This question should be easy to answer, but (for me) it isn't. In fact, I don't much have an answer to it. It is most likely that I am thinking about it incorrectly or, perhaps, have the wrong take on the situation. But it has come up before in a couple of contests, and I think now I have the vocabulary to at least identify it as a cognitive speedbump for me.

Take a normal warrior facing off against a Giant Tick. The warrior wants to either kill or drive off the Tick. Now take the Giant Tick. It wants to suck the blood out of the warrior. A simple contests ensues and the Tick gets a Minor Victory.

Now, under the rules, the warrior takes a Hurt. But the Tick hasn't *really* succeeded at its goal and neither, really, has the warrior. Should another contest be attempted? Should I rule that the Tick fed until it was full and then left (while the warrior laid there paralyzed) and now the paralysis has worn off? Should I have ruled that, since the Tick was intending to *kill* its opponent that it needed a Major or Complete Victory and, therefore, failed? What about the warrior, then? Should the same stipulation apply to him? Further, what would I do if both sides required a "Complete Victory" to succeed at their stated objectives and then neither obtained one?

This type of Simple Contest Stalemate has come up only a couple of times. I have identified it, but honestly don't know much how to handle it. As evident from my flood of posts and questions, I'm fairly new to this system. This is one bug (pardon the pun) that has me sort of perplexed. Has anyone else come across this? How have you handled it?

Thanks in advance for any advice you might could give. I am also posting this to the Yahoo-hwrules group to see what they have to say.

Hi Scripty,

Actually you already answered your own question.

If the Tick gets a Minor Victory, then it is victorious. It is not a tie or a stalemate, but a victory. If it tried to suck blood from the warrior it succeeded. The warrior suffers a Minor Defeat, and is Impaired, meaning that he suffers a 10% penalty to all appropriate abilities for a week or so unless healed with appropriate magic or skill.

That's the rulesey bit. What really happens is up to you to decide.

What you *do* know is that the warior is Impaired and the Tick managed to draw blood. That is the only part not open for interpretation.

Finally, I'm going to cut and paste a bit when quoting you. I hope I'm not misrepresenting what you are trying to say.

Now, under the rules, the warrior takes a Hurt.

But the Tick hasn't *really* succeeded at its goal and neither, really, has the warrior.

(snip)

Should I have ruled that, since the Tick was intending to *kill* its opponent that it needed a Major or Complete Victory and, therefore, failed?

Should I rule that the Tick fed until it was full and then left (while the warrior laid there paralyzed) and now the paralysis has worn off?

Should another contest be attempted?

Should I have ruled that, since the Tick was intending to *kill* its opponent that it needed a Major or Complete Victory and, therefore, failed?

(snip)

What about the warrior, then? Should the same stipulation apply to him? Further, what would I do if both sides required a "Complete Victory" to succeed at their stated objectives and then neither obtained one?

Thanks, Peter. That does help a bit. Sorry that I got the Minor Victory thing mixed up. I meant to say Marginal Victory (oops!), hence my whole -1 tangent.

I guess my mental disconnect is occuring in step 3. A large part of this is due to not having *played* HeroQuest ever. HQ is one of those games that I'd really like to play first and then attempt to run. But, as is so often the case, I'm the first one on the boat in my area...

Your statement that my interpretation (the tick's bite paralyzes the warrior, the warrior is left Hurt or Impaired after the paralysis wears off...) is a valid approach helps a great deal. However, I guess I'm mining here for a "How would you do it?" answer in order to get an idea of how others might approach the situation. For purposes of the example, please disregard my statement on Minor Victory and, instead, consider the Tick to have gotten a Marginal Victory.

