its the the result, not the statement of intent, that determines the outcome of a contest.

soru

I want to preface this with: I'm totally ignorant of the system. I've been reading the HQ forum for a while and my copy of the rules is due to arrive today, I think.

So hopefully I won't just be stupid, but something occurred to me while reading this bit:

Mike Holmes wrote: ...we're only competing against the wall's height, and the other effects simply follow from the success (per automatic success if someone wants to be really rigorous).

This is an odd thought process, it seems to me, however. I mean, to kill a thug NPC, then, the idea is that you're going up against it's fighting ability, and death is only a side effect, right? But then against a PC in a fight, then wouldn't the same logic apply? I mean, unless the character states that they're targeting the "aliveness" of the PC, he's vulnerable. Because only in attacking something directly is it then safe (ironically).

soru wrote:
I don't see this case as any different from the use of any other skill.

If someone starts a seduction contest wth the goal of 'I want to have that man fall truly madly deeply in love with me', would they succeed in their goal on a minor victory?

If they wanted to write a timeless classic play, that would change the way their culture thought about what it meant to be human forever, would they reach that goal on a minor victory?

It's pretty much the same issue as pompous abilities like 'instant-kill death glance 13', it's the skill rating, not the name, that determines effectiveness, similarly its the the result, not the statement of intent, that determines the outcome of a contest.

Christopher Weeks wrote:
It sounds like the way everyone wants this issue to be resolved is as if the character is 'targetting' the other character's player-investment. Assuming that each player has one character, those characters are by definition as heavily invested as possible. The important NPCs have less than any PCs, but maybe still quite a bit -- for purposes of plot immunity, enough. Other NPCs have less and they're the mooks. But I assume there's no mechanical way of tracking or simulating this kind of importance, right?

soru wrote: I don't see this case as any different from the use of any other skill.

I tend to look at this completely from a PC-centric perspective. Meaning that NPCs just don't carry a lot of weight with me as a GM. They have no immunity to anything.

So, as far as I can tell if we boiled it down to its base essence, this issue is about "did you roll high enough?"

Mike Holmes wrote: For instance, you could say that for one contest the player's goal is "Kill Count Rolf in the square." In another you could say that the contest is "Kill Count Rolf in such a way that the entire community fears me." In the first case, the marginal success could be seen as not completely accomplishing the stated goal, resulting in Rolf injured. With the second, the marginal success could be seen as killing Rolf, and the community being mostly unimpressed (only a -1 effect).

That all works, Chris. The HP thing is very rigorous, and effective.

But I was trying to do this without altering the rules. Though there seem to be loopholes, the text makes it pretty clear in examples that NPCs do usually have the same sort of plot immunity as PCs as the default. That is, my framing ideas here seem to potentially be somewhat of a change from the norm, and I'm looking for a way to show that they are the norm.

The opening is that the rules don't ever say anything like, "You can't kill an NPC without a dying result." You have to back-interperet to discover that. But it seems that this is what's indicated by doing that. Basically the consequences section is saying that death equals the sort of effect brought about by, and only by, a Complete Success.

I'm looking for the forward looking argument that says that this is not so (if there is one). Here's one, for example. Jumping over a wall has a permenant effect. The effect is that the wall has been jumped. That can't be changed back. The game suggests that this is doable with a marginal success. Meaning that the definition of "permenant success" in the Total Victory section must mean that it only pertains to certain kinds of successes. Permenant here must mean in terms of plot, or something. In which case, we have our explanation as to why killing mooks isn't a permenant change.

I think there are fairly simple counterarguments to this, however.

Mike

Refer to my "lots of room between the lines" comment above. :)

I know you're looking for a solid solution that stems logically from a tight interpretation of the rules as written, but I honestly don't think you're going to find it. There's just to much inherent ambiguity to overcome.

The closest you could probably get is asking Greg Stafford just exactly how he meant such situations to be played out. He'll either take the tight interpretation or the loose, just as we have. Either way, leaves us right where we started unless someone actually rewrites that area of the rules to be completely explicit as to how to handle those situations.

