My working Doc for FADE (as detailed in the thread linked below) will be more or less complete in the next day or so. I’m giving it a final read for consistency, and then would love to pass it on to those interested in giving it a look, kicking the tires, or otherwise checking it out.

Also look out for some Actual Play in the near future.

So... who wants some?

Woops- edit. If you want a copy, please email me at bailywolf@yahoo.com and I'll send one your way.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=14196

-Ben

I've got this thing more or less ready, if anyone wants to take a look at it.

Currently, this is strictly a functional doc, without the usual GM and campaign advice portions (which I am playing with right now). I haven't had the chance to playtest this yet, so it is more than possible that there are huge ragged holes I can't see.

I'm also considering some new/modified mechanics to push the "mediator between the real and the magical" aspect of characters which is somewhat absent right now (mechanically- it could easily play a part in normal game play). Perhaps allowing players to 'bleed' Trouble by introducing what would amount to Kickers and/or Bangs on the fly before the Trouble gets high enough to break loose and cause a Crisis. In my mind, Trouble is becoming less a ‘punishment’ score, and more a general drama-driver. On some level, I want to make Trouble fun- both in acquiring it and in getting rid of it- rather than something players work to avoid acquiring. So Trouble = More interesting gameplay.

I would love to get first-take opinions from anyone willing to give the Doc a read.

Thanks,

-Ben

I received some excellent feedback from Douglas Ruff, and he was kind enough to give permission for me to quote his comments here on the Forge. I’m going to answer these point by point, but only so I can keep my responses and thoughts coherent on the issues he raises. I follow some of his comments with riffy ideas on expanding/modifying the existing mechanics, and this is proving to be my preferred way to refine a design.

Here we go:

(2) Less sure about the 1-6 scale. This means that there are only 3
different splits available: 4/3, 5/2 and 6/1. A 6/1 to split is a
character kill waiting to happen, and because it's easy to trigger a
Crisis, I expect that most characters will be created with a 4/3 split
and players will have to do all they can to keep this balance. This is
certainly thematic, but it would be nice to have things so that
players can aim for a 'stable imbalance'.

For example, your original plans were for 11 points and a d10 system.
I suspect that a 7/4 split would be viable in a way that 5/2 isn't
using d6s.


This is something I’ve waffled on a bit. I like the numeric spread better for the exact reasons you point out, but found that coming up with 11 traits to define a character become a bit tedious- the short and sweet list of 7 traits was easier to come up with, and more succinct, and created some tension in chargen by demanding players make some early tradeoffs between Identity and Mystery- “OK, I want this guy to be a good brawler… but man, I do need that sacred chalice Arcana for the whole Initiation mojo to work right… argh!” But the possible splits are significantly more limited with the 7 point divide. There is always the red-headed stepchild d8 to consider… but I’d like to stick with one of the two more common die types a gamer might have in his bag. Still at a bit of a loss on this one.


(3) The Traits look good too. I like the way they are linked to the
scores, and the choice between Skill/Conviction/Relationship and
Art/Arcana/Patron. However, if Skills are focused within Backgrounds,
and Arts are a focused part of Initiation, then won't using these
Traits also give an automatic +1 for relevant Background/Initiation? I
could use some more clarity from you here.

I do need to clarify this a bit. If your background gives you something even vaguely related to a conflict, then you get the gratis die. A Skill or Art implies a focused expertise. Your Background might describe a “misspent youth on the streets of LA” which would easily imply a certain base familiarity with personal violence, and thus a gratis die for kicking someone’s ass. A Skill in “kicking ass” would get you a bonus die every time it applied… but you could use it just as easily to deal with an Otherworldly conflict, gaining the die, and picking up the Trouble. Even without this Trait, it is still possible to be a respected brawler- a fight with a typical opponent (all things being equal) is Rank 1, and with a high Identity score, you’ll roll a success most of the time. So long as you don’t run into someone bigger…

(4) I think that Trouble is going to accumulate way too quickly, and
starting with d6 of Trouble straight away may result in a Crisis
during the game's first conflict. This is too early: it may also
result in losing a Trait before it has even been brought into play,
which seems a bit odd. I'd suggest starting Trouble at zero, it will
go up quickly enough!

Perhaps so… I might throw the starting trouble in as an optional rule- especially suited for one-shot games that the GM wants to make personal as quickly as possible.

(5) Conflicts. I've got lots to say about these, but here's the main
points for now.

