If Abner fails to nail Bert and gets a negative result he might not take any physical injury but he should take some consequence of failure. Work with the player to find out what that consequence is. Some examples:
There are loads of others you could pull out as well. In addition Bert gets a lingering benefit. This could anything related to the result of the contest. Some examples would be:
For Messrs. Wizard and Warrior I'd have said the goals are the same "defeat the other." Goals of a conflict shouldn't have the type of ability you intend to use in the conflict encoded into them, they're not part of the goal. I'd also be tempted to tart the goals up a bit to make them a bit more evocative. So the warrior's could be "I want to see him destroyed and hear his woman sobbing in the night" and the wizards could be "I want to feed his black heart to my familiar."
It's still a single pair of die rolls and the abilities would be whatever the players can find a way of narrating into the contest. The warrior could use a "warrior" keyword (bit boring), "Bladger, my axe", (bit better says something about his character) or "Sorcerers killed my family and I want revenge" (gives him a chance to play out some issues). Basically anything that makes sense and the player thinks they can use when they come to narrate the outcome. With the goal I outlined above the pair of characters might end up using "Desire to humiliate <insert name of woman mentioned in warrior's goal>" against "Love <insert name of woman mentioned in warrior's goal>." Admittedly if both characters have abilities like the last two we're talking about things the players both care about a lot so it might be worth making the contest an extended one, it sounds pretty climactic to me.
Final point: All this lot only matters when you're dealing with player characters against player characters. For most contests again the GM you won't bother specifying the GM character's ability, they'll just be an arbitrary resistance based on something like the pass/fail cycle or perhaps how interesting you think failure for the character would be - if failure's not interesting, don't bother rolling.
Cheers,
Ash
Hi everyone,
Just today I've got hold of the HQ2 rules and am reading through. I previously played Hero Wars and HQ1, but it's been a few years since I've run a game. I'm trying to understand the way Simple Contests are intended to work in HQ2.
Let's take a physical conflict. Abner the Assassin is trying to assassinate Bert the Burglar. Assuming this is a Simple Contest, how many "exchanges" do I run? Is it simply one roll for Abner (conflict goal: assassinate Bert)? If so, do I also define a goal for Bert (conflict goal: run away!) and derive a defense ability from that? So, we have Abner rolling to assassinate, and Bert rolling to run away. Is that it?
If so, what does it mean if Abner suffers a Major or Complete Defeat? I take it he's not injured, as Bert isn't fighting back - he's just running away.
OK; next example. A conflict between a warrior and a wizard. Simple contest. The goals are "Defeat the wizard with my weapons" and "Defeat the warrior with my magic".
Is this still a single exchange? Is there any sense of an "active ability" and a "resistance" here, or are we simply rolling a Weapons ability and a Magic ability, and assuming that the warrior is simultaneously attacking and defending against magic with his Weapons ability, and the wizard likewise with Magic? Or do we have *two* exchanges, one where the wizard has to use an *appropriate* ability to defend against Weapons (like Dodge), and the warrior likewise against Magic (like Magic Resistance).
I'm guessing in all cases a Simple Contest is just a single die roll; however, if two PCs were squaring up, like the Warrior and Wizard above, I'm interested what abilities they would use in that single die roll.
Hope that makes sense!
Cheers,
Sarah
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