House rules for extended contests

From: Kmnellist_at_...
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 16:59:43 EDT


<< I found that >typically, a player is going to stick to their top 2 or 3 skills >>

My own idea on this is that it should have something to do with bid size, but I cannot work out how to get it to work. Essentially, I think it should be hard to get big bids from "I do it again" type actions, probably because such actions tend to be boring, and what I was thinking was that a Hero can only reduce his bid if he keeps doing the same thing (and I am thinking halving each time (rounding up, so it never gets to zero). A new, radical and exciting, action enables him to go for a big bid, after which he can return to his former ability with a restored ability to do big stuff.

Trouble is with this approach is that it encourages small bids and requires some sort of additional record keeping.

Alternatively, and using an opposite approach - if the player wants to use the same ability, he must make each bid bigger than the last, on the basis that the repeat action is really just one action "I keep chopping at him with a sword until he is chopped to pieces" - so why waste time with 10 rounds at 2AP per round: roll one round at 20AP. I think this is more in line with Hero Quests narrative imperative, which is to avoid wasting time on the boring bits.

Actually though, when I think about how it might work I am concerned that the action might get repetive but in actual play it has not really been a problem. (although I do find myself assigning improv modifiers that take the player-Heroes best skill just one less than his more appropriate ability so he uses that.)

Keith

Powered by hypermail