- Characters may be able to muster 5 dice if they call on a
Relationship and a Patron at the same time, without considering
advantages or backgrounds. Are you comfortable with that, if the
highest regular challenge Rank is 3?

I think so- calling in that much mojo isn’t the kind of thing a character can do very often- a Patron and a Relationship can only be called upon once per session each, it will leave the character without his mechanical “big guns”. But when you draw upon that kind of major character mojo, then I think you should be able to expect to pull off a success. The math may need some attention though- I haven’t run the numbers on this system, so I don’t know how the odds play out yet. I may tweak things a bit when I graph things out.

- If a player gets to define their own success result, they don't need
to Stretch. I think that the GM should let the player define the
success, and then set the Rank and consequences of failure
accordingly. The whole process of setting Ranks, consequences and Outs
needs more support for the GM, as it's quite tough to work out how
hard to drive the players.

You are totally correct here. I need to be very explicit about this, because this is one of the fiddliest bits of the system. I think defining explicit levels for a conflict’s defining mechanical elements will be important here… another thing I was considering is who gets to set everything.

Last night, I started considering a success scale like so:

3 Yes And (+2 Advantage)
2 Yes (+1 Advantage)
1 Yes But
0 No But
-1 No (-1 Disadvantage)
-2 Yes And (-2 Disadvantage)

If the player initiates the conflict, he describes his Goal, and the GM describes the Consequences and an Out. If the GM initiates the conflict, he sates a “baseline” Goal and then the Consequences and Out for that baseline. The player can accept that Goal, or Stretch (going for something better). Stretching will then bump Consequences or Out.

Rank
1 Typical- conflict is easy relative to Background or Initiation.
2 Challenging- character has disadvantages, or conflict outside Background or Imitation.
3 Really Hard- character has disadvantages, and/or conflict well outside Background or Imitation.

This makes Rank somewhat relative- a character who is trauma surgeon is going to have a Typical time doing emergency first aid on a wounded friend, while an urban indie music hipster would have a Challenging or possibly Really Hard time of an identical task.

Consequences
1 Minor- don’t last beyond the scene, no permanent setback.
2 Serious- persist for the session, and can cause longer term setbacks.
3 Critical- persist until resolved actively (or until end of story), can cause permanent setbacks.

Somehow I need to make these a bit more concrete, but generally this determines how long Disadvantages will persist.

Out
1 Give up goals, no Consequences.
2 Give up goals, -1 Consequences.
3 Give up goals, -2 Consequences.


Say Agent Clark (Identity 5, Mystery 2) is investigating a weird occult kidnapping under the guise of his normal FBI duties. He is examining the crime scene (a child’s bedroom), and his Trouble score is 3 (lower then his Identity score). He has his gratis die, an FBI Field Agent skill to guide him, and a Protect the Innocent conviction driving him. Agent Clark’s player says, “I’ll go over the girl’s room, searching for signs of how she was taken or anything else weird or out of place. A Success will give me clues as to how and by who the girl was taken.” This falls well into the character’s Background, but the girl was taken by someone with extraordinary skills and abilities, and for bizarre occult reasons. The GM sets the Rank of the conflict at 2, and defines the Out at 1 (just give up and quit looking), and the Consequences as 2 (clues are confusing, and will make following them difficult). The actual details will be provided after resolution in the narration, which will fall to the player if a Success is rolled (net successes of 1 or more), and to the GM if a Failure is rolled (net successes of 0 or less).

The player takes his free die, and the 1 die for his Skill and 1 more for his conviction. He rolls the three dice, and all three fall under his Identity of 5. Subtract the Rank of the conflict, and this yields a Success of 1. A “Yes, But” result. The players gets to narrate the success: “I go over the room, noting that the girl was taken, but also there seems to be certain toys missing, as well as diapers, bottles, and other things you would need to take care of a baby. It doesn’t seem likely that anyone who was going to immediately harm the child would take the things needed to care for her. It also seems they gained entry through the window via a ladder which they took with them, and there are signs that at least two people participated in the crime. However, since a “Yes, But” result was produced, the GM gets to add details to the narration which bear directly on the Success, Rank, or Consequences of the conflict. He says, “You notice these things, but as you move further out into the yard beyond the child’s window, you find signs of struggle, matted grass, and a fine splatter of blood at head height on a river birch tree. You find no bodies, however…”

But perhaps I’m overcomplicating these things beyond what is needed. I need to make sure that a failure doesn’t cause the story to ground to a halt- preventing a failure from becoming a stymie will be a significant concern.


