For quite a long time, the minimum number of people required to play Panty Explosion was a difficulty for me. Back in January, however, I finally managed to try the game out with Kamil, Magda and Jacek. I've been unsuccessfully getting down to writing down this AP for some weeks, but at last, here it is.

With this AP, I hope to deal with my confusion about the rules. I'd like to receive official clarifications from the authors, but if you know the game well and can help, I'd appreciate it.

Now, I've been interested in the game from the time Jake Richmond released the playtest version back in 2006, but for a long time I had no good perspectives for actually playing it. However, I've been keeping an eye on it, checking out forum threads, reviews, previews and the playtest version of Classroom Deathmatch. What I discovered during that period was that the game apparently didn't change much from the playtest version and some things I regarded as problems seemed to still be there. Also, reading the preview of PE and CD's playtest document I found I've been holding wrong assumptions about the way the rules work. In fact, I noticed that I wouldn't be able to run the game on the basis of the text only – my conclusion was that I'd wound up running a construct consisting mainly of my own subconsciously created rules. This was another reason that delayed buying the book for me.

Last summer, I had a discussion with Jake about it, and later I decided to buy the book after all, give the game a go, and try to learn the ropes. This AP is, I hope, the final part of this learning process. Now that I've seen the game in action and know what exactly poses problems, I'm able to ask specific questions and better relate the answers to my concrete actual play experiences.

Reading the full version of the game still left me with some questions. Despite the impressions I had upon my first contact with PE back in 2006, the rules intended by the authors are quite unclear to me. I've been searching for an errata or FAQ, but there aren't any, it would seem. There aren't many threads with rules questions as well, and actual play reports I've seen were no help as they didn't touch the mechanics at all (those linked from the site, for example, are all story).

As a side note, I actually find it a bit alarming that the system is not discussed much. Seriously, with over a thousand copies of the book sold, am I the only PE-proof person out there, or do other people decided not to talk about their rules problems for some reason?

Either way, I decided to run the game without bothering Jake with further questions, if only to check out how many of my expected problems would turn out not to be problems at all in actual play.

Creating the characters and the school was unexpectedly fast – it took us only about half an hour. Since it was our test run, most of the Traits picked by the players came from the examples in the book. However, I suppose even if they tried to create their own Traits the prep wouldn't take much longer, which is nice.

So, I considered the Agendas, picked some poltergeist-style Demon from the book and started the first scene, giving one of the Students an opportunity to draw attention of the teacher she secretly loved. As the class was in the progress of writing a test, the unsettling emotional aura of the psychic girl started causing some disturbance among the students, resulting in the strict teacher becoming enraged. We played out our first conflict, as the man approached the apparent source of the commotion and tried to discipline her with a ruler. The conflict itself wasn't long, but since we've been learning the procedure, it took some extra time. The girl managed to appease the teacher, and he calmed down a bit. So far, so good.

Then, another girl tried to cheat on the test, and our second conflict started – this time, another schoolgirl got involved, using the situation as an opportunity to move her Agenda forward. I wish I still remembered the details – but I only recall some struggle over dropped cheat sheets. Either way, the conflict dragged, as we started experiencing various procedural problems. It became apparent that handling stuff the way that seemed logical in the previous conflict will not work.

The main issue was that we've been interpreting the Response step as something akin to Seeing in DitV, an opportunity to effectively negate the previous action. But it quickly became obvious to us that such an approach was flawed, as we had trouble figuring out how much could actually be achieved in a single action or response, and how it all related to the overall progress of the conflict. This realization in turn posed some other question concerning the resolution procedure.

We decided to stop at this point. We took our time to carefully analyze the text, step by step, word by word, relating the rules to the example. This revealed that much more of our assumptions couldn't be right. We discussed the rules for an hour or so. Then, exhausted, we started arguing over them. Then we stopped once more and concluded that we need to clear our minds and forget we played any other games before. Then, we started the analysis from scratch. So much for the game that evening, heh.

Anyway, we came up with multiple possible interpretations of the conflict resolution text. This includes Kamil's reading in which there were no conflicts as such, actually, no stakes, no participants and no nothing, and to us it seemed quite plausible and consistent with the text and examples at that point. But all in all, we eventually arrived at one interpretation that seemed to make the most sense, concluding it should work rather well and that we should be able to play the game effectively that way. As I look at it, it's close to my initial reading after all, but differs in procedurally crucial nuances.

