>Please say more?
>I actually find this part the hardest to adjudicate in both HQ1 and HQ2.
>The mechanics involved are never clear to me for upping the ante/drastically changing the contest part way through.
All I can say is that it's a pacing mechanic, as far as I can tell, and it's not supposed to make any in-game sense. That is, if I am recalling correctly, yes, you simply just change which abilities you are using (of not, if the same ones apply), and continue with the same pools. Really nothing necessarily changes, it's just the player goal for his character that is altered.
Now, I can see how you might find this odd in some ways. Like, OK, we've fought back and forth with swords for a while, and now I'm running away, and all of my progress in the fight counts towards running away. How can it, if the effort was put into simply standing still?
Well, frankly I can rationalize it in an in-game sense myself. It's position, exhaustion, etc. There can always be something from the previous part of the contest that explains why the current pools are the way they are.
But, again, it's simply a dramatic timing mechanism. Put it this way... we could have resolved the entire conflict with just a simple conflict, right? Where there was no pool of points at all being bandied about. So if I did that, would that have been an abrogation of the meaning of the points?
No, it's a dramatic tool, in my view. You use it or you don't, based on drama, and changing your goals even after "progress" has been made, is just as appropriately dramatic. Take a look at examples from movies or literature, and character changing their minds last second about what they're about is a common feature. The action doesn't necessarily reset to extend the conflict just because a choice was made. In fact, often when such a choice is made, that's immediately when the conflict ends.
Luke puts down his light-sabre. And suddenly it's no longer a physical fight with his father, to defend himself, but a fight for his father's soul on mental territory. Yeah, even with his AP down by three quarters...
Once again, I've done this a lot in actual play, and nobody ever bats an eyelash.
Mike
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