The Forge Archives

Finally, after a motorcycle accident and a National Guard Drill weekend are done delaying, we got around to our Post-Apoc Dogs in the Vineyard game.

PC recap:

Brother Thaddeus "Dove" Johah Gentry: Former Territorial Authority Deputy Marshall, played by me.

Brother Raven: Former bandit and all-around bad guy, played by Zach

Brother Malachi Falconer: Son of a doctor with a tendency to talk with his fists, played by Kory

See here for more details on the characters.

Summary: So our Dogs come riding into Canton, the first stop on their first route as Dogs. Brother Thaddeus is hand-carrying a letter from his mother to his aunt Flora Montgomery, and Brother Malachi has a young aunt who sometimes babysat him while he was growing up. They're met by the town Steward, and quickly greeted by Brother Ebenezer Crane, a prominent citizen of Canton. As the Dogs are escorted to the Temple, they also catch sight of the young Brother Virgil Walker, who takes their horses.
Upon reaching the Temple, they see a statue of a man Brother Raven recognizes from his days as a bandit; Job Crane. When asked, the Steward tells the story about how, 12 years ago, Job Crane stole a truck full of foodstuffs from Ft. Reynolds, the nearby Mutant settlement, to help Canton through a rough winter. Job Crane disappeared after that, but they learned that rumors had been going about lately that he was in the area again, which has the Mutants a bit unsettled.
After further conversation with Steward Cornelius, they learn that Brother Ebenezer Crane, Job's brother, is a man strong in the Faith, having two wives, one of which is the Steward's daughter Adelia(?) and the other is Thaddeus' cousin Sabryna. Having got a snapshot of the city's situation, our Dogs separate, Malachi going to see his aunt, and Thaddeus and Raven going to see Brother Ebenezer and Sister Sabryna.

Malachi finds his aunt having a tense conversation with young Virgil (approx. 16) in which the boy was using a bit of harsh language. Sending the boy on his way to think about proper conduct, Malachi settles down to find out what's going on. After a bit of direct questioning and avoiding answering, he finally learns that his aunt is being courted by Virgil, as well as by Ebenezer Crane, who apparently feels he's ready for a third wife. He goes off troubled (temporary fallout) by his aunt's request to bless Brother Virgil's courtship.

Meanwhile, Brother's Thaddeus and Raven arrive at the Crane home. Thaddeus asks to speak to Sabryna, and Raven sits down to have a chat with Ebenezer. Thaddeus, though wanting to believe Ebenezer is a good man, is convinced that he's definitely far too full of his own worth, and sits down to convince his cousin that Ebenezer isn't as righteous as everyone seems to believe. The seeds of doubt are planted when she is unable to come up with a strong case for her husband, and Thaddeus takes his leave of her. At the same time, Ebenezer has cornered Raven into agreeing to perform the ceremony when Sister Ebenezer Crane and Sister Temperance Falconer (Malachi's cousin) are wed. Thaddeus comes out just in time to see Raven heading out the door, and stays to have a short conversation with Sabryna, at her father's request.

About then is when things start getting tense. Wandering the nearby woods and thinking about the situation, Malachi comes upon a badly injured mutant, who gasps out the name "Job Crane" before collapsing. Calling on every bit of knowledge he learned while training as a Dog and from his father, Malachi does his best to save the mutant's life. In the end, he calls upon the power of the King of Life, laying his hands upon the mutant and bringing him back from death's door. He then carries him back to the town, where he encounters Raven and Thaddeus. After a brief explanation, Raven takes off into the woods, believing he'll be able to catch Job Crane. Thaddeus accompanies Malachi to the temple with the bloody mutant, and then leaves Malachi with the Steward to look after him and goes after Raven.

Raven is now putting his tracking knowledge to the test, with the assistance of his dog, as he follows the trail. Unfortunately, the trail is a difficult one, at one pointed sprinkled with pepper to put the dog off the scent. Just when things couldn't get any worse, they do; Raven steps into a bear trap, and his dog runs off. Luckily, Thaddeus is able to find Raven about the time he gets free of the trap, and they set off on the trail again.

