[IaWA] Pyrrhic Victory

[Troels]

Hello there,

My friends and I, here in Copenhagen, have been playing In a Wicked Age for a bit more than two years now. Since we took our point of departure in the magazine article, it has been a bit raw, so we have been tinkering a little, producing some rules-variations that I thought I'd share.

Pyrrhic victory:

If you win narrowly, the victor takes a bit of damage too. Under the old conflict rules, we used a pyrrhic victory if you failed by just one point to secure a total victory. Under the new rules, I'd use this in the last round, if at all (being a bit mysterious here, with the new rules unpublished and all). The default consequences would then be that the victor could inflict two die-sizes on the vanquished, but the vanquished could slap the victor for one. The real point of this, other than a slight shorthening of some conflicts that will now be less relevant, is that it makes for an interestingly different sort of negotiations when the winner actually has something to lose.

Oh, and here's another:

What you use is what you risk:

Instead of standard exhaustion/injury, the default consequences of defeat are damage to the two actual dice that you used in the conflict. As always, consequences are negotiable. Vincent has said elsewhere (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25056.msg242334#msg242334) that he's cool with this.

Wicked greetings,

Troels

[lumpley]

Hi Troels.

I like that first rule too. I like it increasingly since you posted it, it's settling well into my thinking. It fits nicely in that last-round space in the rules.

-Vincent