I think this has been covered before (if not here, then on the rules group). How often are variable augments used in your game?

I have a feeling that they're not much used. Because it seems to me that they usually represent a level of complexity that just doesn't seem neccessary. Also, I don't think that there's any mechanical advantage to using them at all (in fact I think that they may actually be disincentivized, mechanically). So if the expected value result is about the same, why should I gamble?

Or do you have some gambler players who you find like to go for the variable augments? Given the vagaries of the expected value outcome, I wouldn't be surprised if players don't realize that it's not a winning proposition. The proof is in the pudding, really, and how often players really do use it.

Also, how often do you as Narrator mandate variable augments? Examples would be cool.

Mike

Not used at all. Then again, I'm playing a pretty stripped down version of the game, escheving reams of simulatory stuff starting with equipment bonuses and ending with almost all special magic ability structures. Forgequest, as it's starting to get called ;) Something like variable augments drop by the wayside really fast, as they have no use at all apart from anal retentive fiddling.

Really, when the augment values are as small as they usually are, why bother? If we want more detail in resolution, we can use the complex conflict rules.

I have only had someone use a variable augment in an HQ game I ran in one contest (a playtest of a HQ Conan scenario I've been working on between projects): but it was only because of some particular circumstances: one, the character had a fairly large number of -extremely- high rated attributes to use in the contest (at least one 20m4, a 15m3, and several in the mastery 2 range) and figured that the benifits on taking the risk are worth it*, two, the player had a lot of HP to burn on the contest and wanted to make more rolls in order to have a chance to stack HP onto the simle contest (she wanted it simple, I'd wanted extended, she told me she was just going to blow all her AP in one bid, so I bowed down), and three, the player was willing to gamble because it was a big final showdown with her ultimate nemisis character and if it ended well or badly, she was sure it would rock.

In the end she burned like 7 HP, and came off with something like 3/4ths again the augment she would have had if she'd taken it at auto-levels, and got to build an interesting "the hero prepairs" scene where she got to make rolls and narration on each other's heals without the back and forth of an extended contest.

She lost the final contest anyway, but it was one fuck of a blowup.

Anyway, other than that one specific time, I've never even had anyone show interest in the variable augment rules.

*When you're at low levels, variable augments are often not worth the risk. If you've got an ability at 20 you can get a +2 automatically, or go for a +4 with the odds being that you get an average of nothing (+4 on good successes, +2 on marginal, nothing on a tie, and penalties on any failure). It isn't even a very interesting gamble most of the time. OTOH, if you're dealing with high level abilities, 20m4, for example, you can risk a +20 instead of a +10 with even odds, or even do it more safely and go for a +15 and have a 75% chance of getting the extra 5 points.

Hi Mike,

The only time I could see someone using them is IF the Narrator drops some bonus modifiers depending on the trait doing the Augmenting. For example- "Loves Mom 17" is a reasonable trait, but if Mom is about to be eaten by a troll, I could see a Narrator dropping a 10 or more point bonus for the variable augment roll.

The rules don't give an example of using modifers on a variable augment roll, but they don't rule against it either...

But then it still requires a secondary roll and handling time from both the player and the Narrator. It's probably just easier to pour those kinds of modifiers directly into the conflict roll itself, but it IS an option for Narrators who want to give smaller bonuses.

Chris

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Something like variable augments drop by the wayside really fast, as they have no use at all apart from anal retentive fiddling.

If we want more detail in resolution, we can use the complex conflict rules.

but if Mom is about to be eaten by a troll, I could see a Narrator dropping a 10 or more point bonus for the variable augment roll.

Mike Holmes wrote:

Eero Tuovinen wrote: Something like variable augments drop by the wayside really fast, as they have no use at all apart from anal retentive fiddling.

Well maybe it's my simmy side, but I do like the concept of variable augments in some ways. That is, I can't agree that it's just "anal retentive fiddling." Consider - if the player actually discovered a reall sub-conflict inside of the larger conflict, then doesn't rolling for it with the variable augment make sense?

Or would you make this another conflict entirely, possibly using the impediment rules to make the effect roll over appropriately? I've seen players do that.

If we want more detail in resolution, we can use the complex conflict rules.