-Chris

Killing someone is possible by administering a coup-de-grace at the end of any successful combat-oriented contest. This is done like any parting shot, just a bit easier if the foe is already Injured or Dying. Mind you, I don't have my copy of HeroQuest handy and may be recalling the way Hero Wars implemented this.

Refer to my ancient post here for how I handled an assassination in playtest. It is a different process, really, as the goal is actually to render the target open to attack by circumventing his defenses and positioning oneself effectively to administer the killing blow/shot. I ran it as a group extended contest, with each round consuming a week's time.

The HQ mechanics provide plot immunity only in the sense that killing requires a conscious decision rather than a fortunate series of die rolls.

RaconteurX wrote: Killing someone is possible by administering a coup-de-grace at the end of any successful combat-oriented contest. This is done like any parting shot, just a bit easier if the foe is already Injured or Dying. Mind you, I don't have my copy of HeroQuest handy and may be recalling the way Hero Wars implemented this.

First, I'd like to address Mike's "Overshooting Goals" issue.

If I'm, using Close Combat to try to kill Frederick, then that's an apropriate use of Close Combat and we're fine. If my goal is to "Kill Frederick and impress everyone", the overshoot issue can be dealt with using an apropriateness modifier. My goal is beyond what you'd ordinarily expect to do with Close Combat, perhaps my Narrator would impose a -10 modifier. Now if I get a Major success perhaps I killed Frederick but failed to fully impress everyone, but it's still fair because without the -10 modifier I'd ahve probably got a Complete Success at a streightforward kill attempt anyway.

I think one problem is that in HeroQuest it's actualy very rare, even in Simple Contests, for an entire situation to actualy be resolved in a single roll. It's very rare in a Simple Contest combat for anyone to actualy die, even if the stated goals were to fight to the death.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Look at the drama of the situation. Even if it's just a fight with a mook, the moment of the mooks actual death is often worth an extra camera cut, an extra sentence describing the body being hurled against a wall and sliding to the ground, etc. Game mechanicaly what this means is that unless you got a Complete Success, you still have to state after defeating the guy that yes, you are realy going to make sure he's actualy dead.

How much fun would it be if every time you jumped at a wall, you either landed effortlessly on the other side, or bounced off and landed on your butt. Sometimes you have to flip off the top of the wall. Other times you land half across it and heave yourself over. other times you hit the wall, but just hang on to the top with your fingertips and have to panstakingly haul yourself up.

Crossing a wall or killing a guy are binary situations. Either you crossed it/killed him or you didn't. Makign someone fall in love with you is a much more graduated situation. She might be in love with you today, but it might be an easy fad for her to shake off, or she might be utterly devoted to you unto death. In a binary situation I'd sualy just require extra narration from the player as to how their character coped with a partial success, but not require any further rolls to acheive their goal. The contest leaves the mook incapacitated, actualy kiling him is a post-contest act with no resistance. With a situation where the final goal is a result on a flexible scale there's a bit more of a problem. Intuitively I'd like to give the result measurable rating, like an ability. The better your seduction result, the higher the Love rating you inspire in your lady. A number of ways of doign that have ben proposed on the HW rules list.

Personaly, I usualy give pretty much a Complete Success result on a Major Success, and on Complete Success give extra bonus narration and rewards on a Complete Success. If I'd written the rules, the scale might have been Marginal, Major, Complete and Outstanding Success. That kind of interpretation of results has proved much more satisfying for me and my players.


Simon Hibbs

Mostly your post seems to come down to just saying that you cope with it just like the rest of us do, Simon. It's certainly right where I'm at right now, I just cope with it in whatever way seems appropriate at the moment (if I've given some impression that this has even slowed my play by one iota, then I apollogize for misinforming you). What I'm looking for is some guiding principle that makes coping much more straightforward. So that we can deal with any declaration of intent in a process oriented way.

Which I'm becoming more and more convinced just isn't forthcoming. In part because I haven't managed to state the problem so that people really understand it, and in part because I think it may simply be insoluble. All the suggestions that I'm getting seem to boil down to "use your best judgement, and make it work." Which is precisely where I started at, and was hoping to overcome.