After several more switchbacks and setbacks, (like Dove's horse throwing a shoe, mysteriously.. that gave both myself and my character the hint of what was coming) they saw a shadow running through the darkness. Thaddeus called out for his surrender, and Raven threatened arrest. When the shape in the darkness called back that "I'm on your side! I'm Job Crane!" Thaddeus' suspicion was confirmed. However, when the shape tried to bolt, Thaddeus' patience ran out. Drawing both pistols and his considerable skill, he put two bullets through the meaty section of both of the shadow's legs.
After the gunshots brought Malachi to their position, and the boy's wounds were seen to, a multiple part conflict began, with the three Dogs alternating defending the boy's actions as stupid but well intentioned, and putting the fear of the King of Life into him. In the end, the Dogs all concurred that the boy hadn't meant any real harm, and they had a better idea of how to solve things. They brought him back to the Temple, and prepared for the final showdown the next day.

The next day, the three Dogs went their ways. Malachi went to arrange the wedding between Temperance Falconer and Virgil Walker. Raven prepared to give a sermon/tell the truth about Job Crane. Thaddeus just sat back, facilitated, and waited until it was time. Raven's sermon wasn't well received, but the full force of what he'd revealed was too much for even Ebenezer Crane to overcome. When the crowd began to disperse, Thaddeus stepped up and accosted Ebenezer, calling him on his pride, and pronouncing sentence; that both of his marriages were to be anulled for one year, at which time, he could attempt to remarry, if either of them would have him, and the Steward gave his approval. But when he called for anyone to speak up in mitigation, Adelia(?) stood by her husband, and spoke of how she'd married him before the town came to almost worship Job Crane, and his pride had caused him to overstep his bounds. Then on a happier note, Malachi stepped forward and announced that Temperance Falconer and Virgil Walker would be wed on the Sabbath Day. It also came about that Steward Cornelius had been searching his soul for some time, and had decided that the King of Life had drawn him to take a second wife himself; Augusta Walker, Virgil's mother.

Denoument: Ebenezer Crane's marriage to Sabryna was anulled. Virgil Walker was taken under the Steward's wing as a Temple assistant, and married Temperance Falconer. The Steward took a second wife, Augusta Walker, and an effort was made by the community to fix the town's crop problem, and relations were to be smoothed with the nearby Mutant community. And an old Dog, Raven's mentor Jason Walker, was requested to stop through to talk to the boy who it turned out was his nephew, and to check on the progress of the town.

What we missed: Lx revealed after the fact that the cues that I caught, but then dismissed, were something that could possibly lead to more trouble. It seems that Ebenezer was so concentrated on courting Sister Temperance that his wives took to finding comfort in each other. Though it's possible that the anullment of Sabryna's marriage may have solved the problem, the fact that she is now living alone may lead to further problems down the line.

Rules comments and observations:

It may have been my own quirks, but it seemed to me that Lx frequently had dicepools that were considerably larger than our own, even when we managed to call on 2-3 traits every time. I'm not totally familiar with the recommended size of NPC dicepools, but there were many times that if I'd not kibitzed and called bullshit that we'd have been easily trounced. Is this a common thing, and I'm just being too nitpicky?

There was also a bit of confusion in multiple person conflicts when a raise affected multiple participants. In the case where Thaddeus and Raven were cooperating to run Virgil's trail down, in specific, if we'd have both had to see every one of Virgil's raises, even with him having to see both of ours, he would have beaten us handily. Though we did finally come to a compromise that seemed to work, we agreed that this concern should be brought up.

The mechanics do one thing really well; The simple statement that raises cannot be ignored means that some really cool things sometimes happen. In particular, Kory, who is a rather passive player, surprised the whole group on at least a couple occasions, by coming up with lines and decisions that were absolutely perfectly what the scene called for.

The conflict in the woods between the three Dogs and Virgil was perfect. What was at stake was whether or not Virgil could convince the Dogs that he was just a misguided kid. Raven was the initial opponent, who thought he was a bad seed, whereas Thaddeus wanted to see the best in him, and Malachi just wanted to know what the hell was going on. We ended up opposing each other at different times, and then supporting each other at different times. Halfway through the conflict, we'd already decided the outcome, but we played it out just to see what would happen. In the end, Raven and Malachi gave, and not only was the kid's hero-worship of Job Crane shot down, but it was decided that he'd marry Temperance, and would assist the Steward in the Temple.

Memorable lines:

Malachi to his aunt: "You took care of me when I was younger; Now that I'm a Dog, it's my turn to take care of you."

