Conflict resolution

[Larry L.]

We ran into a situation this week where the rules seemed a little unclear.

Say we have an event on the table. Protagonist A has acted to increase the die, i.e. he's Allied with that side, he wants to win event narration. Protagonist B claims that side of the conflict, but doesn't actually take any action to increase the die. Antagonist, having claimed his side of the conflict, stakes debt and pushes his side of the conflict to winning.

Who gets the story tokens from Antagonist's debt? Who on the losing side gets inspirations? We made cases for a) Protagonist B gets everything, because he claimed the conflict this page, b) Protagonist A gets everthing, since he's the only one who acted on that side of the conflict, or c) any number of split distribution schemes, to be decided by.... Antagonist (maybe).

The creator of the conflict (I think it was Protagonist B in this case) gets one of the story tokens in any case, right?

[TonyLB]

Ah interesting... I edited that page way too far down.  Good catch!  This'll go straight into the errata!

Winning characters each distribute their own Story Tokens.  If Protagonist B made the Conflict and has a character conceivably on the losing side (as seems the case) then yes they get at least one of those Story Tokens.

The other Story Tokens are distributed based on the winning character's subjective judgment of who provided the most effective opposition to their victory.  In this case, since B never rolled anything up, this is almost certainly A.  So the first Story Token goes to B and the rest go to A.

[Christopher Weeks]

Winning characters each distribute their own Story Tokens.

To anyone at all?  So, let's say players A and B are the two clear-cut sides of a conflict and player C has neither claimed a side nor rolled any of the dice in that conflict, but has provided very valuable consultation/kibitzing -- basically enriching the conflict through entirely non-mechanical vectors.  Can the winner, whether A or B, award a Story Token to C?

[TonyLB]

My provisional answer is "Choose from those allied on the other side".

But then my follow-up is that people sometimes switch to the winning side, so that they are on the winning side at Resolution-time, but are still the person who historically provided the most adversity in the conflict.  Recently, for instance, we had a magician who really, really didn't want to get involved in raising the shade of Nimue.  But when the ritual went wrong, and it became clear that it was a question of "raise her correctly" or "raise her completely without restraint" she switched sides.  So she won the conflict, but was simultaneously its greatest adversary.

In this instance, she got no story tokens, because she was the only one Staked on the conflict (and even in this situation she can't reward herself).  But if someone else had been staked on the winning side then they could have given her story tokens.

So my refined answer is "Choose from those who have, at some point or another, been allied with a losing side."

[Larry L.]

So what's the benefit of claiming the conflict?

[TonyLB]

You get the Inspirations.

[Larry L.]

Cool. This is pretty much what we decided to go with.