Firstly, I'll say that my little group just got done with a fun first chapter of Wicked.  Thanks for another great game, Vincent!  But we did have some questions:

1) We had the entry: "A noble house’s signatory ring, left behind in a street brawl."  One player took as his PC's best interest: "Get the ring back".  We didn't know who had the ring, so it was not clear how/whether it would bring him into conflict with anyone.  Is it a reasonable best interest?

2) We had a situation in which A and B were trying to retrieve the lost ring. A ordered a beggar to search for it, B tried to hide himself from view while finding and taking the ring. We handled that as a conflict: A: "The beggar finds the ring." (for others/direct)  B: "No, I find the ring and take it away without anyone seeing me." (for myself/covert). Is that a reasonable conflict?

3) When A returned to report not finding the ring to C, C ordered A to go back and continue searching for the ring.  No conflict ensued (although the scene was colorful).  Does Wicked support/encourage/discourage scenes with no conflicts?

4) A wanted to get D alone, but D was with C.  When B took C aside for a brief conversation, A tried to get past without C noticing. We handled this with a conflict.  Was that a good time for one?

5) B's possession of the ring gave him power over demons -- we created demon-control as a Particular Strength associated with the ring. B tried to control demon D, and at the same time A tried to kill B.  We had a 3-way conflict.  We said that the extra d8 for the ring was only used in the B-D conflict, not the A-B conflict.  Should we have handled the conflict differently?

6) 1-4 suggest a common theme arising from our play -- we didn't jump straight into the conflicts that would resolve the interests of the characters. Perhaps these questions suggest that we pussyfoot around too much, postponing the meaty conflicts: those that resolve the opposing interests.  Maybe a better approach is to have each scene resolve at least one interest?  (It took us about 5 hours to complete the first chapter, including lots of rules-checking.)

Thanks for any feedback,

Steven

Steven, I think the best advice is in the thread just above yours.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25654.0

Does that help?

Thanks for the response, Ryan.

The thread was helpful to understand the game, in that it explains that IaWA conflicts are rolled when things escalate to coercion (physical or otherwise).  But my questions were on different matters.

In each case the question is: Does IaWA support this?  If so, any guidelines on how best to handle it?

1 was about best interests: what if a best interest doesn't clearly imply who it interacts with?

2 and 4 were about conflicts: What happens when characters don't conflict (because they don't know what's going on), but players conflict, e.g. when someone wants to do something secretly?

3 and 6 were about flow: should every scene have a conflict?  Should every scene resolve an interest?

5 was about mechanics: how do Particular Strengths and 3-way conflicts interact?

Steven

steven807 wrote:
1) We had the entry: "A noble house’s signatory ring, left behind in a street brawl."  One player took as his PC's best interest: "Get the ring back".  We didn't know who had the ring, so it was not clear how/whether it would bring him into conflict with anyone.  Is it a reasonable best interest?

2) We had a situation in which A and B were trying to retrieve the lost ring. A ordered a beggar to search for it, B tried to hide himself from view while finding and taking the ring. We handled that as a conflict: A: "The beggar finds the ring." (for others/direct)  B: "No, I find the ring and take it away without anyone seeing me." (for myself/covert). Is that a reasonable conflict?

3) When A returned to report not finding the ring to C, C ordered A to go back and continue searching for the ring.  No conflict ensued (although the scene was colorful).  Does Wicked support/encourage/discourage scenes with no conflicts?

4) A wanted to get D alone, but D was with C.  When B took C aside for a brief conversation, A tried to get past without C noticing. We handled this with a conflict.  Was that a good time for one?

5) B's possession of the ring gave him power over demons -- we created demon-control as a Particular Strength associated with the ring. B tried to control demon D, and at the same time A tried to kill B.  We had a 3-way conflict.  We said that the extra d8 for the ring was only used in the B-D conflict, not the A-B conflict.  Should we have handled the conflict differently?

6) 1-4 suggest a common theme arising from our play -- we didn't jump straight into the conflicts that would resolve the interests of the characters. Perhaps these questions suggest that we pussyfoot around too much, postponing the meaty conflicts: those that resolve the opposing interests.  Maybe a better approach is to have each scene resolve at least one interest?  (It took us about 5 hours to complete the first chapter, including lots of rules-checking.)

Thanks for the response, Darren.  I'll mull on these and pass them on to the other players.

Darren wrote:
It sounds okay to me, as long as its remembered that the conflict system deals with intents, not outcomes.

lumpley wrote: Most importantly, I think, the rules don't care what anyone's intent is. Their function is to provide consequences for (contested) actions, not resolve intents.

