> One of the ways of handling this is to add another
> side to the contest. To complete the football theme,
> you'd have three sides in the contest: Team A, Team B
> and the clock.
>
> This would also work for someone trying to pick a lock
> while evil henchmen prowl the corridors of the palace.
>
I've always had a problem with this kind of set up in extended contests. What decisions does the clock make? How are subsequent ticks of the clock different from each other so that one is more significant than another? As I see it, there are no decisons the clock can make, so it can't change the APs it bids each round, so the EC degenerates into a long period of boring dice rolling. Make it a simple contest between A and B, and get on with it.
As for the lock-picking example, I think that there are some types of scene in literature and film that, while thrilling to watch, are really boring to role-play through. Can the Hooded Claw pick the complicated lock? Can Indy run fast enough to escape the huge stone ball? Is Sly strong enough to hold on to his dangling climber buddy? Such scenes can be long, tense, and thrilling in a film, but they're best skipped over in an RPG session. That's because there are no moment-to-moment decisions to be made by the actors during those conflicts: every EC bid will be the same ("I wiggle my lockpicks", "I run fast", "I hold tight"). If that's all its going to be, make it a simple contest.
Of course, if you can turn those situations into ones where there are interesting decisions to be made, *by the player*, from exchange to exchange (Climb the vines or jump the chasm?), by all means make it an extended contest. But if it's just a question of whether my horse if fast enough to catch the just-hijacked train, resolve it in a single roll.
Neil.
-- Neil Smith Milton Keynes Roleplaying Games Club neil_at_... http://www.mkrpg.org.uk http://home.freeuk.com/wimp/ Honorary Life Member www.SADWargamers.com
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