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Topic: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions
Started by: Clinton R. Nixon
Started on: 8/22/2006
Board: Galileo Games


On 8/22/2006 at 3:01pm, Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
[Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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?

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On 8/22/2006 at 11:22pm, inthisstyle wrote:
Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/22/2006 at 11:33pm, Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/23/2006 at 2:21am, boredoom wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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!

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On 8/23/2006 at 2:23am, boredoom wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

.. 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.

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On 8/23/2006 at 10:18am, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.


I think you are right, how to determine which actions oppose each other is a bit ambiguous in the written rules and could definitely stand to be explained better.

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.

Regarding breaking the rounds out, once it is clear which actions oppose which, I do resolve them one at a time, just so everyone remains clear on what is happening in the game.

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On 8/23/2006 at 12:27pm, Doyce wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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..

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On 8/23/2006 at 12:29pm, Doyce wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/23/2006 at 1:00pm, Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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)


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

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On 8/23/2006 at 1:12pm, coffeestain wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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

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On 8/23/2006 at 2:59pm, boredoom wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions



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

Forge Reference Links:
Topic 20588

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On 8/23/2006 at 3:25pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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..


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.

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On 8/23/2006 at 3:27pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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


Boredoom is right. You can target the same character with more than one offensive action. Each action needs to use a different faculty. You just can't normally target multiple characters with a single offensive action.

Forge Reference Links:
Topic 20588

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On 8/23/2006 at 3:28pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/23/2006 at 3:34pm, Doyce wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.


I guess i like the word "countering" as opposed to 'defending' action. :)

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On 8/23/2006 at 3:56pm, coffeestain wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.


Ah, right.  That makes sense.

Regards,
Daniel

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On 8/25/2006 at 11:58am, jasonm wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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. 

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On 8/25/2006 at 12:24pm, Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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. 


I should have mentioned that. Thinking that way was important to the task - my character could ignore that character's lies because she felt he was not as pure as her, but, yeah, repeating it as a simple descriptor isn't awesome.

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On 8/25/2006 at 12:47pm, Doyce wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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. 


Okay, now I'm confused, and/or need further info.  If the actions were all active and directly opposed, how were there mutual successes?  The way I'm understanding the language, if there's direct opposition to a action, either the action or the direct opposition will succeed. 

Who won what in conflicts Clinton mentioned?

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On 8/25/2006 at 12:59pm, jasonm wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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. 

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On 8/26/2006 at 10:22am, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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?

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On 8/26/2006 at 1:43pm, jasonm wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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. 

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On 8/26/2006 at 2:26pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/26/2006 at 3:23pm, jasonm wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/26/2006 at 4:14pm, Doyce wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

*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.


Now, I know that you HAVE an example there, but allow me to submit my humble opinion that it's probably the worst example text that you have in the whole book, because it's so very vague.  I read the "Conflict Rounds" bit and nodded, then read the Example and was in no way enlightened as to when that might come up in play... I didn't see the specific actions that failed and succeeded on either side that lead to unresolved stakes -- I was just told that they happened, so I suppose it failed on the "show me, don't tell me" writing rules. 

In any case, I sorta shrugged and figured "well, I'll know it when I see it."

And then Clinton posted pretty much exactly that situation, and I didn't know it when I saw it, despite the fact that their situation is a pretty dang good example of it.

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On 8/26/2006 at 4:21pm, Doyce wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.


Heya Jason,

Take a look at the "Conflict Rounds" section was just blathering about (redundantly to Brennan's post, mostly) on p. 58 of the dead tree edition.

I don't know that you're playing it "wrong" -- often, it seems like one round of conflict should resolve the conflict and indicate who won stakes.  Maybe not really really often, but yeah... fairly often.

You got one of those situations where you need that rule on page 58.

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On 8/27/2006 at 3:45pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.


OK, wow. Yeah, if you do that, the rules totally break.

Clinton, is this what happened?

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On 8/27/2006 at 4:02pm, Clinton R. Nixon wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

That's exactly what happened.

So, then, when is the conflict resolved?

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On 8/27/2006 at 4:20pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

Clinton wrote: That's exactly what happened.

So, then, when is the conflict resolved?


If you do the first round of actions and it's clear which side won, then the conflict resolves.

If you get to the end of the first round of actions and neither side wins, you do a second round of actions (in the example case, probably the shaman trying to put the kid over the fire to do the ritual, and the nurse trying to stop him again). You continue to do action rounds, with your action tokens refreshing to your pool at the end of each one, until one side or the other is the clear winner. At that point, the conflict resolves.

Basically, if you can't win with your initial tactic, you try something else that gives your character a different advantage in the next round of actions. The nurse in your example could try to call for help, or get some tool to help her in the physical conflict (a gun, a club, whatever).

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On 8/27/2006 at 6:34pm, jasonm wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

So winning takes place entirely on the social contract level?

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On 8/27/2006 at 7:47pm, Doyce wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/27/2006 at 8:01pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/27/2006 at 8:23pm, Nathan P. wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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?

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On 8/27/2006 at 9:17pm, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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?


No reason. I think it is important for the GM to strongly guide these things, and my description in the book is probably too passive. As a Mortal Coil GM, I am constantly trying to facilitate motion in the game, and letting a conflict linger too long would definitely be a problem. On the other hand, when it is clearly not resolved, you've got to move on to another round of actions.

This whole discussion has definitely given me insight into some problems with the way I wrote this section in the book. All of the important stuff is there, it's just hard to identify or described too passively considering its key role in conflict resolution.

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On 8/29/2006 at 9:52pm, Andy Kitkowski wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.

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On 8/30/2006 at 12:02am, inthisstyle wrote:
RE: Re: [Mortal Coil] Frozen Alaska and serious rules questions

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.


Exactly! Damaging your opponent's effectiveness through fatigue or harm is a key part of winning in this situation.

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