RE: Re: Fixed-length extended contests?

From: Mike Holmes <mike_c_holmes_at_...>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 13:29:18 -0600

I'm sorry, Sam, but the lenght of a round just isn't important to me. That is, I like your "footie" example, and that's how I do things. Pacing should be like a movie. Think about the movies that you've seen with Football in them - do they show the entire game? No, they encapsulate whole periods of play at times, and just focus on dramatically important parts.

Same with the siege of Minas Tirith. Tolkien and Jackson both only show you what you need to see. You don't even have to cover some of the territiory with bids, "Hours pass with the fighting raging on generally - then trolls start to bring up Grond..."

The AP are the "time" pacing tool that you need to provide suspense, IMO. I don't think that adding rounds as such would add much to an extended contest. Again, the players and narrator are monitoring just how much suspense there should be at any given moment by their bids. It's neat, the audience has an active hand in choosing the pace.

I'm tempted to come out against the idea of using the heroquest sequence, but it might actually work. What I'd do is actually make the event that seemed to require such into an actual heroquest. Sure they don't realize that the game of trollball is actually happening on the Hero Plane ("so that's why we had to get past a 10W3 to get on the pitch?"). So? When it's done, they'll be glad to have gotten the heroquest reward. Hmm. Burn the opposing goalie and keep the ashes as a talisman?

Mike