>But this one, it's not just the initial 20v1 roll,
>it's all the way through! What's stopping the Lunars
>from simply executing her? Very careful balancing of
>character motivations, that's what. You'd need to
>fiddle every dice roll, and control every bit of what
>should be player decision, to get that result. And
>that balance, and watching the Lunar dithering, and
>learning, and shifting viewpoint, are the entire point
>of the story.
NPC motivations aren't dice rolls. I can't think of any other contests that require extreme results. Most of them come under the heading of "no respectable hero fails" or NPC/NPC contests.
>> I can sort of see how to do it. First off you drop
>> Kallyr and her party.
>
>Well, there goes the story.
If you don't replace Kallyr then the PCs have to be the Lunars. And it would be a struggle to get a bunch of PCs to act in a way that produced anything like the story.
>> They are replaced by the PCs one of who should be
>> wanted by the Lunars. They have the problem
>> of rescuing a prisoner from the Lunars.
>
>Yes, this is roughly what I was thinking. Wrong
>decision number 1: Kallyr should never have been doing
>the job herself in the first place.
>
>In fact, simply rescuing the prisoner and the plot
>token might well be enough to keep a low-level group
>occupied. I know I played up the incompetence of the
>opposition, but the average PC group probably isn't as
>good at this sort of thing as Kallyr and mob, and they
>probably don't have a Trickster using teleportals to
>sort out the get-away.
And if there are a reasonable number of contests involved there's a good chance someone will lose in such a way that they can be captured.
>[writing Big Plot Arc scenario]
>
>> I can see how it could be done, with a lot of work.
>> But I'm not convinced the end result would be worth
>> it. You still end up with a one off plot reliant on
>> a group of characters with specific skills. Any other
>> group are either going to ignore the plot or trash it
>> completely. So an entire book becomes a single useful
>> paragraph setting out the problem the PCs have to solve.
>
>Well... a series of problems, perhaps. In order to
>achieve Big Goal, you need Minor Goals A-G. Pick one
>from that list that's suited to the PCs' talents, or
>let them find another way of reaching some of those
>goals.
That has a bit more potential but even then most of the book is irrelevant to most groups of PCs.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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