The second edition upcoming has a new rule and a rule change in it. They're both about followup conflicts.

The rule change
I'm the GM. My NPCs take a stack of fallout, but nobody cares if they live or die or what.

How it used to work: I pass all their fallout dice, unrolled, to the players, to roll with their dice in the followup conflict.

How it works now: I roll their fallout dice as I would if we cared about them. However, instead of assigning fallout, I pass the two highest showing dice across to the players for their side of the followup conflict. They don't reroll them.

This is to make followup conflicts less humiliating for me as the GM.

The new rule
If you give instead when it's your turn to raise, you get to "cut your losses."

Take your highest single showing die and set it aside. After you roll your dice for the followup conflict, add the "cut your losses" die back into the mix, without rerolling it.

This is to break the thing where people are by default staying in every conflict past when they should be ditching out.

The relevant new text

Giving
When you Give instead of Seeing, you don’t need to Take the Blow. In fact, one of the best reasons to Give is to avoid a Blow you can’t bear to Take.

There’s no need to stay in a conflict to the bitter end. You can and should Give as soon as you’re willing to let the conflict go — be it because the stakes aren’t worth it, or because you’ve thought of follow-up stakes even better — or as soon as you realize you can’t win.

When you Give instead of Raising, you get to cut your losses. Grab your highest showing single die and set it aside. If there’s any follow-up conflict, roll your Stat and Relationship dice as usual, then add this reserved die to the mix. Don’t reroll it! This represents the advantage you keep by ceding the previous stakes on your own terms.

Follow-up Conflicts
A follow-up conflict is simply a new conflict that follows on the one just ended. In general you treat it exactly as you would any other, but it does have a few special considerations:

- It counts as a follow-up conflict only if its stakes follow directly from the previous conflict’s resolution.

- Its stakes can be the same as the previous conflict’s stakes only if all three of its participants, its stage as set, and its opening arena are different. That is, if your character tries to talk my character into admitting her sin, but fails, you can’t just try again. That conflict’s done. What you have to do if you want a follow-up with the same stakes is come back another time or catch her at some other place, with your friends to back you up — and this time it can’t be just talking.

- If you cut your losses in the previous conflict, Giving instead when it was your turn to Raise, you get to keep your single best die from that conflict. After you roll your dice for this conflict, add your reserved die (without rerolling it) to the mix.

- As the GM, I get an extra option, and it’s a good one. If nobody cares about my NPCs’ Fallout, when I roll my Fallout Dice, I don't calculate and choose Fallout. Instead, I simply give you the two highest dice to add into your side of the new conflict. You don’t reroll them, just put them straight in with your own dice. They’re the advantage you carry into the follow-up.

I definately like the rule change.  Handing the players a great big gob of falloutdice to whomp me with kinda sucked.  Will there be any guidelines as to which of the opposing players gets to take the two high dice?

The Cut Your Losses rule feels iffy.  I'm looking forward to trying it on for size.

-Eric

  On the fallout issue:

  What happens if it's the GM vs. 2 or more players?  Who gets the dice?

  On the giving issue:

  GM: He clobbers you with a stone axe!
  Me: No way
  *rolling*
  GM: Hah!
  Me: Crap!
  *quick math*
  Me: OK, I give.

  So...I get clobbered with a stone axe then?  Kinda makes the bonus die pointless doesn't it? 

  Also, these Give dice are completely bonus right?  They don't subtract out of your regular die pools?  If I just give and give and give, can I build up a heinous pool of bonus dice to whomp on you?  I dunno if this is a valid strategy or not, I'm just pointing it out.

Interesting stuff
Tom

I have to agree that handing over a whole bunch of Fallout to the players was a bit unbalancing. i.e. I had to hand over something like 18d8+6d6, IIRC, yesterday after a massive attack against a Sorceress, with a followup conflict of "do we exorcise the Demon out of her?" I had to Give, as there was no point facing that much. On reflection, I should have Gave earlier in the initial conflict, but you live and learn.

The thing which gets me is the two highest dice seems a pretty drastic reduction, and I'm sure my players would complain. I'll give it a go the next time we play, but I imagine that it might cause some problems. This is due to the fact that as soon as my players figured out the power of followups, they immediately started creating smaller (and thus more givable) conflicts, on the understanding that they would get a big bonus for the followup. Before they realised, the stakes they went for were always pretty 'big'.

Ah, well, I like the idea, but I'm not sure of the details... I'll let you know how it turns out.

bluegargantua wrote:
  GM: He clobbers you with a stone axe!
  Me: No way
  *rolling*
  GM: Hah!
  Me: Crap!
  *quick math*
  Me: OK, I give.

