So, LA gamers took the Wicked Age for a spin last night, and we were our usual ruthless selves with the rules.  Dice worked out fine, we had a lot of entertainingly negotiated consequences, and all told, it was a good time had by all. 

The short form: Rab Seen, the king of thieves in Nineveh, meddled in the prophesized birth to the demoness wife of a wealthy merchant, resulting in the binding by marriage of an overconfident devil of the air to the demoness, and his subsequent destruction in the fulfillment of the prophecy he himself had tampered with.  It was pretty cool.

Now, we have a tendency to take a new set of rules out of the gate by jamming the throttle all the way down and forgetting to pop the clutch.  Case in point: the first time we got to dice, it was a three way thing.  That was okay, but it hit on the first of three soft places in the rules:

A few times we wound up consequences of 3 and 4 player conflicts with a negotiation mid-dice.  Three ways, that wound up being tricky, and the best we could figure was that everyone had to agree to the result or else go on to the next round of play.

The second time this was an issue: the merchant was trying to chain the king of thieves under the hut of the wise prophet.  The devil of air wanted to recover one of his un-earthy rings from the king without being seen.  At the end of the second round, the king lost outright to the devil, and they negotiated that the king escaped and dropped the ring.  Clever tactics, or illegitimate?  It seems a little like consequences for the merchant, except it's not quite direct consequences.  I sort of feel like I (as GM) should have said to the devil's player: wait until the merchant and the king settle their hash.

The final one hasn't quite come up, but we talked about it a bit.  It's pretty clear that players own their characters.  But, does the GM own his NPCs?  (And when the GM rotates, can he pull his NPCs in as PCs?)  Can players yoink in NPCs in a future chapter?

(Incidentally, we did play with 3 rounds of conflict.  I think it came down to that twice - the rest of the time there were sudden finishes or mid-dice negotiations, a lot.  I still think I want to see it with 2 rounds - Colin said he was going to suggest the 2-round nitro version to his other group.)

Not to dispute that the issue can come up of a "negotiation midway" resulting in something another character would have go otherwise (but they didn't win so I would say tough, winner is the one negotiating), but fights can avoid being framed in ways provoking that more frequently, can't they?

The merchant chaining king of thieves, devil retrieving ring from him conflicts don't seem to require being a single 3 way fight. 

Who is asked first what they're doing, who objects would interfere?

Say it's merchant, merchant is narrating chaining king of thieves of ring, k of t resists.  Devil doesn't care if ring not an issue, sneak in a steal ring from bound character next.  They can be resolved as sequential fights. 

If merchant says "it would be chain and strip", okay the first fight is that and devil stands out, going after merchant for ring now; or the devil says "well I want the king free so I can get ring", so "I fight alongside king in first fight to keep him free with intent of then stealing ring".  In latter, if merchant beats king first round and knocks him out, king negotiates what that means and it is "you strip me but I wriggle free and escape, only one die damage", then that's the outcome, devil has to go after mechant for the ring, etc.

This is not the scene of ring stealing conflict, this is the scene of chaining conflict and conflict focuses on that would have been how I would have GM'd it/framed it based on description offered.