>I see that lots of you are saying that your games are better with very little
>extended contests, and that you know try to avoid them as much possible.
>
>So I'm wondering: why? What's wrong with extended contests? They're one of the
>things that draw me to heroquest (though i haven't had a chance to play yet).
I like extended contests but agree that they should be used sparingly. While they can degenerate down to a numbers game, I find that they tend to actually enhance the storytelling, especially for climactic contests.
For example, look at the movie, "The Princess Bride" (a great one for HQ contest examples!) Towards the end when Inigo first encounters Count Rugen, the count sends his guards to attack and Inigo dispatches them without breaking a sweat; definitely a simple contest. Inigo chasing Rugen is an extended contest, however. It's much more interesting to have Inigo overcome all of the obstacles Rugen puts him through and see the AP seem to favor Rugen towards the end before Inigo's 'desperation stake' bid winning the contest. Running that as a simple contest would just be bland. Of course, an extended contest where the players and narrators just spout AP bids and roll would be just as boring. Extended contests take more work but can be much more rewarding if done right.
>How do you replace them ingame? Everything is a simple contest? So what happens
>with a fight for example? You solve the whole fight with only one simple contest
>or do you get a contest for each "strike"?
Definitely the former! If you're doing a contest for each strike, you might as well be doing an extended contest!
For a while, my players would almost always want extended contests even for incidental opposition. Their reason was that they didn't want their success to depend on one die roll and end up losing to a couple of trollkin just because of bad luck. An extended contest would mean a single bad die roll wouldn't necessarily lose them the contest. I finally decided that if the combat was not supposed to capture or kill them (for combat is where this always came up), it wouldn't. If a player suffered a marginal defeat, the opponent was driven off or killed but the PC was Hurt during the conflict and suffers that loss.
Camo
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