Re: How to play instant damaging effects?

From: David Dunham <david_at_...>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 08:18:49 -0700


Paul

> I had some thought as to handling traps and suchlike and they all
> seem to be oriented around a high-bid extended contest. eg. Trap:
> Person use his 'cunningly conceal boobytrap' skill (I'm talking about
> a professional tomb trapper here) in a simple contest, evaluated at a
> point in the future when the players encounter it.

While I can conceive of situations where dealing with a trap is an extended contest (think disarming the time bomb -- yanking the red wire as the counter gets to 00:01 represents spending a HP), most of the time traps aren't worth much screen time. A simple contest should result.

If your concern is that a marginal defeat doesn't do much, well, it probably shouldn't. However, you can think about the consequences as more long-term. In the short run, losing a contest with a trap could be really bad. But since the trap isn't really the focus of the adventure (I hope!), its major inconvenience is probably just for the scene in which it appears.

Also, in most cases I'd treat the trap as an inanimate force, not the extension of a trap-maker. As I said, it's not likely to be an extended contest, and you don't need to be able to describe the trap's bid: "Jotasar, the long-dead trap-maker, wound the spring extra tight. 15 AP."

Jeff

> it took me literally years before figure out that I could just nest
> a simple contest into an extended one

Taking the "Do not 'nest'" advice [HQ.186] too broadly, eh? I concur that running two extended contests at the same time is a Bad Thing (for one, it's hard to coordinate them, since the victor of the first inevitably wants to join in the second). But a simple contest for an unrelated activity or other distraction shouldn't be a problem.

-- 

David Dunham
Glorantha/HW/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html>
Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein

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