Malachi to Virgil: "I was considering letting you marry my aunt. Now I'm not so sure that's a good idea." (to which Virgil takes the blow, and starts bawling his eyes out)

When Augusta asks what happened to her son, Thaddeus: "He was playin' the fool and got shot. He'll live-"
Raven, with his signature line: "There's a lot you can live through."

I'm sure I missed at least half a dozen things. Zach and Lx will probably chime in with their own impressions and questions.

Hey Lance,

QuoteIt may have been my own quirks, but it seemed to me that Lx frequently had dicepools that were considerably larger than our own, even when we managed to call on 2-3 traits every time. I'm not totally familiar with the recommended size of NPC dicepools, but there were many times that if I'd not kibitzed and called bullshit that we'd have been easily trounced. Is this a common thing, and I'm just being too nitpicky?

Can you give me a little more context for this? You mention traits, but were the Dogs escalating along the way? Did you guys assign any of your own relationship dice to boost your effectiveness? Were you outclassed in the dice even when the Dogs worked together? I've only played dogs a couple of short times but I found that the players pretty much always had the pools to win, assuming they thought it was worth it to push to the bitter end.

-Tim

Quote from: Tim AlexanderCan you give me a little more context for this? You mention traits, but were the Dogs escalating along the way? Did you guys assign any of your own relationship dice to boost your effectiveness? Were you outclassed in the dice even when the Dogs worked together? I've only played dogs a couple of short times but I found that the players pretty much always had the pools to win, assuming they thought it was worth it to push to the bitter end.

We weren't always escalating, but we did whenever it was feasible. One particular situation, I couldn't even imagine how it was possible to escalate until the very end when Zach made a call that wasn't *quite* within the bounds of the conflict, and Lx let it stand. Relationships were brought in, but usually the NPCs had their own relationship dice to counter. And yes, we were fairly well outclassed even when we worked together.

Most telling scenario: Tracking Virgil through the woods

Raven was tracking him alone at first. Following tracks, without any sign of the person he's tracking (the stakes were whether or not he found the person he was tracking) it's hard to escalate to anything beyond physical-but-not-fightin'. Zach had called in a good half or more of his traits on the conflict. Still, the opposition still had more dice than he did. Also, to be fair, Zach has terrible dice-luck. So not only did the NPC have more dice, but his values were higher. Near the end of his conflict, where he ended up giving rather than taking further fallout, I tried to suggest a flimsy means to escalate but Lx said it was too weak, and I had to agree. So after he loses his conflict, I join in, having stated in the scene prior that Thaddeus was going to go seek Raven out. We both roll again, with me adding in about half of my traits as well.

There was a bit of conflict at the beginning between Lx and myself. We've both got enough admitted gamist tendencies that we like to win.. Lx was trying various angles to make his raise apply to both of us, and I kept pointing out how each could be ignored by one or the other. Finally I got a little frustrated and told Lx he was trying too hard, he agreed, and we just moved on. His very next raise DOES apply to both of us, because of something I did (Thaddeus lent Raven a stirrup so they could move faster, and suddenly, Thad's horse throws a shoe..) which we both found amusingly ironic. Still, even having argued Lx out of trying to make us both see every single raise, it was very tough (and my dice-luck was better than Zach's).

It wasn't until Zach decided that Raven had seen a shadow moving, and Lx let it stand (even though the stakes were whether or not we found him, so it wasn't really allowable for us to find him before we'd won the contest) that I had Thaddeus escalate to speaking, Raven escalated to speaking, and the quarry also escalated to speaking. Finally, I just hell with it, and escalated to guns. When Thaddeus escalates to guns, things get really hairy, as besides talking, guns is what he's really good at. At that point, Lx gave to avoid serious fallout.

So the point that I'm making here is that when things were "even" (no escalation was narratively feasible) the NPCs seemed to have a serious advantage. However, having read Vincent's comments in another Actual Play thread, it seems to me that maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. In this case, I guess it's just my own preconceptions getting in the way.

Still, this does remind me of something I forgot to mention, something that, though I can see the rules allow for it, seems a little.. odd.

