Sgëno!

I've been working on and off for a while now on an RPG called "The Fifth World."  The last version, 0.2, came out almost a year ago.  It basically just got some of the basic ideas on paper; I can't really object to much of Wil's review on RPG.net.  It wasn't a finished game by any means (that's why I called it 0.2 and not 1.0); it was barely a compendium of goals and ideas.  Over the past year, I've spent a good deal of time working on v. 0.3.  I think the ideas and mentality of story games mesh very well with the concepts of the Fifth World--now it's just a question of applying that.

So, to describe the game concept:

Feral humans live in an animistic world where they must constantly renegotiate their place with competing interests: plant and animal communities, competing human tribes, and the spirit world.

After the collapse of civilization, humans became feral out of necessity. They rediscovered magic, tribal lifestyles, and eventually formed syncretic, feral cultures. Life in the living world can seem idyllic comparatively, but it requires constant renegotiation of the human place in the world against competing human and other-than-human powers. The players tell the stories of the shamans, scouts and braves who step up to safeguard their people and ensure their future.

I once toyed with a mechanic using glass beads in a bag. It was when "Magic: the Gathering" first became big, and everyone seemed to be using these beads as life counters.

It gives the feeling of a shaman plucking things out of their medicine bag as they strive to shape the world around them.

The concept is fairly simple. You have two types of beads, one represents skill level (we'll call them "White"), the other represents the difficulty of the task (we'll call them "Black"). Any time you perform a task, you throw in a number of white beads equal to the character's skill level and a number of black beads equal to the difficulty. You shake them up and draw out a bead. If it's white the character has succeeded, if it's black they've failed. If you want extra degrees of success/failure, you can have the player keep drawing out beads until one of the opposite colour emerges. If I draw two white beads, then a black, I've got two successes. If I draw three black beads then a white, I've done really badly with three failures.

I've toyed with other ideas like throwing in "Green beads" that might represent mystic influence in an area. These wouldn't count as successes or failures, but if one of these is drawn while the character is determining their result then something mystical or supernatural intervenes in the scene. For example I draw a white bead, a green bead, a white bead and then a black. 2 whites counts as two successes, but the green means that there is an unexpected side effect. Maybe the hallucinogenic drugs I've taken for my vision quest reveal something significant to one of the other characters and now I have to decide whether to reveal this unexpected knowledge to them.

If you want to avoid dice, this is just one idea that seems appropriate to the setting...

V

I once guided a one shot with a Paleolithic setting. I choosed a d2 system since I reckoned that most people could count but only an elite fraction could actually sum. The dice were actually converted Go pieces. I made the players draw pictograms in the back of each piece. According to skill-level they threw a certain number of pieces, then counted the number of faces showing a pictogram and this number had to match the difficulty level.

As you can see, this system was not very original but I found that it worked well: d2 made a great primitive feeling and players actually enjoyed to invent primal pictograms.

Those are both really good ideas.  Actually, I keep coming back to beads, particularly using beads to "up the ante."  I like mechanics that give characters the opportunity to do just about anything, assuming they're willing to utterly consume themselves in the process.  It makes for some really incredible game moments.  But I also like a lot of what you said, vulpinoid.  I'll have to chew on that, but at the moment, I'm thinking beads might be the way to go.

I posted on your design blog, but I really want to make sure this idea gets to you.

I think that drawing beads from a bag is the way to go on this. But what's interesting about that as a mechanic is not the draw, but what determines how many stones of what type are in the bag.

I propose that each conflict begin with bidding. Since this is an animist setting, EVERY conflict is opposed by at least one character. All interested parties will then bid beads, starting with the player who initiated the conflict. Biding then proceeds around the circle. All bidding takes place in the open, and it goes on as long as anyone is willing to up the ante.

When bidding comes to a player, they can chose to bid, to stay, or to withdraw. A player who bids adds a number of beads to the pile. A player who stays does not. Staying does not prevent a player from taking other action if bidding comes back around to them. A player who withdraws is no longer in the conflict. They remove their beads from the pool and put them back whence they came. There is no penalty for withdrawing.

Bidding ends one of two ways, either all but one character withdraws, or all characters still in choose to stay. In the first instance, the remaining character reclaims all but one of their beads (this bead is the price of victory) and decides the stakes. In the second instance, it goes to the bag. All beads are placed in the bag, which is then shaken, and a single bead is drawn from it. The owner of that bead takes the stakes and reclaims the bead drawn. All other beads are spent.

