Yes, I agree with that, too. Getting a new ability at the same level as one you already have strikes me as good for balance (if it's too low, you'll never bother to use it, so why have challenged for it in the first place? also, having lots of attractive and similarly useful things encourages players to spread out their advancement HP, discouraging overspecialization). *Doubling* an ability is what destroys balance. Furthermore, while I don't mind the idea of a HQ lifting a 10w3 only to a 16w3, I'd feel really terrible telling anyone, "Congratulations! You got a Complete Victory on your Quest Challenge, so you get a brand new ability of, um, well, 14. Default + 8. Keen, huh?"
> IF you don't have it already that is. I think that wagering close
> combat for more close combat is horribly prosaic - boring, even!
Maybe, but I can see a mythic justification for it being the best way to advance beyond a certain level of power. "OK, you're good, but to *really* be the best player ever, you have to prove your ultimate skill in chess by wagering it and winning against Kasparov, Fischer AND Capablanca..."
> The contests don't quite map over from RQ heroquests directly - I'm
> not sure how I'd work the ZZ vs Yelmalio Hill of Gold quest.
IMO, the thorniest part of quests like this is how to mechanic the quester knowing he's supposed to *lose*. Now, clearly, in the Godtime when the myth itself happened, Yelmalio wasn't *trying* to lose, so why is it that a quester who does try (e.g., his psychological state is opposite his god's) is emulating him better than one who fights for his life (exactly as his god did) and accidentally wins?
Now, you can try to do this with reversed carryover on the station in question, but then you have deal with how exactly one goes about "throwing" a contest in HW. Intentionally defend with an inappropriate ability? I don't like that much, as one thing it implies is that the better you emulate your god in the Inner World (e.g., you have all the right skills at high levels), the worse you are at doing this sort of HQ. Also, what about carryover from previous stations? Does doing really well in the first half of the quest make it harder for you to get losing right? Or do you reverse the carryover too, so that you have a big handicap for just this contest?
Another thing you could try to do is redefine what each side's objective is, and go from there. The tricky bit is the definition of who "wins" a sufficiently asymmetric contest. In some sense, the HoG contest is between the ZZ's goal of "Take Fire Powers" and the Yelmalian's goal of "Not Get Killed in the Process". How do you mechanic the "historical" result of them *both* achieving the stated objective? Similarly, the Orlanth version of KoDP's Humakt HQ that Bruce Ferrie posted in January -- one could view this as goals of Orlanth's "Get the Sword from Humakt" vs. Humakt's "Force Orlanth to Make a New Arrangement". The trouble is, these are not incompatible goals, and indeed in the myth *both* sides "win". Mutual defeat is a possible outcome of a HW contest, but I don't see that mutual victory is. One way to handle this is to do a sort of purely formal contest: since each side wants the other to succeed, they both do -- but we have a "contest" anyway to see what happens to the carryover. This leads also to some interesting interpretations of bad outcomes: sure, a complete defeat for Humakt could mean Orlanth beats him, or it might mean he actually kills Orlanth, the mythic repercussions of which would pretty much permanently screw the quester, too.
Ryan Caveney
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