As a side question, how do you adjudicate this contest (and others in HQ) and maintain dramatic or rising tension? It seems to me that the result is already done and the description here is left the task of narrative tension. For example, here's how it plays out thus far with my group:

Me: "You're lying still with your hand on your weapon, thinking that this rummaging noise might be a raccoon. But it's not. It's a Giant Tick. And it's out for blood..."
Player: "I hit it."
Me: "With your weapon?"
Player: "Yeah, with my battle axe..."
Me: (with a nod to Mike Holmes) "So, you want to kill it?"
Player: "Oh Yeah! I have a 4W..."
Me: "M'kay. It's up to a 9W with all its augments..."

(dice rolls)

Player: "Yes! I have an 4. That's a success bumped to a crit!"
Me: "You both have masteries, so they cancel out."
Player: "Oh."
Me: "It rolls a 3. A success it has a Marginal Victory..."
Player: "Bummer. I still try to whack it."
Me: "You try to whack it, but flail weakly. Your blow is deflected off of its hard chitinous shell. You have succumbed to its Paralyzing bite..."
Player: "That sucks!"
Me: "Ah, but it only drinks its fill..."
Player: "It only had, like, a Marginal or something. I should've gotten to whack at it again."
Me: "But that's not how this works..."

---------------------------------------------------------

Is this how everyone else does it? It seems to me like there should be a bit more in regards to guidelines for narrative rights here. Often, I'm left to interpret the rolls. What if the player had rolled a Major Victory instead? Could he have narrated events? To use Forge terminology, I'm often at a loss to determine who "has the ball" and when to pass it. I think I'm up to a point of familiarity where I can run the game okay, but I know I'm not at my best. I'm only at about 82% or so. I want to be at 120%.

Now, do people ever do it like this...

Me: "You're lying still with your hand on your weapon, thinking that this rummaging noise might be a rat. But it's not. It's a Giant Tick. And it's out for blood..."
Player: "I hit it with my battle axe..."
Me: (repetition is key) "So, you want to kill it?"
Player: "Oh Yeah! And I have a 4W..."
Me: "M'kay. It's up to a 9W with all its augments..."

(dice rolls)

Player: "Yes! I have an 4. That's a success bumped to a crit!"
Me: "You both have masteries, so they cancel out."
Player: "Oh."
Me: "You try to whack it, but flail weakly. Your blow is deflected off of its hard chitinous shell. You have succumbed to its Paralyzing bite..."
Player: "That sucks!"
Me: "Ah, but it only drinks its fill...it had a Marginal Victory. You're at -1. You awake the next morning sore and groggy, but otherwise fine."
Player: "What did it roll?"
Me: "A three." (shows player) "Now, let's roll a contest to see if you've contracted any diseases..."

--------------------------------------------------

Conversely, has anyone done this...

Me: "You're lying still with your hand on your weapon, thinking that this rummaging noise might be a wombat. But it's not. It's a Giant Tick. And it's out for blood..."
Player: "I hate those. The last one left me paralyzed, like, all night. I'm going to kill that sucker with my battle axe. I'm at 4W..."
Me: "M'kay. It's up to a 9W with all its augments..."

(dice rolls)

Player: "Yes! I have an 4. That's a success bumped to a crit!"
Me: "You both have masteries, so they cancel out."
Player: "Oh yeah. I forgot. Damn, I always roll fours!"
Me: "It rolled a 12... "
Player: "Woohoo! Die bloodsucker!"
Me: "You impair it..."
Player: "I don't just impair it. I impale that sucker, yelling "Take this back to your family!" the whole time! I'm sick of these things always sneaking up on me when I'm in my sleeping bag. I chop it and splatter it all over..."
Me: "...and it limps away weakly, crawling under the nearest crevice in the rockwall behind it."

Alternately, I would've probably just let the player kill the tick if it had no further impact on the storyline (i.e. the Tick wasn't a Big Bad shapechanged into a Tick or something). For instance, if it's a mook, I have no problem with dusting it, if that's the direction the player *really* wants to go.