I'm still interested in approaching the problem from the "Parting Shot" vs "Coup de Grace" contradiction. Let me restate the problem. The Coup de Grace rule seems to state that if I've achieved any level of success over an opponent, that I can then adjust their state to the "dying" level. There are many implications. One of which is that, if I can put them to dying, that I should probably also be able to move them to any lesser state. I should be able to injure them instead of killing them, for instance. The other question is whether or not the rule pertains to situations outside of combat. Given that the consequences of contests are meant to apply to any contest, I'd think that you could do a similar maneuver in a non-combat situation. That is, you could, if you defeated a foe in a debat, put the nails in the coffin, so to speak, and move him to a completely defeated position. The generalization of the rule would mean that any level of success would effectively be a Complete Success if the player so desired.

It seems to me that this dramatically changes the entire dynamic of contests. I mean, what's the point of determining a level of outcome if the player can then just select a more potent one? Or is the rule really only meant to cover combat situations? The reasoning being that it's an important moral choice, so that balances out the motive to do it? I'm not sure that I'm buying it.

I think that quite possibly, there are two directions in design conflicting here. If you don't have the Coup de Grace rule, it means that death never occurs without a Complete Success. I think that some people just have a problem with that. Looking at HQ contests as task resolution, they think, "If I want to kill someone, and I only get half way there, why would I stop?" Basically, this is a failure to understand how the "No Repeat Attempts" rule works. Because it's completely viable to play in a way that would only allow for people to die only on complete successes.

What I see here are two colliding visions of how the game works. The "parting shot" rule is actually a functional compromise. It says, you can't do repeat attempts, but you can get in a parting shot. That's fine. But why use these risky rules if the Coup de Grace rules seem to make them unneccessary (even if only in combat situations)? What I think is going on is that the Coup de Grace concept was from HW, and that the discussion of killing folks in the book was meant to be about the moral choice, not a mechanical choice. Though I'll have to read up again.

OTOH, another interpretation is that circumstances could make a further roll a matter of an automatic success. This again becomes a framing issue. Like the assassination example given above. If your goal is to knock someone out (or the equivalent), which only requires a marginal success, then killing them could be construed as a second goal, in which case it's not a repeat attempt. And being unconscious, it's ruled an automatic success.

What this means, however, is that all a player has to do is be very careful about how they state a contest. If they really want an NPC dead, then they should state that they're intending to incapacitate the NPC. Then they can kill them at lesiure. Whereas if they stated that they intended to kill, ironically, a marginal success would have to result in the target fleeing or something that made a repeat attempt implausible in-game.

So, you either have one of two problems. If the coup de grace is an additional rule, it means that mechanical consequence levels are a player choice. If the coup de grace is a matter of framing and automatic success, then you incentivize players to approach contests with some strange assumptions, which, if exploited, again mean that the mechanical consequence outcomes are selectable.

The "solution" to all these problems is to have the narrator in control of the dramatic scope of all contests. But sans guidelines this seems heavy-handed and arbitrary. In any case it seems that eliminating the coup de grace as a separate concept would help that.

Mike

Basically, this is a failure to understand how the "No Repeat Attempts" rule works.

Mike, good points regarding Coup de Grace.

The general problem is a difficult one, I can't yet see a satisfactory way of one the one hand always making sure that all simple contests realy do produce a definitive result, and yet also systematicaly have different levels of success be meaniningful in an obvious way.

In the end, it simply isn't dramaticaly desirable for simple contests to always produce a definitive result.

I think I have more to say on this, but I have to go now.


Simon Hibbs

soru wrote:

Basically, this is a failure to understand how the "No Repeat Attempts" rule works.

Does that rule really still apply if you succeed at a task?