Now, I'm going to summarize our final interpretation. I'd really like to know whether this is exactly the way the conflicts should flow – please, correct us if we're wrong.

The conflict starts when somebody tries to achieve something and the group can't or doesn't want to agree it's automatic. I'm assuming the conflict is a chain of actions following from the opening one, but not every action within the conflict needs to further or hinder the initial intent – side actions are possible, as a consequence of an avalanche effect started by opening the conflict. In fact, conflicts just structure individual task rolls within a scene, marking chains of related actions and moments of dice replenishment.

1. An intent is announced by the conflict's starter.

1.1. The starter is involved. The target of intent is involved. Everyone else has an option to join the conflict.

2. The starter takes an action and it is resolved. This is definitive.

(Once something is narrated it can't be negated or undone - i.e. it's not like with Rising/Seeing in DitV. Every action modifies the fiction in some way, just like that, and subsequent actions can only work within the newly established circumstances - i.e. it's a bit like with Monologues of Victory/Defeat in The Pool. It's possible to repair the outcome with a later action, but there's no way to stop or undo an action. For example, if the resolving player narrates how a monster strikes a Student, wounding her, a subsequent action can't block the attack, since it already hit. A subsequent action can be used to tend the wound or the like, but the attack has already happened, the wound is there, and that's it.)

2.1. Somebody, including those who didn't join the conflict (p. 31 “any other Student...”), can chose to Respond with a single action. This is, in each and every respect, like a normal action, as above, only it needs to follow directly from whatever has just occurred.

3. The target has an option to takes an action. It doesn't have to follow from previous actions in the conflict in any way. The target doesn't have to take the action, if she doesn't want to (only the conflict's starter is required to take an action each round).

3.1. Somebody, including those who didn't join the conflict, can choose to respond with an action, like in 2.1.

4. If more players joined the conflict in 1.1., they have an option to take their actions, in order (actions are followed by Responses, as normal). Those who don't want to take their actions don't have to (only the conflict's starter is required to take an action each round). Those who didn't declare joining the conflict in 1.1. can't take their actions, but can respond as normal.

5. If, at any point after 2, no participant is interested in taking further actions, the conflict ends. Otherwise, go to 1.1. again.

5.1. Those who joined the conflict in 1.1., but want to get out of it, can use their regular actions or responses in the next round to remove themselves from that chain of actions (those who do won't be able to Respond later). There are other conditions that remove the character from a conflict listed in the book.

This is how I think the procedure goes, step by step, but I'm still not certain about some things. One of them is that joining part in 1.1. If only the starter (or the player chosen by Superintendent, if he starts the conflict) is required to take an action each round, why announce participation at all? My guess is that those who didn't join the conflict formally are completely untouchable for the participants, but I don't think anything like that was clearly delineated in the book (conditions listed on p. 32-33 might as well refer to not being able to take further actions, but still subject to actions). And what about those Responses from those who didn't announce their participation?

Also, “Once each student has taken an action” in Step 1 (p. 29) would invalidate the above interpretation completely. Step 5, however, states that the target “has a chance to take an action of her own” - but again, suggests that players other than the target “get to take an action” (this might be just my misreading, but due to this I've been reading the rule as “every participant has to act each round” before). Upon examining the example closely, Bill skips his action in the second round, so I assume only the starter's action is mandatory. Am I right now?

Now, there are parts of the book that confuse me, due to their misleading wording or what appears as inconsistencies of the text to me. I'll list all my questions one by one. Along with the clarification on the conflict procedure, they should give me a more or less complete picture of how the game is actually supposed to be played.

You know, I'm one of those people who ask questions about every detail, so brace yourself ;)

* The text highlights the possibility of conflicts against “non-person characters” (e.g. an earthquake, a hole in the ground etc.). Is such an opposition treated as a character? Should an earthquake, for example, be given normal elemental dice and could it take its normal actions in the conflict, or would only the Students involved roll the dice? Could non-person opposition have and use Traits or psychic powers? How to determine its Popularity? (Or, maybe in practice such conflicts don't really happen and parts that mention them are redundant?)

* The last sentence in Step 4 on p. 31 (“no other Students or characters involved in the conflict” just after steps dealing with the starter's action) could suggests that it would be possible for only a single character to be involved in a conflict and making rolls. Is it possible to be in a conflict alone? This ties to the previous point, obviously.

* Is it possible for Superintendent to control multiple characters in a conflict, keeping separate elemental dice and taking separate actions for each of them? Or does he just have a single side, with 15 elemental dice regardless of the number of characters involved? (I guess it's the latter, as the former would be an overkill.)