This is a strong argument, OTOH (how often do you use extended contests?). But what about variable augments as a compromise? We really only have two rolls that look interesting to make?

could imagine it as a compromise solution, but much more likely would be handling the two conflicts separately, with the first giving a bonus to the second if appropriate.

A penalty it is. Although I wouldn't find the rules to suffer horribly if I instituted carry-over bonuses, as well, when they make sense. With the game already accepting situational bonuses it's not a particularly radical change.

I really should get my brother to mail me the rulebook for a refreshment read. I'm getting a feeling that I'm missing out something terribly important with my HQ-lite play. Then again, I've been reading lots of Hero Wars stuff lately (got the books for a couple of bucks a shot at a con some six weeks ago), and that's shaped my thinking, too. The designers of the game are amazingly old-moded compared to Forgequest, those books (Thunder Rebels, Cults of Sartar) are chock-full of all kinds of rules I couldn't imagine using. So in that sense I guess that I'll just have to accept that playing the game with all it's rules wouldn't be very fun for me.

Hi Mike,

Let's say you got "Loves Mom 17" and trying to squeeze a +5 bonus out of it (5W resistance). Now, the Narrator decides that the situation earns a 10 point modifier, which either results in rolling a Variable Augment contest of:

A) Loves Mom 17 vs. 15 resistance (25-10)
B) Loves Mom 7W vs. 5W (17+10)

So in this way, the gamble isn't as crappy as the normal variable augment, which usually makes things a crap shoot. If you, as a player, know the Narrator is going to give bonuses like this, it can often be worthwhile to try and squeeze out a few extra points here or there. This pretty much follows in line with the rules to a T, but of course, it's not shown in examples.

Although- the real easy and (more) logical answer would be just to have the Narrator give a straight bonus to the contest itself without making a variable augment contest...

But yeah- without any modifier- variable augments are pretty pointless except as a "wahoo! Random effects!" mechanic.

Chris

As a result of this thread, I made up an Excel sheet that explores the simple cases of variable augments. It looks at every possible case when skill level is 1-20 and you're seeking augment bonuses of +1 through +4. I didn't want to bother with the 'wrap-arounds' caused by mastery-level numbers and I think that what I have can extrapolate out. Can anyone tell me if that's right? And if so, how? E.g., what can we conclude about the odds for someone with an ability at 10W2 seeking a +8 from the table that I generated (if anything)?

Chris

When I was running a FTF game the house rule was we *only* used variable augments, only the best augment was actually used in the conflict resolution, and the resistance rate was lower (using D10, it was 2resistance per point). And for simple contests you could roll after the resolution roll.

The logic behind this was that, for simple contests, the players would be saying "just roll, even before they'd checked which ability they were to use.

But that was another country.

Keith Nellist

Eero Tuovinen wrote: A penalty it is. Although I wouldn't find the rules to suffer horribly if I instituted carry-over bonuses, as well, when they make sense. With the game already accepting situational bonuses it's not a particularly radical change.

I really should get my brother to mail me the rulebook for a refreshment read. I'm getting a feeling that I'm missing out something terribly important with my HQ-lite play. Then again, I've been reading lots of Hero Wars stuff lately (got the books for a couple of bucks a shot at a con some six weeks ago), and that's shaped my thinking, too. The designers of the game are amazingly old-moded compared to Forgequest, those books (Thunder Rebels, Cults of Sartar) are chock-full of all kinds of rules I couldn't imagine using. So in that sense I guess that I'll just have to accept that playing the game with all it's rules wouldn't be very fun for me.

Mike Holmes wrote:
But to get back on topic, what it seems that you're saying is that the rollover bonus rules that are provided by the variable augment rule, are somehow inferior to simply using the normal system and then coming up with a bonus from that. I really don't see how these are different. In both cases, you have an ability and a resistance, and you roll and you get a bonus number to the next roll. What's the difference?

Wow, that's pretty judgemental. It might interest you to note that many people would say that Hero Wars is actually a lot more "Forgey" than Hero Quest. There are actually less "fiddly" rules in Hero Wars than in HQ.

In any case, playing with the rules has, for me, ended up being a very narrativism producing experience, and all excellent. I find it strange that I wrote Universalis, and can have fun with HQ, but you play games like Universalis, and cannot somehow enjoy HQ as written. I also find it telling that it would appear that you haven't even tried to do so.

