More Rules Questions

Q1:  It’s very tempting to assign relationship dice to the Monster at some point.  This wouldn’t apply to interactions with Victims or Slaves I think, but would it with Acolytes as they are so closely bound to the Monster and can take its fallout dice?  Van Helsing gets his Dracula Relationship dice against the brides.

If the Monster died and an Acolyte rose to become a new Monster, could the Relationship dice continue through to a Relationship?

Q2: Is it simply a “refer and use DiTV” matter or are relationships with institutions and places intentionally left out of Afraid?

Q3: Follow - Up conflicts and available arenas in them.

Buffy is walking through the cemetery and goon attacks her with murderous intent.  Buffy responds in murder arena but seeing fight resolve without any supernatural bonds etc. being invoked (leading her to decide this is some mere human NPC or slave).  When she wins she doesn’t claim the stakes of killing her foe, she gives a classic witticism and sends him scampering off because of her Bond “Never kill people who don’t have supernatural connections etc.”.  She routinely fights in “murder” arena and doesn’t claim stakes because of this Bond.

He’s just lost and can’t initiate a follow-up of murder because it’s still just him and Buffy, still in the cemetery etc.  He’s under “suspended death” sentence and if he tried that she could just kill him period, it’s been established that’s the outcome she can invoke as long as the scene is principally the same and that arena comes up.

If Buffy initiates a follow-up conflict, starting in the talk arena, Stakes:  “Get this goon to explain why he came after me.”, she gets no particular bonus for this follow-up conflict as far as I can see.  She won the last conflict, her “prize” is the stakes not dice. 

Now the question - I don’t see it in rules explicitly but perhaps implicitly it’s there in DiTV. That is that when it says the stakes in this conflict can’t be same as last, does that just mean the opening ones but also on escalation ~ since escalation to "murder" can change the stakes from whatever they had been?

In the follow-up conflict, if the goon sees that talk is going badly, can he escalate into the murder arena again even though the goon could not himself challenge in that arena?

I would say that for a follow-up, anyone who “lost” before still can’t escalate back into an arena that they lost in the previous conflict if they couldn’t open the conflict in it.  If the cemetery fight had been “goon challenges with murder, Buffy answers with murder, goon sees bad dice, challenges with athletics to get away, Buffy still sticks with her murder roll but brings in acrobatics trait, goon makes last try on fighting to push her off but still ends up with dice he can see aren’t going anywhere, he Gives”.., then the goon would not be able to escalate in the follow-up into murder or physical.  He’s tried killing her, he’s tried running away, he’s tried fighting her, it’s all hopeless and remains so for him in the follow-up.

The only wrinkle is that it is a new scene and the GM can describe in some new characters (the police car swinging by on patrol that might ask awkward questions or the Monster’s other slaves arriving, whatever).  New foes can escalate to murder because there’s been none so far in the follow-up scene.  Buffy can with them because they’re sufficiently new elements etc.

Does that make sense/is it what is intended?

<Not Vincent>

Stakes and Arenas are mostly unrelated.  Just because the goon fails at the stakes of trying to kill Buffy doesn't mean that he can't use deadly force to resist her interrogation.  He could even conceiveably kill her incidentally as he resists her questions.

You can't try for the same stakes back-to-back, but that doesn't mean you might not get the same results coincidentally.

</Not Vincent>

Very, very true.

Q1. Intersesting. I'm okay with that - it depends on the monster and acolytes, though, I'd think.

Q2. Intentionally left out, but if you want to transplant them it's fine. I don't see institutions or places as important in Afraid as they are in Dogs.

Q3. Escalating never changes the stakes - well, it never changes the named stakes. Obviously it changes what's at stake in the conflict, in the casual sense of the word, but that's fine.

Ludanto's answer, like I say, is very, very true.

For example, let's say that I declare a conflict, I declare that my guy's going to kill yours. I launch the conflict in murder, rolling my acuity and will, and my opening raise is that my guy stabs yours in the throat. We go back and forth, we escalate or whatever, and you win. My guy doesn't kill yours. Cool. I declare a followup: my guy's going to escape. I launch the conflict in murder, rolling my acuity and will, and my opening raise is that my guy stabs yours in the throat.

Totally legit. (Kind of boring with the duplicate raise, but legal.)

-Vincent

Thanks ~ it's great the attention you pay to questions etc. in this forum.

On Q3, 'not-vincent' and 'vincent' you've helped me understand stakes/arenas better so special thanks.  I had been thinking that the "murder" arena essentially made the stakes into "do I kill you".

It was mostly the "seems repetitive" aspect that had me thinking "maybe not legit".

Actually, let's see if I do get it.

We launch a conflict with my stakes being "your life", do I have to open with "murder"? 