I think the examples in the HeroQuest book were great, but I felt I could've used a few more. Is it okay to reveal the results of the dice roll through narration? Is it okay to allow the players narrative rights when they succeed? Is it okay to pull the reins when they've gone too far? Using the second example above, could I have extended the scene through Narration describing in detail to the player the effects of paralysis and how the tick slowly crawls on top of him and sucks blood out of him? With the contests being so short, we seem to breeze through and gloss over so much. It seems that, for us, the end result had always been the die roll. That's obviously not the case in HeroQuest.

How do you guys do it? It's not so much a question of understanding how it's supposed to be done (which I think I do). For me, it's more of a question of conceptualizing its application at the table. Sometimes, it's easy. Other times, I'm at a loss... I realize I'm sort of searching here, but I'm just really concerned about "getting it right" I suppose. Hence, I'm concerned that approach X might be better than approach Y, but approach Z is how Lael said he does it, etc., etc.

Barring the obvious and near comic absurdity of my next question, is this normal?? Do any (or all) of the examples above reflect what you guys actually do with HeroQuest?

EDIT: Added more questions. Typical for me...

Hiya,

I suggest that everyone in the group gets to look at all the dice, all the time. And that the concept that, in most cases, a Simple Contest is over when it's over, has to get articulated. This is quite hard for many role-players and represents the usual squint-eyed attention on task resolution rather than conflict resolution.

But the point is to get that concept across through example and necessary exercise of authority very consistently during play. When they see that you don't have your NPCs keep fightin' after they've been Marginally Defeated, then they'll accept that it's a fair way to conduct a game.

So once that understanding has been internalized, the player doesn't run ahead narrating his victory like a Pool player on speed, because he - just like you, the GM - is looking at the dice too, and knows what a Marginal Victory is.

Now for the squishy part. I should point out that it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to permit the player to attack the tick again in a new Simple Contest, if he demonstrates that kind of enthusiasm. Why not, after all? The point is that he has beaten the tick, marginally, but now why not go to town? So that his ravings aren't narration of the Marginal Victory, but themselves a new announced action.

That's a tricky wicket, and I suggest considering it to be a "bend" on your part. As I said before, it's best when everyone knows that once the dice have hit the table, and once all the bumping and Hero Pointing is done, that the conflict is over. If that's the default understanding, then a little bending to permit a new Simple Contest once in a while is OK.

Finally, about your normality ... I suggest that most if not all people who consider themselves "experienced role-players" are actually terribly marred in their ability to role-play, compared to newcomers. By which I mean, not the ability to depict a character, but in their ability to establish what happens in the imaginary situation without all sorts of weird self-imposed stumbling blocks. So, normal? Normal for a role-player, which is to say, in playing HeroQuest, at least on the road to recovery.

Best,
Ron

Your discussion touches on something I'm still trying to grasp. I've read in several threads the exhortation to have the players state the goal of their actions, the "I hit it" vs "I hit it with my axe and slice its head off". In addition there is the advice to let the roll stand as the conflict resolution, so if you win the contest and your goal was to slice its head off, you did.

But if you get a marginal victory, or heck, anything short of a complete victory, how can you have cut its head off? I don't think decapitation can be considered a Hurt in anyone's book (I'm assuming an opponent like a human or something, no automatons or undead).

So either you honor the intent, and any degree of victory means death, in which case the degree of victory becomes irrelevant, or you tone down the result from the intent. But if you do that ("Um...your axe clips his neck as he hurls himself back, he's bleeding and injured"), then the contest isn't over because the player hasn't reached his goal, and logically enough he wants to keep going and finish the job. In which case its not conflict resolution anymore, its something more like a traditional round of combat.

This seeming paradox is to me the biggest stumbling block to my understanding of conflict resolution mechanics. On the one hand, mechanics that inply degree of success in a stated goal, on the other, stated goals that do not admit degrees of success.

Is the solution just to ask for intentions but require them to permit varying degrees of success?

Alex

Hi Alex,

Is the solution just to ask for intentions but require them to permit varying degrees of success?

