Brennan and all,

My group played Mortal Coil last night in an awesome setting (the Klondike gold rush + necromancy), and I want to say that the setting-building part of Mortal Coil is great.

We had a seriously major question, though. Multiple actions are talked about a lot in the book, but there is no example or explanation of multiple actions besides telling you you can do this and also that you can have an offensive and defensive action against another person.

So if I put 1 chip into a defensive action and add, say, my Will of 1 and an aptitude of 2, totalling 4, and then put 6 chips into an offensive action and add my Wits of 4 and an aptitude of 3, totalling 13; and my opponent just has an offensive action, totalling 14, what happens? Do two actions resolve, with the results being +10 (his offense - my defense) for his action and +13 (because of no defense on his part) for my action? That would mean we could both easily kill each other. Or do we figure out the difference again, which is +3 in my favor? Or what?

This is the thing we couldn't resolve. There were a lot of scenes where I, for example, try to intimidate someone while defending my soul against their lies, and they try to convince me of their ways while keeping a stiff upper lip. This is two separate actions - an offensive and defensive - for both of us, and we often both ended up winning, with, say +7 in one set of actions and +4 in another. What happens here?

Each action should be resolved in a way that makes sense for the conflict. Offensive actions that are not opposed can easily be mutually lethal. If either player is not happy with the outcome, they can always trigger a reallocation round. I would say that two actions that cannot be mutually successful are actually opposed.

As always, an example from actual play would be quite useful for explanatory purposes.

Brennan,

That last example is from actual play.

We've got a character - a Christian nurse - whose actions are:

Offensive: Intimidate this Siwash shaman. (Body + Mountie)
Defensive: Defend my soul from his dirty lies (Will + Christian)

The shaman's actions were (I think):

Offensive: Steal a child (Body + ?)
Defensive: Break the lady's faith (Will + Shaman)

Ok, typing these out, I can already see the problem, but I'm not going to say we were just screw-ups: we play a lot of games with this sort of structure, and how to choose these was just not something that the book covered.

Anyway, we both won our offensive actions and then couldn't figure out what to do. I won driving him off, he won stealing this child to burn over a fire (don't ask.) These two are mutually exclusive. So, hm - what should we have done? Choose different actions is what I assume the answer will be, which makes a lot of sense, but almost all the textual examples choose one action against each other character, while the text told us to choose offensive and defensive actions.

I ran into the same kind of problem - the ambiguity over what's an opposed action and what is not. I'm considering breaking each round into two phases. Side A attacks, B defends. Then Side B attacks and A defends. Much like Heroquest or TSOY. Not sure how to deal with the chits, though!

.. and I should add that Brennan is right: logic can go a long way toward determining what are opposed actions. But figuring that out in every round is tough, especially if you have six characters in a conflict.

Clinton wrote: We've got a character - a Christian nurse - whose actions are:

Offensive: Intimidate this Siwash shaman. (Body + Mountie)
Defensive: Defend my soul from his dirty lies (Will + Christian)

The shaman's actions were (I think):

Offensive: Steal a child (Body + ?)
Defensive: Break the lady's faith (Will + Shaman)

Ok, typing these out, I can already see the problem, but I'm not going to say we were just screw-ups: we play a lot of games with this sort of structure, and how to choose these was just not something that the book covered.

Brennan wrote:

Clinton wrote:

Here's how the situation you describe is solved:

Christian nurse:

Defensive: Intimidate this Siwash shaman. (Body + Mountie)
Defensive: Defend my soul from his dirty lies (Will + Christian)

The shaman's actions:

Offensive: Steal a child (Body + ?) (opposing Intimidate)
Offensive: Break the lady's faith (Will + Shaman) (opposing her Will action)

This does take a bit of sorting out, especially in multi-character conflicts as boredoom says. If you examine all of the actions, you can general find which ones are opposing each other, though.

Thinking like a player for a second, my immediate impression is that you would never want to call any of your actions 'defensive', such as the defensive action that the nurse is taking, because if the Shaman wins, she is damaged in some way, and if she wins, nothing happens to the shaman -- inequitable trade.  From what I suppose is a gamist point of view, she'd want to phrase her action in a way that would oppose the Shaman's action, *and* do something to him via the damage chart if he loses.

If that's simply the way it's already supposed to happen (if she wins, he's going be affected via the damage chart, regardless of whether or not we said it was defensive or offensive), then all a 'defensive' action is, is one specifically designed to oppose some other character's action, and designating actions as defensive or offensive is just muddying the waters..

Dammit. I screwed up the quotes in the last one.  Final two paragraphs are mind, not a quote of Clinton or Brennans. First quote box is Brennan's.

And why is it, again, that we can't edit our [censored] posts anymore?  Someone PM me and explain, please: I was out of the loop for the last year, and this is friggin' annoying.

