>From: Brian Curley <bkcurley_at_...>
>Yep. As soon as Mike said "There's no such mechanical thing as a
>surprise round" I realized where I was going wrong. Old habits.
It does say that one should take things like surprise into account, however (and, well, of course). Here's another way of thinking about these things that makes it all fit the text. Every character present at the start of an extended contest is involved in it, whether they want to be or not. The narrator decides who is involved, so just rule that way. But the rules also say that a player can always hold his action indefinitely, and then jump in whenever they like. So, again, they start in the round cycle when they say they want to.
Another way of stating this is that the character can act any time after everyone else has had a turn. Now it's possible that if you have a lot of PCs involved that some of them may want to delay longer than others. If this happens, tell them that they're going to incur another round of the opponents action if they delay further. Then keep on rolling until they decide to jump in.
If the contest is between two PCs, say, you have the odd circumstance where they may each delay. If that happens, maybe there's no contest going on. Otherwise, if there really is a contest going on, then apparently their first declaration is going to have to be to outwait the opponent, which becomes their bid. Or perhaps they want to provoke the other side into attacking first as their action. (This is reminiscent of the rules from the game The Riddle of Steel for getting somebody else to attack first, which is often tactically unsound).
Again, technically there are no rules for joining an EC once it's started (you can lend or augment, but not get your own pool, apparently). So the way to get around this is to assume that everyone is, in fact, in the contest, and just delaying if they haven't gone yet, or never go. Yes, technically they have an AP pool, but if nobody is attacking anyone else at some point then the contest ends per the rules for withdrawal with none of those parties suffering a defeat.
Mike
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