> Great in theory - somehow, in practice, I suspect that players will work
> out how to either wheedle a new contest or work out which buttons to push
> to justify a new contest. Personally, I don't see this as a big objection,
> though.
Well, me neither, to put it mildly. ;-) I can't see how this is going to be an issue, unless the narrator is so suggestible as to make a mental flip from thinking restarting contests is Impossible to thinking it's Practically Compulsory. Nor do I see it's any sort of unequivocal benefit to be mini-maxed -- it could in practice represent an escalation of the conflict, or losing on two fronts, instead of just one.
> That one is :
> > > 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.
> >
> >I can see why that's game-mechanically clean and convenient; I think
> >it's something of a awkward fit to the twists and turns of actual
> >storytelling (and actual playerly ass-preserving wangling), however.
>
> So why bother with extended contests at all? If your story is sufficiently
> twisty and turny for this to be a genuine issue, stick to simple contests.
How is one supposed to know how twisty and turny the story is going to be, before it happens? That'd be fine if only one person was contributing to telling it, sure. Contest starts off as one thing, seemingly, and due to player choices, starts to resemble more closely something else. (OK, I _did_ want to prove I was the best wrestler, now I just want to beat his brains out/
> As far as I can see, allowing extended contests to be interruptable is a
> recipe for an enormous can of worms, and little better than nesting them.
That part I have a certain sympathy for. As a rule of thumb, I reckon one would want, as has been variously suggested, to in some way permanently end the original contest (with or without some level of consequences), or to make the 'new thing' not extended, precisely to avoid the possibility of something essentially equivalent to the dreaded nesting).
I'll stop short of saying 'never nest' though, just to cover the possibility of one of those "hrm, y'know, this actually _is_ the original contest all over again, by other means" sorts of moments. e.g. if I PC is performing a Parthian Shot sort of thing, but presents it as a bona fide attempt to run away, one might way to revise the original decision (and slap the player in question round the head to boot).
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