Well, to paraphrase Nancy Reagan in line with HQ, "Just Say 'Yes, but it's at -40'." ;-)
> > (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.
Try as I might, I can't see how I'm in any sense giving the narrator _less_ choice. You're supposing that the players will use their knowledge of the very _existence_ of an option to contrive to make it the only one; I don't how you could do this, practically, and I don't see even why you'd want to, if the means of doing so are going to consist of doing things nonsensical to the situation in hand. I mean, you might want to change the goal of the current contest from 'defend self on capital charge' to 'fold origami horse', but how are you going to reasonably do so without a) sounding like you're taking the piss, and b) making the first issue worse, rather than 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.
I think it can occur legitimately; to stick to the 'running away' example, say, it's quite possible said NPC has been narrated into a position where they're at a considerable disadvantage to winning the fight, but are far from 'cornered'. You potentially then have a choice of how to model this: fiat (he runs away); same contest, maybe with some ad hoc sit-mods to 'compensate' for his (now frankly inappropriate) AP position; or new contest (very possibly just a simple one). The last seems to me to be the least frustrating, done right, not the most so.
> 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??
For me, I'd try to confine it to same contest with new sit-mods, or new contest with carry-over/wounds, but the how and which I'm not making any 'written down' suggestions regarding, no.
> I think abandoning contests cause more questions than it answers.
In a sense it does, yes. It poses the question of what's the best resolution mechanic for the developing situation, and leaves it to the narrator to answer it.
> > I don't follow the logic of this. You seem to be saying that what a
> > contest is entirely mutable, right up until the moment of victory
> > or defeat; but the AP totals are what's sacrosanct? I think that's
> > definitely putting the mechanical cart in front of the story horse.
>
> 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.
Which is to say, they're everything to do with the narrative. The AP totals as-is correspond (in an inexact way, obviously) with existing established past events of the narrative; if those past events have ceased to be especially pertinent to the _changed_ goals, then neither are those AP totals.
> 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.
But AP totals in a contest don't measure decontextualised Overness. They measure how close one or other side is to achieving a _particular_ goal, as explicit or implicit in the course of the contest. A change in goal may be essentially consistent with the previous one (abandon current sub-goal in favour of a new way of doing what you actually want to achieve overall), in which case fair enough. But if that's not the case, why are those AP totals still relevant, except to the degree they happen to correspond to past events that'd facilitate or hinder the new goal? What are they actually now measuring?
Cheers,
Alex.
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