My group recently played Mortal Coil, (and I may post an actual play at some point) but in the process we had a few rules questions.

As I understand the 'helping' rules, if two characters wish to work together to win a conflict, they effectively take turns, where one character resolves his action, and depending on the margin of success, gives a bonus or a penalty to the other character's action.  This makes sense in the examples given in the book - where one character indirectly assists the other character.

However, this doesn't seem to work as well if they are helping each other directly.  For example, the PCs want to hold closed a gate, that the opposing enemy is try to force open.  Neither of the PCs have useful aptitudes, or are particularly strong, whereas the enemy is a bit better.  Each PC alone cannot achieve a victory aganist the enemy, but if they worked together, one might imagine that they could.  However, the helping rules in the game would give a penalty in this case (the first PC fails, which gives a penalty to the second PC - which doesn't make any sense).

Am I missing something?

Garvey,

Nope, that's the way they work as written. I agree that in the situation you describe, it doesn't sound like they apply very well. In this case, you could treat the second character like an item, and have him give the other character a flat +2. That's basically a judgement call, when the rules as written don't seem to be making sense.