I'm also considering another action during bidding where you can spend a certain number of beads from your bid to effect another character, forcing them to either spend an equal amount of beads from their bid, withdraw, or take some penalty outside the context of what's at stake (such as an injury, diminished reputation, or whatever.)

I love Vulpinoid's idea of glass beads in a bag. That's as shamanic as it can get in my opinion, unless you also use the mandala from your previous post! Wasn't it supposed to measure angles between symbols on it? The symbols can be replaced for beads. So now you have concentration areas on the mandalas, and throw beads over it. The way the beads fall in relation to the mandala design determines... stuff.

Think of the one I sent you (did you get it, by the way?). It can be used not only to measure angles between beads and north/south/east/west, but also between two different beads, in relation to north/south/east/west. Spiffy eh?

Throw in different types of beads for different outcomes (as the white/black/green previously mentioned) and you get a fairly complex shamanic system.

What I'm thinking of currently goes like this....

You have certain pools, basically your "attributes," the basic things that define your character's abilities.  And then, you have your skills/traits, charted out on the mandala/medicine wheel.  So when you enter a contest, there's a particular attribute being tested, so you have to pull your stones (your energy or effort) from that pool.  If you have a relevant skill or trait, its direction on the wheel will determine how many "free" stones you get (stones you can commit and get back after the contest).

You may not always be contesting another character.  If you want to jump a river, the river doesn't much care whether you make it or not.  Then, it's just the distance you need to clear.  So in those cases, you just need to beat a set number.  If you're good enough at jumping, maybe it costs you nothing (you have enough free stones from your "Jumping" skill/trait to cover it entirely); or, maybe it takes some of your effort (depletes your pool).

Other times, you have an escalating conflict.  You and another character make your initial bets.  Now you have the chance to raise or back down.  Whoever's still in, with the most stones committed, wins.  But you lose the stones you commit.  So you can commit everything in a climactic encounter and manage to win, but you may put yourself in a bad situation by doing so.

Admittedly, this is a Narrativist mechanic, not a Simulationist one.  I've found that some of the most fun I've had at a gaming table came in games like Munchkin, where you face the tension of whether to throw everything away to pull out a desperate win, or reserve your strength for later.  This takes that dynamic to its purest form, it seems.

Now, if adding a random element was something necessary, the beads in a bag idea would be great.  But do we necessarily need a random element?  That I'm not so sure of.  If we don't, there's something that feels somewhat inelegant to me in the beads-in-a-bag mechanic, as opposed to this betting mechanic.  But I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

Jason, this is an Animist world. ALL rolls should be contested. That stream you are trying to jump over has a spirit, and it has an opinion on if it wants you to make it across or not. If all the spirits in an area want you to succeed, then no test is needed. If there is any spirit, human or otherwise, who wishes to oppose you, then you have a conflict. In my opinion, having no roll be uncontested would really get across the animist spirit of the game.

Also, I feel the trouble with the simple bidding mechanic is that there is only one unknown in any conflict, and that is how much your opponent will go in for. After a few sessions together, everyone at the table will know everyone else's bidding style reasonable well, and so even that starts to be a given. In that way a player can know, just by looking at the table, if they will win a given conflict before they even start. In this system, the underdog would always lose.

The randomizer exists (in my opinion) solely to add that unknown aspect to the future (the outcome of a conflict); it makes it worthwhile to try things that you would most likely fail at because you might succeed.

Now, I can think of a non-random way to introduce that unknown that makes striving worthwhile. One that's more work, but may be more in tune with your setting. And that's to increase the number of interested parties. If two characters face off, and you compare their skill and then start adding beads, then others can add beads to either side. Since you don't know if others are going to throw in with you at any given time, then you can always try for something you don't have the means to succeed at hoping that one or more of your relations will help out. The whole idea then becomes to try and secure the aid of others in your endeavors. Mangy Wolf and Fat Bear are in a knife fight over Sheila. Sheila has a 2 bead relationship with both of them, so she can throw up to 2 beads in with either. She favors wolf, so she tosses in 2 beads with him. However, the tribe as a whole has a 2 bead relationship with Bear, as Wolf is an oursider from another tribe. They toss their beads in with Bear. Wolf, however, before the fight secured the aid of a wind spirit, prayed to his ancestors, and performed a ritual to honor his totem. All contribute a bead to wolf. He wins the fight.

