How to GM Principia

[tonyd]

And one more:

How do you decide when something should be a conflict, as opposed to just a controversy?

Is it a pretty straightforward "here is the climactic scene of the story" kind of thing?

How many conflicts (as opposed to controversies) does each session/story see? Just one, or more?

That's been one of the big questions that I've been trying to answer through playtesting. It has changed somewhat, but I'll answer for both your draft and the new external playtest doc I'm working on.

In your draft, most dice rolls will be controversies. Save conflicts for when you're resolving either the main plot of the adventure, or when a character is resolving a major piece of their character arc (often resolving one or more drives). In practice, this boils down usually just one, and no more than three conflicts per game. If the character drives are heavily tied up in the adventure, then they'll all tend to resolve around the same time. So saving conflict for the big finale usually works good.

I'm working on an external playtest draft now for wider dissemination. In this draft, controversies and conflicts are more closely woven together. Now you always roll a controversy. If the loser of the controversy isn't satisifed, they can take it to a conflict. You'll often get more conflicts, but they play faster so there's no impact on how much play you get in during a session.

[Paul T]

Tony,

Your explanation of how the latest draft will work is how I thought Principia was supposed to work when I read the rules--it made sense, intuitively.

But then I realized that you had to decide upfront, in order to clear all the Drives.

So, I'm totally onboard with the latest concept. It works intuitively and is more elegant.