As my final raise in the tracking conflict, I declared that Thaddeus was going to put two bullets in the back of Virgil's legs. Lx chose not to escalate, which meant that he couldn't see, even with all four remaining dice. So he gave.. Which meant, narratively, that Virgil was shot in both legs, but by the system, he took no damage whatsoever. Lx said he'd gladly change it around and have him take 4 dice of gun fallout, but I told him nah, that I'd shot to stop him, not to kill him, so the "narrative fallout" was fine with me. I just thought it was a funky application of the system.

Quote from: WolfenRaven was tracking him alone at first. Following tracks, without any sign of the person he's tracking (the stakes were whether or not he found the person he was tracking) it's hard to escalate to anything beyond physical-but-not-fightin'.

Uh... excuse me?  How can that possibly be hard?

Stand there and start cussin' up a blue storm about how you're never going to find this stupid sumbitch.  You've just escalated into Just Talking.

Punch a tree in frustration.  Welcome to fighting.  Need your guns?  SHOOT a tree in frustration.

Quote from: WolfenI tried to suggest a flimsy means to escalate but Lx said it was too weak, and I had to agree.

Where in the rules does it give the GM any authority to decide whether or not a player can escalate?  That's... that's a downright strange way to play things, at least from my point of view.  But I don't know the rules as well as I ought to, so maybe you've got the right of it.

Well, I can answer one or two questions, but I'm pretty confused.

When you Give, you don't have to Take the Blow. Like, you say "I shoot him in the legs." I say "I give! He throws himself to one side, you don't hit him, but he's down." I get to decide when I give whether you hit him or not. What I don't get to decide is whether you get the stakes or not - I Gave, so you get them. In this case, "you find him."

But now, you shot him as a Raise when what's at stake is do you find him? How? Had you found him already? I think there's something weird going on there.

Tony, cussin' and shooting the trees only count as escalation if your opponent - the guy getting away - can't ignore them. That's the rule for Raises: do something your opponent can't ignore.

-Vincent

Hm. I think it may be a part of our social contract then. GM is still the final arbiter of what's allowable, with group discussion when there's a disagreement. I suppose this is something we're definitely going to have to discuss.

By that same token, would you say that the beartrap laid by Virgil would count as an escalation to fightin'?

And the following is in response to Vincent's comments here

Quote from: lumpleyHey, I've been thinking hard about Lance's problem with the Dogs being consistently outclassed by the NPCs, dicewise, here. Do you have any insights? Even just data would be helpful, probably: how often did the Dogs lose a conflict? How often were they forced to escalate?

The more I read, and the more I think about it Vincent, I'm beginning to see that it's not really an issue.

I believe we had... 8 conflicts.

-Malachi -vs- Aunt: Malachi wins out barely, though Lx could have won in dice, because he got a good line in, takes temporary fallout.
-Thaddeus -vs- Sabryna: Thaddeus wins
-Raven -vs- Ebenezer: Raven loses, takes temporary fallout
-Malachi -vs- The mutant's death: Malachi wins, bringing in a mess of traits and doing some actual supernatural healing.
-Raven -vs- Job Crane(Virgil): Raven loses, takes permanent fallout
-Raven and Thaddeus -vs- Virgil: Thaddeus and Raven win, both taking permanent fallout
-Raven, Thaddeus, Malachi and Virgil, free-for-all: We all win, and it's a kickass conflict. I don't believe anyone takes fallout
-Raven -vs- the congregation: Raven wins handily, because it's a generic conflict.

I think what it's really coming down to is a combination of dice luck, and the fact that Lx has a strong drive to win, and besides myself, the players are less forceful. He's willing to push it further than they are, and to pull out all the stops. Every win for the players had me pushing it, either by kibitzing or participating. It's a group dynamic thing, rather than a mechanical issue with the game. I think Tony's observation above might have something to do with it as well.. Escalation is always possible, by the rule of "Say yes or roll the dice".

Vincent,

Yes, as I said, Zach made a statement which wasn't technically allowed by the terms of the conflict, but Lx let it stand, and responded in kind. This changed the stakes on the fly to "do we catch him" rather than "do we find him".

As for giving and taking the blow.. I guess we were a bit confused. As I understood it, unless you See (block, whatever) then you cannot negate the stated effect. Either way, it was just a bit of confusion on how it was described, but it's something to be mindful of.

Hey Lx! I know you're readin', (or will be when you get off work) chime in already!

Whole lotta cross-posting going on heah..