The downside to this system, perhaps, is that a lot of who wins a given conflict will seem to be up to the GM, as every character not a PC will be theirs to play. As long as the players trust you to be playing the characters, that's could be OK, but It's take me a while to get comfortable with such a setup. Also, this system creates a narrative structure of deciding what you want to accomplish, securing allies, trying to separate your opponent from his allies, and then when you feel you've got enough support, attempting your goal and finding out if they'll really back you and if you really had enough support. You'd have to be OK with that structure.

I also favor the bag because it makes it so similarly skilled characters who give a similar effort an equal chance of success. A strait success system means that if two players each go in for 6 and 7, the seven wins, which I think is a poor deal for the guy who went in for 6. I'm not saying eliminate the bidding, I'm just saying that all the beads each person bids go into the bag, which means that giving it more weighs the odds in your favor.

Andrew wrote: Jason, this is an Animist world. ALL rolls should be contested.

Andrew wrote: That stream you are trying to jump over has a spirit, and it has an opinion on if it wants you to make it across or not.

Andrew wrote: In my opinion, having no roll be uncontested would really get across the animist spirit of the game.

Andrew wrote: Also, I feel the trouble with the simple bidding mechanic is that there is only one unknown in any conflict, and that is how much your opponent will go in for. After a few sessions together, everyone at the table will know everyone else's bidding style reasonable well, and so even that starts to be a given. In that way a player can know, just by looking at the table, if they will win a given conflict before they even start. In this system, the underdog would always lose.

Andrew wrote: Now, I can think of a non-random way to introduce that unknown that makes striving worthwhile. One that's more work, but may be more in tune with your setting. And that's to increase the number of interested parties. If two characters face off, and you compare their skill and then start adding beads, then others can add beads to either side. Since you don't know if others are going to throw in with you at any given time, then you can always try for something you don't have the means to succeed at hoping that one or more of your relations will help out. The whole idea then becomes to try and secure the aid of others in your endeavors. Mangy Wolf and Fat Bear are in a knife fight over Sheila. Sheila has a 2 bead relationship with both of them, so she can throw up to 2 beads in with either. She favors wolf, so she tosses in 2 beads with him. However, the tribe as a whole has a 2 bead relationship with Bear, as Wolf is an oursider from another tribe. They toss their beads in with Bear. Wolf, however, before the fight secured the aid of a wind spirit, prayed to his ancestors, and performed a ritual to honor his totem. All contribute a bead to wolf. He wins the fight.

Andrew wrote: The downside to this system, perhaps, is that a lot of who wins a given conflict will seem to be up to the GM, as every character not a PC will be theirs to play.

Andrew wrote: I also favor the bag because it makes it so similarly skilled characters who give a similar effort an equal chance of success. A strait success system means that if two players each go in for 6 and 7, the seven wins, which I think is a poor deal for the guy who went in for 6. I'm not saying eliminate the bidding, I'm just saying that all the beads each person bids go into the bag, which means that giving it more weighs the odds in your favor.

Yeah, I've come around. I tried playtesting the mechanic and while it's an interesting game, it doesn't tell good story.

I still think, though, that no task should go uncontested. If there is no one who cares to contest, then the player gets away with it.

Lets say you are crossing that stream. If the stream doesn't care if you make it across, then you have no difficulty. In a clockwork universe we'd care about how far the jump was, how strong the character is, that kind of thing, but this isn't suh a universe and we don't.

It doesn't have to be the stream spirit that cares. After all who decides how wide the stream is, how far the jump is? In the narrative it all leads back to the land itself, in game terms the GL decides. In most games, on an uncontested roll, the GM will simply set a target number the player has to reach. I think in this game, the GL will have to spend some of his or her own beads to set the difficulty. Which is mechanically the same as a contested check.

In other words, if it matters to the story that this is difficult, then it matters to someone in the story, even if it's "just" the spirit of all things. That character will be the opposition. If it doesn't matter to any of the characters, then it doesn't matter to the story and don't waste time on it.

