How to trigger extended contests, or bringing down the pain

[Ian Cooper]

One common question folks seem to ask About Heroquest is when and how often to use an extended contest. There is a lot of advice in Heroquest Glorantha, and I don't want to repeat that here.

However one technique to use is just to remember that any extended contest is just a series of simple contests fought on a 'first to five' basis where you get points for the victory. That means that you can always choose to pick a simple contest, and then if that seems unsatifactory treat the results as points awarded in the first round of an extended contest, and go to extended. There are two smells here: the victory is somehow unsatisfying, this was pitched as the big confrontation and yet we just get a marginal defeat etc. or the victory turns out to be just the first task in a larger conflict and you are about to run back-to-back contests for another action. At that point, just switch over to extended.

This demand based approach is very reminiscent of The Shadow of Yesterday by Clinton Nixon (now called The Solar System) itself a 'love letter' to Hero Wars. In that game the choice to switch from a simple to an extended contest was called 'bringing down the pain' in The Shadow of Yesterday and was an explicit player act. The player might invoke it because they lost, and wanted to fight for their victory as it was important to them, or because the victory was not satisfying enough.

The move away from the AP mechanic of earlier editions allows Heroques to pull the 'bringing down the pain' trick and simply make an extended contest a 'player choice,' when the first simple contest is done.

My experience is that it can take a while to get used to for players, but if you decide to make extended contests a 'player choice' as a result of 'bringing down the pain' the question of when to have an extended contest becomes easier. Of course this works better with experienced players who have moved on from the 'mini-games' of other systems detailed resolution mechanics as a default i.e. combat is always extended and actually pushed over to the other direction - why not just use a simple contest.

I don't think this is really a house rule, more a technique based on the observation that the simple and extended contest mechanics are linked in this way. If anything it just adjusts the flow chart to be: it's a simple contest - do you want to bring down the pain. BTW, this is incompatible with pre-contest hero point spend, as the two are trying to achieve similar outcomes.

[soltakss]

On 8/18/2016 at 1:50 PM, Ian Cooper said:

One common question folks seem to ask About Heroquest is when and how often to use an extended contest. There is a lot of advice in Heroquest Glorantha, and I don't want to repeat that here.

 

For me, it's easy. Players can trigger an Extended Contest once they've clubbed me over the head and stepped over my dead body.

Seriously, I absolutely hate them and won't have them in my games. I don't mind chained Simple Contests, though, so use them quite often.

[jajagappa]

9 hours ago, soltakss said:

I absolutely hate them and won't have them in my games

I'm completely the opposite and love them and my players enjoy the drama they create, whether individual or group extended contests.  That said, I also don't overdo them.  They represent critical points in the storyline - occasionally an opening scene, the central climax, the final resolution, but otherwise I keep them minimized.  Sometimes a key failure or action by a player will lead to one where their actions suggest that the storyline is shifting and it's important to see whether the prior failure triggers a significant dramatic change.