First, read these two posts:

http://www.story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=601&page=1#Item_8

In my highly limited experience with extended contests in HQ, they have seemed fairly unnecessary.

When do they work?

Actually I think that "unnecessary" is a good description of extended contests. The default for all HQ contest are simple contests. The unenlightening answer to the question of when they "work" is somewhat tautological: they work whenever the players feel that they will work. That is, after you get some experience with them, you get a feel for when they are interesting, and when not.

So, Fred, if you're saying that you never feel that they will add anything, then perhaps for you they won't. In which case we'll never use them for you. That's just fine if that's how it works out.

But, for me, I do like them in certain circumstances. When do they work for me? Well, both of Josh's examples were from my play with him, and I concur with him that we chose well for those. Another one from play with Josh that I remember well was his character and Julie's in my game having an extended contest of wordplay to put the other character off guard - yep, as I remember the stakes were really mostly just to disconcert each other. The only word I can use for the result is to say that it was Shakespearean. No, we didn't recite blank verse at each other, in fact we didn't narrate too much of the conversation. But you felt that the back and forth was the sort of thing that you'd read in Taming of the Shrew or something.

That's the sort of thing that I feel "works," contests that, if it were a movie or play, would take a long while to get through on screen. And I mean a pretty long time. For example, the movie the Princess Bride has some examples that I would say would take extended contests to resolve.When Westley first fights Inigo Montoya in the "I'm not left handed" fight, the back and forth there would take an extended contest to reproduce. Same when Inigo fights the six-fingered man, and makes several rounds where his action is to simply say, "My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!" (counting on his huge relationship ability to his dead father to carry the day). The Fire Swamp could be an extended contest, or even a Hero Quest - one that fails as they don't end up escaping.

Whereas all of the tests in the Fire Swamp are simple contests. Even fighting the ROUS doesn't really have any back and forths. Narrating it, you'd say something like, "They struggle fiercely, the ROUS getting a few bites in, but in the end Westley hears a fire jet about to erupt, and throws the ROUS onto it just as the flames burst forth, vanquishing it."

The key is that there are no changes of tactics, no real changes in situation, etc. Another example of a movie situation that I always use is that of the final fight in a Kung Fu film between the protagonist and the bad buy boss. That's got precisely the sort of back and forth detail that an extended contest can produce.

Now, all this said, doing this sort of hindsight analysis is relatively easy, I'll admit. Looking at an impending contest, and trying to determine if it'll be cool to do with an extended contest output, takes more analysis. But the basic question is, "would it be cool to have a contest here that's like the duel of wits that Westley has with Vezzini in The Princess Bride, or the final fight of a Kung Fu film?"

Remember this is a Robin Laws design, so there's one rule we can throw out there right away: never have extended contests with mooks. If the character doesn't have a name, or at least some thematic meaning (I'm reminded of a nameless warrior that Conan fights in the mountains while going from country to country in one story), then he's definitely not worth an extended contest. That's not the same as saying that you should always have extended contests when against named characters, far from it. Just that the opposition needs to have some real meaning for the characters.

There was once an example we went over here of having an extended contest to climb a tower, it being a key obstacle to some hero. What you look for, too, is the number of augments that a character is likely to be able to bring to bear. If the character isn't invested in terms of relationships, values, and personality, then it's probably not worth an extended contest. But, given the right circumstances, even an inanimate object can count as being a suitable opponent.

If you're eager just to know the outcome, do a simple contest. But if the situation is such that you want to draw out the anticipation of that outcome, then that's when you want to do an extended contest. Sometimes it just takes a bit more lead-in narration to do a resolution description justice.

Anyhow, that's my opinion on the subject. Again, it's entirely a subjective thing, however, and each individual will have their own opinions on when it suits things to do an EC. As a group you have to agree on when specifically you want to do these, so there's often some compromise. But, generally, it's not too hard to come to a consensus on when to do an EC. When in doubt, err on the side of moving things forward with a simple contest, IMO.

Mike

As Mike said, in both of those instances, doing the conflict as an extended contest seemed absolutely right. In the first example, the back and forth of actions and APs gave the seduction a cool dramatic feel that I don't think we would have gotten with a simple contest (just narrating the back and forth). Plus, since I didn't want the NPC to be seduced by Mike, it gave me a chance, round by round, of throwing difficulties at him and gave Mike a chance to put different modifiers (from augments and actions) in. In the second example, I think it would've been disappointing for Ryan to have his character uncovered as the villain after just one roll of the dice. It certainly would've been disappointing if it had been my character. Plus, this was one of the biggest dramatic moments of that run--Ryan's villainy was one of the main conflicts that needed resolving. As a player in the game (even as the GM), it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun to resolve the whole thing as a simple contest. In the rules, extended contests are said to be there for the big dramatic moments, with large AP bets, gains and losses meant to reflect camara close-ups, music score swells, slo-mo and "bullet time" moments, and so on. I've found that extended contests do exactly that. Both of those examples I gave definitely felt cinematic and dramatic to me.

