Cross-posted from Barf Forth Apocalyptica: http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?topic=2359.0

Ok, so this is a complicated situation.  We have three PC's:

Tabni-Ishtar, Goddess of Fertility and the Harvest.  She wants to get rid of Ku-aya and convince Dolawat to not sacrifice children to her (though her best interest is to actually have the villagers give sacrifice unto her).
Ku-aya, the Demoness of Illness (formerly a river goddess). She wants to discredit Tabni-Ishtar.
Dolawat, Midwife and priestess of Tabni-Ishtar.  She wants to be impregnated by Tabni-Ishtar.

The three are mixing it up, and we enter the second round with both Dolawat and Ku-Aya having advantage:

All roll, the action order becomes Dolawat, Tabni-Ishtar, then Ku-aya.  Dolawat makes a plea to Tabni-Ishtar to prove that she is still loved by the goddess, and moves to embrace her.  Tabni Ishtar (losing but not by double) consents and draws her in to a relatively chaste embrace.  Ku-aya, in the form of creeping black shadows, insinuates herself between the two of them and forces them apart (They both answer, lose but not out, Ku-aya has advantage). Dolawat misinterprets this as Tabni-Ishtar pushing her away, and Tabni-Ishtar ends up with Ku-Aya's hand on her throat.

At the end of the round, Tabni-Ishtar and and Dolawat negotiate:  Tabni-Ishtar will give Dolawat a child, if she promises to help banish Ku-aya.  Dolawat is willing to agree, but here's the rub: Ku-aya still has advantage over both those two characters.  By negotiating, one of them has to agree to drop out of the fight, and Dolawat is the one who wanted to drop out, but Ku-Aya doesn't want her out yet: she still has a stick to wield.  How do we deal with this sort of negotiation?  In our game, we just said that the two of them can't negotiate a resolution between them if and drop out if Ku-aya isn't done with them, because even though Dolawat has advantage over Tabni-Ishtar, Ku-aya has advantage over both of them and to deprive her of her stick would break the rules.  Thoughts?

Another question that came up as part of this: I as GM am intended to be the arbiter of scene framing.  But with two supernatural entities, how much control do I have over saying "You're not in this scene?"  The fiction almost seems to dictate that I can't bar them from scenes, since they really could just argue the "I can be anywhere" angle.  It wasn't a problem in the game, but I did find myself having to worry about relative fairness, especially when I did explicitly set up some scenes without a PC where that PC would have had a very good vested interest for wanting to be there (a chance meeting between the demoness and the child of one of the PC's).  How have others handled this, how strict/strong is the GM's ability to limit participation in scenes?

We record our sessions for AP on the Jank Cast podcast, and I'll link when this one is shared, but I was curious about this for our next session.  The game is really great, I'm enjoying the format and play of it a great deal, just trying to work out some of the kinks.

I don't think that anyone has any good answers. My gut says: if there's a breakdown in negotiation, roll into round 3 as normal, period. But I don't remember if the rules contradict that in 3 or more player conflicts.

If it worked, you did good. Well done!

-Vincent

yeah, it's a messy situation.  We're going to try some approaches, if it turns up again.