I guess maybe its just my players! :-) The people I game with are a great bunch and loads of fun but I know there are elements within them that would exploit this. Not always or even often but they'd know it was there and available.
> (in disjunct with any possible game-world validity of changes of
> tactic). I'd have thought it would have flowed fairly naturally
> from the choice of contest mechanism being the narrator's in HQ,
I was following everything you said up to here. I thought the question was that the players might change goals and actions sufficiently that the current contest would be pointless to continue and a new contest would begin.
If that is so, then the narrator has less choice than before in that the players can push the current contest into a siding and lobby for a new one that they like better.
> and not to mention having said it myself a couple of
> times: but the point is that whether/when a contest would be
> 'restarted' in this manner is, I'm suggesting, *entirely* up to the
> narrator.
Now see, I agree with this to a point. The game is essentially the narrators but when is a narrator going to abandon a contest that their NPC is losing badly and begin a new one that gives them a decent chance of frustrating the heroes?? Probably never unless they want some pretty pissed off players.
Even if you do it, does the abandoned contest influence the new one? To what extent? Are these written down stuff (like the contest resolution events) or arbitrarily decided on a contest by contest basis??
I think abandoning contests cause more questions than it answers.
>> By changing actions you bring different skills and abilities >> into play during the contest and by changing goals you change >> the consequences of the contest if you are victorious. Obviously >> if you lose then its your opponent that dictates the consequences >> of the contest.
I think it depends on your approach to the whole hobby. I look to the rules to provide me with a framework on which to hang the narrative. The AP totals represent how close we are to coming to the resolution of a contest and thus they can be entirely mutable.
APs are nothing to do with the narrative - they are metagame stuff that helps me decide how two competing visions of the future of the narrative might be resolved.
Now as a narrator it is up to me to decide how well or badly I recieve AP bids and actions and how much penalty I decide to apply to proposed skills. If a contest is coming to a close (the characters AP totals approaching zero) in a way the players do not like and they want to change everything in such a way that none of the original abilities have any relevance to the new goals then they tell me what they want to do.
If I am happy with that (the narrative flows well) I agree to their requests and do not impose situational penalties upon their skills and perhaps even impose them on their opponents responses. If I am unhappy I impose penalties. In this way I influence (and control) the new phase of the contest.
I keep the AP totals sacrosanct as they give me an impartial way of saying to the players that this particular contest is OVER. Yup. They can try other things and begin new contests afterwards but only once they accept the penalties of the one they've just been involved in.
If I thought it was important enough to begin as an extended contest then it is likely to be important enough to finish it...otherwise I should just have rolled the dice once - got a result and never given them the chance to start worrying about getting beaten.
>> As far as I see it, once you enter a contest then you have to >> finish it and determine the consequences of that contest before >> entering a second one.
If that was my point of view then I think I'd completely avoid extended contests and stick to simple ones instead...it only becomes a problem because you draw out the resolution of the contest rather than just deciding it. (all in my ever so humble opinion of course!)
Stephen
(I'm rambling when I should be working!!!!)
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