IMO -- the extended contest rules don't really work mechanically -- it's in the interest of the weaker character to go all in as soon as possible, and nothing can stop them from doing this.

OTOH, the concepts behind extended contests are cool -- they're basically hit points for a given conflict.  I think they would work very well indeed if one came up with guidelines/limits for how much could be staked on a given action -- or even just had assigned a stake based on the description of the action (GM-judged, consensus, negotiated, whatever).

You may have a point, Joshua. I don't want to get into the deep theory about it here, but the question is whether or not the "pseudo-gamism" urge to manipulate the system mechanically to win creates the "closeout" effect regularly, and if that's really not in the best interests of the narration.

There are several mitigating factors here, but I do agree that this may be slightly problematic at times. From what I've seen in play, however, it's not often practically problematic. That is, on those occasions that I've seen players go for an early closeout because they are behind, I think it was probably not the best idea to be doing an extended contest. And, occasionally it actually makes dramatic sense.

This is actually a cool self-correction feature. That is, any contest which probably should have been a simple contest will tend to resemble one as much as possible. For ones that really are dramatically interesting, it seems to me that players are willing to bid lower, risking more HP, to drag the contest out for a considerable time. Just what I've seen.

Mike

mneme wrote:
or even just had assigned a stake based on the description of the action (GM-judged, consensus, negotiated, whatever).

Oh, I misread that the first time. Ralph's right, the rule is that the bid must match the action taken. What does happen is that players do the reverse thing...they decide to bid all the AP, and then figure out an action that would merit that. But at least that takes the player thinking away from his character motives to accomplish. If he's thinking character first, the AP bids will always be dramatic.

The text also encourages players at least, to think dramatically first. They go out of their way to point out that you can "game" it if you're behind, but that it's not always funnest to do so.

Mike

I have to agree with the principle that you should use a simple contest as the default, moving only to an extended contest when play calls for it. When does play call for it. my yardstick is the 'desire to narrate':

• When a player wants one. Players become pretty good after a while at knowing whether 'this is important to me I want to savour every moment' or 'I just want to get this done' So I negotiate.
• If you are both going to use the same ability, round-after-round, with little narration beyond 'I use my x' and 'he uses his y' then a long extended contest will get dull fast. An extended contest is about the desire to narrate what is happening in detail. No desire, no interesting extended contest. This is an amplifications of the point above.
• The no-named characters rule of Mike's is good, very good. But for me the point about desire to narrate trumps this. Sometimes a player just wants to savour his character's ability to give the opposition a good kicking. And I'm fine with that. Think of this as the teaser to a James Bond movie, we want to know how cool you are. But like a James Bond trailer, you need to be cool
• The worst thing I do is to use an extended contest as a filler. I don't know what to throw out next so I'll throw in an extended contest to soak up attention while I regroup. This is a variation of 'man enters room with the gun' and I think its bad behaviour on my part whenever I do it. Try to avoid it, I know I'm trying to break out of that habit.

Fred, have any of these posts answered your question?

Yes.

Not sure what I can add to that...

In our game we have begun to use extended contests to cover long or extended dramatic sequences, like travelling.

For example, in a recent heroquest, we had to find our way through a maze of hills. The maze of hills opposed us with various augments on its basic difficulty, in order to  add flavour to the encounters within, each lasting for a round. Example "augments" were roving spirits, a gambling trickster, and a gang of broo. As players we were rolling on our most appropriate terrain navigation skills, but could adapt to the flavour of each encounter with augments relevent to the situation at hand.

As a method of telling the story of our journeys this has proved both effective and satisfying, and can be adapted to any number of situations. An old fashioned tunnel crawl would be a very different experience using this system.

Web_Weaver wrote:
In our game we have begun to use extended contests to cover long or extended dramatic sequences, like travelling.

For example, in a recent heroquest, we had to find our way through a maze of hills. The maze of hills opposed us with various augments on its basic difficulty, in order to  add flavour to the encounters within, each lasting for a round. Example "augments" were roving spirits, a gambling trickster, and a gang of broo. As players we were rolling on our most appropriate terrain navigation skills, but could adapt to the flavour of each encounter with augments relevent to the situation at hand.

As a method of telling the story of our journeys this has proved both effective and satisfying, and can be adapted to any number of situations. An old fashioned tunnel crawl would be a very different experience using this system.

Hi Christian,
Glad to have piqued your interest.

Der_Renegat wrote:
im not sure i understand how "roving spirits, a gambling trickster, and a gang of broo" actually work as an augment to the maze of hills.

Does this make any sense? It plays better than it reads.