First, thanks for the opportunity to take part in the playtest. Now on to the nitpicking :)

I notice a few differences in the way you do conflicts. One I think is very worrying, but maybe I'm misreading it, and two others you can consider observations - I'm undecided whether they are better or worse, but they are definitely easier to understand.

First, the worrying one...
Hurt Boxes: the rules say you suffer a Hurt box on every Failed roll. This will cripple characters fast. In an Action-By-Action conflict that a player wins without using rerolls, he could still be Injured!
This detracts from the Failure-is-cool element of Trollbabe. In trollbabe, you can suffer failure after failure, but if you don't stake anything on it (use Rerolls), you suffer no lasting consequences.

If you want to run it more like Trollbabe, it could work something like this:
* Any failed ROLL causes no damage. You just have to describe a failure without long-term consequences.
* Any failed REROLL inflicts one Hurt level.
* Remove the Bruised level - the lowest meaningful Hurt is Injury.

With this approach (which is basically vanilla Trollbabe), Hurt levels are a consequence of Rerolls, and the rules describing it could be relocated to the Reroll section.

Multiple Injuries:
In trollbabe, you only take one injury per series - I quite like this, but I have no problem with losing it.

Incapacitation and Death:
I can't remember seeing any discussion of Stranger death. The way trollbabe handles this, and incapacitation, is pretty clever:
If incapacitated, you can make a final roll to influence your final Fate -
Success: you have still failed the Goal, but you get to frame the next scene and you can describe how you recover. So basically, you can walk away from the most intense conflict and still be right-as-rain - though the Goal is gone.
Fail: you have another final choice - you can
  (a) Live, in which case you are Incapacitated, and the GM frames the next scene; or
  (b) Die - you get to describe how you die.
Being Incapacitated is then not a bad thing (except for the used rerolls) - in fact, the ability to control your fate at that level can encourage players to push that far once they are committed to a contest.
This is one of my favourite choices in Trollbabe and it would be a shame not to have something like it.

On to other things in the Conflict Chapter:
The last paragraph on Pg19 talks about the Goals of NPCs. This might trip people up. Discussions in Ron's forum have sometimes pointed out that NPCs don't have Goals - they have intentions that the GM should reveal, but they aren't the same thing as a Goal as defined in the conflict rules.
Set The Pace (pg20): If the GM initiates a conflict involving several PCs, which of the PCs then gets to decide whether the Pace is altered? The text is unclear - it only says (in passing) that one of the PCs does.What if they disagree?
Free and Clear(pg20-21): It's not clear from this section that the Director must reveal his secrets. It is mentioned later under Step 6: Narration, but it's such an important point that maybe it should be emphasised under Free and Clear?

Multiple Action Types:
with the approach you have chosen for Follow Up Conflicts, do you really need Multiple Action Types? If a character wants to use Shadow and Blood, well he can use one, then if that doesn't go his way, reframe the conflict to then use the other approach.
(Or maybe you have some method to switch action type when using a reroll?)

Questions/Comments on the Rest of the Book:
I like the definition of the stats, especially the Social reworking. I notice the sidebar on pg16 refers to Shadow as "Darkness". Is this a mistake?

Hurt: I'm ambivalent about the use of "Hurt" and "Injury" for failure consequences. Something like "Suffering" might be better?

Relationships and Magic: are there any major differences from trollbabe we need to know about these, for when we do or playtests?

Scale: will this have more effects beyond tile picking? Can we have some clues?

Darren

Hi Darren,

Thanks for the feedback. It is much appreciated.

The new injury system is quite different, yes. You may be right that it will injure characters too quickly. I originally had the system as you suggest (hurt only on failed re-rolls) and then changed it at the last minute.

I've been second-guessing this change since then, and your worries seem logical to me. I realize now that the system can put the Stranger in a position where the Director can call for several conflicts until the Stranger is taken out of action. This isn't possible in Trollbabe, where a PC can shrug off conflicts they don't really care about without consequence.

Hmmmm. I think this system may need to change again.

Incapacitation and Death: These rules aren't written yet, but they will work just like Trollbabe.

Goals for the NPCs: You're right. I should use a different term. PCs have Goals, NPCs have intentions.

Pace with multiple Strangers: A conflict always starts with one player and the Director (unless it's Stranger vs Stranger, which is a special case). Those two set and modify the pace. Other players can be *added* to the conflict, but they don't get to set or modify the pace. I'll make that clear.

Multiple Action Types: Follow-up conflicts do affect these, but they are still worth having. A player may really not want to lose the present conflict, and so will want to add other action types now instead of waiting to follow up.

Relationships and Magic: One way to represent magic in the game is to take a relationship with a magical creature. If you have a realtionship with a giant bat-demon, your Stranger might "summon" it to aid him in a fight for instance. This is something akin to magic, but using the relationship rules. Strangers can also take relationships with parts of the city, like "The Canal of Bitter Dreams."

Scale: Works just like Trollbabe, plus the map tile thing.

Glad to be of help :)

John wrote:
I've been second-guessing this change since then, and your worries seem logical to me. I realize now that the system can put the Stranger in a position where the Director can call for several conflicts until the Stranger is taken out of action. This isn't possible in Trollbabe, where a PC can shrug off conflicts they don't really care about without consequence.

Hmmmm. I think this system may need to change again.

Relationships and Magic: One way to represent magic in the game is to take a relationship with a magical creature. If you have a realtionship with a giant bat-demon, your Stranger might "summon" it to aid him in a fight for instance. This is something akin to magic, but using the relationship rules. Strangers can also take relationships with parts of the city, like "The Canal of Bitter Dreams."

There's a bit of the Magic section in the PDF now. It explains how Slow and Fast magic work, at least.

And Relationships will work just like Trollbabe: Player requests new relationship, Director approves. Player says what relationship does, Director says how/why. Can be used for re-rolls. Suffer one level of hurt worse than Stranger in conflicts.

- J