[Solar System] Extended Conflict

[Luca Veluttini]

Hi.

I have a little question about the Extended Conflict.
Here is part of the wiki (with underlined the part of my interest):

There are two reasons for escalating: one is that you're unhappy with the result of a lost conflict and wish to have your character strive hard to turn the outcome. Another is a matter of stakes manipulation: as discussed in chapter "Conflict Resolution" on page 37, there are some conflict goals that might be inappropriate for an outright conflict. Extending is a way of bringing those conflicts in play, regardless.

At pag. 37 there is Leverage/Propriety/Scope.

So the question: if a Goal needs it, can I ask directly to an Extended Conflict?

Take the example of the jewel robbery. If it's interesting, can I ask an Extended?

Thank you.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I suppose you could. I don't remember that I'd seen anybody skip directly to extended conflict without first rolling the simple conflict, but the rules do allow it. Probably I'm not seeing it simply because the propriety issues rarely come into way in my campaigns, gritty and naturalist as they are; usually the player wins a simple conflict and then in the aftermath narration we find out that he wanted more out of the conflict than the SG would allow, necessitating extension of the conflict. But in principle, yeah, no reason to roll the initial simple conflict if you know in advance that you'll want an extended conflict anyway.

Obviously enough there's no surprise bonus for either party on the first round if there wasn't a simple conflict to initiate the extended conflict.

[Luca Veluttini]

Thank you very much, Eero.

[Luca Veluttini]

Another little question:

There are two reasons for escalating: one is that you're unhappy with the result of a lost conflict and wish to have your character strive hard to turn the outcome. Another is a matter of stakes manipulation: as discussed in chapter "Conflict Resolution" on page 37, there are some conflict goals that might be inappropriate for an outright conflict. Extending is a way of bringing those conflicts in play, regardless.

So if there is a tie in a Conflict or I'm winning with a poor result (a 1 for example) I cannot extend, right?

[Eero Tuovinen]

If you're the player and playing a player character who's participating in the conflict, you can always extend after seeing the outcome. Extending a conflict is a full and compete privilege at your own discretion. That paragraph in the rules intends to convey that being unhappy with the outcome or wanting to modify the stakes are the usual reasons for extending, but the presence of those motivations is not a requirement for being able to extend.

A different way of looking at this is that extended conflict is basically a D&D combat system. It would be pretty unfair to not get your combat if you want it, right? The Solar System compromise between the arbitrary handling time of traditional RPG combat and the arbitrary pacing and outcomes of a single-roll resolution is to say that OK, our default resolution device will be one-roll, but if a player feels that an extended resolution is needed, he has the right to require it; the simple resolution is sort of an utilitarian short-cut that can always be abandoned in favour of the full procedure, should any advocate require it. As I said earlier, you don't even need to roll the simple conflict first if you already know that you'll want to do an extended conflict, although this seems to be uncommon. You might want to consider the SS procedure of first rolling a simple conflict and then abandoning the result as a sort of concession to player psychology: by allowing everybody to first see how the conflict would go with one-roll resolution before deciding on the full formula you make sure that extension is only called when it is definitely wanted, not just to avoid a bad roll or whatever.

(The reason for why the Story Guide doesn't get to call for extension is that he should not technically have any motivation to do so; he does not advocate for any character in the game, so he does not have the responsibilities and perspective necessary for making the right call on whether we should spend the next hour resolving this one conflict or not. Just like a player does not have the necessary perspective to decide whether the papers are in the safe or whether the ship has already left, the Story Guide is not prepared to make choices about when we hit the bullet-time in our resolution procedures.)

So yes, you can extend even if you won the conflict or tied the initial roll. I don't think that I've ever seen anybody extend due to a poor win, though; in my crunch landscapes you're usually better off winning by a slim margin than going into extended conflict and blowing your wad on just hurting your opponent. This is in fact one of the reasons for why one should adjudicate all above-zero Ability check results as successes of various sorts.