Brennan wrote:
Here's how the situation you describe is solved:

Christian nurse:

Defensive: Intimidate this Siwash shaman. (Body + Mountie)
Defensive: Defend my soul from his dirty lies (Will + Christian)

The shaman's actions:

Offensive: Steal a child (Body + ?) (opposing Intimidate)
Offensive: Break the lady's faith (Will + Shaman) (opposing her Will action)

I think this is really my biggest sticking point with understanding the conflict resolution in Mortal Coil, too.  Since you have no idea what the action(s) of your opponent will be, it's difficult to determine what a reasonable offensive or defensive action might be when you're supposed to decide on it.

I wonder if it might work better to place tokens in offense and defense and then decide what the actual actions are after the reveal when everyone's got a bigger picture of how the conflict should play out.

Regards,
Daniel

Ok. I'm asking this for clarity: is this really kosher? The rules state you can have one offensive and one defensive action per character that you are in conflict with: that is, the way it reads to me, the nurse can only have one offensive action and one defensive action vs. the shaman, not two defensive actions.

- Clinton

Doyce wrote: Thinking like a player for a second, my immediate impression is that you would never want to call any of your actions 'defensive', such as the defensive action that the nurse is taking, because if the Shaman wins, she is damaged in some way, and if she wins, nothing happens to the shaman -- inequitable trade.  From what I suppose is a gamist point of view, she'd want to phrase her action in a way that would oppose the Shaman's action, *and* do something to him via the damage chart if he loses.

If that's simply the way it's already supposed to happen (if she wins, he's going be affected via the damage chart, regardless of whether or not we said it was defensive or offensive), then all a 'defensive' action is, is one specifically designed to oppose some other character's action, and designating actions as defensive or offensive is just muddying the waters..

boredoom wrote:

Ok. I'm asking this for clarity: is this really kosher? The rules state you can have one offensive and one defensive action per character that you are in conflict with: that is, the way it reads to me, the nurse can only have one offensive action and one defensive action vs. the shaman, not two defensive actions.

- Clinton

The rules don't read that way to me. It looks like you can target a character any number of times in a round, and Brennan supported that in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20588.0

coffeestain wrote: I wonder if it might work better to place tokens in offense and defense and then decide what the actual actions are after the reveal when everyone's got a bigger picture of how the conflict should play out.

Brennan wrote:
Defensive vs. Offensive is just a crutch for players to think about their actions in a conflict. If you beat your opponent with a defensive action that could injure him (like intimidate), he will take damage from it. If this dichotomy muddies the waters, then the defensive/offensive concept is fine to disregard. When I was first playing with the system, the defensive/offensive pairing seemed to make sense to me.

Brennan wrote:

coffeestain wrote: I wonder if it might work better to place tokens in offense and defense and then decide what the actual actions are after the reveal when everyone's got a bigger picture of how the conflict should play out.

It's tricky, but that's what the reallocation round is for. If you seriously miscalculate, you have a second chance.

I echo Clinton's concerns.  "Steal a child" was Body + "Charmer".  We framed all of our actions as both active and directly opposed, and in play when they were resolved, there was no good way to accomodate the mutual successes.  Regardless of how obvious it may seem to others, it completely stopped us during the game. 

Siwash is sort of a period racist epithet, BTW - my guy was a Jilkaat Kwáan clan Tlingit, and he was curing a child of smallpox.  Just to be, you know, clear. 

Jason wrote:
Siwash is sort of a period racist epithet, BTW - my guy was a Jilkaat Kwáan clan Tlingit, and he was curing a child of smallpox.  Just to be, you know, clear. 

Jason wrote:
We framed all of our actions as both active and directly opposed, and in play when they were resolved, there was no good way to accomodate the mutual successes. 

How'd that go down, Clinton?  I recall the shaman succeeding by one after a lot of fiddling around, but he failed to Klondike Kate in the other test.  Or something.  I don't feel like I have a solid grasp on the chip mechanic at all, and I sort of took a step back as Clinton and Remi went back and forth trying to figure it out. 

OK, I think I need some more input on this. What were the stakes of this conflict? What you listed above were the actions. The more I think about it, the more I think "Steal a Child" is pretty broad for an action, and sounds more like the character's ultimate goal in the conflict.

Your main complaint I think is that the book doesn't give enough instruction on how to set stakes and then determine actions and their outcome, is that right?

No, you lay out what stake-setting as and so forth, and as rabid hippie gamers we get that.  That particular conflict:

If I win, I take the kid out back and drive out the demons of sickness over a devil's club and rosehip fire.  I spent a magic token to say that this would, in fact, work. 

If Clinton wins, I'm chased away from the infirmary at gunpoint and can't return.  The unspoken assumption was that the kid dies.  I think that's right. 

We didn't know how to allocate tokens to resolve the conflict. 

OK. I think I understand what's unclear in the rules regarding this situation. I've been thinking about it, and I've gone over the relevant sections of the rules. Stakes setting is pretty clear in there, and it sounds like you had good stakes for the conflict.

