[Trollbabe] PvP question

[suffusionofyellow]

This grew from Paganinis latest session of Nightbabe, the Trollbabe variant with Vampires.

We have two PCs in a room, arguing over the fate of a NPC in the corner tied to a chair. I am failing to convince the other player (Bryan) of the merits of my course of action. So I do what you do when dialogue drags to a standstill. I call a Conflict, fully prepared to have a climactic Vampire on Vampire fight. What I ended up with was the following.

Nate digs up the PvP rules. It seems that since I called the conflict, Bryan decides what type it will be and makes the roll. (There was no discussion of Pace. not having a rulebook, I'll assume this is left out because Pace is 1 roll). The roll comes out in Bryans favor, and thats the conflict. No reroll for me. This is explained as follows: Bryan made the roll, and he succeeded. Thus, there being no actual failure, there is nothing to reroll. Nathan, as the GM, narrated the outcome.

Was this correctly done? It seems kind of odd to me. Always before, the person declaring the conflict gets to decide what type it is, which makes sense. The other thing that bothered me was the lack of rerolls. Following the logic above, Brian would be allowed rerolls, but I would not. Even if no rerolls are allowed, I still feel shortchanged. What should have been an exciting and decisive battle ended with an 'oh. so what happens now?'

If this was incorrectly done, could I trouble Ron for a clarification?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This is a fine example of why IRC isn't my chosen medium for role-playing ... Well, might as well start with the rules text.

If it so happens that two trollbabes come into direct conflict with one another, the system must be tweaked a bit. First, both characters' Goals must be explicitly stated and reviewed to see whether they are really in conflict.

Might be good to check this. What exactly were the two trollbabes' Goals? I find that many people are so used to dealing with resolution in terms of physical tasks that they have a hard time with conflict resolution, and forget the whole idea of Goals. Which in Trollbabe, renders the system nonsensical.

The player who does not initiate the conflict (call for a roll) sets the Action Type and will make the roll. Before rolling, check the relevant Action Type to see whether the target player's trollbabe's ability exceeds the other character (whose player is rolling) in that category. If so, then the roll suffers a –1 continuing Modifier. If more than one Action Type is being employed, then the Modifier applies to each die separately.

Did you guys employ that modifier? 10% is actually a bit of a bite ...

Note that either involved player may bring in new Action Types as desired, with no veto permitted.

There's the sting in this text. This is a very important rule, especially considering what comes next. Without this, trollbabe-trollbabe conflict is just a blah, as you guys discovered.

Ordinarily adding Action Types to the conflict is an excellent choice for the character whose player is rolling, because any success will count. However, in this case ...

The rules are furthered altered in one significant way: if the rolling character succeeds, but if any of dice rolled do not individually succeed, then the outcome must be moderated to include some advantage or positive outcome for the "beaten" character.

There's the nuance you were looking for. The player whose trollbabe is not rolling should include more Action Types, all three if possible, in order to increase the chance that one will fail (assuming that character will lose, as we are doing here in retrospect). Therefore the outcome will contain a concession or two.

The impact of this rule is to make trollbabe-trollbabe conflict (a) full of showy shit and (b) not unilaterally successful for whoever wins. If I'm not mistaken, that's what you were looking for, most reasonably.

The possible effects of the conflict on both characters should be stated clearly during the "plain and clear" stage of discussion, taking both the goal of the acting character and the possible outcomes along the Series into account.

This part is important to, because it relates back to the first point: if there's no real conflict of interest (opposed Goals), then there's no roll at all. Again, people are often not used to the idea that one player could say, "Hey wait a minute, I have no beef with that ..." and wham, no roll now.

Furthermore, in all trollbabe-trollbabe conflict, regardless of the outcome of the Series, the GM narrates the outcome of the conflict.

So what's this about? I can tell you this; it has nothing to do with the GM being impartial or "objective." It has everything to do with the hope that, by the point any two trollbabes come into the conflict, the GM has become their fanboy/fangirl. You know how, in the comics, when two superheroes you really like get into a conflict? And you're hoping that they come to some kind of meaningful conclusion, but don't lose their essential coolness or personal thematic oomph? It's almost like a physical pain if you're a real fanboy. That's what the GM becomes as trollbabe play proceeds, and so he or she is best suited for narration at this point. Again, it's not because he or she is most impartial, but rather the opposite.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

The character-character interaction rules say "the system must be tweaked," so I take all of its information as add-ons to the regular conflict system.

In normal conflict, the declaring player declares Type, Pace, Goal, and then the GM may adjust the Pace one level.  

In character-character conflict, I would interpret the tweaks to mean that the declaring player declares Goal and Pace.  Then the other character's player declares Goal and Type, and may adjust the Pace one level.  Special emphasis is placed on clarifying both Goals because it may turn out they are not opposed.  

One last char-char rule I just noticed: the GM describes the results, period!  Players don't get final say on describing any outcomes here.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Bit of cross-posting here. Alan, your point about the "add-on" concept is correct. The Pace rules are applied as normal.

Suffusion, if you were playing one of the trollbabes and if you never had any input into Pace, then someone's doin' something wrong.

Best,
Ron

[suffusionofyellow]

Thanks, Ron. You cleared up every point of confusion I encountered. The Goals were most certainly opposite, and we did include the modifier. The things we did wrong were the pace and bringing other abilities into the conflict. I think the problems arose more from a misreading of the system than anything else. Hopefully, when my character goes back witha  rocket launcher, things will work more smoothly :)

Thanks again.

[Doyce]

I love gamers' definitions of 'smoothly'.  :)

[/end useless comment]

I actually cribbed some rules from Fate for use as a resolution matrix in TB vs. TB conflicts (which, incestously, credits Trollbabe as an inspiration for some of it's reroll stuff) -- there's nothing at all the matter with what's there (and I'm even more okay with it after reading Ron's breakdown above -- time to start that Trollbabe rules-wiki), but I wanted the option of presenting a slightly modified version that allowed both of the player's to roll and have it continue to make sense.

Part of that stemmed from some of my player's reading that section of the book and feeling that the rules there had simply been written to make pc vs. pc conflict sound so unappetizing that it would be avoided categorically in play, and part of it came from... simply wanting to do it, I suppose... I tinker,  it's my nature. :)

[b_bankhead]

Hi I'm Bryan I'm playing the character Amanda Trevaine in Pags vampire game. I think the whole problem here comes down not to the trollbabe rules but the fact that our characters wanted very different things...

Suffusion clearly wanted a knock-down-drag out,vampires-in-the-matrix,wire fu battle.

On the other hand Amanda didn't.

Lets point out that this interaction is taking place in the midst of  Amanda's lab, surrounded by expensive equipment she is going to need.(She needs to do a complete blood replacement to arrest the onset of vampirism in this guy,not to mention her obsession with ressurecting Lolly...) Now Amanda has seen 'Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman' and she knows was happens when monsters go at it hammer and tongs in a mad lab, it gets turned into junkyard fodder real fast.

She just wasted a reroll on Moto and wasn't in the mood for a long, drawn out series, she just wanted Benedict GONE so she could get back to work fast as possible.

So she chose vampirice powers (domination) as the conflict with the goal 'make Benedict leave'.  She rolled, she won, he left, that's it.

Suffusion wasn't satisfied with this ,but like I said , our character' wanted very differenent things and I won.  He'll just have to get his big battle some other time.