- I'd leave Scale out of regular conflicts and keep it for Crises
only, where it has an application within the system.

A fair point- I only really included it with Conflicts to create the starting Scale of a triggered Crisis- but perhaps it would be more natural to start all Crisis at Scale 1.

- I think Narration should stay with the player (for success or
failure) until Trouble reaches a certain level. This represents events
spiraling out of control...

Do you think? For some players, narration rights are a treasure beyond price… for others, they are a burden. Some players just don’t like to narrate that much, so I didn’t want to always stick them with the responsibility. Somehow, I like keeping Trouble as a tipping point for determining narration… but perhaps the over/under/success/fail thing is just too cumbersome to manage in Actual Play? I won’t know until I can playtest it.

I have to admit, I am somewhat attracted to you ‘spiral out of control’ concept though. More thought needed. I may swipe the narration determination angle used in Pretender- make this who gets to pick the narrator rather than who is the narrator.

- In your conflict example with the thugs, I think you need to make it
more clear that this is a *single* conflict, and that it isn't over
until the player succeeds. In other words, if the character is
failing, the player can elect to introduce a cross-trait to swing the
balance. Note: it has to be a single conflict, as the initial failure
didn't result in the failure stakes (serious injury).

YES!

I need to make this much more explicit. Basically, players can keep calling on their resources when it looks like they are going to fail- with narration being taken in blocks based on the current success/fail point in the conflict. A player only fails if he chooses to stop tapping cross dice, or runs out of Traits to tap.

(6) I love the Crisis rules, especially when Scale kicks in - you can
almost feel the Trouble spreading itself across the community. I think
the actual mechanics need a closer look, but the basic concept is
excellent.

True- I’m comfortable with the concepts here, but iffy on the mechanics.

(7) Finally, a thematic note: this game should be all about trading
favors, and especially about how socially difficult it is to be
between two worlds. I think that this is captured very well within
your intent for the game. However, the game doesn't force this: it's
easy to make and play character with no Relationships or Patrons, and
there is a real risk that such a character will not gel with one of
the game's central themes.

This may be a massive pain for you, but I strongly suspect that
Relationships and Patrons need to operate as another layer of
mechanics within the game. This doesn't have to replace any of the
existing traits, but I think that Favors given or owed should have a
mechanical impact on the game. Not sure yet how to do this, but I
think we should explore the option.

I’d considered something like this, but couldn’t come up with a system that gelled for me… but you are right, that it needs another look.

I was considering allowing players (or the GM… or even another player) to ‘cash in’ a point of Trouble from a character’s pool, and use it to introduce a kicker/bang into the story, to kick things up a notch. This could be a supernatural entity asking the player to intercede for him, it could be someone the player has a relationship with asking for a favor… this kind of thing. Something that adds traditional RPG game direction to the thing, below the level of the Crisis system (which really should be a complication rather than the main focus of every game). This makes a pool of Trouble ‘volatile’ rather than just a danger when you’re rolling in very specific circumstances- it also can serve to keep Trouble totals down a bit. There needs to be some caps on how often a character’s Trouble can be so used too…

So, coming later this week- a V0.2 of the mechanics.

-Ben

Brian Langley (gorckat) has gotten me thinking about a solution to the limited starting split issue with the 7 point characters and the d6 resolution die.

He suggested that rather than simply pick 1 trait per point of a given score (with the 7 point scale) use the 11 point scale, but 'buy' the scores with those points- 1 for an art/skill, 2 for a conviction/arcana, and 3 for a relationship/patron.

With further riffing on this idea, it offers a more detailed and possible more interesting way to handle points shifting from score to score (in addition to offering a broader number of possible starting splits).

A Crisis causes the shift of a point, and affects a threatened trait. Rather than the total loss of the trait, higher-up traits would get 'down graded' to the next level (and only get lost completely if they are Skill or Arts, which are worth 1 point only). The step down can be thematically linked to the conflict, the crisis, and the traits lost and gained. A shifted point can buy a new Art or Skill OR can upgrade an existing trait to a higher level (art/skill to conviction/arcana to relationship/patron).

This transition isn't precisely linier- why would a skill turn into a conviction, for example- but this isn't intended to represent any kind of "skill improvement' or anything like that, but rather to highlight how a character's focus and energy get redirected through experience, and how a character's core beliefs can be shifted.