Ron and Peter have it right here, but just want to add that once players become used to the results as conflict resolution, not task resolution, they often direct their efforts to improve the level of victory. The simplest example is the parting shot in an extended contest, which allows the player to try and drive the opponent to a worse defeat. If a player questions why he could not just run though his opponent before he fled (because this is how you are describing the marginal victory), explain that the parting shot was his opportunity to do this. In addition players in our game, often bid high even when close to winning, with an eye to the final position not just driving someone below 0. In addition it is not uncommon for someone with hero points to use them, even when they would win without them, to make sure their opponent is driven to the desired level of defeat.

That's really a key concept.

The confict is "a physical engagement in which I intend to use lethal force to end the engagement"

Anything beyond that (like the how "I chop his head off") is wholly dependent on whether the roll was sufficiently high enough to permit that level of narration.

With a minor victory, its not. But regardless of what actually happened...the fight is over. Its done. There is no additional roll (for this conflict). So now what remains is to decide on what a suitable description for the events are. What actually happened that the character would deem a victory but not the victory he was hoping for.

Well, he won the fight, that's the victory part. But the enemy was not killed...he didn't achieve that part of his goals. The enemy may have surrendered or been knocked unconcious or the like, leaving the character (and more importantly the player) with an important choice. He wanted to kill him in combat...is he willing to kill him in cold blood?

Lets say the narration is something along the lines of "you were mostly in control of this fight the entire time and managed to land a solid blow creasing his ribs. Thinking better of his choice to cross swords with you, he disengages and breaks for the woods".


THIS is the meaty "takes some practice" part. Many a player would say "hey wait, I wouldn't let him get away like that"

This is where the GM must interpret 2 things. First the original statement of Conflict and second how to apply the degree of success to that. See in the statement of conflict as I summarized it above, the key statement of the conflict was "ending the engagement". There for anything that ends the engagement without the PC being defeated would be appropriate.

If the player REALLY wanted to make sure this particular opponent didn't escape to warn others (or whatever) than the statement of conflict should have been along the lines of "I'm willing to use lethal force to prevent the escape of this individual". See, now the key qualifier for what constitutes a victory includes not letting the individual escape.

How the conflict is defined is also what the GM will use to 1) assign improv penelties or other modifiers, and 2) determine what abilities might be most useful for augmentations and which don't apply.


I strongly recommend new players to actually take the extra step of defining out a formal conflict statement. Most experienced roleplayers have a set of assumptions about "but what I meant was..." when they make statements about what they are doing. These assumptions are almost always firmly rooted in "task" based resolution. The player may have really wanted to prevent the guy from escaping but in "task mentality" saw no reason to announce that until the escape attempt happened and needed to be thwarted. By practiceing with a formal conflict statement it can help players enter that "ok, if everything went absolutely perfectly, what would I want to happen" state which usually gets right to the heart of what the conflict is about.

Beautifully stated, Ralph.

Best,
Ron

It's funny, but this is all just another example of the same ability to narrate that we all practice in other games. But, as Ron says, because of tradition, player expectation makes it difficult. When it's really no more difficult than coming up with anything else on the fly.


There's another subtle thing going on here that people are sorta glossing over. Sometimes there is no "winner". In fact, in HQ, that's normally the case. From a certain POV anyhow.

What do we know about the conflict in question?
1. The player wanted to kill or run off the tick
2. The tick wanted to kill the player
3. The tick came out with a marginal victory.
4. The conflict is over.

How can we make that all stand up via narration.

Well, the effect of a mariginal victory can't be made to match the tick's goal. Marginal victory means that he got some positive effect, but not that it accomplished 100% of the goal. This is important, IMO. Only Complete Success means that the goal was completely achieved. Anything less means less than perfection.

