>From: "Ian Cooper" <ian_hammond_cooper_at_...>
>
>Second, don't roll for the Opening unless something is at stake that
>we care about. This is true for all contests, but especially so for
>this kind of 'gateway to adventure' roll.
Beat me to it, Ian. This "issue" is reall a matter of technique, and not an issue at all.
There's no difference between rolling for whether or not you get to the scenario due to the opening, and rolling to see if you get lost on the way to the hidden temple. If that's where the fun is, then simply "frame" the action there.
It doesn't matter what the difficulty is for the Opening in this case, there's always a chance of failure. Even if you get to the point where your characters are rather competent with this, and have a TN of 10W2 to do the opening. Against a 14 resistance, the lowest listed, they still have a 6% chance of failure. So, you have to be prepared for that chance, right? I mean is it bad to allow the scenario not to occur because it was likely to fail, but OK to have the scenario not occur because it was a longshot?
The HQ system is set up such that failure is going to happen, and happen regularly. If your scenario is built under the notion that certain rolls have to be passed to get from one point to another, then your scenario is broken.
I don't use that word lightly here. Broken, meaning built incorrectly, unuseful in play. Yes, I know that many published scenarios are built this way, and that it's become an expected way to play. What happens in actuality, when a failure like this happens in play, is that the narrator comes up with some way around the problem. That is you fix the broken scenario on the fly.
>The trick
>to this is that failure should advance the story as well as success.
Precisely. What's often thematically most interesting is to throw the characters into even deeper danger, or give them a harder decision to make. But failure can never mean that the scenario is over. Because it's going to happen with great regularity in HQ.
Heck, it happens in most games, but people try to ignore the effect there by skewing the results to victory. Don't do that in HQ, let the characters fail, and the story become all the richer for it. Unlike other games, if you set up interesting consequences for failure, HQ won't take your character away from you. So there's nothing to worry about.
This is related to what Rory said about "No repeat attempts." The HQ text actually even allows for exceptions. So what's the "real" rule behind when to allow a retry at something? When doing so isn't dramatically disapointing. Meaning, practically, after the contestants have paid the price for failure, and new stakes are set. That is, the contest may look the same, but the stakes must have changed somehow. Not just higher, either (though that's a good idea), but they must have qualitatively changed as well. Something new can be lost.
Put another way, making a crossing is rarely ever a goal for the characters. There's some reason they have to get there. Some reason that tomorrow won't do as a date to leave. Because, given time, eventually they will make it. Maybe it's just pride in doing it on the first attempt...but something is at stake in this crossing that'll be lost if the characters fail. And in nifty fashion HQ will give you a mechanical way to point it out by the penalty that you can give. A marginal defeat might mean that they had to come back to port, and get something to make the crosssing, but now they have a -1 penalty to anything that their damaged pride might affect (which could be pretty damn broad).
Also, all stakes are larger than people at first think. I think Bruce Ferrie first came up with this notion, but when a character says "I want to kill Ragnar" he includes in there a plethora of unstated clauses to the goal. "I want to kill Ragnar without being killed myself." "...without getting run off." "without losing my confidence in my own abilities." Bruce's idea is in regards to gaining information - you should never dead end the heroes, just make getting the info problematic if they fail. Same with everything else. The failure condition of missing the opening in HQ says that it's "returning to port" sure - but there are other examples. And "you end up marrooned on a desert island" is one of them. That's not the same as going back. It's just not getting where you wanted, not getting your goal.
So, who's to say that missing an opening roll means you don't get there. Maybe you do get there, but the hidden "Without being cursed" clause is the one that's failed. As long as there's a price paid for the failure, drama is satisfied. Defeat doesn't mean that the scenario is over, it means that it just got more interesting.
Mike
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