[Adventure Game Engine] Tempting your opponent into Conflict

[Andrew Cooper]

Gasten,

Okay.  That makes sense to me now.  While it isn't exactly what I'm looking for it does have some good grist for the thought mill in there. 

I'm beginning to think that Mike may be right and that "gambling" on the outcome might not be exactly what I'm needing here.  However, I'm probably going to leave that up to Playtesting to determine.  Actual Play might might show that the gambling aspect of the game really adds to the feel.  We'll see.

[Filip Luszczyk]

I presume that every side starts every Quest with some number of Tokens, right? What about players who bet too much Tokens, lose, and wind up with having 0 Tokens in the Quest? Doesn't it mean an automatic failure for the side? No more Tokens to bet, no chance to gain more Tokens. You need some additional way of gaining Tokens (or maybe a rule that the number of Tokens is never reduced below some value, e.g. 5). Unless you already have it of course ;)

[Andrew Cooper]

Um... I've been terribly unclear.  I can see that now.  Let's see if I can unmuddy the waters.

There is a group of players playing a game.  They have a Quest on the table, "Get the McGuffin!".  It's a 10 Token Quest.  The Party (one side) is essentially contesting with the GM (the other side) over the outcome of this Quest.  The Party starts with 10 Red Tokens.  The GM starts out with 10 Blue Tokens.  (Don't get hung up over Red and Blue.  I just picked something to differentiate them.)  Here's how it works...

The Party needs 10 Blue Tokens (which the GM starts with) to complete the Quest successfully.
The GM needs 10 Red Tokens (which the Party starts with) to keep the Party from being able to complete the Quest.
Red Tokens are useless to the Party in terms of Quest completion.
Blue Tokens are useless to the GM in terms of stopping the Party.
Tokens are gained by getting into Conflicts with the opposing side during a scene.
Conflicts can be anything from a fight with orcs to a debate with the town council.

So, each side actually starts out with zero of the type of Tokens they need to win.  Zero isn't failure.  It's just a starting point.  Is that any clearer?  Regardless of whether I'm clear or not, this thread has helped a lot.  I've already decided to cut out some mechanical parts to the process and add some other stuff.  I think the final product is going to be much closer to what I want.  Thanks to everyone for replying and taking an interest.