It seems like Clinton was saying that after he wrote out the conflict, he was clear on where the problem lay. My solution to the conflict is listed above, and that would move you toward the resolution of the conflict. However, I don't think the stakes would be achieved after this round of actions, because the shaman would fail to shake the nurse's faith. He would avoid being intimidated and take the child outside, but the nurse could then do something else to try to stop him, and you do another round of actions at that point, again aimed at the same stakes. I think this part is pretty clear in the rules.

What needs to be more clear in the rules is how you compare actions after the reveal and how these move toward a resolution of the conflict. Here's how I propose to explain it:

After the reveal, all of the players involved declare what their actions represent and which faculty and aptitude they are calling on. Then the GM (with the help of all of the players) needs to take a moment to sort out which actions are opposing one another. Any actions between two characters where the story cannot make sense if both actions succeed must be resolved as opposing actions.

The above conflict round is an excellent example for this rule, and I would use my readjustment of which actions oppose one another as the resolution of the example.

OK, I think we were playing all or nothing - one set of actions, then redistribute if you want to pay for it, then the stakes are resolved.  Which looks like it is wrong ... correct me if I'm mistaken, guys.

*light comes on*

Oh, I see!  "Each side won one of the ACTIONS, so what happens to the STAKES?"  Right?  That's what it boils down to.

Phrased that way (simplified, obviously, far more easily than it ever is when you're sitting at the table), the answer is obvious: you play another round of conflict, just as Brennan says above.

Brennan, actually, I have a suggestion (and actually, for right now, I'm just going to put part of this up on the Wiki): at some nebulous future point if/when you revise Mortal Coil, USE THIS CONFLICT as the example for the text of "Conflict Rounds" on p. 58.

Often, after everyone involved in a conflict has taken an action [should maybe read 'all their actions'], the outcome of the conflict is still not clear. If the group is unsure who has won the conflict [really should be "the stakes" there], then [the conflict] is not complete and another round of actions needs to be initiated.

Jason wrote:
OK, I think we were playing all or nothing - one set of actions, then redistribute if you want to pay for it, then the stakes are resolved.  Which looks like it is wrong ... correct me if I'm mistaken, guys.

Jason wrote:
OK, I think we were playing all or nothing - one set of actions, then redistribute if you want to pay for it, then the stakes are resolved.  Which looks like it is wrong ... correct me if I'm mistaken, guys.

That's exactly what happened.

So, then, when is the conflict resolved?

Clinton wrote: That's exactly what happened.

So, then, when is the conflict resolved?

So winning takes place entirely on the social contract level?

Umm... it doesn't sound at all like a Social Contract thing, does it?  That strikes me as sounding kind of squishy and fiat-ish, and the system seems pretty solid in this regard.

Round One: Two actions. Each side wins one, and thus the results of the Conflict are inconclusive.
Round Two: More actions. Each side wins enough that the results are still inconclusive.
Round Three: More action. One side wins everything. Conclusive. Conflict over.

Winning takes place when one side succeeds in an action that allows them to achieve their stakes, and the other side cannot succeed in blocking this. Sometimes, you will have a conflict where the stakes on more than one side can actually be achieved without precluding the other side from achieving their stakes, but in the conflict that caused the trouble, this was not the case. In the initial round of the conflict, both the shaman and the nurse won an action. However, neither win meant that one side was successful in achieving the stakes. If you do another round of conflict, you may end up with the same result. Conflict rounds continue until one side or the other decisively wins. For example, the nurse failed to stop the shaman from taking the child. If he then can go outside, put the child over the fire, and drive out the spirits, he will succeed in achieving his stakes. If the nurse can somehow prevent him, she achieves her stakes instead. Conflict over.

I don't think this is really entirely on the social contract level. Some social contract stuff will be involved, in that the group must agree that one side has actually achieved their stakes in the conflict. This is usually pretty obvious when it happens, though, at least in my experience with the game.

What I remember from playing with Brennan, and the way I'm going to approach it when I run the game, is that the GM is the buck-stopper in terms of whether you go another round for conflict or not, and when stakes are acheived and when they're not. I don't think that this is in the rules as written, though. I am also a big fan of delineating what stuff the GM has say over in a concrete manner.

Looking on page 58, it just says stuff about the group and uses passive voice in describing whether you go multiple rounds or not. In my games, I'm going to give this job to the GM; Brennan, is there any reason why this shouldn't happen?

Nathan wrote: Looking on page 58, it just says stuff about the group and uses passive voice in describing whether you go multiple rounds or not. In my games, I'm going to give this job to the GM; Brennan, is there any reason why this shouldn't happen?

Interesting, I didn't catch that either on the first read-through.  Seeing how the rounds can continue if both sides win, and imagining the allocation posturing, fatigue etc that ensue, it smells very similar of diceless Bringing Down the Pain in some ways.  Very cool.

Andy wrote:
Interesting, I didn't catch that either on the first read-through.  Seeing how the rounds can continue if both sides win, and imagining the allocation posturing, fatigue etc that ensue, it smells very similar of diceless Bringing Down the Pain in some ways.  Very cool.