Rules Clarification: Multiple conflicts and multiple actions

[divineseeker]

I am a little confused as to how multiple conflicts work. Here are some questions:

1. In a situation with multiple actors each one states intent of the action and stakes and then resolves each action   simultaneously unless one action will prevent the other right?

2. In a situation where one charcter is being attacked by many characters does he need to allocate action tokens to defence more than once? Or can he defend all attacks with one defence action? Does this apply to desperate responses?

3. I noticed in the rules that it is not possible to attack more than one person with an action. How about fireballs or bazookas or similar things? Or hacking into a computer to shut down several power grids? How does one resolve that?

[divineseeker]

One last question on multiple actions:

When committing action tokens for multiple actions in the same conflict round, how does a player keep track of what he is committing to?

Eg how do you distinguish from a stack for taunting and a stack for attacking and a stack for dodging, assuming he attempts all these things?

[Brennan Taylor]

1. In a situation with multiple actors each one states intent of the action and stakes and then resolves each action   simultaneously unless one action will prevent the other right?

Correct. With a lot of characters involved this can get confusing. Just pay close attention to the intent of each character and the intent of each action.

2. In a situation where one charcter is being attacked by many characters does he need to allocate action tokens to defence more than once? Or can he defend all attacks with one defence action? Does this apply to desperate responses?

Defence applies to all incoming attacks (if applicable--a dodge isn't much use against a withering insult, but it is useful of two people are trying to stab you). This applies to desperate responses as well.

3. I noticed in the rules that it is not possible to attack more than one person with an action. How about fireballs or bazookas or similar things? Or hacking into a computer to shut down several power grids? How does one resolve that?

Fireballs/bazookas would be a special case, I'd say. If the attack can affect a large area, I'd allow it to hit multiple targets. This is kind of a judgement call.

The computer scenario, I'd treat all the power grids as a single entity.

[Brennan Taylor]

When committing action tokens for multiple actions in the same conflict round, how does a player keep track of what he is committing to?

Eg how do you distinguish from a stack for taunting and a stack for attacking and a stack for dodging, assuming he attempts all these things?

I haven't had too much difficulty in play with people keeping track. There is actually a little space on the sheet to write down which aptitude you are using, and you could use that to help remember what each action was. If your players don't want to keep erasing things from the sheet, a pad of mini sticky-notes could be used for that.

[divineseeker]

Thanks for the response. The intent thing does help a lot to adjudicating actions. It can also reduce the number of actions -it seems that if everything is towards one intent chances are you are really taking only one action. I guess its a bit of a judgment call when dissecting a particular action - its a question of how fine players want to split hairs about specific actions. For example "I run up to slap the talisman into the sacred symbol while dodging attacks by the goblins" could be considered 2 actions "Running up and slapping" and dodging or 3 ie run + slap + dodge.

I'm a bit of a rules lawyer because I want everyone to have a fair game. Thanks to everyone for being patient while I figure some of this out.