What about the character vs. himself?  The character wants to jump across a ravine.  It's a tense moment, and it's in doubt, not because anyone is trying to stop him, but because he's pushing himself to the limits of his own capability.  Does he make it?  I'm not sure who the opposing character would be for a contested check, but it's still something you'd want to include in the game.

Then you, as the GL, would throw in stones as his self-doubt.

man I wish we could edit.

... or gravity, or whatever. But the core mechanic seems to be "you have a skill and then add in beads from a pool". Well, the GL has a target number and MAY add in beads from a pool. so if its unopposed, you just have to hit the target number, and may make it automatically if your skill is high enough. But if something opposes, it throws in the beads it wants to, and adds that to the target.

And you'd never know if a check was opposed or not until you threw in. So you might try what looks like an easy jump only to find out it's farther than it looks, or the opposite side is unstable, or a breeze hits you at exactly the wrong moment, and down you go into the stream.

Well, if you're just throwing in against a set target number, that's an uncontested check.  There's no one opposing you, there's just a difficulty to be overcome.

Hi Jeff,

Randomness helps create tension because we don't know the outcome. I really like the idea of drawing beads as it feels somewhat evocative of the game, but I think as described it won't be fun, it needs a few more variables. If I was designing this mechanic here's how I'd try to introduce variables. First I would have different denominations of beads. What I mean to say is they would have different values, for example like poker chips. Let's say we have three values one, five, and ten.

Then we tie every bead to a relationship. So I've got one with the river where I fish, and the fish, and the eagle who also comes and takes fish from the river, etc. I would also have one bead representative of the players personal power. This way if we dump out a players bag, it's their character, relationships and all. I would weigh the game so most of the characters bidding power comes from their relationships.

Alright back to pulling beads. The way I would work pulling beads is I would make them blind pulls done one at a time. I would have both players pull at once. They can decide to withdraw and put their bead back, but then they have lost that conflict. If they stay in they're committed to pitching in those beads regardless of the outcome there needs to be a risk of loss to provide tension. If both players stay in then we have two ways to continue. If both players are tied we go back to both of them pulling out a bead at the same time and resolve it like before. If not then the player that is losing can draw beads until they tie or exceed the other player. This goes until someone gives or runs out of power.

After the winner is decided, I would have the beads representing the power of one go back in the bag, but the ones representing 5's and 10's would be pushed aside and not be useable to the player for the rest of the game session. This makes the more powerful ones a one use type of thing and if you drew one you'd have to really think about the conflicts value to you in the fiction, and personally, versus the mechanical value of that bead, and your estimation of the other player(s).

Then I would have a way a player could threaten to burn up and damage a relationship by using one of the set aside beads.

Let's example this:

Round one:

• Player A and Player B get into a conflict.
• They both draw beads.
• Player A and player B both draw beads representing "one."
• They both decide to stay in.

Round two:


• Since it's a tie they both draw again.
• Player A draws a value 5 bead, and player B draws a value 1 bead.

To me it seems at this point the decisions are more interesting.

I commented on this on my design blog, but it bears repeating.  This discussion of randomness has led me to remember that one of the most immediate features of animism that usually strikes the Western observer is the denial of chance.  They don't really believe in the existence of the coincidence.  The world is too full of persons, and everything that happens is the result of the struggle between conflicting persons.  Nothing simply happens randomly.

Randomness can help create tension, just like you said, but notice you also said that it creates tension because we don't know the outcome.  There are other places where we don't know the outcome that don't involve randomness, like when two people are in conflict.

Animals rarely throw down and fight to the death, even though they come into conflict, especially for mates, quite often.  But it starts with an aggressor wandering into the territory.  The defender puffs up.  Maybe they put on a big display, rearing up or roaring or showing their teeth; whatever, it's about scaring the aggressor into backing down.  And maybe the aggressor backs down, or maybe he decides it's worth it, and escalates by putting on a display of his own.  Now the defender decides: is it worth it, or do I back down?  Maybe we're just dealing with escalating displays of bravado for a while.  If both sides keeps deciding it's worth it, someone will eventually attack, but usually it's with minimal force.  Now the other one has to decide: am I really willing to fight for this, or do I back down now?  If they escalate by fighting back, the fights itself continues like this, with escalating amounts of violence, until finally they might come to a full fight to the death.  But that's rare; usually, long before that, someone has decided that whatever it is, it isn't worth dying for.