So, in this case, I'd simply narrate that there's a fierce struggle, the tick grazed the character's arm trying to get at his blood, and then was driven off. Once you realize that almost all HQ Conflicts end like this, with nobody a complete victor, you quickly become adept at describing them, IMO.

Note that players are constantly telling you that their goal in these cases is simply to end the conflict. Well, that's not really saying anything. Because the conflict will be over after the dice are rolled. Now, that doesn't mean that it's a bad declaration, but it does mean that what they're really saying is that they're trying to make the conflict go away in such a way as to make it harder for it to come back again. Which is what the penalties represent in the case of a success (whether they be applied for injury or some other disability). The -31+ result on a "run off" Conflict would result, in my estimation, in the creature not having the will to ever face the character again (or death if that's what the player wants).

In this case the tick hasn't suffered any disability. Sure, it was run off momentarily, but it's still out there somewhere. It can't legitimately attack right away again*, but it can start a new conflict right off. I'd have it shadow him through the woods. So that later, at some really inappropriate time, it can attack from some angle that will give it a big bonus.

Once you know what the potential results of a contest are, then you can start to better see what makes for a good narration. What you want to do is stay away from invalidating the non-achieved results. But as long as you come up with a good in-game representation of the statistics, you're doing fine, IMO.


Now, the Tick is actually the easy case. Because in the example solution I have, I don't have to worry about the Tick being a protagonist, just the character. Take a harder case: PC v PC. In this case, if the Conflict entailed both characters having a goal of "Combat to the Death", then what does a partial success look like?

Well, this is something you always have to worry about. No matter what the nature of the conflict, there's always a chance of a tie. What do you do in that case? As long as you have an idea of what sort of things make for good interruptions for ties, you can always figure out what makes for the stoppage of a Conflict.

In the case of a Duel, it's easy, somebody intervenes, perhaps. Sure, it's to the death, but Lady Soinso, upon seeing Forgault get scratched, leaps between the two to stop the fight. Or the guard comes along. Or the rain becomes so torrential that one of the characters is carried off in a mudslide. Or a war breaks out. Or a monster comes along. Or their mutual arch-enemy arrives. Or they just fight so long that they both collapse in exhaustion - Forgault's scratch having been aquired in the first five minutes of an hour long battle.

All these things can be used to either indicate that the Conflict was interrupted or end it "prematurely" as an interperetation of a result. Note that if you use this bit, that most of the above present other Conflicts immediately. This is fun. If you do this a lot, your play can just turn into a series of Conflicts. And the fact that Complete Victory is rare becomes an asset.

Another way to "interrupt" is to do something that makes more of a protagonist of one of the characters. This does require you to take control of the PC in a fashion, so be careful. But if you do it right, nobody minds. In this case, the PC who wins the Conflict has a sudden change of heart or something. "Seeing that you've injured poor Forgault, you halt for a moment, and call for him to surrender, which he does, gracefully." Just as a "Dying" result imposes some involuntary reaction (bleeding out, or what have you) on the character, so, too, can any other results. In this case, all that you need to remember is to make both characters look as good as possible for the situation.

The point is that killing something, or any such permenant results are not easily available by the system. They're dramatic and only obtained rarely (often as a result of spending HP). But they don't need to be available for the character to have some related success, or partial success, and still look good. The advantage to partial successes is that the source of the Conflict doesn't go away. It just crawls off to fester for a while before trying again from another vantage. So your antagonists don't go away constantly. Protagonists, too. Let's not forget that what makes the antagonists dramatically durable is the same thing that makes the PCs so durable. Without which, PC death would be a constant problem - as it is in other games that use Task resolution instead of Conflict resolution.

Oh, and one more method, one that's not supported by the rules directly, but seems to be an extension of them, is to make unimportant opposition part of a larger whole. For example, if the character had won against the Tick with a marginal victory, that could be represented as him killing it. But what the character doesn't know (but the player might) is that there are more in the trees waiting for their chance - created by the GM on the spot to enable the narration. The -1 is applied to the next one to threaten him as it's going to be more tentative due to the ferocity of the character. So that one follows him to strike later. This way, you get all the blood you want, but the real success, defeating the ticks so that they don't attack again, is still in the offing.

