Extended Contests

From: L C <lightcastle_at_...>
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 18:39:28 -0400

 I do like the new extended contests for the most part. I'm tempted to find a way to work the bidding back in, because I did like that aspect, but doing it in a way that doesn't break the new system seems difficult. I had long ago abandoned using straight "rating value = AP" anyway, so it might be do-able.

More interesting for me are some of the subtle shifts that seem to have happened.

1. No longer is there a back and forth of who acts. I guess this fits the "focus on the protagonists" aspect, but I did like the "one side declares an action, then the other" aspect, if only for allowing people to focus on pushing their interesting ability. I see they somewhat addressed this with the "do two things at once and average the ability" so instead of Bruiser attacks with Smash stuff and Fast talker defends with Dodge then Fast talker attacks with "Talk my way out of anything" and Bruiser defends with "Murderous rage" you just have one average ability used by both sides. I suppose you can always just mess with resistances by deciding how best the single ability applies.
2. No tacitcal augment shifting.

When I first heard of the "only one augment applies" rule I didn't realize it was for the entire contest. I thought it would be for each exchange. Add in that if you try to augment during an extended contest it counts as an asymmetrical exchange and augments really get taken out of the picture entirely. I'm not too upset by that, since you can probably work the narrative to just do a wholesale shift in what ability to use and it works just as well.

3) Limited ability to help.
 I'm not sure about this one: You can augment your ally if they haven't already had an augment; you can assist, but each time it gets harder; you can open up your own exchange with the person, which at least should give them a multiple opponent penalty. Since I know my players used to love doing things to help one another in interesting ways, I am tempted to give them more options than this and use situational modifiers to model it.

4) Follower rules.
 I like theses although I am a little unclear about the "any unengaged person can pick off a follower with a simple contest". This seems a bit weird when the follower is a full contestant. The fact that as a full contestant the "follower takes an extra 2 RP when knocked out" is listed as an extra grim and gritty rule and then every other follower approach automatically inflicts that same +2 also seems a bit strange.

5) Disengaging:
 One piece about this is unclear to me. It says on page 42 that "If an opponent attempts
to disengage from you while you are also engaged by at least one other contestant, you suffer a penalty of –5 when you roll to counter to his disengagement."
I assume that is separate from any multiple opponent issues that may apply. (So if you are the first person to go and you try to disengage there is a minus 5, but if you let your two friends attack first to keep the guy off balance, there is a -11)

I am also surprised at how much I think I like the new Gloranthan magic rules, which I was fully prepared to viscerally dislike from the snippets I heard. They're much more interesting as a base to work with in the form I see here.