Mike Holmes wrote: Second, this relates to the idea of the automatic partial success method that's been bandied about. That is, if there's a character with information, you can state the conflict as, "I want to get the info from Rolf" or, "I want to get the info from Rolf without him hating me." In the first case, you need at least a marginal victory to get the information. In the second, you always get the information, but failure means that you get a penalty based on Rolf's ire. So, basically, you have a full spectrum of possibilities here where anything can be successful at any level. Again the question is whether just allowing this to happen based solely on GM peference is alright, or if there are some sort of guidelines in terms of the mechanics that make some statement as to when to use a particular framing, and when to use another.

But the way I read it, if there's a marginal success, then the result can't really be that you're standing over the other character with your sword pointed at his throat

Hello All,

I held off commenting at all, because this whole discussion is amazingly reminiscent of a conversation Roderick Robertson and I had about a year or so ago. He wrote up an article about the whole subject of killing people, and submitted it to Pyramid forever ago. I just found out a few minutes ago that it was published last month. It gives some thoughts about the whole concept of killing foes, and actually suggests a lot of answers that already appeared in this discussion. If any of you are Pyramid members, you should check it out. If you're not, um, maybe Rory will share some thoughts -- he's not a member of The Forge yet, but indicated that he might check it out.

The link to the Pyramid article is http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/login/article.cgi?4619 (but you have to have a subscription and log in to read it).

Sorry to plug a pay site, but the article really does answer a lot of these questions.

Cheers,

Stephen

Mike Holmes wrote: ...But the way I read it, if there's a marginal success, then the result can't really be that you're standing over the other character with your sword pointed at his throat, unless you state out of character that you won't kill the character. Because that would void the result. .....

(• Not a guarantee.)

I'd think in most games, no-one and nothing is truly 'immune' to plot developments -- the best one can hope for is to be 'resistant to' 'em. And how is that quantified? Surely in a sense that's exactly what character abilities are? They define that entity's capacity to change the plot/resist having the plot changed in a way that's unfavourable (by whatever criterion) to them. So in the "hunting" example, the deer doesn't have any such dispensation -- though it could have been given such, had it had a 'character sheet' (and I mean that in the loosest possible sense...), either individually or by reference to 'generic deer "stats"'.

As regards the specific case of death in "physical contests"; for the standard consequences chart for such, one might say it offers a degree of 'plot protection from death', but surely at the option of the controlling player, not in any mandatory sense. And one can certainly imagine circumstances in which a non-standard set of consequences would be more appropriate.

Cheers,
Alex.

Buserian and Simon, you're both just leading me back to where I started.

I completely agree that all the alternatives presented make sense. I'm not trying to argue that mooks or deer should not be killed by marginal successes at times. And I agree in other cases that NPCs should have the same plot immunity that the Heroes have. It was in fact my agreement about this that caused me to post this thread in the first place.

Beause the notion, while "how it should be" is handled oddly in the text - there are essentially two valid, yet incompatible ways to handle these things. The one way says that you determine success mechanically, and then match the narration to the consequences as defined by that level of success. The other method says that you should alter the level of success required for a certain result based on the drama of the situation. Which both work fine alone. But they can't stand together, unless there's some way to know when to use the one and when to use the other method.

For instance, if a player has his hero attack to kill NPC A, then, if NPC A is important, then I use the rules as written. If NPC A is a mook, then I have to interpret from the rules that there's another way that I can handle the contest that doesn't match the first. Nowhere does the text even admit that the split even exists, much less where to handle it. I mean, if you assume that the above example is accurate, then doesn't that sorta void the rules as written more or less? Basically the rule seems to be, use the consequences in the book, except when it doesn't make sense to - in which case, why are they supposedly set at those levels? I mean, couldn't the rules be rewritten that the GM assigns which level of consequence applies to which level of success? If that were the case, then wouldn't that cover all of the cases as a whole, rather than to say that the consequences are X, and then have it be obvious that there are exceptions to the rule (which in a way are actually more common than the cases covered by the rule)?

So what I'm trying to do is to distil down the principle involved into a restatement of the rules. What I'm hearing is that the principle is, "When a character should have plot immunity, use the normal method, but in all others, assume that marginal success means that your goal was accomplished exactly as stated (intead of being a partial success)." That's how I operate now, effectively. But what I was hoping was that the principle would make straying from the consequence/success pairings less of an exception, and more of a simple application of the same principle. I showed how that can be done by altering the "target", but that leaves something to be desired. Especially regarding where and how to apply consequences.

