>Just to emphasize this point, if the player accepts a psychological
>contest, then they agree to it potentially having an affect on their
>character's choices.
Definitely, if they lose. I only question enforcing limited choices during the contest, especially when the lack of options makes the character almost certain to lose when he could otherwise manage to regain the advantage.
>The cavalryman could physically continue
>blocking the bridge - or even try to ride across - even if suffering
>a complete defeat as a result of the swearing contest.
No he couldn't. Someone suffering a complete defeat can't do much of anything substantial for at least awhile. And since the objective of the contest was "cross the bridge first," the character definitely lost out on that chance.
A character suffering a lesser defeat might still be able to start a physical fight (though the narrator would be within his/her rights to rule that the new contest begins on the near side of the bridge, since the other guy won the contest to cross it first), but there would be penalties in place from the previous defeat.
>Saying that
>he can't is telling the player that their character can't do
>something that they just as plainly "could do" and - from the
>perspective of the narrative (rather than the rules) - for the same
>reasons.
Ah, so you're treating this as an extension of the "But I'm still up! Why can't I keep trying?" problem that seems inevitable until everyone gets on the same page about "defeat is defeat." I can see that, but I would tend to avoid the spread of that problem by making a rather large distinction between actual defeat (at which point the contest is lost, penalties kick in, and repeat attempts -- if even possible -- are entirely at the narrator's discretion) and just "about to lose," when I would still allow the player to pull just about anything out of his bag of tricks in order to come back from behind. Though now that I understand your case better (see previous response), I agree that some changes in tactics might require an unrelated action devoted to rolling a personality trait or the like in order to overcome the declared narrative results of the previous losses.
Stacy Forsythe
deadstop_at_...
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