Re: Multi-way contests

From: bethexton_at_...
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 17:57:31 -0000


I think the exact method for doing this sort of thing varies a bit depending on the exact sort of contest that you are looking at.

For example:

  1. In cross-country skiing races you normally have time staggered starts, and the winner has the best time, but may never have seen any of their competitors. Similarly in down hill ski racing, when one racer goes at a time. Mind you, without the head-to-head drama, these might be best modelled as simple contests (everyone rolls, best result wins).
  2. A mile long running race (or the modern 1500 metres). At the start there may be some jostling, flying elbows, and scratched up legs. Then you have a long pull where there is some runner setting the pace, and everyone else trying to keep up, along with some jostling for position. Finally near the end the end everyone does their final kick in an effort to achieve the best placement possible.
  3. A chariot race where the first across the finish line wins, but chariots crash into each other, drivers are whipping each others horses (and sometimes each other), and maybe the winner gets dragged across the finish line ten seconds after their chariot disentegrated
    (and two seconds before they began to sand off internal organs!)

They are all races where the ultimate goal is to get across the finish line the most quickly. However they have different levels of interaction.

Mind you, at least HQ gives you some tools for this....I recall in RQ doing a chariot race by using Circus Maximus and just fudging the stats over.

In the first case I'd be inclined just to use a simple contest. In the second I might use a series of simple contests, adapting the carry-over rule to modify the latter contests. In the third case I think a standard group extended contest works, provided enough narration, as it may well be something like a process of elimination. But it could also be done as a series of simple contests with carry over I suppose.

The problem with doing any sort of race with an extended contest, is that the purpose of an extended contest is to eliminate people. In a race type situation there is not (generally) eliminations. That is why you need some other progressive structure, which is where I'd consider the carry-over idea to be reasonable.

Also useful in racing would be some development of that "take a wound to get a bonus" rule to model things like "I push too hard, knowing I'll get winded, to beat him to the turn and get the better position"
(or "I whip my horses within an inch of their lives to beat him to
the turn").

--Bryan

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