* Is it possible to take a single action against multiple characters? (I'm assuming yes – so if the opening action affects more that one Student, they all count as targets and are automatically involved.)

* Am I right that the character can Respond and still take her regular action in the same round? My interpretation is that everyone has one regular opportunity to take an action per round, but can Respond to multiple actions regardless of that. (If it's otherwise, and everyone in the conflict gets only a single action or response per round, the presentation of the procedure is awfully misleading.)

* Am I right that it's not possible to Respond to a Response?

* Can characters whose players didn't announce their participation at the beginning of a round Respond?

* If more than one person wants to Respond, it's resolved through RPS. But how exactly it would be resolved with more than two players attempting the Response? A series of one-on-one RPS separate matches, until there are no ties, with whoever wins the most getting the Response? It would be a bit bothersome, it seems (obviously, I'm assuming a heated situation in which everybody just has to Respond, so maybe it's not an issue, really).

* Does an attempt to leave the conflict (described in Step 6) occur as a regular action in the next round? Or is there a special phase for such rolls between the rounds, and in the case of a failure the character can still take her regular action next round?

* Once the character is removed from a conflict (in a way different than running out of dice), is she effectively untouchable, or is it still possible to act against her and include her in the narration of results?

* I've discussed the issue of death in the game with Jake before, and my group agreed that we can easily handle it by assuming the players have an option to outright veto narration that kills their own characters. There is, however, another problem. Since only a single successful action is enough to incapacitate or otherwise remove the opposition from the conflict, it seems just too easy to end a conflict by going all out with the dice. I'm not really sure how to handle this issue, if it's an issue at all. (I'm tempted to count successful attempts at forced removal towards the number of actions failed in a row by the character, unless the player accepts being kicked out.)

* After taking a psychic action, the Rival narrates both successes and failures of all actions for the rest of the scene. Does he narrate the success of the initial psychic action? In the example conflict, on p. 35 it is stated that Jo is Bill's Rival, but on p. 37 it is Preston who narrates Bill's success at psychic action.

* In the rules for Levitation and Making Heads Explode on p. 41 it is stated that “A Student can use these powers in the same way they might make a normal action,” but they always get d10 and can't use Traits. Does it mean that other rules for psychic powers don't apply to these two actions? Do they give narration to the Rival? Do they allow for a re-roll on a failed check? Do they add to Demon Dice?

* Can NPC psychics use psychic powers, mechanically, just like player characters? If so, I presume they don't add to Demon Dice by doing so?

* What about Demons, then – do they get the benefit of a re-roll on failed psychic-like actions? Also, can they have and use Traits?

* The text states that school Traits don't do anything mechanically? If so, why call them Traits in the first place? (Now, I can imagine how they could work mechanically, if Students or NPCs could use them for their advantage while on the premises, and I think it would be cool. But that's not what the book says. Uh... why?)

* What exactly counts as a confrontation with the Demon (i.e. the moment when unresolved Agendas add to Demon Dice)? The text says that I shouldn't use more than 1/3 of the pool for each encounter with the Demon before the climax. However, how can I split the pool into three before knowing the size of the pool? After all, power usage adds to it gradually throughout the session. And if I'm supposed to add the dice for unresolved Agendas in the first scene that can be considered an encounter with the Demon (which might as well be vaguely connected to the Demon itself, as the splitting examples suggest), I need to delay those small encounters or Students might not have enough time to resolve their Agendas. Wouldn't it make more sense to calculate the base pool at the beginning of the session and actually subtract the dice whenever an Agenda is resolved?

Also, the cheatsheet we downloaded from the site states that only one die is added for an unresolved Agenda.

* Or, maybe Agendas contribute the dice to the pool anew every time the Demon is confronted? That would be an overkill, though.

* I'm somewhat confused by all the talk about the characters investigating ways to defeat the Demon in the description of session structure. Isn't it enough to take an action to get rid of it and have one's success narrated in a way that makes the beastie go *poof* by the Best Friend? I don't think the rules for creating the Demon explicitly mention that Superintendent needs to come out with a single way to defeat it and everything else fails. So, is investigation just something that is expected from the players, but in fact not required, mechanically, when it comes to defeating the Demon?

That would be it for my nitpicking, I think ;)

One last thing – Jake mentioned he often plays the game without Superintendent, and it works even for three players. Did anyone try playing Panty Explosion GM-less? What are the specific procedural changes needed to make it work that way?