That leaves a lot of unknowns.  How much effort will my adversary put into this?  How far will he go?  How much will he escalate?  I like these more than the randomizers because they emphasize the patterns seen in ecologies, and the values important to animists, rather than the forces (like probability) that we see the universe as governed by.  To me, it seems like having the game run by randomizers takes a somewhat condescending attitude, like, "Those cute little animist sure have quaint beliefs, but really, it's all about the probabilities."  Whereas creating tension from what the other person will do still creates that tension from the unknown, but now you're talking about a game that operates the way an animist sees the world, rather than the way we see it.

And then he realizes he's talking to Clyde Rhoer.  That Clyde Rhoer.  Wow.  I love your podcast!  Your appearance on The Round Table was my conversion on the road to the Damascus of story games.  So I suppose you can appreciate why I'm trying to make the mechanics speak to the setting here.

Hi Jeff,

I'm flattered you like the show. Please don't let me blabbering on a microphone have anymore credence to my words than anyone else. I'm actually in this thread because I check the links to my site, when I find them, and am working my way through your blog which I've just discovered and found very interesting.

Let me get back to the focus of the thread.  I'm not suggesting having some sort of randomization because it has anything to do with my beliefs, judgments, or ignorance of Animism. I'm suggesting it because you are designing a roleplaying game. I do understand that you are trying to be true to your understanding of what Animism is. However I think, depending on your goals, you also need to give thought to gameplay elements also. There are likely going to be two opposing elements in your game design, the modeling of animism, and gameplay. I would say this is similar to other games that are focused on achieving a certain type of modeling, for instance realism, or capturing say the fiction of Star Wars, etc. Let me try an example to see if that makes it more clear.

In the mid to late 80's, Dragon Magazine had ads it for this game called, "Phoenix Command: The Game of Realistic Gun Combat." My friend Dave got this game and was really hot on it. So much so he wanted to run it, which was a bit out of the ordinary as Dave normally chose to be a player. So some of the crew gathered at Dave's Grandfather's house one night to play Phoenix Command. I rolled up a character that almost took the wind out of the other players, the kind of character you get with random character generation sometimes where the character is stronger, faster, and smarter than everyone else playing. I decided I'd make him Rambo-ie with a big M-60 and two gun belts across his chest.

Dave had us be members of a SWAT team, and our objective was to storm a house and rescue three hostages. Being flush with my characters coolness I said I was going to make a run on a side door to kick it in and enter the house. Dave described as I was doing so one of the bad guys shooting at me as I passed by a window. He rolled to hit and was successful. I wasn't too worried as I had rolled so well I had like 37 hit points. Dave rolled for hit location from behind, then another chart, and likely another one, and found the bullet hit me in the spine doing 50,000 points of damage. That's right, 37 - 50,000 equals negative 49,963. Everyone looked shocked on hearing this result. Dave then informed me after consulting another chart that I could stay concious if I rolled a 99 on percentile dice. I picked up my ten sider. Zero. Zero. Everybody at the table cheered. Then Dave informed me that medical attention would arrive in like 7 minutes, but I needed to roll a 100 to live longer than a minute....

Phoenix Command modeled gun combat well, you get shot, you die. As a game though, in my and the rest of the crew's mind, it was a failure, and we never played it again. That being said I know there had to be people who loved the game, and maybe there were even a rare few who could find a group who liked it enough to play. Today it is not likely a game very many folks have even heard of.

My point is you may want to consider gameplay versus your modeling. Maybe you don't. I'm unsure of what your goals are. Is this a point where you need to consider it? I've given you my half-assed opinion that is not based on any kind of play. If you disagree, cool-- it's your vision, but in playtesting you may want to keep in mind the friction between modeling and gameplay.

Clyde wrote: There are likely going to be two opposing elements in your game design, the modeling of animism, and gameplay. I would say this is similar to other games that are focused on achieving a certain type of modeling, for instance realism, or capturing say the fiction of Star Wars, etc.

Clyde wrote: My point is you may want to consider gameplay versus your modeling. Maybe you don't. I'm unsure of what your goals are. Is this a point where you need to consider it? I've given you my half-assed opinion that is not based on any kind of play. If you disagree, cool-- it's your vision, but in playtesting you may want to keep in mind the friction between modeling and gameplay.

