Burning at both ends

From: Ian Young <Ian_at_...>
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 08:38:39 -0000

Hello. This is my first post on this particular list, and I have an odd question.

I'm trying to devise a contest that represents a person being in conflict between two different, undesirable, and somewhat opposed internal urges. To put this in a concrete example that might make sense to some of you here, it's like the old dragonewt Personality Trait Chart from Wyrm's Footnotes #14, where the desirable conscious state was caught between two opposed impulsive traits. The mechanic I'm looking for should -- in a single roll, ideally -- represent an individual's personal mastery over two opposed and uncontrolled emotional states, or personality traits. At the same time, I want to be able to track the ebb and flow of these personality traits -- thus, the candle burning at both ends.

My first thought was to simply pit one personality trait against the other in a simple contest, say, a person's Foolhardy impulses versus his Cowardly impulses. However, this doesn't take the person's mastery over the two into account, particularly the mastery getting pinched between the two. So I'm finding myself trying to devise a three-way contest with one personality trait on one side, the other on the other, and a third trait piggy-in-the-middle. I've mulled over the Group Simple Contests ruling on HQ p.65, but it doesn't seem to apply well to this case, where I want to pick a single winner out of three contestants with a single roll.

Any ideas on how to wrangle this contest?

!i!