lyssa

I'm 11 sessions into running a HeroQuest: Glorantha campaign. We switched after a few sessions to the point-bidding style of extended contests from the QuestWorlds SRD (the ones called "extended contests" by the SRD). A difficulty I've encountered running extended contest is there being a non-follower NPC ally fighting alongside the players. Because (if I understood correctly) that NPC does not participate in the mechanical structure of the group extended contest (since I as GM should not be rolling NPCs against each other), I have in both instances where this occurred struggled to remember the NPC ally was there at all. When I do remember their presence I am still uncertain of how I should approach narrating their participation due to it being unconnected from the mechanical progress of the extended contest. How do other GMs handle these kinds of situations? How do you decide how successfully to describe the NPC ally's actions and how the contest affects them? The two occasions I've had this problem so far were both combat situations, although I haven't yet had non-combat extended contests with NPC allies to compare to so it might apply equally outside of fighting: A Yinkini NPC was assisting the PCs in a Seduction of Tarahelera heroquest which ended in a running battle between the heroes and the forces of Venebain as the heroes fled down the Celestial River. The PCs followed the trail of a kidnapped farmer and confronted the family of ogres who had kidnapped him, accompanied by a warrior from the same household as the farmer. In both cases, I ended up noticing at the end of the fight that I had almost entirely forgotten about the ally and having to be kind of apologetic to my players about that. In the second one I did a better job involving the bodyguard retainer of one PC (the bodyguard didn't participate in the heroquest), as it was easy to fold the bodyguard's actions and fortunes into narration of her employer's outcomes (the player opted for the "just-add-the-ability-to-your-starting-APs" option).