Hey Jeff,

It appears we are on the same page then. I've been thinking about this a bit and bidding can be fun, it's just tit for tat doesn't sound fun to me. I've been thinking about board games though... there are quite a few board games that use bidding as one of the mechanics, but I can't think of a tit for tat system. They ususally have a couple other elements to make it interesting. For instance, "Ra" uses bidding, but the numerical value of bids you have to use is not even, and doesn't match any other value. It also makes the bids a limited value. I'm not doing well at describing it so here's a link to the games description on boardgamegeek. My point is there might be some good ideas to mine in various bidding board games that might work for the nonrandomness.

I also had an idea Wednesday for another idea that doesn't use any random. Let's say that each player has ten beads in their bag. They have a conflict that they need to resolve. They draw a number of beads out of their bag. The one that draws the most wins, but their success is based on how many beads are left in the bag. The problem with this idea is it doesn't resolve ties. You could just do over but I find that unsatisfying as you could tie again, and I think the purpose of a resolution system is to bring resolution in one pass. Anyway there's likely other values that could be tied to it to make the choice of what to draw more interesting.

Well, I couldn't be more thrilled to see people who aren't even me doing playtests and sending in reports.  I agree, tit-for-tat isn't fun, but the psych-out game is.  Andrew encountered the tit-for-tat game in his playtest, and I saw that in some of my early playtests, too.  But when it was put into the context of a scenario, that started to go away, because that meant that some characters would need to conserve their strength for future conflicts, while others maybe not so much.  That seems to change everything.

Thanks for the link to Ra; I'm not sure I really get what's going on with that, but your main point is an excellent one--lots of stuff in board games well worth considering.

With your bag idea ... what's to keep everyone from pulling one or even zero beads, and then it's just whoever has the most beads wins, every time?

Hi Jeff,

I obviously didn't articulate my thoughts well, the idea was that the number of beads was the same for all players. Of course that would mean you would need to deal with change like growth and loss somewhere else. *shrugs*

Can you expand on what exactly you mean by, "put into the context of a scenario?" Also I think somewhere along the line I missed that the idea was for the bidding resources to be limited. In my mind that moves towards a little more interesting.

Clyde wrote: I obviously didn't articulate my thoughts well, the idea was that the number of beads was the same for all players.

Clyde wrote: Can you expand on what exactly you mean by, "put into the context of a scenario?" Also I think somewhere along the line I missed that the idea was for the bidding resources to be limited.

Still nothing solid for a core mechanic, but I have four main candidates.

The Bet

The simplest (and original!) mechanic, this one assumes that each person has:

• Some number of pools, representing different kinds of effort (Possibly Flesh, Breath and Word; possibly the four directions of the medicine wheel)
• Some number of relationships

So, in the straight form of the bet, each person makes a secret wager of some number of beads from the appropriate pool, depending on the nature of the conflict.  Then, the reveal.  Whoever bet more, wins.  The number of beads in the relationship determines how many beads you can recover, the rest you lose.    That would model sudden decisions, like, did your arrow hit the target, or did you make that jump?  In the iterative version, modeling things where you can escalate like fights or arguments, you could add more beads, and that stops when both sides stop adding beads.  Once again, the person with the most beads bet wins; you get to take back a number of beads equal to your relationship, and lose the rest.

My thoughts on this.  Does the escalation lead to a back-and-forth of one bead at a time?  Does this really make for a game of awareness, or just overcoming an adversary?

The Mancala Mechanic

Andrew posted the best version of this that I've heard yet, especially when combined with Daniel's earlier post in that thread.  You have a starting configuration, and then, based on the appropriate relationship, you can either:

• Add some number of beads to one of your pits
• Remove some number of beads from one of their pits
• Move some number of beads from one of your pits, to another of your pits

So, let's say you want to hunt a deer.  You have 10 beads in your relationship with deer.  So, you can add beads to one of your pits, remove beads from one of the deer's pits, or move beads from one of your pits to another of your pits.  Let's say you decide to add three beads to one pit.  10-3=7, you have seven moves left.  This can conclude in one of two ways:

• The encounter.  The two sides match.  Whoever moved last gets to narrate how the encounter unfolds, based on the previous narration.  So if the hunter moves last to align the two sides, he would likely narrate that he takes the deer; the deer might narrate that he bolts away at the last moment.  So, the encounter occurs, and whoever moves last gets to narrate the encounter unfolding on their own terms.  Which means you not only want to reach that alignment, you want to do so on your terms.
• The escape.  One side or the other runs out of moves without any alignment.  No encounter occurs.  I think madunkieg's suggestion of a "distraction pile" on the Story Games thread might work here: every escape adds beads to the distraction pile, which could hamper you in future encounters (perhaps you don't get your relationship beads to move; you get your relationship beads minus the beads in your distraction pile?)

