Splitting question

[Sindyr]

Will reply to the brouhaha one the other stuff later... (only so much time for explaining things, after all, I am not getting paid to do this...)

but for now,

Can someone with debt staked not merely split his dice off to a new side, but to an different existing side?  What if he is currently allie to a side, but his debt is on another side?

[TonyLB]

Nope.  Debt staked on a side stays on a side.  Splitting off third sides is an inherently divisive maneuver.

[Sindyr]

Making sure I understand...

Debt stakes on a side stays on that side unless split into a new and previously nonexistant side?

In other words, you can move you debt to the void, ceating a side where there was no side, but you cannot move your debt under any circustances to an already existing side, even if you are aligned to it currently?

[TonyLB]

Correct.  You can stake more debt on the new side, if you care to ... but then you're working at cross purposes to yourself.  I've only seen it done once, and it was me doing it, and everybody said "Dude!  Are you crazy?"  I'm not at all sure that I wasn't ... haven't tested the strategy often enough to see the benefits.

[Zamiel]

Correct.  You can stake more debt on the new side, if you care to ... but then you're working at cross purposes to yourself.  I've only seen it done once, and it was me doing it, and everybody said "Dude!  Are you crazy?"  I'm not at all sure that I wasn't ... haven't tested the strategy often enough to see the benefits.

I can see it being useful to split away, take the best dice, then add more Debt and split one or more of those dice (the least of them) in the hopes of getting a net gain, but it is definitely a gambler's wager. Mind you, that may be exactly what you want, risking increasing your investment to pull others into putting more Debt staked in, so you gain more net Resources, but ...

It seems such a chancy tactic, I'm surprised you haven't done it more.

[TonyLB]

Oh, I've done that a ton of times.  The scenario I'm talking about is a bit dicier (no pun intended):

• I stake on the red side.  Chris stakes on the red side.  We're pounding the living daylights out of the blue.  Suckers!
• Chris splits away from the red side.  He grabs some white dice.  Aw shit!  Suddenly I'm against him!
• I stake debt on the white side.  I now have debt staked (in this case from the same character) on two sides of the equation.  My character is torn.
• However it works out, I'm taking back some doubled debt.  There's just no way out of it.

I suspect that there are, in fact, benefits to doing this, but it comes up so rarely that I don't have much experience with it.  Even third-side splitting is a niche strategy, and this is a niche within the niche.

[Zamiel]

• I stake debt on the white side.  I now have debt staked (in this case from the same character) on two sides of the equation.  My character is torn.
• However it works out, I'm taking back some doubled debt.  There's just no way out of it.

I suspect that there are, in fact, benefits to doing this, but it comes up so rarely that I don't have much experience with it.  Even third-side splitting is a niche strategy, and this is a niche within the niche.

Hmm, not to express over-puzzlement, but I'm not sure this is actually a mechanically valid tactic. Since I'm saying this to the author, I am definitely risking what little Forum Egoboo(tm) I've accumulated, but ...

The issue being, you can't really do anything with the Debt staked to white in this case, as far as I can see. You're allied already with red, and you can't trivially change to allying with white because you're the only remaining Player allied red. As such, you've got nowhere really to go, and since you're not allied to white, you can neither split dice nor split away a side, the best reasons to stake Debt outside of pure incentive for others to oppose you.

The questionable nature comes in the grey zone of whether or not its legal to stake to a side you're not allied to, if you then do no ally-requiring operations with it.

The only strategic advantage I can see to doing this would be to farm Debt to turn around in another Conflict, if for some reason you were dreadfully short. Getting a 6 up-front die roll and wanting to split it 4 ways, for example. Outside of that, I think theory suggests its not going to be as useful a strategy in accomplishing much of anything else.

[TonyLB]

Yeah, I rolled up white, in order to shift alliance, before I even staked.  Good catch.  I did that in the game, but it didn't make it into the explanation.

I mean, in-game, we had quite a bit of back and forth about where things were going to end up.  There are all sorts of actions that I'm abstracting away (both because I don't think they're hugely relevant and because it was nearly a year ago and my memory of it is sketchy).  There were still people allied with Red, and they fought against me as I supported the white side.  And the whole way through they're saying "Damn, man!  It's your debt we're trying to keep from rebounding back at you!"

[Zamiel]

Yeah, I rolled up white, in order to shift alliance, before I even staked.  Good catch.  I did that in the game, but it didn't make it into the explanation.

I'm a programmer. Abstract process glitches are my bread and butter. :)

So, let me restate: Part of the premise of setup here is that you and at least two other people were allied on red versus blue, and one of those split off white. You had Debt staked on red. You then rolled on, thus allied to, white, and staked further Debt there.

I can see plenty of fine narrative reasons to do so, as you allude below, but mechanically ... Unless your intent is to farm Debt, there's little reason to do it from a Debt / Story Token PoV.  Now, what you do have, advantageously, in this case, is a much, much larger liklihood of getting Inspirations from at least two sides of the Conflict. The actual reason you're getting them won't really matter, as long as the resolver thinks you contributed significantly enough to earn the Inspiration die itself. Given you're clearly pumping Debt in on multiple sides to kick up the number of dice in play, you should end up sitting pretty.

I can definitely see there being a certain advantage to farming Inspirations en masse in such a method, if only for pure coolness value and social recognition later.