This all said, it's always the GM's right to declare that an encounter has been permenantly resolved by even a marginal victory. As he's the player who decides what other characters do, he perforce has the ability to decide that "they just never come back." So don't feel that if you have less than a Complete Victory that you have to bring antagonistic forces back again and again until permenantly defeated. Just do it if it seem like a good idea. IOW, even a marginal victory can mean the final end of an antagonist in terms of story.

Mike

*see Ron's caveat - a player might change his mind and go after the Tick, which seems to me to be totally different goals on his part (hunter become the hunted), and I'd allow in an instant.

Ron Edwards wrote: Beautifully stated, Ralph.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: This is quite hard for many role-players and represents the usual squint-eyed attention on task resolution rather than conflict resolution.

Ron Edwards wrote:
But the point is to get that concept across through example and necessary exercise of authority very consistently during play.

Ron Edwards wrote:
So once that understanding has been internalized, the player doesn't run ahead narrating his victory like a Pool player on speed, because he - just like you, the GM - is looking at the dice too, and knows what a Marginal Victory is.

Ron Edwards wrote:
Now for the squishy part. I should point out that it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to permit the player to attack the tick again in a new Simple Contest, if he demonstrates that kind of enthusiasm. Why not, after all? The point is that he has beaten the tick, marginally, but now why not go to town? So that his ravings aren't narration of the Marginal Victory, but themselves a new announced action.

Ron Edwards wrote:
...a little bending to permit a new Simple Contest once in a while is OK.

Ron Edwards wrote:
So, normal? Normal for a role-player, which is to say, in playing HeroQuest, at least on the road to recovery.

kalyptein wrote:
This seeming paradox is to me the biggest stumbling block to my understanding of conflict resolution mechanics. On the one hand, mechanics that imply degree of success in a stated goal, on the other, stated goals that do not admit degrees of success.

Is the solution just to ask for intentions but require them to permit varying degrees of success?

Alex

Ron Edwards wrote:
The opponent stops fighting for whatever reason makes most sense at the moment, whether it's fear after experiencing a potentially-fatal strike, or whatever. If it were an animal, I would probably have it flee; a human(oid) foe might flee or beg for mercy, or simply yield, depending.

Valamir wrote:
Lets say the narration is something along the lines of "you were mostly in control of this fight the entire time and managed to land a solid blow creasing his ribs. Thinking better of his choice to cross swords with you, he disengages and breaks for the woods".

THIS is the meaty "takes some practice" part. Many a player would say "hey wait, I wouldn't let him get away like that"

…

By practicing with a formal conflict statement it can help players enter that "ok, if everything went absolutely perfectly, what would I want to happen" state which usually gets right to the heart of what the conflict is about.
_________________
Ralph Mazza

Mike Holmes wrote:
How can we make that all stand up via narration...

Thanks, Ralph. That was a great post. I especially appreciated the bit where you explained how you would narrate the outcome. In your experience, would prompting the players for an “if everything went absolutely perfect” response help me in avoiding the concentration on task-based resolution?

That's how I finally figured it out anyway. Something along the lines of "if your character had 1 wish to spend on this conflict to make it come out exactly the way they wanted it to...what would the final result look like".

But mostly that's just necessary to break them into the concept. From there the GM can usually figure out what aspect of the "encounter" is most important.

For instance, take a duel between 2 people. You might find, based on the character's description of what he REALLY wants to happen, that the most important thing in the conflict isn't winning the duel; its impressing the local chieftain. The duel is just a means to that end. The conflict statement then should be framed to indicate what the real conflict is.

Would it also help me to determine degrees of success in these contests (or have the players do so)? What mental exercises do you use when running/playing the game to keep yourself, and your players, focused on conflicts, not tasks?

