I've got an idea, but I haven't been able to quite pull it completely together, so I thought I would bounce it off you all and see what happens.

When I was working on Luna 0.3, I had intended on the resolution mechanic to work out as follows:

Winner's Hand has Same Rank as Loser's= Partial Success: The
character only gets a piece of what he intended to do. The GM comes up with a lesser version of what was intended.

Winner's Hand is 1 Rank above Loser's= Complete Success: The Statement of Intent happens exactly as declared.

Winner's Hand is 2 Ranks abouve Loser's= Critical Success: Not only is the Statement of Intent fulfilled, but the player can also claim an extra bonus from the result.

This all sounded like a fine thing until I showed this off to Ralph Mazza. I had intended to have the game so that if the Statement of Intent was "I want to kill my opponent", a Partial Success would mean the the Loser had only been Wounded instead of being Killed. A Complete Success meant that the opponent had been killed, and a Critical Success meant the killing may have been done in some spectular way.

Ralph clenched and unclenched his jaw a few times, as he tends to do when he's concentrating, and simply stated that he didn't like how that played out. After he demonstrated how easy it would be for a player's character do die, I had to agree with him, but I didn't have a satisfying fix for it at that time.

After doing some research, I came across Donjon, and that gave me an idea I think will work. Instead of following a "Partial-Complete-Critical" structure when it came to success, the game is more free-form in it's results, allowing the player to get bonuses on future rolls or creating Facts that fill in the blanks of the adventures.

What I have in mind now is the following:

Partial Success: In combat, the winner doesn't do any damage, but
gets a bonus die in his next roll against the loser or the loser loses a die from his hand for the next Conflict only. This would represent the winner gaining an advantage over the loser, or the loser is temporarily stunned or off-balance.

In a non-combat situation, the winner is able to narrate success, but
the loser is able to add a "but..." onto this narration that taints
the success.

Complete Success: Each Rank the winner's hand is over the loser's allows the winner to deliver a Damage Die against the loser. The Damage dice would be modified by the winner's weapon and the loser's armor.

So, if Tom's character rolls Two Pair over Dick's roll of a Pair, he would get 1 Damage Die plus 2 DD from his sword. This gives him a total of 3 DD. Dick's character is wearing light armor, which will subtract 1 from that total, leaving 2 DD. Two dice are removed from Dick's hand, leaving him with only 3 left to play with until the damage is healed. When Dick's character loses all the dice in his hand, the character is dead.

In a non-combat situation, the winner is able to narrate his success, with each Rank he beat the loser's hand by allowing him to either learn a Fact established by the GM or to create his own Fact.

For example, the GM describes a man flirting with a woman at a fancy dress ball, and one of the players becomes curious. He asks the GM if his character knows the man, and the GM allows him to make a roll, setting the difficulty at a Pair. The player rolls 3 of a Kind, which is 2 Ranks above what he needed. If the NPC were of any consequence, he would be obliged to give the player 2 facts about the NPC. If the NPC is simply a nameless Mook put there for color, the player may invent 2 facts about that NPC. Facts could range from the NPC's name (raising him out of Mook status), his occupation, reputation, or even if he is a secretly a flesh-devouring zombie.

All this is very rough of course, and I would appreciate as much feedback as possible.