This all makes sense, but I think that sometimes you don't know what is "the most interesting outcome" in advance - sometimes the events can guide the story...
>
> If the players care most about backing the winner, regardless of
> argument, that's the contest - can you back the right horse.
>
This works if the players don't care who wins so long as they can back the winner ("If we support who ever is likely to end up as Chief then we can be sure he will reward us for our support...") - But they may want to attempt to predict who will win so that they can take different actions - (Orlev is rash, but he holds a grudge. If we argue against him now, and he wins he will hold it against us. If we keep quite now, then when he makes mistakes and the mood turns against him we can remind people we did not support him now. However if Orlev is not likely to win we should argue for Arnulf, who will reward us for our early support). It is not enough to know if the players can pick the right side, we need to know which side they pick. Either way can lead to interesting fall out...
> The world is not player-centric, but story telling games should be,
> because the story is about the players.
I agree with this...
> One mistake I made when Red
> Cow was to have people in the story who the players could not hope
to
> win contests with. That makes pcs into zeroes not heroes.
Only if they think they should be able to compete with those people,
and then discover they are wrong.
>
> No beginning band of heroes is going to take on Harrek. So even in
a
> Wolf Pirates campaign he should be color, never someone who the
> players roll against in a contest.
>
Yes. But the fact that they shouldn't roll against him doen't make them zeros because they can't hope to beat him.
> In Red Cow the pcs could not win a debate with the ring. In The
Coming
> Storm they have a chance, because I use a relative resistance to
their
> ability and even where it is tough can feel that they had a chance
to
> sway the clan. IMO the game is more enjoyable for that.
>
To me, this seems slightly backwards. If the players can't win a debate with the ring then that tells us something, and should suggest that if the players want to get the clan to do something then they either need to do something other than debate with the ring (In true Orlanthi fasion they should go out and do it first then aoplogise later), or find some way to improve the odds in their favour (Gain support from influential individuals, find a way to lessen the influence of their opponents on the ring, try bribery or blackmail). These attempts then drive the action, and may have ongoign consequences whether they ultimately succeed or fail. If the relative resistasnce is +2W, then it's not clear (to me at least) why they would bother to do any of this. At the end of the day they will still be +2W behind the ring, because you have decided it will be a tough contest.
I had previously understood the Pass/Fail cycle and relative resistances to be an optional tool that enabled you to ensure that players were very unlikely to either walk through a scenario without breaking into a sweat or be unable to progress beyound the first scene, not as the only we of ever generating a resistance
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