Hi Mike,

Sorry, I usually feel like I'm the one who's writing like an idiot, because I've run into a spat of misunderstandings elsewhere (online), so I've been trying to write as simple as possible to make sure I'm clear. I apologize if I came across condescending- I was just trying to make sure I communicated clearly.

My point being that with appropriate modifiers to variable augment rolls it becomes easier for a person to gamble to get a higher augment than they would by auto augmenting with good odds of it happening(also assuming that, for some reason, the GM doesn't feel like tacking a bonus straight on to the contest itself, why? I don't know).

The only reason I mention it is because I know you enjoy comparing things that are "strictly according to the rules", and that's simply one way of doing things- and honestly HQ's system is effectively the Perl programming of game systems- it's flexible enough that you can do things 1001 ways and still be using it "correctly".

The only other reason I could really see using variable augments would be to look at them as the equivalent of Dogs in the Vineyard's Raises- a bit of neat randomness to kick off some narration to the larger conflict... So perhaps playing out "Loves Mom" and rolling horribly might mean either that the character doesn't love mom as much as he thought, or perhaps his feelings just aren't enough to really help here... Which is a fairly common sort of thing in literature and movies.

Chris

Yeah, somebody smart once said that random resolution in narrativism driven games is simply a "springboard" for creativity. You just take the random results and react to them.

So, yeah, when you're love for your mom doesn't pay off, then maybe your character figures out that it's time to go see mom. You don't get results like that with automatic augments.

Good thoughts everyone.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote:
Keith, that's a lot of modification. Can you tell us how it played? Do you think the modifications were good?
Mike

We never use variable augments - we decided to exclude this rule, since we thought it's only kind of "backward compatibility" to HeroWars.

Oddly enough I have an actual play experience of this particular issue.

At a con game a while back the GM required us to make variable augments from time to time rather than straight ones, I think because in his experience nobody ever used them otherwise.  Certainly none of the players on the day would have but for it being insisted upon.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn't take to them, I had a little dice game suddenly intrude into the story which I found very jarring and I had an uncertainty enter into events at a point which didn't make sense to me in terms of anything happening in the game world or in terms of dramatic impact.

I'm not persuaded it's a terribly good rule, it felt again like a minigame, a sudden gambling mechanic by which I can wager for a better result.  It seemed to fit oddly with the other rules and the apparent intent of the game.

I'm happy to add further detail, but don't want to turn this into a post just talking about who did what in the session, so please ask if my actual play experiences could usefully be expanded upon.

Hi Mike,

Just in case its not clear to folks Hero Wars had only variable augments. Automatic augments were introduced in Barbarian Adventures. I think it was first proposed as a means to making it easier to figure out NPC's numbers from all their augments without rolls. People picked up on the idea and used auto augments for augments after that, partially for speed, partially to avoid whiff factor.

We still use auto-augments. We do so when an augmentation strategy is risky amd might back fire. Say for example you want to augment someone engaged in hand-to-hand combat  by firing your crossbow at his opponent. You might hit the wrong guy, so we would use a variable augment. So we use them a fair amount to suggest this kind of thing.

oops.  should read: we still use variable augments

Ian wrote: We still use auto-augments. We do so when an augmentation strategy is risky amd might back fire. Say for example you want to augment someone engaged in hand-to-hand combat  by firing your crossbow at his opponent. You might hit the wrong guy, so we would use a variable augment. So we use them a fair amount to suggest this kind of thing.

Hi Max, long time no hear from. Good to see you post again.

I think that a useful principle is emerging from all of this. First, if the player isn't interested, I think that Variable augments can probably be left unused. That is, I doubt that there's much to be gained in terms of "tension" or such from Variable augments unless the player has a desire to use one.

But that said, I'm finding that some players do like to drag some contests out, like Brand points out, by zooming in on some particular ability. Does it work or backfire in this particular case? For example, the one player I have who regularly rolls his Origami 13, to see if the little things he folds help or distract from the negotiations he's always making with other characters. In one case, he got penalized the full amount, and I narrated that the flower he'd made for a little girl turned out to look like one that symbolized death for her culture. And so we made something out of that little part of the overall interaction (and he did fail that contest scaring the little girl with whom he was trying to make friends).