Quote from: lumpleyTony, cussin' and shooting the trees only count as escalation if your opponent - the guy getting away - can't ignore them. That's the rule for Raises: do something your opponent can't ignore.

Ah, right!  I knew that, but didn't apply it.

But... dang... how do you even do a conflict against an absent opponent (i.e. "tracking him down")?  Is it possible within the system?  How can you Raise in a way that the opponent can't ignore when the opponent doesn't know about what you're doing?

Tony,

Probably if we'd set the stakes to "catch him" from the beginning, we'd have been better off. When it seemed appropriate, either side could have decided we'd caught up with him, and used escalation as normal.

It was a funky conflict, though. Basically what we did that he "couldn't ignore" was to gain on him, and what he did that we couldn't ignore was throw pitfalls in our way. Looking back, I think you're probably right. He could easily ignore that we were gaining on him, because he'd done everything ahead of time, before we'd even begun trying to track him down. If he can ignore whatever we do, then it's not much of a conflict, and should probably be decided narratively.

"I look for tracks, and when I find them, I follow them. When I find where they lead..."

Ha ha! Vincent's getting Trollbabe questions, Vincent's getting ... [repeat in singsong voice until punched by older sibling]

... my take on these matters is that people with a lot of gaming background tend to perform actions which have little or nothing to do with any conflict, then look expectantly at the GM. If the system has nothing to do with resolving non-conflict actions, then the GM is best off not using it (or rather, switching to the system which does resolve or enact such things, which is often tacit).

Conflict, conflict. The character is in a scene, by definition. The question is whether there's a conflict. Is there? Chasing someone, etc? Good. Do something which resolves or intensifies the conflict.

"You're chasing the guy through the desert." "I stop and look for water."

"You're chasing the guy through the desert." "I look for water and other desert survival stuff, 'cause it's going to be a long chase - I want to find him without being ragged out."

See the difference? The in-game actions performed by the characters are the same. But in Sorcerer, Trollbabe, or Dogs, the first one merits no roll of any interest, and the second absolutely does.

Mild cautionary note: groups differ in their lingo about this stuff. In one of my regular groups, all statements are considered as if they're the second kind, unless the person specifically indicates that it's only Color. So they might sound like the first kind, but we all know that there are no such statements in our game, so we go by the logic of the second kind.

Best,
Ron

Quote from: Tony
how do you even do a conflict against an absent opponent (i.e. "tracking him down")?

Don't frame it as "tracking him down".  If you do that you both protect him--from violent conflict--and give yourselves the opportunity to roll-over fallout into the capturing contest--"We finally caught up with him, holed up in a cabin--he didn't have a damned clue we were onto him..."

But there is no reason not to frame it as "do we capture him"--then you can segue between tracking, chases, arguments, gun-fights, all over a series of raises that represent a period of minutes, hours, days, or weeks.  

There is no reason you can't raise and frame to "So we thought we'd lost him up in the hills, and so we went on down to Dogwood, and who'd ya think we saw walking out of the grocers, calm as can be..."

Or for that matter, raise to guns by framing to his kin's farmstead and threatening them with them--it just has to be something he ignores at his peril.

Piers

The stakes all along, as I understood them, were "do we catch up to him."  Yelling at him across a crowded woody landscape isn't exactly "yup, we've caught up to him."  He still can get away at that point, and have the trail get lost, even if he's glimpsed through the trees.  So it was within the bounds of the conflict as I understood it.  And shooting his legs so you catch up to him is also within the bounds of that conflict.

Thus yelling at him, even shooting at him, is all acceptable, since he still could have gotten away.  Yeah, I didn't quite think hrough the whole "Giving doesn't mean Taking the Blow"  in fact, it's the opposite.  But I don't mind Virgil needing a cane now either, even if it wasn't Fallout he took.  The shots allowed me to decide that catching up to him turned int catching him, as Virgil didn't want a follow up conflict for capture.

Yes, Virgil's beartrap might've been an escalation to fightin', though I just treated it as a physical "fallout" injury, in retrospect, Lance is right there.  Raven/Zach got off with less Fallout than he otherwise might have, had I thought that.

He couldn't ignore you gaining on him because he was against the idea of being gained on.  You couln't ignore the pitfalls, 'cause that's the point of the chase.  Nothing funky there, really.

