>
> If you have Hairdressing 18W2, then the obvious way you'd blow up the moon
> is to become the hairdresser to Colonel Tracy Timms, ubercommander in charge
> of Lunar Outfitting, woo Col Timms through your expert hairdressing skill as
> an in, and arrange to have those warheads sent to Lunar Base One in
> preparation for the oncoming War With Mars matched with live, timed
> detonators, and then Boom! Score Major Victory for the Marsies!
>
> (Implicating Col Timms in the mess, and don't think Timms is going to forget
> /that/ any time soon...)
>
- Yes, exactly!
- HQ gives you the flexible abilities, rules, and contest structure to make this exciting and dramatic. Back in RQ days when I had a character who happened to have samples of a rare plant which exuded chaos tainted spores under the full, and who wanted to strike back at the lunar temple being built in Duck Point, the rules really didn't support it well. She wanted to enamor the architect of the new lunar temple in Duck Point so that my character could get access to the sanctuary during construction in order to put the cuttings under the altar.....it was settled with discussion and some hand waving. Essentially the narrator decided it was plausible, that it would be fun, and let it happen. The results were entirely satisfying (thanks Jeff!), but we didn't really have a way of playing out the process in a really dramatic way.
In HQ she could have cemented possession of the plant with an HP, had a contest or contests to get to know, gain the confidence of, and take advantage of the architect, and maybe even to place the plant cutting appropriately and safely. It would in fact have made for quite interesting contests, I think.
So I think the question is always "OK, how do you try to do that?" even if it seems unlikely. Because sometimes a character will use a little botanical knowledge to blow up a temple, or yah, hair dressing skill to bring down the moon. It is how you connect those dots that makes it interesting.