Hi Filip. I'm glad you finally had a chance to play! I'm going to ask Matt to respond to this as well, since we tend to have different opinions and insights on the game.

I've always been mystified by the lack of talk about the game. As you said, it sells well... but no one talks about it. I used to assume that people bought it, decided it sucked, and never looked at it again. But the game gets good reviews, and what little feedback we get tends to be very positive. My assumption is that potential players have the same problem you have, finding other players who are willing to pretend to be Japanese school girls. I also think that there are people who bought the book for the novelty factor. I'm not going to cry over that. A large amount of our sales happened outside the indie/story games community. We sell a lot of books through retail and through our site, where the number of books we sell through IPR is rather small. I know a lot of the people we sell to are not so much hardcore rpg players as anime and manga fans, so I expect they don't have the same traditions of posting actual play that this community has.

But really, I don't know why more people don't talk about the game. I'd like to think that the game is relatively problem free and easy to play, and that it doesn't require a bunch of answers and support text.

You know, I'm one of those people who ask questions about every detail, so brace yourself ;)

Now, I'm going to summarize our final interpretation. I'd really like to know whether this is exactly the way the conflicts should flow – please, correct us if we're wrong.

I'm still not certain about some things. One of them is that joining part in 1.1. If only the starter (or the player chosen by Superintendent, if he starts the conflict) is required to take an action each round, why announce participation at all? My guess is that those who didn't join the conflict formally are completely untouchable for the participants, but I don't think anything like that was clearly delineated in the book (conditions listed on p. 32-33 might as well refer to not being able to take further actions, but still subject to actions). And what about those Responses from those who didn't announce their participation?

Also, “Once each student has taken an action” in Step 1 (p. 29) would invalidate the above interpretation completely. Step 5, however, states that the target “has a chance to take an action of her own” - but again, suggests that players other than the target “get to take an action” (this might be just my misreading, but due to this I've been reading the rule as “every participant has to act each round” before). Upon examining the example closely, Bill skips his action in the second round, so I assume only the starter's action is mandatory. Am I right now?

The text highlights the possibility of conflicts against “non-person characters” (e.g. an earthquake, a hole in the ground etc.). Is such an opposition treated as a character? Should an earthquake, for example, be given normal elemental dice and could it take its normal actions in the conflict, or would only the Students involved roll the dice? Could non-person opposition have and use Traits or psychic powers? How to determine its Popularity? (Or, maybe in practice such conflicts don't really happen and parts that mention them are redundant?)

* The last sentence in Step 4 on p. 31 (“no other Students or characters involved in the conflict” just after steps dealing with the starter's action) could suggests that it would be possible for only a single character to be involved in a conflict and making rolls. Is it possible to be in a conflict alone? This ties to the previous point, obviously.

Is it possible for Superintendent to control multiple characters in a conflict, keeping separate elemental dice and taking separate actions for each of them? Or does he just have a single side, with 15 elemental dice regardless of the number of characters involved? (I guess it's the latter, as the former would be an overkill.)

Is it possible to take a single action against multiple characters? (I'm assuming yes – so if the opening action affects more that one Student, they all count as targets and are automatically involved.)

Am I right that the character can Respond and still take her regular action in the same round? My interpretation is that everyone has one regular opportunity to take an action per round, but can Respond to multiple actions regardless of that. (If it's otherwise, and everyone in the conflict gets only a single action or response per round, the presentation of the procedure is awfully misleading.)

Am I right that it's not possible to Respond to a Response?

Can characters whose players didn't announce their participation at the beginning of a round Respond?

If more than one person wants to Respond, it's resolved through RPS. But how exactly it would be resolved with more than two players attempting the Response? A series of one-on-one RPS separate matches, until there are no ties, with whoever wins the most getting the Response? It would be a bit bothersome, it seems (obviously, I'm assuming a heated situation in which everybody just has to Respond, so maybe it's not an issue, really).

Does an attempt to leave the conflict (described in Step 6) occur as a regular action in the next round? Or is there a special phase for such rolls between the rounds, and in the case of a failure the character can still take her regular action next round?

Once the character is removed from a conflict (in a way different than running out of dice), is she effectively untouchable, or is it still possible to act against her and include her in the narration of results?