You Family relationship gets downgraded to a Conviction after a failed Crisis, and so you bump a point from Identity to Mystery. Based on the Crisis (the wife and kids leave the character after being shocked away by the occult weirdness), the defines the new Conviction as “get family back” and the point that shifts into Arcana buys a new Art called “Insect Tongue” which allows the character to speak with and command insects. At least he’ll have someone to talk to in his increasingly filthy apartment…

-B

Bailywolf wrote: Brian Langley (gorckat) has gotten me thinking about a solution to the limited starting split issue with the 7 point characters and the d6 resolution die.

He suggested that rather than simply pick 1 trait per point of a given score (with the 7 point scale) use the 11 point scale, but 'buy' the scores with those points- 1 for an art/skill, 2 for a conviction/arcana, and 3 for a relationship/patron.

Doug Ruff wrote:

That's an interesting idea. Now, if you go down that route, why not go the whole way and allow all of the traits to have 1, 2 and 3 point versions?

You know, some Patrons and Relationships aren't as useful, but they get you into less Trouble and can be called on more often. For example, you can ask your mom for help all the time, just don't expect her to understand or help too much.

On the other hand, maybe your character has a devastating 3-point Art which gets them into lots of Trouble if they use it in the real world.

That way, losing a point in a Trait just downgrades its in game value.

One other thing, although I said originally that the D6 system led to less stable positions and was a problem, this problem can go away if the current 'death spiral' into more Trouble=more unbalanced stats=even more Trouble can be counterbalanced somewhat.

which leads me to think whether the player can decide to exchange Trouble for favours. For example, you help the water spirit in the nearby lake, and she owes you a 2-point debt. Later on in the game, you've racked up a pile of Trouble, can you call in the favour and ask the spirit to take two of your Trouble away? Or solve a 2-point Crisis for you?

Or maybe the sprite will help you lose all your Trouble, but she's in the middle of a 4-point Crisis of her own and needs your help...


In other words, this game isn't just about the Trouble the characters get into - it's about them helping other people with their Trouble.
Ben, is this helping any?

double post.

Bailywolf wrote:
Do I need a more generic currency in this game other than Trouble?

Something that can be aspected bad (for trouble & debts) or good (for harmony & favors)?

Hmmm... perhaps I do.
-Ben

funny- i also thought maybe Trouble should be adapted to have some kind of positive aspect, but i couldn't see a solution or method for it

maybe not cross-diceing in certain situations could be a means of reducing trouble.

i think the only 'stumbling block' to cracking this bad boy open for play is streamlining trouble and how it spurs a crisis-

my wife is calling me so i can't complete this thought, but i'll ponder some more and post it up in a bit :)

okay, so i couldn't back til this morning :)

just had a thought, but Ben- if i'm trampling your vision or concept, just reign me in!

what if Trouble and Crisis are 2 separate scores?

when you cross Mystery to solve Identity problems, you get Crisis (hmm- Identity Crisis, lol)- basically, the # of dice crossed adds to your Crisis score. The flip is also true- cross Identity to solve Mystery conflicts and those dice add to your Trouble score...

now, as far as triggering these (lacking Crisis as the term now...wheels turning)- okay- when Trouble is greater than Mystery or Crisis is greater than Identity a character has a Context Conflict (corny, but the character is now 'out of context'). since being equal to the score won't trigger anyhting, the Context Rank will be 1-3 depending on how many dice were crossed into the conflict. The GM decides on the Scale, since the player, in effect, decided on the Rank of the Context Conflict by knowingly crossing the dice into the Conflict.

After the Rank of Context and Scale are determined, that amount is reduced from the Trouble or Crisis score (this keeps in line with the original 'Trouble Crisis causing dice are removed from the score), which may leave the character (at GM discretion) with a few points left to start more Context Conflicts sooner than later. This avoids neatly the player always creating Rank 1 conflicts by just slighty bumping the Crisis over Identity- if the player misbehaves like that, the Gm just lets him off with a Rank 1/Scale 1 Context Conflict leaving the player right on the brink again...

had to think for a moment- if the player does manage to create a bunch of Rank 1 Conflicts by nursing his Crisis or Trouble scores, then its up to the GM to ramp it up and push the player to cross more dice into a single conflict and really push the character

wow- the jargon gets thick while brainstorming, but i think you can make sense of it...well, let me know what you think- its a little rough, but i think you can still work the whole Favor/Debt idea into it as well

Early in the design, I was considering two running scores, and/or aspecting the totals to either Identity or Mystery... but I realized that this was something of a complication, and really what was significant was not the flat Trouble total, but rather the nature of a Crisis when Trouble gets out of control.

