Last Saturday (October 16) we gather a play group in a local RPG store to try out Mortal Coil, no one had ever played before and during play I (the GM) was the only one who had read the rules.

Theme Document

Tone: Dark & Gritty, Dark Humor, Police Thriller. Sin City meets Fight Club with Evil Creatures.

Setting: Hexcity, a decadent city that froze in time in the 20/30’s. Crime runs in the city like a wild fire, while the rich and powerfull are involved in a city-wide conspiracy bargaining with Demons and Creatures Of Darkness for more power and influence.

The Supernatural:
- Magic is uncommon and powerfull, only accessible through rituals and years of study;
- There is a world outside of our own, inhabited by Mystical Creatures;
- Sometimes the borders between this worlds is weak, which provides places of power and cult.

Magic Level: Moderate low (12 tokens)

Situation: Easy and Boundless Power VS Individualism. The Conspirators have access to great sources of power, because they are organized and sell themselves to Demons and such creatures, while the PCs are people trying to make it on their own in this cruel and violent world and make a name for themselves based on solely on their skills and abilities.

The Villain: There are a lot of people involved in the Conspiracy, but for focus sake we decided to “fight” only one, The Great Dark Dragon, a half-demon head of the Yakuza crime syndicate.

I’m not going to address the whole session, a Short one at that, I’m just going to present some questions that appeared during play.

On page 46 it says that the “threshold of credibility definitely applies” when adding a new Magical Fact to the Theme Document, but if this is true then why should there be an auction when deciding who sets the price and what that is? Does the threshold only apply to Magical Fact in its essence and not the price to pay for it?

Since we were not totally comfortable with the system (and I forgot things) we “escalated” the amount of rules involved in the Conflict Resolution System, and the last one we played had all of it and it went something like this:
If the player won the Head Of Security of the Yakuza’s brothel would tells why they attacked the Bishops church a few hours ago. If I won he would be thrown out of the brothel with the tip of the Head Of Security boot and the girl who was helping him stays inside captured.
Tokens were allocated and after Reveal this was what we had:
The player tried to intimidate the Head Of Security establishing a Magical Fact (Divine Conducts can use The Voice Of God to make someone spill their beans) and at the same time tried to dodge any physical attempts made to get thrown out.
The Head Of Security tried to use his Leader aptitude to resist any kind of mental influence and at the same time kick the PC all the way out of the brothel.
When comparing scores both won, so it came the question, do we go for a second round or try to incorporate both outcomes? We tried to incorporate, and the result was:
The Head Of Security drags you to the exit hurting you every chance he gets, when your both outside you rise hanger-fuelled-eyes-blazing-voice-of-god-thundering-in-your-mouth and ask what you want to know, the guys makes and amazing feat he releases various forms of internal substances while talking his mouth off about everyhing he knows and then runs back inside screaming like a madman, leaving you broken up in the alley moaning a world of pain and agony.
So harm was handed out both ways and both of the character involved got their stakes, is this… right? (I know it sounds dumb, but I’m still trying to get my head around the Conflict Resolution system).

Does harm have to be related to its source? Example: If a guy looses a battle does the harm involved in it have to be physical or can it be mental, lets imagine that the guys honor was at stake here.

Is harm supposed to be dealt in every conflict? Like even if you win the conflict by passing the other guys defense by more than he passes yours (when applicable) you may still have harm dealt to you. If so it sounds pretty cool.

I also run into a kind of moral problem, are the actions pools the players get balanced with the general pool the GM gets? I ask this because during conflits I had a problem when deciding how many tokens to commit; I didn't’t want to completely overwhelm the players and at the same time I wanted to provide some close to the edge conflicts, so I never went all in was playing low with a low amount of tokens (normally two).

I froze a couple of times during play because the book says that the conflicts must always involve characters vs characters, not characters vs abstract obstacle (like a storm or a magical defense system), I sound weird but I guess it makes sense, is the point here to make every conflict something personal between characters and that is the only thing worth conflicting (?) about, everything else is just background scenario?

Thanks in advance for any clarifications you can give.

P.S.: I’m reading this thread about Conflict Resolution in Mortal Coil; it’s pretty great and clear.

RedPissLegion wrote: On page 46 it says that the “threshold of credibility definitely applies” when adding a new Magical Fact to the Theme Document, but if this is true then why should there be an auction when deciding who sets the price and what that is? Does the threshold only apply to Magical Fact in its essence and not the price to pay for it?

So harm was handed out both ways and both of the character involved got their stakes, is this… right? (I know it sounds dumb, but I’m still trying to get my head around the Conflict Resolution system).

Does harm have to be related to its source? Example: If a guy looses a battle does the harm involved in it have to be physical or can it be mental, lets imagine that the guys honor was at stake here.

Is harm supposed to be dealt in every conflict? Like even if you win the conflict by passing the other guys defense by more than he passes yours (when applicable) you may still have harm dealt to you. If so it sounds pretty cool.

I also run into a kind of moral problem, are the actions pools the players get balanced with the general pool the GM gets? I ask this because during conflits I had a problem when deciding how many tokens to commit; I didn't’t want to completely overwhelm the players and at the same time I wanted to provide some close to the edge conflicts, so I never went all in was playing low with a low amount of tokens (normally two).

I froze a couple of times during play because the book says that the conflicts must always involve characters vs characters, not characters vs abstract obstacle (like a storm or a magical defense system), I sound weird but I guess it makes sense, is the point here to make every conflict something personal between characters and that is the only thing worth conflicting (?) about, everything else is just background scenario?

Thanks for the quick and clear response (this has to be one of the main reasons I like to post about games in The Forge).

Brennan wrote:
Are your NPCs much more powerful than the PCs?

OK, if your players all have novice characters, and your NPCs are novice level, everybody should have roughly the same pool of action tokens. If the players play to their strengths, they should be able win conflicts, although they will have to be smart about it. When players go up against NPCs with a much higher starting level, they will need to band together to beat them.

Is it the GM power pool you are finding too high?

Sorry for the late reply, I just had an intensive play weekend, witch involved by the way the planing of a Theme Document for a short 3/4 sessions game of Mortal Coil, more on that later.

Brennan wrote:
OK, if your players all have novice characters, and your NPCs are novice level, everybody should have roughly the same pool of action tokens. If the players play to their strengths, they should be able win conflicts, although they will have to be smart about it. When players go up against NPCs with a much higher starting level, they will need to band together to beat them.

Brennan wrote: Is it the GM power pool you are finding too high?