Limiting yourself to starting AP has a big dramatic advantage - someone enters a contest at a big disadvantage but manages to turn the tables - happens all the time and gives great value, IMO. I did it as a player myself recently. I tried allowing desperation bids to be bigger than the starting AP but it didn't work quite as well as having that limit.
> >In addition, if you don't believe that rolls are always against an
ability
> >of the opponent (which - I think - is the position of the book) does
that
> >mean that the AP is determined by the resistance? (I've thought so.)
> I extrapolate this from the notion of having ECs against things like
> Forests, Crypts, High Towers that Need Climbing, etc. They don't
> get ability ratings. So they shouldn't be ECs? If doing ECs with them is
OK,
> then what else do you use for an AP pool?
I didn't understand this, LC? The Resistance in the book is simply shorthand for an ability. I very frequently resort to considering the PCs' opponent(s) as The Universe. The Universe has all sorts of abilities (see Mike's examples) and can include a number of entities. The Universe itself could easily resist with Uncaring, say, and can get AP from this. It could quite easily "attack" a PC using The World Is Against You or It Just Isn't Your Lucky Day or All Sorts of Funny Coincidences Are Happening At The Moment. Mooks tend to be abilities of the Universe too. This seems to me to be highly consistent with stories one reads or sees.
That have any bearing at all on what you said?
> To me, there's a danger with using "Chained Simple Contests" this way. And
> that's that it'll tend to put one back into "Task Resolution" mode. They
may
> assume that, in all cases, if they fail at something, they can simply take
> another shot at it, perhaps with a penalty. "I swung my sword, but missed,
> so now I swing again." This voids the very important concept of "no repeat
> attempts."
Indeed. I personally think I will reserve these for when I specifically want a fairy-tale or nursery rhyme feel of being able to try a bunch of different things until you find the soft spot.
> Does the Broo fight on? This would be the traditional approach, the Broo
> keeps fighting on until a Complete Victory result. This is great if you
want
> traditional gaming where every fight has to result in death. But it also
> means that every lock picked will result in the lock being picked, or the
> character getting some sort of obverse "dying" level damage. It's a step
> backward for people who want the resolution system to resolve
> conflicts, not just individual tasks.
Yes but...it does give you an alternative to the Interesting Victory vs. Interesting Defeat model. You have an Interesting Victory as read (say in a Hero Quest) but what you want to know is How the victory is achieved - which ability is it that works; which of the heroes is it who finally succeeds? Or you explicitly want a number of steps at which the heroes can succeed. If at the end they don't succeed, all hell breaks loose. You know Jack is going to escape the giant (most likely anyway)...Does he escape the giant's house/castle thing undetected, leaving all as it was up there? Does he manage to double back and trick the giant? Does he manage to climb down the beanstalk and chop it down?
Other example - a bunch of questing knights find a cup. Knight A doesn't manage to pick it up. Neither does Knight B. Up until Knight G (of course) who, apart from anything else, has seen that the others weren't thinking thoughts quite as purely as they should have done. He does pick the thing up and is known to legend as Pure, Holy and all that stuff.
So, I don't like repeat attempts myself at all; not one jot, not even using another ability. But I do see a role for the structure above and I don't think an EC quite does it.
> Just don't let things go that way by the "accident" of thinking that
> one can just get multiple bites at the same apple. That's dull, and what
the
> system is designed to avoid (IMHO).
I agree, FWIW.
Sam.
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