Contests with Stakes

[Clay]

I’ve been pondering an elegant solution for handling contests that are not exactly Pyrrhic Victories but more like Costly Successes – contests in which the characters stake an ability to win. Contests of wealth, for example, seem to fall into this category.

I had thought, on first reading of HQ2, or S:KOH, or HQG, that I had seen some good guidelines on handling contests that stake abilities, but on going back through, I couldn’t find what I thought I had read before (including the section on Wealth in HQ2).

Examples of things I’ve been thinking about how to explain to my players:

A merchant prince wishes to outfit a small army using his wealth ability. There are several degrees of mismatched success and failure involved here: he could fail miserably, spending his himself into poverty and failing to raise an army; he could succeed in raising an amazing army, but is so spend-thrifty that he bankrupts himself doing so; he could fail to raise an army because he was too miserly with his wealth; he could raise a barely functional army by being misery with his wealth; he could raise an excellent army and managing his investment of wealth well.

He has two levels of success: the quality of the army he raised, and the amount of wealth he sacrificed to do so. I am not sure, however, exactly how to model this in the rules. None of the given cases (Pyrrhic, Costly, or Graduated) seem to apply appropriately. It is not credible that he could raise an army and not suffer some consequence to his wealth.

Another example:

A poor entertainer wishes to bribe a guard to get into the city. The guard has no special reason apart from “orders” to keep the entertainer out – he just wants to be left alone. The entertainer cannot outright “entertain” the guard to let him into the city. The entertainer has no special wealth ability, but the player argues that he certainly has some decorative juggling balls – since he is a entertainer who juggles – could he not use his entertainer ability, staking the balls, to bribe the guard? The narrator agrees that the guard might indeed be bribable with a set of brightly colored juggling balls (he has a son at home who might like a new toy). The guard’s goal is simple: to be left alone to do his guard duty – he has no special desire to gain the juggling balls. The entertainer’s goal is to convince the guard to accept the juggling balls and let him into the city. But if the entertainer succeeds, he will take a lingering consequence to his entertainer ability until he can replace the juggling balls.

So, how might one model these contests and the results in a predictable, repeatable manner that the players will feel is fair?

Thanks.

[Roko Joko]

Can you be more specific about why Pyrrhic/Costly/Graduated don’t work here?

[Clay]

For Pyrrhic, because this is based on achieving victory via over-extension, damn the consequences. Engaging in a Pyrrhic Contest gives you a +W to your ability, but at an usually deadly cost on any failure. This is not what I am trying to model.

Costly success, likewise, doesn’t quite deal with the problem as presented. A Costly Success allows you to convert failure into success by taking a lingering consequence. It does not address lingering consequences for succeeding in the first place. So, Costly Success is *closer* than Pyrrhic Victory, but still not quite the model to follow.

I had also thought that Graduated Contests might provide a solution as written, but they don’t. This one is harder to explain (and I think this is because Gradiated Contests are themselves hard to explain – the example is somewhat tortured).

Climatic Extended Contests deal with this in some extent, since it is possible for a person to emerging victorious but wounded from one (this is much less true for Rising Action Extended Contests). But to get this result you must define the contest as both “climatic” and “extended”, which is not handling simpler, speedier cases.

I have been futzing around with a chart to handle losing stakes in a contest, but I haven’t landed on an elegant solution yet.

[Roko Joko]

How about frame a result for one victory level, and then improvise a better or worse outcome if the actual result is different.
“OK, a minor success will mean you get 3 regiments and -6 wealth. [We’ll figure out when the penalty goes away later.]”.
“OK, a minor success will mean you get 3 regiments and -6 wealth for one year”.
“You can afford that. OK, a minor success will mean you get 3 regiments and no wealth penalty”.
“OK, a minor success will mean you get in and take -3 No Fancy Balls”.
Just like Pyrrhic, but with the values of the bonus and penalty chosen each time. (In the examples above the bonus is implicit in the framed result and the resistance.)