Basically in the "normal" case, the consequence is the result, but in most actual cases, the consequence represents an additional effect to the actual success. To illustrate, if I get a Minor Success on an Important NPC, the -10% represents a wound directly, or somesuch - the mechanical result represents the primary effect of the success. If I get a Minor Success attacking a mook, then he's dead, and the -10% can only be applied to something else. Or not applied, which is what I find happens in most of these cases (I realize that you can, and it's fun, it's just distinctly different). It makes me want to divide contests into "success/failure" and "partial consequence" sorts as a prequalifier. Almost as if there were an entirely separate form of resolution that the GM could choose to declare. That would be functional, but, again, is obviously not what the current rules are trying to say.

Buserian, I sort of agree about what you were saying in that it's a GM job. That is, there's an unwritten step where the GM "adjusts" the player statement to a coherent contest for purposes of the game. This is basically done by selecting the resistance in a way, as a way of indicating the "target". Target indication is important, because the target is who is going to receive the mechanical results of the event. But, again, to void the normal consequence rolls, you have to do a strange mental dance and target somebody other than the obvious target.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Buserian and Simon, you're both just leading me back to where I started.

Mike Holmes wrote: Beause the notion, while "how it should be" is handled oddly in the text - there are essentially two valid, yet incompatible ways to handle these things. The one way says that you determine success mechanically, and then match the narration to the consequences as defined by that level of success. The other method says that you should alter the level of success required for a certain result based on the drama of the situation. Which both work fine alone. But they can't stand together, unless there's some way to know when to use the one and when to use the other method.

buserian wrote: Sorry about that. But, to an extent, I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Mike Holmes wrote: Doesn't Heroquest present the contest results as guidelines? If it didn't, then that may be where the problem lies -- those results are guidelines, which can and should and must be adjusted to fit the storyline and the contest involved.

Mike Holmes wrote: Big grin. You may now deflate my balloon by pointing out holes in my logic, or rules violations, if you can find any. :-)

I think that half the reason that I did all this was so that I could simply go and do what I have been doing - just feeling better about it knowing that the principle exists. There were just elements that made me feel at times like I was making up rules as I went along, but I felt that there was something guiding the whole all along. So I had to discover that.

And you got me, I am a programmer/analyst by job description, and spend most of my time working with statistics - programming solutions to generate the statistics, and methods to more quickly and carefully analyze the numbers. I also have about half of an Engineering degree. So, no surprise that I came at it from this angle. :-)

Mike

So, no surprise that I came at it from this angle. :-)

Hi Mike,

I've been watching this with some interest, and here's the best I can offer at the moment...

I base the required success level based on the results of overcoming a given conflict. For example, dealing with an immediate conflict, such as jumping over the fence, beating the mob of mooks, only results in immediate benefits. Looking at my book, that means only a marginal victory is required. Longer term conflicts may require higher levels of success, with the conflict that changes the campaign or the hero itself being the kind that requires a Complete success. The latter might be something like overcoming alcolhism, or killing a long term rival("The man with 6 fingers!"), etc.

The only other rule that I use to avoid the "double jeopardy" syndrome of trying again, is that I require that another seperate contest lay between the next try. Therefore, failing to kill a foe, but injuring them, would then probably result in a some other contest, such as a chase, before another combat contest would arise.

I don't know if that helps you any, but that's what I use for my game.

Chris

That sorta helps, Chris. That is, it's another data point on how people are doing this sort of thing. And I think that how you're doing it follows my general principle if I don't misunderstand something.

Note that some of what I gave above are just examples. For instance, the roll to kill someone could just as easily be a chase scene or something. The example that I chose merely addresses the situation that could be narrated into where the NPC in question is lying unconscious, or has a knife to his throat or something (which was the problematic case). That doesn't mean that all contests will go that way, just that I have a reasonable application of the rules when it does.

