The basic idea is probably good--it is easier to describe a contest if you have appropriate results in mind ahead of time. However you have to be ready to accept that players may well come up with a plan that will totally kill your idea. You know, the storm magician who summons a small cyclone down the stairs to sweep the villain off his feet, the Vangrathi who goes outside and flies to the top of the tower and comes down behind the villain, or numerous other possibilities. Obviously some you can anticipate and have "defenses" against (the door to the roof is barred from the inside, keeping people from getting in off the roof and making it hard to raise a wind down the stairs.) The odds are still good (well, may be good depending on your players) that they'll come up with something completely different ("we'll retreat and build a fire to smoke him out!"). If that happens, you have to adapt.
In short, I guess I'm trying to say it is fair to plan some scripting and to try and manipulate a situation, but you can't _force_ it without damging the illusion of free will. Back when I was a player in various of Jeff Kyer's campaigns he was frequently succesful at running planned scripts....but then there was the time that my pious Orlanthi, infected with some sort of zombie spore, threw himself into a river, knowing that it would speed him to the underworld, rather than suffer the fate of turning into a horrid, chaotic, walking corpse. *shrug* sometimes the script works, sometimes it doesn't.
(a quick disclaimer: as a player I like narrator scripting. I'm inclined to walk right into narrator plans, and even throw them half formed ones to use. Basically I'll cooperate to get more drama, even if it isn't always the tactically best thing for my character sometimes. Other players may differ in their preferences.)
--Bryan
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