I've discussed the issue of death in the game with Jake before, and my group agreed that we can easily handle it by assuming the players have an option to outright veto narration that kills their own characters. There is, however, another problem. Since only a single successful action is enough to incapacitate or otherwise remove the opposition from the conflict, it seems just too easy to end a conflict by going all out with the dice. I'm not really sure how to handle this issue, if it's an issue at all. (I'm tempted to count successful attempts at forced removal towards the number of actions failed in a row by the character, unless the player accepts being kicked out.)

After taking a psychic action, the Rival narrates both successes and failures of all actions for the rest of the scene. Does he narrate the success of the initial psychic action? In the example conflict, on p. 35 it is stated that Jo is Bill's Rival, but on p. 37 it is Preston who narrates Bill's success at psychic action.

In the rules for Levitation and Making Heads Explode on p. 41 it is stated that “A Student can use these powers in the same way they might make a normal action,” but they always get d10 and can't use Traits. Does it mean that other rules for psychic powers don't apply to these two actions? Do they give narration to the Rival? Do they allow for a re-roll on a failed check? Do they add to Demon Dice?

Can NPC psychics use psychic powers, mechanically, just like player characters? If so, I presume they don't add to Demon Dice by doing so?

What about Demons, then – do they get the benefit of a re-roll on failed psychic-like actions? Also, can they have and use Traits?

The text states that school Traits don't do anything mechanically? If so, why call them Traits in the first place? (Now, I can imagine how they could work mechanically, if Students or NPCs could use them for their advantage while on the premises, and I think it would be cool. But that's not what the book says. Uh... why?)

What exactly counts as a confrontation with the Demon (i.e. the moment when unresolved Agendas add to Demon Dice)? The text says that I shouldn't use more than 1/3 of the pool for each encounter with the Demon before the climax. However, how can I split the pool into three before knowing the size of the pool? After all, power usage adds to it gradually throughout the session. And if I'm supposed to add the dice for unresolved Agendas in the first scene that can be considered an encounter with the Demon (which might as well be vaguely connected to the Demon itself, as the splitting examples suggest), I need to delay those small encounters or Students might not have enough time to resolve their Agendas. Wouldn't it make more sense to calculate the base pool at the beginning of the session and actually subtract the dice whenever an Agenda is resolved?

Also, the cheatsheet we downloaded from the site states that only one die is added for an unresolved Agenda.

I'm somewhat confused by all the talk about the characters investigating ways to defeat the Demon in the description of session structure. Isn't it enough to take an action to get rid of it and have one's success narrated in a way that makes the beastie go *poof* by the Best Friend? I don't think the rules for creating the Demon explicitly mention that Superintendent needs to come out with a single way to defeat it and everything else fails. So, is investigation just something that is expected from the players, but in fact not required, mechanically, when it comes to defeating the Demon?

Thanks for the quick response, Jake!

Heh, dunno about the approach part, really. One thing I'm starting to notice is that when I read you talking the system I often have this sense like information was given in a backwards order - as in, the parts I'm looking for tend to be near the end, and once I get there, it changes my reading of the previous part. It's like with Japanese syntax, in a way ;) So, there might be something in it, but I'm not really sure what.

In the first round of a conflict the Student who initiated must take an action. No one else is required to, but everyone participating in the action has the option to. Once every participating Student has taken an action or passed, the next round starts. This time, the Student who initiated the conflict is NOT required to take an action. If no one takes an action this round, the conflict ends. Does that answer your question, or am I missing your point?

But yes, a student may find themselves alone in a conflict against the Superintendent, or as the last participant in a conflict that everyone else has fled.

Am I right that the character can Respond and still take her regular action in the same round? My interpretation is that everyone has one regular opportunity to take an action per round, but can Respond to multiple actions regardless of that. (If it's otherwise, and everyone in the conflict gets only a single action or response per round, the presentation of the procedure is awfully misleading.)

This is right. I can take my normal action, and I can respond to an action that was taken against me. If I don't want to respond to the action that was taken against me, someone else has the option to instead.

Is the presentation misleading? I just read over it, and in context with the rest of the section it seems fine.

I actually paid someone once to let me respond to an action.

The Rival only narrates the results of the following actions.

Levitate and Make Heads Explode are still Psychic actions, so using them does give the Superintendent more Demon Dice, will allow the Student to re-roll a failed check and will cause the Students Rival to narrate their actions for the rest of the round. The only difference is that they can't use Traits with these two powers.