Another reasonable application is to just make it an automatic success, assuming that drama is satisfied by that. And the contest to be a killer is just one sort of contest that could occur at that point. Another could be to kill the helpless person without losing the respect of some follower or something. There are infinite possibilities - I didn't mean to imply that I would only do this the one way that the example showed (I thought about it afterwards and realized that I could have been read that way).

Part of the problem is that I sorta started to get into other principles that the example leads into. I should have stayed with the original point. The most important thing is the idea that contest results alter or eliminate a particular source of challenge. I think as long as you look at it like that, it's easy to know when you're doing it "right". Well, is for me at least.

Mike

Hi Mike,

I needed to sleep on it, but here's actually a better worded explaination of what I'm thinking of:

Resistance is actual difficulty, while degree of success is somewhat equivalent to Scale from Trollbabe, with the difference being instead of thinking about Scale externally(few people, clan, entire land), the Scale is about "How much of a difference is this going to make in the game/character's life over the long run?" You get Just now, For a while, For some time, Forever as guidelines in that regard.

HQ's openness requires a strong statement of Goal, What's at Stake?, and What Happens If I Win?, which is pretty much where a lot of people get confused.

Chris

See, I think you may be drifting here. "Forgifying" the game, if I might. I'm not sure that the way that you're putting it is supported by the book. That's not to say that your idea isn't effective - I'm sure it is. But the whole point of this excercise is to try and extrapolate the principle in question from the rules that exist in the book. That is, I want the principle in no way to violate the letter of the rules. And your statement about it being like Trollbabe seems like a stretch. To the extent that you mean that the levels of success and Trollbabe scope are actually the same in both texts, that it's about the presence of challenge, then I think that you're just arguing precisely the point that my principle does.

So, again, if you're just supplying a datapoint supporting the way I'm thinking, or just restating the principle in your own words, that's great. I guess my quesition is whether your ideal represents something different from mine in any way.

Anyhow, as to why I don't want to violate the letter of the rules here, I don't want anybody to be able to look at the principle and say, "Bah, that's just the Forgies twisting things to make it work how they want it to work." I want to be able to go back to the text and justify the principle rigorously. Not that it's the only possible interpretation, but that it's at least as legitimate as anybody elses literal interpretation.

So, that's why I asked if anybody can find any "legalistic" problems with my thoughts. I want to hash it out here and now before I trot it out anywhere else.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: So, that's why I asked if anybody can find any "legalistic" problems with my thoughts. I want to hash it out here and now before I trot it out anywhere else.

Before I respond to Simon, I wanted to restate the short form of the general principle. From mail I've gotten I think people thing that the whole post is the principle when it's actually quite short, and hopefully easy to remember. To paraphrase it to my best current understanding:

Complete success removes the challenge permenantly, and marginal success (or any other success) just alters the actual target somehow.

It's really that easy. Note how closely it matches the actual descriptions of the levels of victory. The rest of my posts were just explaining the ramifications, and arguing for why it follows the rules.

Simon, thanks for taking some swings the concept. Please continue. Here's what I think so far:

simon_hibbs wrote: I think in the specific case of wasting mooks, there is no justification in the rules for allowing PCs to off mooks with anything less than a Complete Success. The rules for the consequences of defeat are very specific and cover combat explicitly so I'm afraid going directly from the rules most simple contest combats will not end in death for one or other of the opponents, but rather will just result in some level of impairment for the loser.

That doesn't necesserily mean there has to be a further contest. The Narrator might decide that the mook will surrender on any level of defeat.
In which case it's the end of the contest and theoreticaly the PC might execute the mook anyway.

Alternatively the mook might run away. I wouldn't allow that to automaticaly succeed. Since we're now beyond the frame and consequences of the orriginal contest I'd say that if the PC wanted to pursue, that would legitimately be a new chase contest wiht the mook suffering from the consequences of the combat.

The most troublesome case (to some) is where the PC loses, takes an impairment (say -10%), but then refuses to back down. I don't think there's anything concrete in the rules that would justify a narrator refusing to allow another combat contest, should a player press for one. It may not be in the spirit of the rules, but I don't think it's against their letter either.