[Paul]

Marginal success can still result in a negative for the winner, as Roko pointed out you win but no ‘Fancy Balls’
Also remember that Wealth is not measured in absolute terms, but relative terms. Buying regiments may not necessarily reduce your wealth standing, but waging your homestead as collateral (your wealth) to raise an army could men that the loss of the war would have more than just military consequences. The referee may also stipulate that while your wealth is tied up it is temporarily less effective in other areas.
Key here is not to think in literal terms but story terms, what does the Wealth represent and what would it’s loss means.
After all you can juggle apples just as well as Fancy Balls

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Clay,
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As the rules state, the rules are tools for any GM to use and manipulate as he sees fit for Maximum Fun. With that in mind, and knowing that others have already offered ideas, and you will have many of your own, here are my thoughts:
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In general, I think you’re asking the rules to do things they are not meant to do. But I’m not sure! So, let’s take step back.
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First, would you mind stating, for each of the two examples, the Framing of the contest. Remember the the rules are there to resolve contests between characters or characters and some sort of force, and how the contest is framed will help determine and interpret the results of the die roll.
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Naming the prize: Game Masters start
framing the contest by asking the involved player(s)
what prize they’re trying to win, or what goal they’re
hoping to achieve.
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For the Contest system to work, the Framing has to be established clearly.
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After this is determined, the Player states what Ability he is using to achieve this goal.
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So, in the case of the merchant, it might be, “I wish to raise an army at the best price possible.” The mercenary captains which to set him up with an army, but to bleed the merchant’s finances dry.”
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Thus, we have a Mismatched Contest (p. 110-111). We have a contest, and the issue isn’t whether the Merchant will get an army. He will, because the Merc Captains want him to get an army. What is at stake is how well he’ll be doing financially by the end of the negotiations.
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Each side rolls a die, we check the results table. If the Merchant is defeated, he gets the army, but his Wealth rating takes a hit per the Consequences of Defeat Table. (p. 243) If he succeeds and gets a Lingering Benefit from the Benefits of Victory Table (p. 244) I would rule that he is seen as a power player for a while, a man to be dealt with respectfully and with care and he’ll be able to use that Benefit to his advantage in issues where wealth and martial power meet.
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Now, this doesn’t do exactly what you’re asking for; the issue of whether or not he gets a solid army worthy of his purposes isn’t at stake. But, again, the system isn’t there to resolve all things like this with one roll. So much of the system depends on a specific frame contest between characters.
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To get the specific kind of results you’re looking for, the only thing I can think of is two rolls: One to see if he gets an army worthy of his needs; and a second to determine if he succeeded in protecting his wealth while doing it. My only question is this: For the first roll, what is the Framing of the Opposition. Is someone trying to actively stop him from hiring a worthy army? If not, I would go with the suggestion I first gave. If so, my guess is the Framing is going to suggest a lot about how to interpret the results. But that Framing will be specific to the fictional elements at hand, and I don’t know what they are.
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As for the Juggler, again, we have to turn to the rules and determine how to resolve the Contest with how they’re written.
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The Framing is, “The Juggler wants to get past the city guard, and the city guard wants to follow his orders and not get in trouble.” As for me, I would happily let the Juggler use his Juggling or Entertaining ability (or whatever) to get past the guard. Why not. The question is, “Can I entertain this guard so much and tell him I just want to enter the city and go make some money with the delights I just showed you for free, will you let me in?” Well, then, why not?
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In this version, there is no need to use the balls at all as a bribe of any kind. (But, certainly, if he fails, the guard could confiscate the balls — and thus the penalty to the Ability.)
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If the Juggler, however, wants to bribe the guard with the balls, well, that’s a different thing. At that point he’s using another Ability (Charm/Cajole/Bribe/Whatever) or a default of some kind and giving away the balls. (Please note that in your example, there is no question of the Juggler losing the balls. He will lose the balls because they are the bribe. The only question is, “Will the bribe succeed?”)
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With this example, there is no need for the Juggler to take a hit on his Juggling/Entertainer ability. At least per the rules. Because what is at stake is ability to Charm/Cajole/Bribe whatever. It is assumed that the juggler can juggle other things, that his ability does not depend on the balls. (That is, unless the balls are magical in some way, a named ability on the character sheet. At which point this whole contest takes a very different turn.)
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So, the question is, can you name specifically the Framing of the contest between the Juggler and the Guard? I ask because I’m not seeing it as clearly as I’d like. There are so many permutations, and only the specifics of the fiction, as determined by the Player and the GM, in that particular moment of fiction, can really make this clear. What does the Juggler want? What does the guard want? And then what Ability will the Juggler use to get what he wants. Only with these elements clear will the method forward reveal itself.