That's actually what you should do. At the beginning of the session you have 15 Demon Dice, plus 2 dice for each unresolved Agenda. As the game goes on some students will probably  complete some Agendas, reducing your dice pool. Some Students may use their psychic powers, increasing your dice pool. In either case, the pool is very likely going to change throughout the game. Using only a third of your dice on any given encounter is just a suggestion. But it's pretty easy to look at how many dice you currently have and decide how many you want to use for your next encounter.

So the dice for Unresolved Agendas are actually added to your Demon Dice pool at the beginning of the game. You'll remove these dice from the pool as Students complete their Agendas. If you aren't careful this can sometimes mean that you run out of Demon Dice. That's the reason I suggest saving about a third of your dice for the final encounter.

NPCs all draw from the Demon Dice pool. So while NPC psychic girls can be described as using psychic powers, they actually don't. In practice, there's not a lot of difference there. NPC psychic girls will always roll D 10s (because they're using demon dice), and you can describe them doing whatever you want. So they can be as psychic as you want them to be. They just don't use the psychic mechanics.

This all falls under the heading of Demon Dice. So you'll create an earthquake or a car crash by giving the conflict whatever elemental dice you think it needs. Demon dice are always D 10's, so there's no reason to roll for popularity. You never apply psychic powers or traits to the demon dice. So if you decided to challenge the students with an earthquake, you might assign the quake 4 Earth dice from your Demon dice pool. On the first round of the conflict you might use 2 dice to have the earth rip open into a gaping hole. On the second round, you might use 2 more dice to cause a building to collapse. the Students will roll dice in the conflict to do whatever it is they want to do.

The Superintendent can control multiple characters in the same scene. He has to divide his Demon dice between the characters, but each character can take separate actions.

Feel free to ask more.

One reason of this interpretation, I think, is that my first actual play experiences with DitV occurred just some months before I've read the playtest version of PE, and it was my big eye-opening break from "traditional" resolution mechanics. During my first reading of PE, my head was full of assumptions based on those experiences with DitV, and it seems much of those assumptions about the way I thought PE worked carried until I finally tried it out.

Hmm, my question wasn't perfectly clear, it seems. What I've been wondering about was, in fact, whether it's possible to have a conflict without an active opposition. E.g. a situation in which the character tries to run through heavy traffic and rolls for it, possibly multiple times depending on his results, but the street has no dice and Superintendent doesn't roll for it at all.

Uh, wait. So it is actually possible to use Traits with psychically enhanced actions, and only Levitation and Making Heads Explode can't be combined with Trait use? In Choosing Traits sections, at the end of the second paragraph it is stated that Traits cannot be used during a Psychic action, and it's not apparent that it doesn't refer to enhanced actions.

(Hmm, remember the order of information thing I mentioned at the beginning of this post? Since enhanced actions are explained first, they seem like a default to me, with Levitation and Exploding Heads being special cases. So, when I read the book, having the rule about Traits not working for psychic actions in memory once I reach the part about enhanced actions I automatically connect it to them, and then I see the description of two special psychic actions which seems to suggest normal action rules apply.)

Superintendent can assign dice from his budget to NPCs and obstacles as needed. (But what happens if the dice are not spend for actions? Do they a) dissapear, b). remain with the NPC/obstacle until another conflict or c) go back to the budget? Also, can more dice be added from the budget to individual NPCs/obstacles between conflicts?)

However, if the Students get into conflict with opposition unrelated to the Demon, it's different.

Is this 15 dice per character? 15 dice per conflict? Do they refresh after conflicts? Or is there rather a secondary pool of 15 dice per game to spend on those extra conflicts? I still don't know. (I'm re-reading Creating the Demon section: in the last paragraph the text first refers to assigning 15 elemental dice to the girl, a single person, but later instructs to give 15 dice to conflicts, which is confusing.)

Now, assuming the above is true, and supposing each NPC has 15 dice of his or her own, I'm at a loss as to why those extra encounters are potentially so much more challenging than the main conflict of he game. Superintendent, budgeted when it comes to the main antagonist, would get potentially infinite amount of resources, and therefore potentially unlimited input into the fiction during side scenes. This is probably my only beef at this point, but I'm still uncertain about the number of dice available per extra conflict.

I could use some suggestions, if not concrete rules, for playing without Superintendent (I recall you've been mentioning you do it often). Currently, the difficulty of gathering three players for a regular game are a greater obstacle for me than the subject of the game. And I'd really like to play at least a couple of sessions eventually.

Ok, I have no more questions at this point and it seems things I wasn't sure about are starting to neatly click together now. Or, so I think at least ;)

Thanks for the clarifications!