I think pretty much any intent that is opposed by someone else can be a conflict, so long as both sides are willing to risk injury or exhaustion to get it. I see no problem with your example.

I don't think a hard-and-fast rule, "one scene per best interest" is a good idea.

I am going to answer these questions! I lost track of them at first. Give me a bit longer.

-Vincent

steven807 wrote:
Thanks for the response, Darren.  I'll mull on these and pass them on to the other players.

Darren wrote:
It sounds okay to me, as long as its remembered that the conflict system deals with intents, not outcomes.

steven807 wrote: Well, it doesn't deal with outcomes, but apparently it doesn't deal with intents either.  Here's Vincent:

lumpley wrote: Most importantly, I think, the rules don't care what anyone's intent is. Their function is to provide consequences for (contested) actions, not resolve intents.

Steven! Okay.

1) It's a perfectly fine best interest. If no other player takes a best interest like "keep the ring," then It's the GM's responsibility to decide where the ring is and who has it. Ideally, someone with an interest in the ring and high dice to back it up, but it's the GM's call.

2) Well ... it's okay. It's super important to know that "without anyone seeing me" isn't guaranteed even if B wins the dice, that's something they'll have to negotiate at the end. Maybe A would rather see B and be exhausted or injured.

3) It does, strongly.

4) A took action and C tried to stop her, right? "I get past without you noticing." "The hell you do." So yeah, that's right for an action sequence.

Hey, you know how in Dogs in the Vineyard, you aren't allowed to make a raise resolve the stakes? The Wicked Age doesn't work that way. If C wins initiative, C's move can be "I see you and start shouting." The action sequence continues from there. A doesn't have any "but I didn't want you to see me!" recourse.

5) You should have, yes. No dice ever count against some people and not against others. B gets the d8, plain and simple.

6) 5 hours is a long time for one chapter. The GM needs to be pacing better and throwing people together more aggressively, is my guess. Resolving people's best interests isn't the goal of play, but using people's best interests to get them to roll dice against each other is. The GM needs to be paying attention to conflicting best interests and setting scenes accordingly.

Followup questions welcome, always.

-Vincent

If C wins initiative, C's move can be "I see you and start shouting." The action sequence continues from there. A doesn't have any "but I didn't want you to see me!" recourse.

I think that, as with everything else, you can't guarantee stealth will work.  You can place your opponent in a situation where he'd probably rather overlook you (or disbelieve what he saw, etc) than take exhaustion or injury, but you can't force someone to accept a piece of narrative.

So our group finally (finally!) got together again to play another chapter.  We understand things _much_ better now, thanks to the above help from everyone, as well as the great explanation of Sorceror at Story Games (which has such a similar mechanic for conflict resolution).  Not to mention Ryan Stoughton's awesome IaWA flowchart, which smoothly resolved our questions.

The story was very Conan-ish.  My character, the only one from the preceding chapter, came to a town just about to have the Spring Festival, which turns out to involve blood sacrifice and the consumption of drugs; the newly-arrived stranger was a perfect person to add to the sacrifice.  But a beautiful air spirit in the guise of a dancer, offered to aid to the stranger in exchange for help in retrieving the lamp to which she was bound.  Meanwhile an ambitious priestess of the cult sought the lamp for her own ends.  3 PCs and an NPC all had a long conflict trying to retrieve the lamp, but ultimately my barbarian and the spirit were captured.  The barbarian escaped, but rather than leave he foolishly attempted to seduce the priestess.  He ended up bound on the altar, but the spirit sent a wind carrying a knife, which let him escape his bonds and kill the leader of the cult.  The priestess allowed this to happen, as it meant she would become leader herself.

We still managed to complete only one chapter in the session (roughly 5 hours), but the time for conflicts went from about an hour for the first one to 10 minutes for the last, as we familiarized ourselves with the process.

Our concluson at this point is that the game is really cool -- no prep involved, lots of scope for creativity, interesting mechanics, etc.  But the game text leaves a lot to be desired (sadly, the number of questions asked and answered on this forum is a testament to the lack of clarity in the game).  Now that we are starting to appreciate the quality of the game, I can speak for my whole group when I say that I hope there will be a new edition that spends a lot more time clarifying the system, so that more people can appreciate the elegance of the design and the fun of play.

Steven

Oh, I should also mention that GM was very enthusiastic about the Alan's Best Interest diagram.  The map helped him choose interests for NPCs that kept the PCs involved, it helped the players choose interests that kept everything churning along, and it helped us all establish a coherent, simple situation rather than a tangled skein of disconnected motivations.

Steven