I'm going to deviate from the consensus here and say that this is not a suitable choice for a simple contest. If you really had to do it that way, a marginal victory for the tick means the pc managed to escape from the tick almost unharmed, but he certainly didn't drive it off. Possibly instead of being injured, he had to leave something behind when he ran away.

However, as described, it is a one-on-one fight by a solo pc against an opponent with superior combat skills and intent to kill. You were lucky the player rolled as well as they did, the expected outcome would have been a worse defeat for the player. Being left for dead was a distinct possibility - it's hard to die in HQ as part of a group, but solo with no followers you will be spending HP or living by narrator fudges all the time.

Heroquest, is, of course, not really designed to be played solo with no followers.

The point of a single contest is it gets something accepted as having happened quickly. But a lot of players players would never accept their character taking a serious defeat or dieing with one roll, so there is the temptation to allow them another, and then another, indefinitely.

In this case, an extended contest would have been a much easier and probably faster to narrate choice. After losing AP on the intial roll, the player would have been given the choice of staying to fight a superior opponent from a poor position or running away - hopefully giant ticks are sluggish and escaping would be a lot easier than beating it in battle.

If they did stay and fight, then they would know what they would be getting in for.

The fact that APs always trend downwards in an extended contest means it would soon be over, given appropriate bids, rather than dragging on indefinetely as a series of simple contests can. A 2 person extended contest very rarely goes beyond 3/4 exchanges, which is about proportional to the screen time the giant tick would have gotten in a movie.

Tick attacks sleeping hero, hero wakes and tries to ward off blow, gets a scratch, kicks out at it, realises it is pretty tough, tick advances menacingly, hero turns and runs, just makes it to safety.

Things the players attack can be simple contests, as thats just a fast way of removing an inconvenient obstacle. In a film, you can take out the guards in a single shot (either sense). But if you choose to have something attack the players, then it's either worth an extended contest or its rarely worth including in the first place. A film where an assassin attacked and killed one of the protagonists half way through in a single shot as if they were a faceless mook would be deeply 'experimental'.

soru

soru wrote:
Things the players attack can be simple contests, as thats just a fast way of removing an inconvenient obstacle. In a film, you can take out the guards in a single shot (either sense). But if you choose to have something attack the players, then it's either worth an extended contest or its rarely worth including in the first place. A film where an assassin attacked and killed one of the protagonists half way through in a single shot as if they were a faceless mook would be deeply 'experimental'.

soru

According to the numbers up thread, you said the tick was 9W, the player 3W, which makes the tick the better fighter. I wouldn't count hero points as part of a description of player power, spending a hero point is more 'I knew he was better than me, but I got lucky'.

Most of the time, if you have a fight out of the blue, its to add some excitement, or just to buy yourself some time to work out what happens next. Comparisons with hollywood movies that substitute flash-bang action and special effects for plot advancement and dialog are probably justified. But for most people, theres no shame in running a game thats no worse than the efforts of overpaid screenwriters.

The problem with a simple contest is it doesn't meet those goals, it's abstract and doesn't fill 'screen-time'. I wouldn't say I would never resolve an attack on the player as a simple contest, but it would definitely be an exception rather than the rule. Generally, if you have a player attacked, its for a reason, if that reason isn't good enough to justify an extended contest then why not skip the attack entirely?

Watch Star Wars, LoTR, Buffy and you can count the number of combats resolved as simple contests on the fingers of one hand. And when they do occur (e.g. Han taking over the shield generator in RoTJ), it's always at the initiative of the protagonists.

There's one famous exception to this rule, which is the sequence in Raiders of the Lost Ark where an arab swordsman challenges Indy, and he just pulls out a gun and shoots him. That always gets a laugh from the audience, simply because it is such a breaking of the usual rules.

soru

Hello,

Soru, I think there's a major difference between the way you're interpreting Simple vs. Extended Contests, and the way I do it. I'm fairly certain that mine is more consistent with the rules text, for whatever that's worth - that's not really the point, though. The point is to understand the difference.