In this case Virgil fucked with the horse's shoe.  But could my See in a "do you find him" conflict have just been "your horse throws a shoe for no reason"?  More generally, do Sees have to invole actions of the opposite party?  Can I See in a talking conflict by saying "as you say that, you spill your drink on yourself, making yourself look ridiculous".  Or does my See have to invole my Talking character?  

How does the GM escalate in a generic conflict?  Or do only PCs have that option in such a case?


Anyway, hopefully Town Two will be better, as will my runnin' of it.  I keep stopping short of sorcery for some reason when I design towns in my head, and I need to work on it.


Flavor things and random comments:

Canton was at the bottom of a mesa, on the top was Fort Reynolds, a Mutant settlement in a former nuclear reactor.  (Mutants are the local variant of mountain folk, such that we used the terms interchangeably.  Also, for future colour, all mutant towns start with "Fort.")

It's Sybrina.  Not Sabryna.  

Raven has no blood.  This makes him hard to tie into towns.  I'm finding ways though.

----------

I gotta get to physcail therapy.  I'll be back with more later.

I think we definitely need to make a point of being more explicit when we frame a conflict in stating exactly what the stakes are, because we were obviously seeing it different ways. I saw it as "Do we find him?" and you, and possibly Zach, saw it as "Do we catch him?" I saw it as an impromptu shift of stakes, whereas it was perfectly in line with what you saw.

And actually, the beartrap didn't cause fallout. He couldn't see the raise, and gave. His fallout came from the pepper that fouled up the dog, as I remember. I pointed out that, if we wanted to interpret it literally, losing the knife didn't make any sense because the fallout came from an earlier stage of the conflict. However, it was agreed that literal interpretation isn't the way it was intended, nor was it the only idea. We ended up talking Zach into losing the dog rather than the knife because it seemed to be an interesting theme.

Still, after Vincent's comments, I'm thinking that the beartrap can't/shouldn't count as escalation, because at that point, there was no way he could have chosen to escalate himself. The idea as I see it is to set up conflicts where you choose to escalate or not, not where you don't have the choice.

And finally, as for the idea of sees and raises having to be explicit action, I'd think so. However, it doesn't necessarily HAVE to be the explicit action of the person involved if, for instance, the demons want to get involved...

...what the hell am I doin'? I'm giving my GM ideas on how to screw with me.. Must be the masochistic side of me.

All personal issues aside though, I really enjoyed the game, and I think DitV has the best chance yet of helping Kory and Zach overcome their self-admitted handicaps.

Oh.. and:

Sabryna, Sybrina.. You just said "sabrina, but with a y" I suspected I got it wrong after seeing the most recent Town, which used the same name, but ah well.

And Raven's lack of kin presents no difficulty at all, in my mind. He's got enough complicated history that you should easily be able to drop a relation of some sort into every town we encounter. I'd think Thaddeus would give you more trouble, over all.

Hey All,

There's a lot of good stuff in here, but this is really important:

Quote from: WolfenI think we definitely need to make a point of being more explicit when we frame a conflict in stating exactly what the stakes are, because we were obviously seeing it different ways. I saw it as "Do we find him?" and you, and possibly Zach, saw it as "Do we catch him?" I saw it as an impromptu shift of stakes, whereas it was perfectly in line with what you saw.

Being incredibly clear on the stakes does a lot of good things. Without that level of understanding the system really will fall apart in bad ways. This is true of all conflict resolution systems. Trollbabe is like a sledgehammer when it comes to dealing with this sort of issue.

Also:

QuoteHow does the GM escalate in a generic conflict? Or do only PCs have that option in such a case?

The way I play it a generic conflict can't escalate in a traditional sense. Sure, maybe there's the random die or two for objects, but the standard ways of doing it aren't available. If it's something that the GM wishes to push enough to escalate it gets an NPC and some dice assigned. See here for my thoughts on the generic conflict. Basically they're a tension builder, but the lynchpins of the game are in characters and the relationships between them.

It sounds to me like the system is working pretty much as expected, and Lance seems to have come to that as well. You guys ran into this conflict that was tricky, and folks have brought up a lot of interesting ways of thinking about it. I think clearing yourselves on stakes declaration will probably help a lot of this.

-Tim

Hello,

I'm confused about one thing. Alexander (A. Cherry, not Tim A.), what in the world is a "generic conflict"?

Best,
Ron