Does the GM decide the magnitude of conflict with the Otherkind mechanic? What I mean is, how does "what's at stake" or "what's to gain" get decided? Example conflict: "I want to retrieve the numinous torc from that band of mercenaries." Who decides whether or not that whole conflict can be resolved in one roll? Does the GM get to say "Whoa, there, let's see if you can even get close to their camp." Or is that last statement reflect a low die in the movement/goal category? Who gets to say how much of a conflict gets resolved? Is it agreed on by all?

Hey Chris.

As far as I remember, there's no rule about it at all, so your guess is as good as mine.

If I were to write a rule about it, it'd be: "Everyone must agree. GM, agree only to small stakes. Small small small. When in doubt, smaller."

You're very right to ask. Establishing limits to the stakes is one of the many things you'd have to do to play that game, I think.

-Vincent

I spent some time contemplating Otherkind (I had briefly flirted with stealing it for Robots & Rapiers) and concluded that the best way to establish the stakes for a roll was for the player to identify the absolute most wishful thinking outcome the character could possibly desire.

So to continue with the above example the wishful thinking case would be "I want to retrieve the numinous torq from that band of mercenaries without getting hurt, without having to hurt anyone, without being spotted, and I don't want them to even realize its gone until the next day when I'll have a big lead and they won't be able to follow my trail" So in other words...think big big big big.

Then whittle it down to individual simple concepts. The "without getting hurt" and "without hurting anyone" are standard Otherkind penalties so they get taken right out and decided with the appropriate dice allocation...but if using the mechanics for other settings you'd need to define those other two bad things case by case. Then each of the other individual events "without being spotted", "not realizing its gone", "not following the trail" would be seperate rolls.

In fact, here, I'd probably take a page from the more general interpretation of the mechanic and define the second roll as "Getting Away" (the first roll being "Get the Torq"). The 2 bad things dice would then be "Notice its Gone" (low right away, high next day) and "on my trail" (low easily followed, high never follow it).

Ralph, that's really smart. Chris, try doing it that way.

-Vincent

Hmmm, whenever I ran Pretender, which is based on Otherkind, the issue of stakes never came up at all. I'm not sure why that is...

I'll post the results of our Schrodinger's War playtest some day. They use a mechanic based on Otherkind - you might get something out of that.