So, at this point, I'm seeing it as a tool for players who want to drill down on certain abilities that they find interesting. Opposite this character with his Origami 13, is another character with Strong 10W2, and his player gambles against this a lot. Which is cool, I think, because it can make the strength really much more telling, but also means that sometimes it just doesn't help at all. So, as the player is interested, so am I.

I don't remember ever seeing Ian's "medium length" contest, given that I don't think anyone has ever rolled more than one augment (not since they had to roll them all in HW) for a single contest. But if the situation were right and the player wanted to, as long as I didn't detect pained looks on the other players faces, I'd say go for it.

Mike

Balbinus wrote:
Oddly enough I have an actual play experience of this particular issue.

At a con game a while back the GM required us to make variable augments from time to time rather than straight ones, I think because in his experience nobody ever used them otherwise.  Certainly none of the players on the day would have but for it being insisted upon.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn't take to them, I had a little dice game suddenly intrude into the story which I found very jarring and I had an uncertainty enter into events at a point which didn't make sense to me in terms of anything happening in the game world or in terms of dramatic impact.

I'm not persuaded it's a terribly good rule, it felt again like a minigame, a sudden gambling mechanic by which I can wager for a better result.  It seemed to fit oddly with the other rules and the apparent intent of the game.

"Variable Augments - Used?"

Yup. I like 'em for some things such as "springboard for creativity" and "zeroing in on an ability" points mentioned above.

As a player, I'd be annoyed if they weren't on the table as an option. Who's to say I can't gamble for a +4 augment off my "Loves Mom 17"? Sometimes it pays off (especially with a Hero Point). Give us a lucky roll and we're off to the races.

As a Narrator, I don't enforce my preferences on the players. I let them know that auto augments are assumed but if they want to try for a variable augment then it's their call. There have been settings, though, where I've said that certain types of abilities can only be used for variable augments. This would be like Wild Talents or doing magical things in an uber-low magic world.

For me, it's just another tool for the box.

Oh, and despite the rumors, I am not dead.

Speaking as the player of the character with "Strong 10W2" I want to add that the variable augment sometimes allows me to justify using that gigantic stat when it's questionable.

"Gee, is strength really going to be helpful in this?"  Now Mike has never said "no" to an augment (to my knowledge) so it's not him that's asking the question, it's me... but by rolling on a variable augment, I can answer that question to my own satisfaction.

Just to be clear, I do say no to augments on rare occasions (just nixed on in the PBEM yesterday, and I've told Adrienne no more than once). It's more that my players only activate interesting augments to me than that I'm permissive that makes this rare.

Basically the players are like you, self-monitoring what's interesting by using variable augments when appropriate and such, that makes it so rarely neccessary to say anything. In fact, I sometimes will come in and nix a shakey augment just to keep in everyone's mind that there's a community standard that we're all adhering to. Lax as that standard might be.

But, yeah, that's precisely what I'm talking about with variable augments. If the player finds it interesting, then I find it interesting.

Mike

Vaxalon wrote:
"Gee, is strength really going to be helpful in this?"  Now Mike has never said "no" to an augment (to my knowledge) so it's not him that's asking the question, it's me... but by rolling on a variable augment, I can answer that question to my own satisfaction.

There's also a very, very gamist way to look at it.

Let's say that your bonus is k.  If you make a variable augment out of it, then you have a chance that it'll be k+x, and a chance that it'll be +0.  So the average bonus (b) you get out of the variable augment is p(k+x), where p is the fraction of the time that the roll will "succeed".  Now I don't know the rules well enough to tell what it is, but p is actually a function of x.  (I always just ask Mike for how that all works out).

So you get b=f(x)(k+x).  Given k (your bonus), you can maximize b by choosing the right x.  At low values of k, I suspect that your best chance is to roll a very risky chance for a big bonus, and at higher values of k, you're better off taking small risks, or none at all.

Vaxalon wrote:
There's also a very, very gamist way to look at it...

Scott,

The fact is that extended contests are only really advantageous to the side that has the higher level of ability. Essentially by breaking the contest up into smaller chunks, you take some of the randomness out of them, making it more likely that the superior side will win unless the inferior side is willing to blow lots of HP. This is why it's beneficial to the smaller side to make large bids. If they can, their best bet is to do everything in one shot, making the contest a simple contest once again.

