One of my major objections to HW (as those of you who've been here for a
while will know) is that I hate the Extended Contest/AP rules. Robin
seems to think that they are the thing to go for when a situation is
Very Important but me I can't think of things I like less than ages
spent bidding, adding up and subtracting and trying to keep up the
suspense because It Isn't Over Till The Last AP Goes. You add up
numbers, you take them away and still Nothing Is Decided. This is fun?
So I'm resolved to:
- Only use Simple Contests. (Well, I think you just *might* be able to
use Extended Contests for something as abstracted as a battle but even
then I think that something like the Carryovers from the HeroQuesting
rules would work just as well to model the effects of battle flowing
back and forth.)
- Cut combat down into a series of Simple Contests each with some
definite result in terms of wounds and stuff.
- Restore something like Wound Levels to the game.
So a question I'd like to ask is on the topic of edges (and their
opposite). I can't allow edges to affect APs lost and gained but how
would it work (the mathematicians among you perk up now) if I allowed
them to affect how ties between successes. Since on a success v success
the low role wins how about allowing the edge to affect that tiebreaker:
an edge means that the number rolled is reduced by that amount
increasing the chance of winning a 'marginal victory'. How would this
affect things, do you think?
--
Michael Cule