Trouble represents a kind of disharmony a magician collects when his two lives grate together- and a Crisis always somehow involves both lives. This separates it from the usual disasters and dooms a character in a role playing game faces as part of the normal story (whatever that may be).

A Crisis is something that threatens to spiral out of control if a character can't get a lid on it, and reverberate through the magical or mundane world.

Alright...

To keep things simple, I'm going to stick with the current Trait breakdown, but use the 10 point buy method for determining them. This is grainer than variable level traits, but I think more thematic.

Also, I'm going to stick with the way Trouble accumulates. This seems to work pretty well I think.

Now... At any point, up to once per session, a player (any player) or the GM can take a point of Trouble and introduce a complication to the current session- a supernatural creature asking for help, a neighbor in trouble, the return of an ex-boyfriend... whatever. If the player spends the point, the GM (or anyone the GM chooses) makes up the Complication. If the GM spends the point, the player picks who introduces the complication. This reduces the character’s Trouble, BUT also makes the current situation stickier (and ideally more interesting). Because anyone can use your Trouble this way, in some ways Trouble represents a metagame level of loss of control over the character- something to add a player-level negative to the score. No hard and fast rules on this except such an introduction MUST bring with it at least one Conflict which the player is obligated to roll out and deal with mechanically. This conflict might be immediate, or might come later on. But the conflict MUST come up in the session the Trouble is spent. Introducing side conflicts increases the chance a player might tap cross-dice and risk a Crisis… What should I call these incidental complications?

However, the upside so such conflicts is the chance to earn Favors.

Rather than normal advantages, success on complication conflicts grants Favors. A Favor is some kind of debt or influence you can use to moderate a Crisis. You can cash in a Favor to reduce the rank of a Crisis by one point, if the Favor has some application to the Crisis.

Alright, an example…

Walker Crowley’s family farm is being foreclosed on by a mysterious firm that bought his mortgage from the bank- part of a rank 3 Crisis which threatens his Haunted Farmhouse arcana, and which was initiated when he used his Don’t Take Crap from Nobody conviction to drive off some demon-rats an enemy sent to infest his hay barn. This Crisis threatens his Mystery, so Mystery Favors can be used to reduce the Rank of the Crisis. Crowley only has two Mystery favors- A crow spirit he saved from a angry old Oak, and the garden gnomes he buys cigarettes for. The gnomes can’t really help him here, but he whistles up the Crow, and ask it to find out all it can about the firm that bought the mortgage. The Crow agrees, and returns with significant information on the enemy- thus reducing the Crisis rank by 1 before the rolling even begins.

After resolving the Crisis, and keeping his house, Crowley’s player decides his Trouble score is still too high, and so drops a point, and the GM chooses to introduce and describe the Complication himself. He says, “Crowley wakes up the late to the sound of someone banging on his front door. When he answers it, he’s shocked to see his ex-wife there, with two suitcases and a little kid on her hip. She says to the kid, ‘Say hello to your daddy.’”




How does this strike you?



-Ben

Bailywolf wrote:

Trouble represents a kind of disharmony a magician collects when his two lives grate together- and a Crisis always somehow involves both lives. This separates it from the usual disasters and dooms a character in a role playing game faces as part of the normal story (whatever that may be).

A Crisis is something that threatens to spiral out of control if a character can't get a lid on it, and reverberate through the magical or mundane world.

gorckat wrote:
as far as a player giving up Trouble for a complication, you could even use a 'kill puppies for satan' approach- sometimes let another player decide the complication- that would involve the whole group in each player's story directly, and allow the GM to not always feel bad screwing around w/ some guy's life :)

i really like the 'world' examples you've given, both in the playtest and in the last post- it really shows a solid vision of your world- it reminds me of a book called Dead Witch Walking that my wife bought but couldn't get into. i read it and can't wait for the sequel this spring. while it's story doesn;t translate directly, i recommend reading it! i can definitly see the main character's Trouble and complications

yup- my brain glossed over that other players could spend points

can't wait to see the next draft- is there anthing else you're looking at right now, or did you cover it all?

I think I'm in a good place to start my second draft... much of it from scratch.


I still need to work out a tidier method of resolving/failing a Crisis.

