> Once you do get going, how detailed are the contests? How long does
> it take to play out an extended contest? Hours to figure out the
> details of augments and actions, or just a few seconds?
Our group went through a learning curve in dealing with augments and actions. The first extended contest (under HW) we ran took quite a long time (maybe an hour to work out augments and another hour to actually play it out.) I made many, many mistakes and ran into a problem with using bows that I wound up turning over to the list. I think our next one took even longer. The players were VERY careful in assessing AP bids and tended to bid low, which really stretched things out.
Many experiences later...
Jump forward to our first HQ game. This time, three of the four player heroes had followers (four storms each). No one did anything except use automatic augmentation. They had worked up a "standard combat package" of augments and very quickly added a few specific ones (twenty minutes tops, most of which was spent explaining the difference between a keyword and an ability to a confused player). The players were much more confident about bidding. The bidding guidelines in HQ gave them a nice feel for how to match bid to action. The HQ resolution tables also sped things up considerably. The contest was over in about forty minutes, most of which was spent describing actions, not resolving them. I'm not very strict about protocol in describing actions. Two of my players are very good at vivid descriptions of what they want to do, the other two aren't. I have them make a statement of intent, but then we jointly decide what the results tell us happened.
We had loads of fun.
Gerald
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