Re: HQ2 Extended Contest Question

From: Ashley Munday <aescleal_at_...>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:57:46 +0000 (GMT)

My advice would be let the dice fall where they may and don't change the resistance during a contest. If you're fudging the rolls or changing your mind about the resistance it might mean that you've set the stakes badly (made it a shit or bust, fail this and you've "lost" the game) or that the gaming group are still in a "success good, failure bad" mode. Even in the group I play with we still have trad game hangover of this sort even after playing the game together for six years.

If the characters/adventurers/protagonists don't suceed it's no biggy, the next contest will get a lot easier and you can make their lives a lot more interesting because of the failure.

[Tangent time]

Don't worry about narrative fatigue - if you're running out of inspiration about how to narrate it fall back on:

• "X does exactly the same thing as last time and you lot, like muppets, are letting him"
• "You're still not learning from your mistakes are you..?"

Another trick can be get the players to narrate what happens. This gives them a much bigger input into the game and they can inject something of their character's character into the failure. When inspiration flees make it someone else's problem!

[/end of Tangent time]

Cheers,

Ash

• On Mon, 24/11/08, Jamie <anti.spam_at_...> wrote:

> From: Jamie <anti.spam_at_...>
> Subject: HQ2 Extended Contest Question
> To: HeroQuest-rules_at_yahoogroups.com
> Date: Monday, 24 November, 2008, 2:18 PM
> We have been trying out HQ2 out of the book, and during the
> game I was
> keeping a track of passes and fails and using these to
> inform the
> resistances, but I have a question.
>
> I ran a sequence that involved a number of possible actions
> as an
> extended contest, and mainly because I kept rolling far too
> well to
> the point of frustration to the players I started to adjust
> the
> resistance within the extended contest. (There are only so
> many 'you
> fail but things are still interesting' tautologies you
> can pull off in
> a row).
>
> But this just didn't feel right, it felt like fudging
> back in more
> traditional games and at least one player was also
> uninspired by my
> adjustment in this circumstance.
>
> I guess I was carrying baggage from HQ1 Extended Contests
> which are
> very different beasts, and incidentally match my style far
> better.
>
> So my question is, as currently written, is it correct to
> adjust
> resistances within an extended contest? Alternately, is the
> contest
> supposed to be static throughout? I am interested in the
> intent of the
> rules as opposed to a 'do whatever feels right'
> response.
>
> Jamie
>
>
>
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