One thing I considered was using Crisis points (I'm calling them points rather than ranks so as to diferentiate them from Conflict ranks) to 'buy' the conflicts needed to resolve the Crisis.

For example, a 3 point Crisis could be resolved in three rank 1 conflicts, one rank 1 and one rank 2, or a single rank 3. Depending on how the conflicts are initiated, and how much the player wants to push the resolution.

In this case, failure on any one of the Conflicts would result in a failure to address the Crisis, and the loss of the threatened Trait.

For example, to address the 3 point Crisis in the previous example… Right off, Walker’s player wants to find out why the company bought his mortgage, and goes to his bank to talk to someone about it. He flirts with the teller (using his ‘Good with the Ladies’ skill), trying to get some information (even though it is supposed to be confidential). The player’s isn’t overly ambitious in the Success he wants (“I Just want a name I can follow up with”), so the GM sets the Rank at 1. He rolls two dice against his Identity of 6, getting a 4 and a 5. This gives him a “yes but” success (rank 1 minus 2 equals 1). He gets the name, but the teller says “But I was told he would be in Atlanta all week at a conference.” So Crowley has his name, but is going to have to go to Atlanta (a city he hates) to find this guy. For the next Conflict, the scale of things increases by one.

The advantage to finishing a Crisis in a single Conflict is that you can keep the scale low- the reverberations will remain mostly personal.

You can work a Crisis in small increments, but doing so lets the Scale increase dramatically.

Is this an improvement over the previous (over complicated) mechanics?

-Ben

absolutely- i like how the player can influence the mechanics of resolving the Crisis, and it promotes the story by possibly drawing out Crisis, adn it allows for things to get way crazy with 4+ point Crisises that can be broken down

if 4+ Crisis are possible (have to re-read that part), maybe there should be a limit on how far it can be broken down?

There is a practical upper limit on Crisis points because they are equal to the number of cross-dice wich roll under the Trouble score in a given conflict.

For example, if you're trying to stop the Hell Queen from turning Ashville into a broiling pit and throwing the whole ballance between World and Otherworld into chaos, and you've got a Trouble of 5, and you pull out all the stops- using two Arts, an Arcana, and a Patron (7 cross-dice), and you throws 1, 3, 4, 4, 3, 6, 7, then you've just kicked off a 5 point Crisis (though, your Trouble score does drop to zero...).

So... possble, but not likely.

Hmm... even a three point Crisis might be pretty rare...

-B

Ben,

That looks really neat. I like the way that the scale of a Crisis is now directly related to the scale of the Trouble that caused it, and that the player has a choice between confronting the Crisis head-on, or ducking the full weight of the problem (which spreads the Scale of the Crisis.)

I also like very much you take on spending Trouble, and Favours. One small request: could you take a similar approach to balancing the side conflicts?

For example, could the GM spend 2 or 3 points of my Trouble to introduce a major complication into my character's life, and could I call for this myself?

Knowing that they can call on larger Favours in this way may encourage players to let rip a bit more with their cross traits, and makes Trouble less likely to overturn the character's balance - which would make it easier to keep D6s, if you wanted them still.

(Of course, too much assistance from outside could nerf the Crises, but I don't yet know how this would balance in play.)

I think I'm going to stick with the ten siders from now on... and I did consdier chashing in more than one point of Trouble for big complications... but decided not to do it because I didn't want to totally negate the threat of Crisis having a Trouble score promises. I think letting the player bleed one point per game session can keep things under wraps... but really, I won't know until I sit down and actually run the numbers and figure out how often the typical character is going to throw a Crisis.

-Ben

I realized on the drive home last night that I need to tweak the success/fail thing a bit, otherwise someone with one die could never achieve even a qualified success in a conflict, and this should still be possible... so...

Successes minus Conflict Rank, and compare as follows:

2 "YES, AND" (2 Advantage)
1 "YES" (1 Advantage)
0 "YES, BUT" (no Advantage)
-1 "NO, BUT" (no Penalty)
-2 "NO" (1 Penalty)
-3 "NO, AND" (2 Penalties)

So, someone with a background which fits fairly well with a given situation (for typical difficulty) gets one die, and can then roll a "YES, BUT" success with it. By grabbing situational advantages (brining a gun to a knife fight, for example), tapping Traits, or cashing in Advantages earned in past conflicts, a character can have many more dice.

But with one die and a typical conflict, a character can at least get some kind of success.

-B