Which is: To my understanding, in-game time or complexity of the conflict has absolutely nothing to do with Simple vs. Extended, in game mechanics.

A months-long, multi-variate, incredibly complex military conflict involving thousands of people may be resolved using a Simple Contest.

A single fleeting, flirting conflict between two rivals, in a three-second encounter, may be resolved using an Extended Contest.

To me, Simple vs. Extended is specifically and only a matter of how much the actual people who are role-playing care about the conflict's nuances. Looking over many cases, choosing Extended Contests will indeed be positively correlated with the conflict's in-game time and complexity, but as a secondary effect, not as a causal or primary reason for that choice.

The implications of this approach to the distinction between the Contests are as follows.

Extended Contests become, by definition, revelations about the player-characters as protagonists. We get to see how all of the character's abilities, potentially, get "drawn upon" for something he or she cares about (or rather, that we the real people care about).

Whereas Simple Contests, once played, are more like "Bang, the Situation has now changed, based on the outcome. New Situation, revise and rinse your notions." They do not reveal as much of the protagonists, per unit "event" in the game-world, and tend to confirm what we know about them instead.

Best,
Ron

I agree with your theory, but not with your interpretation of my examples or with your conclusions.

The point of the film examples is not what actually happened, but what the director chose to show.

In star wars (to pick an example hopefully everyone will know), lucas could have cut straight from briefing:

'our X wings will hold off their tie fighters while whoever can get through makes a run down the trench'

to

'pan shot, X wings and tie fighters wheeling'

to the meat of the story:

'Luke in the trench, Vader on his tail'.

That would have been the film equivalent of handling the X Wing vs Tie battle as a simple contest:

'Minor victory. OK you are in the trench, but the x wing force has taken a lot of casualties. And here comes a Tie fighter not like the others...'

Could have been done that way, but would have been a worse film for it, IMHO. Because, using you own rules, the participants (the audience in this case) had never before seen fighter versus fighter combat in this universe. So without the extended sequence, they would not have got to learn anything about it, and the cod mysticism would have had to bear the whole weight of the story.

Now in a longer running series like Babylon 5, you do get the same kind of spacefighter combat treated in that way. 'fighter wing encounters mysterious ship under attack by space pirates, quick CGI sequence driving off the pirates, move on to boarding the mysterious ship'. Because the audience have seen it before, and there's nothing in particular new to say about it this time, it's just a plot point to be got through asap.

So that's the examples. The conclusion I draw from them is that when a new HW narrator asks 'how do I handle this as a simple contest', the right answer is not 'here is how I learnt to do it', but 'run it with your players as an extended contest. Then if something similar happens again later in the campaign, you will know what to do'.

Because at the beginning of a campaign, you haven't established anything. You don't know which PCs are badass, which will act smart, which will never surrender despite the odds, which have a useful magical talent, which have a fatal weakness for cheese. And if you and the players don't have a shared understanding of that, they will very likely end up uncomfortable with your narration of simple contests.

If anything, the names 'extended contest' and 'simple contest' are somewhat misleading, because it leads narrators to using simple contests before they try extended ones. It might have been better if they were marked 'contests' and 'advanced rule:quick contest resolution' respectively.

soru

Mmmm! Good point, and well explained. Apparently we're not disagreeing as much as I thought ... although I'm not sure your previous posts are entirely consistent with this last one. Reader's choice, and not worth debating.

I hope our combined posts can be helpful to people who are still struggling with these issues.

Best,
Ron

soru wrote: According to the numbers up thread, you said the tick was 9W, the player 3W, which makes the tick the better fighter. I wouldn't count hero points as part of a description of player power, spending a hero point is more 'I knew he was better than me, but I got lucky'.

...
soru