Am I correct that both sides declare stakes and mine can be "kill you" (implicitly first though bad fallout for the winner can leave us both dead) which means I'm answering with murder arena, my stakes can be "escape this lunatic" answering with feets don't fail me now physical arena being logical but talking out of it possible too as is lethal murder response, my stakes can be "convince you to stop trying to kill me" answering with talk arena being logical but murder arena threat of death persuasion or fighting - beating you down all work for that stake too?  Some arenas fit some stakes (intents) better but you don't have to achieve them with that arena ~ depending on answer to first question you don't have to open in it even?

Part of what I'm getting at with the examples above is also whether I am correct that the stakes do have to be irreconcilable.  If I don't declare stakes at odds with yours (including simply "you don't") then there isn't really a conflict.  You declare you want to kill me, I declare I want to convince you hockey is better than football, I end up dead and you end up buying season's hockey tickets?  Otherwise, I can effectively be declaring two stakes "stop you killing me and convincing you about hockey".

It just hit me - part of what's been fouling me up.

In DitV, that I kill you can be a stake pursued with different methods, most obviously fighting (split your head with axe) or guns (shoot you in vitals), though you only die from fallout with guns because of the d10's.  In various circumstances other arena could be used too as long as the raise made sense (convince you to drink the poisoned whiskey, use physical force to lever the big rock to roll down onto you etc.).

The arenas in DitV are all "methods", up to an including shooting with guns, and though dangerous that's not the same as "stakes of killing".  One example makes a point of a player not using their best dice when shooting precisely because they don't want to deal lethal fallout (by forcing the opponent to 3 dice to see).

In Afraid, the last arena "murder" (replacing shooting with guns) is an intent the way it's named.  I think it's meant to mean "use potentially lethal force" or "murderous violence" (equivalent to shooting with guns) and not be mixed up with "intent".

Is that correct?

I think part of the thing in Afraid as written to date (and don't get me wrong, I love it and more than Dogs even ~ Vincent belongs in a pantheon with Ron E. and Luke Crane) is that some mechanics are named very evocatively ("Lost") but describe something not only limited to the name.  That's tough to address as evocative descriptions are important to mood of game.

As I understand it, you don't have "opposing stakes".  You just have "what's at stake".  Sort of a "this is what we're fighting to control the outcome of".  So if what's at stake is your life, then you do the thing with the dice, and whoever wins says what happens to your life.  Maybe it ends, maybe it runs away or maybe something else.  And no, you don't have to start in the Murder arena, or even ever go there while fighting for your life.  His raises could just be Talking ("Give up, dude, I'm totally going to kill you so there's no point in fighting it.")  If you gave right then for some reason, then he kills you (or does whatever it is he wanted with your life).

As I understand it.

Very, very right, again!

-Vincent

So on the point of there being one thing at stake at a time, from players' intents it's the GM's job to determine the actual stake. 

Actual stakes are usually "on one side" of a conflict (if it's does the thug kill you, it's not then do you kill the thug; if it's does the thug escape in the follow-up it's not do you get the thug to reveal something in the follow-up).  The GM has to pick which is the correct in the tempo of the game, the circumstances (if you're unprepared it's pretty clear who's trying to kill who), and in follow-up's from the fictions that the challenges and answers have created so far, which are logically sequenced..

Well...

Yes.

Here's how I'd say it: anyone can name the stakes, and the GM is one of the people who has to approve them before the conflict goes forward.

When one character takes action that another character moves to oppose, that's a conflict. The stakes come from the action that the first character took; that character's player should have significant say in what the stakes are.

-Vincent

Thanks.  Also apologies, I see you've answered the "only one stakes per conflict" question several times on boards (I'm to about page 14 reading through posts), I probably deserve a "RTFB" smack - you're spoiling me with all these answers!

Who gets to be trying to kill who first does seem a big "tipping point", GM "the thug Gave in fight, initiates follow-up to run off", PC, "hey, no, whole reason I didn't go all murder on him was to initiate a follow-up to make him reveal something".  Sometimes that's going to be easier to resolve (e.g., if the thug Gave on a challenge, seems to fit to give him the leg up in turning and running if fiction so far permitted it - if thug Gave on an Answer, I would let the momentum be with the PC's, the fallout from a conflict may also have implications for follow up etc.).

If all else fails, is a fair mechanical way to resolve fundamental conflicts without "GM handwaving" to say "well, roll starting dice (each in what would be your opening arena), whoever would be going first can decide on what the actual stakes are - the dice for the other arena have been rolled but it can still be escalated into, over the stakes that have been set for this conflict."

Okay reached page 29:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=15678.0

With the who draws first example from DitV.  At first I thought "okay that is one way of deciding, do we resolve stakes of I kill you first or you kill me first", then saw Vincent's comments in thread that often it could mean "who gets shot" and the follow-up wouldn't be "he tries to shoot me" but "I'm shot", which does seem to make "two different persons' well being at stake".