My thoughts on this.  Does a better job of modeling the idea of the encounter, and certainly Daniel's idea of starting configurations drawn out with cave art styles, even to the extent of posters, adds an exciting new element.  Opens up the potential to either actively hide, or actively reveal oneself, by either avoiding alignment, or pursuing it.  This might offer the best possibility so far.  But where does the possibility to burn up your relationship for extra power come in?  Maybe after you've exhausted your relationship's normal store for moves, you could begin taking beads straight from the string to buy more moves?

The Necklace

Inspired by an old thread at Story Games.  In this model, different colored beads matter more.  These could differentiate between Flesh, Breath and Word, or between the four directions of the medicine wheel.  For now, let's use Flesh, Breath, and Word for example's sake, but keep in mind that we could change the colors and dividing lines, too.

For relationships, you still have a string of beads, but now the kinds of beads matter.  So, an encounter with a physical coyote would add a Flesh bead to your Coyote relationship; hearing a Coyote story would add a Breath bead; exchanging gifts with Coyote would add a Word bead.

So, you come to a particular encounter where you need Coyote.  Let's say you want to coyote around the village perimeter so no one sees you.  Now you use your Coyote string almost like prayer beads or a rosary; you make a quick plea to coyote to help you, thumbing off beads in some set pattern as you do.  Now, look at the bead you currently have in your finger and thumb.  That will give you your result.  The third red bead in a row, right before a blue one, would give you 3 Flesh.  If the village gets a 2 Flesh from, say, their Hawk relationship, your 3 Flesh wins.  If you have a Breath bead, though, it won't help you; you need to coyote fleshly for this, so you have 0 Flesh vs. 2 Flesh.  They spot you.

My thoughts on this.  I like the free-wheeling dynamic of actually calling on other-than-human persons for help, but I see a lot of potential for abuse.  To avoid that, and to keep it functional as a game, we'd need some kind of rules for keeping the exact form of the plea out of the player's direct control, lest every player figure out exactly how many words/syllables/lines/whatever that it will take to get the result they want.  This seems to encourage players to specialize with variation.  Sure, having all 10 of your beads with Coyote will help if you want to coyote about the woods all the time, but without some Breath or Word beads in there, how will you ever coyote up a clever plan, or coyote someone out of a deal?  By the same token, you'd never want something like red, blue, yellow, blue, red, blue, yellow, because everything would have a power of just 1!  You'd want red, red, blue, blue, blue, yellow, yellow, so you get the most out of each type.  So it seems to me like you'd optimize for runs of 2-4 at a time, before switching over to a different type.  Also, this mechanic seems to get us back to the problem of overcoming adversity, rather than approaching the other.

The Color Wheel

This one comes straight from Jared Sorenson, I've just spun it around to the medicine wheel.

So you have the medicine wheel, which gives you four different pools of differently colored beads.  All the beads go into an opaque bag.  First, you decide the nature of the conflict, whether it comes from the north, east, south or west.  Then, you pull a number of beads from your bag equal to the number of beads in the appropriate relationship.  For each bead you pull of the appropriate color, you have one success; the player with the most successes, wins.

So, consider an intellectual debate about the next tribe over.  The conflict comes from the north, associated with intellect and wisdom.  You use your relationship with that tribe, in which you have four beads.  So you pull four beads from you bag.  You pull two white (north) beads, one black (west) bead, and one red (south) bead.  So you have two successes.  The other player have six beads with the tribe, and pulls six beads from his pouch, but he pulls one white, three red, and two yellow (east) beads, so he only has one success.  You win.

My thoughts on this.  The idea of competing numbers of successes certainly fits into the general range of existing RPG mechanics, which puts me on the most solid ground of any of these alternatives.  But it also recapitulates the notion of overcoming adversity, rather than approaching the other.