In terms of ability use (switching and such), you can be as creative with that in either form of contest as the narrator will allow, so that doesn't make a difference.

Yes, knowing the odds and such, you can get a gamism challenge out of an extended contest, trying to best play the odds. But even that is not all that interesting a challenge. HQ removes most gamism incentive, and what's left is only probably mistaken perception of potential gamism. That said, for narrators who allow players to alter tactics via creativity (allowing different abilities to be used when situations are shifted and such), there is a sort of gamism there, too, but it's  very non-level playing field. That is, largely players are constrained to what the narrator allows by fiat.

I think that HQ avoids gamism largely, and I think that's intentional and a good thing. I don't see players making decisions based on gamism much if at all.

What about Variable Augments? Well, the resistance, Fred, is 5 per +1 - a +4 has a TN of 20, for instance. This is twice the normal augment rate, but the expected value of return, as Fred has deduced, depends on the probabilities of the different outcomes - Full bonus, half-bonus, no bonus, or negative bonus. Given HQ's torturous curve, this is difficult to calculate because the expected value bounces around quite a bit (but I've been through this before, so I have some idea of the math).

There are a few things we can say in general. First, and most telling, I think, is that at low levels of ability, the expected value is less than the automatic augment, and it never improves much. That is, at less than 20W, you're better off taking the automatic augment if you're looking to maximize your outcome. After this point, what happens is that the absolute margin between the difficulty and a higher payoff can be made large enough to give a high enough chance of victory that the expected value becomes higher than the automatic augment.

For instance, at a rating of 20, if you go up against a TN of 20 for a +4, you're as like to lose as to win. Losing means no augment, but winning only means +4 if it's more than a marginal. Marginal is only +2. So you can see that the expected value is something less than +2. If you hedge your bets, and only go for the +3, then your odds of winning go up very slightly, but the payoff in each case goes down, and you're still left with something less than than +2 for your expected value.

If you have a 20W, however, and you take a +5 for a 5W resistance, then you can see how the significantly increased chances of a minor or higher victory, and decreased chances of failure, make the payoff more likely. Still, however, you're not much better off with a variable augment here than with an automatic augment at +4. If you go for the +8 even odds, then you're back to the situation you had before with the 20 vs 20 in terms of odds, and you can see that the payoff is less than the automatic augment. Lesson: if you want maximum payoff, go for an augment that's less than double the automatic augment.

Yes, at higher levels this shifts somewhat, but the expected value never really increases much over the variable augment while in the human range. In fact, the players best payout is almost always at just one or two over the automatic augment. Take for example a character with 10W3 in something, a usual +7 automatic augment (note that I'm taking medium case scenarios - the auto augment for 5W3 is the same as for 10W3, but with worse chances for variable aguments). Going for a +8 is the best strategy, but only yields a .44 increase to 7.44 expected value. The higher the augment you shoot for, the closer you get to that inefficient equal odds bet.

A god augmenting with a 8W10 ability pulls away from this slightly, with his best bet being a +24, producing a 22.32 expected value over his normal +17 auto-augment. So, as you can see, variable augmenting as a strategy only starts to really pay off for gods. And even then, the proportion is not terriffically high.

So, yet again, we see that HQ doesn't really promote gamism, other than, perhaps, trying to figure out where the best expected value is. Instead what happens is that people make intentionally bad gambles with these, understanding that failure here is as interesting as victory. Oh, it didn't work in this case, because I was going too long on that ability. Cool. Also, players are sometimes willing to burn a HP here, to make a big augment come out, presumably because it's so very cool to have the augment work at the high level in this case. This is a "waste" of HP as compares using them to simply bump the outcome of a contest. But considering that you can only use one on the outcome (and, if you crit, you can't even do that), it is also a way to spike the odds even further in your characters favor if you're willing to burn the HP to do so.

So what it supports is players looking at their abilities and seeing if they want to play around with how much effect each is having on each particular contest. Again, I think as long as this is interesting to the players to look into it's fine.

Mike

So what it boils down to, is, "It's only used if the players think it's interesting... other than that, it's ignored."

Par for the course for optional rules.... and heck, for supposedly mandatory rules, this being a form of drift.