>It's the implementation of the feat in a contest. The problem boils
>down to in extended contests, everything is supposed to boil down to
>APs, and it's hard to fit that in sometimes. I have been able to
>work it in once, but that was a creature requiring decapitation to
>kill (it was used as a final action). I don't see this as a problem,
>really. It's just a matter of my picking out the right mechanical
>way of handling it.
Well, I'm hardly an expert on extended contests - personally I hardly ever use them! - but it seems to me that you are approaching this backwards. Contests have an objective, defined by what the two sides are trying to achieve. How well they are doing is measured by their APs. Anything they do which helps one side achieve their objective can affect APs. In that case, the feat is just used as the skill that round. If they do something that is unrelated to the contest's objective, that's an unrelated action. Roll a simple contest, apply the effects, and leave the AP unchanged.
Perhaps an example will help. The simplest for most of us is a combat. The objective is to beat the opponent up! So using feats like "Decapitate Foe" or "Truesword Stroke" could directly change the APs - just roll the dice and use the rules. Equally, feats such as "Sword Help" or "Truesword Stroke" could be used as augments. Its an unrelated action because it doesn't directly help you achieve your objective, but it might help indirectly. Finally the various "Healing" feats, and (probably) things like "Shield Breaker" have little to do with the objective. They are entirely unrelated actions.
In other words, the feats to use come from the players and the actions they want to take. Contests aren't designed to require this feat used this way.
>Well, I've read the myth about Orlanth rescuing Heler from the Blue
>Dragon, so I wind up looking at Wind Above and Wind Below and
>asking "how the hell was I supposed to know that?"
>
>Yes, yes, I KNOW I can can just make this crap up, but the whole
>reason I spend money on someone else's world is so that I don't have
>to make this crap up. And I am quite comfortable to make things up,
>but I'm finding myself having to make up more and more. I'm not
>having trouble grasping it, I'm simply not finding it to my liking
>for a casual game.
But I *DO NOT* make things up. I decide on actions, then find an ability that lets me do that. As a GM all I want to know is "Does the action being attempted with Wind Below involve wind and below?" I'm not making up a mythic justification for this, I don't care. It's a very mechanical approach. There's nothing in the rules that says you need to know a given myth to use the ability that might come from it. Feats are much broader than that.
>This is very much my problem. There are times that I feel that the
>more I learn about Glorantha, the muddier it gets. While this
>property makes for interesting mythmaking, I find it less than ideal
>for a game that I'm trying to play for fun.
Personally, I find this much better than the White Wolf "let's define everything down to the last detail" and then you have players saying "you can't do that because it says in this book that's been out of print for six years..." To each his own. Glorantha has always taken the "muddier" route. For me that's one of the main attractions.
Cheers,
Graham
-- Graham Robinson graham_at_... Albion Software Engineering Ltd.
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