  So...I get clobbered with a stone axe then?  Kinda makes the bonus die pointless doesn't it? 

bluegargantua wrote:
  Also, these Give dice are completely bonus right?  They don't subtract out of your regular die pools?  If I just give and give and give, can I build up a heinous pool of bonus dice to whomp on you?  I dunno if this is a valid strategy or not, I'm just pointing it out.

Hey Tom!

Fallout: I dunno, that was unspecified in the old rules too. Whoever jumps for 'em, I'd think. Whoever landed the worst blow, maybe. Whoever invokes 'em first in the next conflict? That'd work.

Giving: Yeah, if the stakes are "killed in the head with an axe," maybe you don't want to give, even for the die. If you do give on your raise, you get your best die to go into the medical aid conflict, though.

People should always be looking at their dice like *quick math*, and if they aren't going to win, they should be going "escalate? give? escalate? give?" This rule is to encourage that.

The die is a bonus, yes, but as Warren says - you only get the one die and only for the one next conflict. There's no way to build up a pool.

Warren: Let me know how it goes.

Did your players really not care whether the sorceress lived or died?

-Vincent

lumpley wrote:
Fallout: I dunno, that was unspecified in the old rules too. Whoever jumps for 'em, I'd think. Whoever landed the worst blow, maybe. Whoever invokes 'em first in the next conflict? That'd work.

lumpley wrote:
Did your players really not care whether the sorceress lived or died?

The "highest two" rule satisfies me on a mechanical, a procedural, and a symmetrical level; I'm not really looking for suggestions.

I should be clear: the existing fallout rule isn't bad or broken at all, it's just let me personally down a few times. Keep playing by it if that's what your group wants to do, I fully support.

(Warren, I think you may want to be giving fallout to your NPCs more often than you are, instead of giving those dice to the players. Under either rule. That's for a new thread, though, if you feel like it.)

-Vincent

The Rule Change: as it happens, I've been using this exact rule myself, so I'm all for it :)
The New Rule: I look forward to giving it a try.

I likes these changes and things, I does!

I look forward to trying these out with my group. It hasn't come up that much to date in the group I GM because of the way we've done things. But with the group I play in, many dice of fallout ended up our hands after a gunfight. I think we were more reckless in the followups because of that.

It seems necessary but not explictly stated that the "cut your losses" die is the highest rolled whether it's been used or not.  True?

--Nathan

Nope. Highest unused.

-Vincent

It's probably just me, but I have a hard time understanding that from the text you've posted.  Is this supposed to be played against the ability of the PCs to bring in more dice via traits, relationships, and escalation?

--Nathan

I don't follow.

If you're losing, you can decide to salvage your best remaining (that's what "showing" means) die and give the stakes, instead of staying in a conflict that's just going to keep sucking. It's to encourage you to ditch out of conflicts you can't win.

Maybe restate your "supposed to be played against..." question for me?

-Vincent

Well, being able to salvage a showing "1" or "2" isn't much incentive to give in a conflict.  Being able to preserve a "5" or higher is. 

So cut your losses early. That's the point.

-Vincent

Hey, folks-

We played for the first time last night using the new rules and ran into confusion about the following:

lumpley wrote:

Follow-up Conflicts
A follow-up conflict is simply a new conflict that follows on the one just ended. In general you treat it exactly as you would any other, but it does have a few special considerations:

- It counts as a follow-up conflict only if its stakes follow directly from the previous conflict’s resolution.

- Its stakes can be the same as the previous conflict’s stakes only if all three of its participants, its stage as set, and its opening arena are different. That is, if your character tries to talk my character into admitting her sin, but fails, you can’t just try again. That conflict’s done. What you have to do if you want a follow-up with the same stakes is come back another time or catch her at some other place, with your friends to back you up — and this time it can’t be just talking.

In general, the GM should abide by both the spirit and the letter of every conflict's resolution. The other players should too, but the GM's under special obligation.

As GM, the time to leave open the possibility that Running Fox will come back in the night is when you [collective] set the first conflict's stakes, not after you've resolved them.

However, "when we objected, the GM didn't push it" - that's exactly the right way to handle the situation, on both sides' parts.

Does that answer your question?

-Vincent

Thanks for the answer, Vincent.

Now we're clear on how a follow up conflict with the same stakes is dependent on the original terms.

Seems like our problem is more about reaching concensus on stakes, and thinking carefully about what the stakes mean. 

I remember it being written somewhere that the players want to set high stakes, the GM wants to set low stakes, and the ideal is always somewhere in the middle.

peace

mmt