Regarding Intent

[donbaloo]

Hi all, Chris here.  I've got a few questions regarding intent within TSoY after our first test drive of the game and some reading of various threads here.

1)  I understand that to change an intent within BDtP a character is only allowed to take a defensive action during the turn in which the intent is changing.  Can the character benefit from the standard rule of rolling over that defensive action's SLs as bonus dice into their next action which will be pursuing the new intent?  Also, are multiple defensive actions allowed sequentially so as to snowball bonus dice into a followup parallel or perpendicular action?

2)  Is it standard practice for players to negotiate out their intents so as to allow for a character's surrender?  For example, if an SGC and a PC are involved in a BDtP with lethal intents, is it acceptable for one or the other to conditionally offer surrender and an end to the BDtP if the other participant agrees to offer mercy?

3)  I dug this example out of an old thread , where Clinton says,

Now, you can pose a series of conflicts:
- Does the hero make it through the bar to the street outside?
- Does the hero make it through the crowd to the gallows?
- Does the hero make it through the sheriff's men?
- Does the hero cut his friend down from the gallows?

Now I'm wondering is that how most folks run TSoY?  My group is currently trying to come to grips with conflict resolution and stakes setting and when I read over that series of conflicts its sounded a lot like our standard gaming approach.  In an effort to conform to conflict resolution I probably would have pressed my player to keep distilling his intent until we arrived at "I want to make to the gallows to cut my friend down" and probably would have skipped all that stuff in between...even though our tendencies would be begging us to go the "serial conflict" route.  Advice?
4) One more on this topic and its a question I've split out from my AP post here that may or may not be helpful.

In the scene with the Ratkin swaying the smith for moonmetal Paul's intent for swaying was to get moonmetal from the smith.  We sort of stalled out right there and it became the intent, at which he was successful.  I've already said that the scene felt sort of flat and that was mostly due to me just simply overlooking setting a failure stake.  But still, at the same time, his intent fell sort of limp as well.  Looking back I almost think that the intent should have been more.  So far, in that game and setting, we really hadn't established any sort of currency or even wealth standards in general.  For all intents and purposes the moonmetal was worthless.  I know in my reading of the setting material that the moonmetal was very valuable but for our current game we really hadn't established any sort of value in it.  As a result the intent of getting moonmetal was just empty.  Should we have perhaps been more specific setting some sort of story effect for having moonmetal in his possession...something that made it worth having.  Something maybe along the lines of "If successful, I get the moonmetal and am accepted as tribe-friend."  That's just off the top of my head and is probably pretty lame as well.  Any thoughts on this?

I'd appreciate any help with these questions, thanks!

[rafial]

2)  Is it standard practice for players to negotiate out their intents so as to allow for a character's surrender?

Well, there is no basis for this in the rules as written, but we stumbled on this idea in the TSOY Freebooters session that I participated in, and frankly it seemed to work very well.  So I don't know about standard practice, but at least at the moment I regard it as a good practice ;)

In an effort to conform to conflict resolution I probably would have pressed my player to keep distilling his intent until we arrived at "I want to make to the gallows to cut my friend down" and probably would have skipped all that stuff in between...

I think part of this is just how much you and the player want to "zoom in" on this scene.  If you just want to get to the meat, then fine, frame the conflict as "I cut my friend down, and get away".  But there are times when you want to go through all the details and setbacks of sneaking through the crowd, battling the sherrif's men, cutting your friend down, leaping on the getaway horse, etc.

So it's really something you have to play by ear.

[donbaloo]

Sounds good Rafial.  I know what we'll want to do...we'll want to keep breaking those conflicts down into smaller and smaller conflicts.  Like I said, my knee-jerk reaction has been to think that it puts us walking somewhere within that boundary between conflict and task resolution.  Maybe I'm just being over critical of our tendencies and bit of a tyrant when it comes to pushing for that intent.  Its good to know that we've got some leeway there without totally missing out on what this style of play has to offer.