>To put this another way, in order to make an extended contest more
>flexible than the use of a narrow set of abilities, you have to
>change the framing of the contest as you go, which is a change to
>the rules.
I think situational modifiers (p. 53) are a good way way to handle this. You can also see switching abilities in the long example (p. 47).
I'm eager to see Rob's reply, but...
> > The incident was important to the overall campaign, so the
>narrator decided to run it as an Extended Contest.
>
>This is interesting of itself, did the narrator take this decision
>on their own, or include the other players?
...I happened to be the Narrator, and this was actually an Extremely Extended Contest (p. 80) because we all had the expectation that it was going to take weeks if not months -- in our dramatic milieu, nobody agrees to marry someone they don't know. (Might be different in a romantic comedy.) And I wasn't willing to move the timeline to the end of the contest (I can't remember if this is because there were planned events or player plans), so we ran it over several sessions.
FWIW, Extremely Extended Contests explicitly may have ability or augment changes.
>in extended contests ... we are forced to narrate indecisive
>outcomes and or a sequence of causes and effects.
True, but I think in most cases this isn't that hard. In this wooing contest I think Rob's summary makes it pretty obvious when the overall status changed (i.e. someone scored an RP).
>Presumably the above narration contains things that were narrated
>both before and after the actual dice hit the table, do you remember
>if this was so, and if so which parts occurred where?
Well, you can't narrate any kind of outcome (even indecisive) before the dice. I believe most of the ability use (and augment) were narrated beforehand.
>This appears to be a discrete contest or more specifically, the
>narration has been informed by the previous narration and the
>current outcome, but less by the previous outcome is this the case
>or was there more going on here?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. But your contest SHOULD be informed by the previous round's narration. If Londrulf had lost big in the first round and Rangare had summoned her Humakti clanmates to escort Londrulf off the tula, the next round is going to be a bit different.
>The overall impression I get from this is that each round had a cool
>and satisfying narration, and that satisfaction came primarily from
>choosing narration in an attempting to match the current mechanical
>situation. Is this true?
Sounds like a good summary of HeroQuest.
>as a side point of interest, who had the primary input into what the
>narration should be after each round, and who had final say in each
>instance?
It's often a collaboration. I think a good rule of thumb is that the victor has primary input, but the Narrator has final say.
-- David Dunham Glorantha/HQ/RQ page: www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html
Powered by hypermail