[Clay]

While I agree that Weath is an abstraction, I was just using it as an obvious example to reach the thing I was trying to model: a case where to achieving success means gaining BOTH a goal and a lingering consequence, but failure does not make the secondary lingering consequence worse (although you might have a lingering consequence for failure anyway).

I also agree that in stories, extremely wealthy people can do things with the wealth without negative consequences. Tony Stark can build an army of laser-shooting, flying robots and he won’t make a dent in his wealth. But there are also dramatic stories where the hero wagers (stakes) something, knowing it will cost him, to achieve victory via another path. Revenge stories often revolve around these mechanics, for example.

A Pyrrhic Victory handles the most extreme end of the later spectrum: a hero is willing to (metaphorically) die in order to achieve victory, but doesn’t seem to handle a more nuanced trade of stakes for victory below that.

I am thinking, perhaps, the easiest way to handle this is via Augments, announcing beforehand that the the augment represents the stake the player is risking and that, in this case, the ability is at risk of suffering a consequence. Off the top of my head, a Stong character wants to remove a physical obstacle quickly and inquires if he may use his sword to augment his strength to destroy it. This seems credible (and matches fiction) and handled ably by the rules. But it also seems credible that in this case he could damage his precious sword (the stake he’s wagering for success). Or even removing the sword, he could damage himself against the obstacle (wagering his strength as the stake).

I am not saying that I think this mechanic is to be used every time, as that would simply be punishing the player. I am looking for a mechanic where one can say “you are staking X to achieve Y” for special cases where it seems appropriate that the player will accept a lingering consequence to achieve his goal. Contests of wealth were just the most obvious example of this kind of contest.

AUGMENTS AN ELEGANT SOLUCTION?

In a Contest with Stakes, allow the player to specify the augmenting ability as the stake and select the level of Augment he wants to gain from it. If the player wins the contest with the stake augment, invert the level of victory associated with the selected augment and apply this as a lingering consequence (from the Consequences of Defeat table) to the staked ability. If the player fails, the stake is left untouched (though he will suffer other consequences as normal).

The Narrator states up front “This is a Contest with Stakes”. The player can then choose to approach the contest a different way (avoiding the staked contest), or accept the contest with some control over how much he is willing to stake against the outcome. He gains the augment of his choosing at the expense of a lingering consequence to his stake should he win.

It also tracks nicely with Pyrrhic Victories in that if a player is willing to go dangerously “all in” for a win, his stake will be dying as a result.

[Mark Mohrfield]

Perhaps you could apply the resource depletion table for community resources (pgs 88-89 HQ2, pgs 123-124 HQ:G) to the characters wealth ability?

[Clay]

@Christopher K., Thank you for those detailed examples.

[Christopher Kubasik]

You’re welcome.
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I’m running HeroQuest: Glorantha in two spots at a local gaming convention this weekend and working to get a handle on the rules. Typing all that out helped me as well!

[Olli Kantola]

Hmm. You could try to sidestep this problem by just dealing with the fiction.

The merchant is rich. We know this from the fiction. Otherwise, he couldn’t gather a mercenary force. The contest is about raising a decent mercenary force. A complete defeat would mean that he’ll get top notch mercenaries and won’t suffer financially, but otherwise the level of success informs the play and the negotiations. A minor success could mean that he could go for the really good and loyal mercenaries, but he’d have to pay a lot while failures indicate a troubled gang, big expenses or complications.

If the player gets a minor success and decides to go for the top notch mercenaries, he won’t get a wound, but instead we decide that the fortunes of his merchant company are pretty much tied to the mercenaries for the year or something. The player gets to make that choice.

Some mixed succes / failure action going on there.

[Author]

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