[IaWA] What is the scope of resolution
RPL:
Hi,
I was playing In a Wicked Age the other day and this question came up.
Can a character action in a round of conflict resolve the statement that initiated that same conflict?
The specific case was this: There was a ring that symbolized the right to lead a country (like a king’s crown), and a character was protecting it (the soldier), another was trying to convince the bearer to used it to lead the people (a priestess) and another was trying to destroy it (a shape shifting demon).
So the demon walks into the soldiers camp steals the ring and says “I destroy it”. The soldier and the priestess say “Oh no you don’t evil fiend”, we roll back and conflict ensues.
In the first round the demon gets the high roll (no one can beat it) and the player describes the demon throwing the ring into his maw and chewing it, thereby destroying the ring.
Nothing in the book says he can’t do that and so we assumed he did in fact destroyed the ring in the first round of the conflict.
So the doubt arouse about the scope of a conflict in IaWA, if at any time during a round you got the highest roll do you get to describe the character accomplishing the action that started that conflict and not having to decide it in the negotiation phase (either mid conflict or after the final round) or do you really have to negotiate it between players during rounds or at the end?
Hope I made my question clear (this happened some time ago and I the ideas were a lot fresher back then).
Thanks in advance for you help on this.
All the best,
D.
P.S.: This game is rockin’ solid in our play group, so thanks for it :).
Noclue:
Assuming the demon has an advantage die and hasn't knocked everyone out of the conflict in the first round. The other characters can still save the ring in their narration. The demon narrates the attempt to destroy the ring, but its provisional until the other characters act. They may decide to let the ring melt and just stab the demon, in which case the ring is slag.They may try to throw a knife and knock the ring out of the demons grasp before he eats it. There may be negotiation. It's not much different from saying "I steal the ring" and having the other characters go "Oh no you don't!"
way:
As far as I understand it is not the winner who narrates an outcome, it is the answerer.
Say the demon('s player) wins initiative first round and narrates that he devours the ring. The answerer can narrate the outcome, can deny the devouring or accept it, it's his call, irrespective of the dice results. He has to put the challenger in an advantageous position, generally speaking, but the specific fact whether the ring is eaten or not is up to the answerer.
The third round is a bit different, the answerer must more or less accept the action in full, however there is still some room to be "tactical" there.
However, if the demon was the answerer and he won, it is perfectly legal for him to devour the ring and the others must accept it.
It was quite shocking to me at first, and some players in my groups still don't get it, because it seems that the demon totally "won", and destroyed the game by resolving the story at the very first round of the very first conflict. One has to cope with this and go on from here. The best interest are not the story or not the goals to achieve, the are a starting point for the story. If it is solved in the very first 10 minutes, so be it. Go forward!
I prefer to see best interests as declarations from the players: I would like to see a story that incorporates my character doing this and that. It's not something to measure the story or the characters' achievements against.
Hope this helps,
way
Brand_Robins:
So, IMO, sure the demon can eat the ring. Why not?
But then the next person gets narration can narrate prying the jaws open. Or going to gut the demon to get it out of the belly. Or whatever. And so it can go until the conflict gets resolved.
IAWA doesn't limit resolution to the issue that started the conflict. You can totally resolve the thing that started the fight in the first round. The question is what happens then?
There are a couple of issues here that help make this work.
1) Sometimes its best to keep it about the actual action rather than the meta-action. That is to say, the demon was eating the ring. That's the action. The "and its destroyed, poof, like that" is the meta-action. We know the demon can eat the ring, but is it actually going to be that easy to destroy it? Maybe. But maybe not. After all, other folks have more narration to come. They can't undo the eating maybe, but they might find out the ring wasn't so much destroyed as just now in the demon's gut. (More about this in #3.)
2) Actions that change the playing field can make a game very dynamic. I've had games where a conflict started over someone trying to kiss someone else, the kiss happened in the first narration, and at the end of the series of conflicts that followed there were dead bodies, a burning city, and a decade long chase that ended in someone being mutilated. If you keep the whole conflict about what happens to the ring here and now it can be fun, but it can also strangle the possibilities. I've often found its best to just run with it, let the conflict go where it goes. (More about this in number 3 too.)
3) In combination with 1 and 2, I've found that final, irreversible actions tend to get you spanked. At the point at which you narrate destroying the ring such that others believe you've really done it and don't want to undo or counter the previous narration you also hit the point where the other characters probably have no reason not to kill you dead. Maybe they gut you to search your corpse for the ring. Maybe they just kill you because you destroyed their symbol of rulership then make a new symbol of rulership out of your skull. (Cause really, the ring is less the point than the symbol of leadership, right?)
I've had a lot of first games of IAWA where someone destroys the ring. They're then shocked when it comes time to negotiate consequences and no one is interested. After all, it isn't like you can give the ring back, you destroyed it. So if that's what they really cared about then you've got nothing to give up to keep them from killing the fuck out of you if the dice go bad.
A recent example of this was a stealth challenge, in which one character was trying to sneak past another to kill someone else. In the first or second narration round, the guard just said, "Yea, I totally spot you and start screaming for help." At which point the other player said, "Well shit, now I'm gonna have to kill you dead." Next game we had another stealth test, and the character being snuck past didn't ever spot and track the sneaker in a conclusive way, and so at the end was able to negotiate for a "I didn't see you, you just get past, please don't injure me" ending.
RPL:
Hi everyone,
First of all many thanks to everyone for you input, it’s been quite enlightening ?
Just for clarification, we were aware of the distinction between colouring an action and having that action actual impact on the game.
What we were thinking was that despite all the declarations that a player made during rounds, the actual resolution of the scene would only happen in the end. That meant that the declarations of the player would translate into character-statements, revealing what they were all about.
Something along the lines of:
Round 1
Soldier Player (SP): “I close my fist around the ring and look into the eyes of demon saying ‘You want this? Come and get it.”
Demon Player (DP): “Ok I go get for it.”
*die roll*
DP: “I won the roll! Ok so I punch you in the face, crack your hand and chew the ring.”
Everyone else “Oh my god no he didn’t… “
Round 2
SP: “Give it back.”
DP: “Come and get it hehe, I taunt the soldier showing him that all is last and break his spirit to keep fighting.”
*die roll*
SP: “I push the pain aside, replay in my mind the oath I took to defend my kingdom and throw my fist right through the demons maw, breaking teeth and tearing flesh from my hand a pull the ring back into safety.”
Everyone else “Christ man, that’s grawsome!! (mash between gruesome and awesome, if you’ve played RPGs long enough you know what it means :p).”
But this…
Quote from: way
However, if the demon was the answerer and he won, it is perfectly legal for him to devour the ring and the others must accept it.
… this is very different.
So player declarations aren’t only about pushing colour about what a character does, it can in fact resolve the conflict before it’s formal ending.
I like this because there was another game where I was playing a devil that wanted to expel an evil spirit (another player) from the body of a child. We had about 3 conflicts of this, because I would narrate my actions of pushing the spirit out of the child’s body in every round of the conflict, win said conflict and then in the negotiation phase we would still rather take form-damage rather than exiting the body. That made for a very repetitive conflict and somewhat boring after a while.
Ok, so let me try to formalize this in my head.
Player A declares an action.
Player B says no.
Conflict ensues and you have three rounds to solve it. Go!
The action was the trigger and that trigger can be defused at anytime during said conflict, like the demon destroying the ring in the first round, and then you can either drop the conflict (between rounds) or just keep at it and resolve what comes of it. “You destroyed the ring?... you bastard, I’m summon the High Guard and were going to hunt you until the end of times.”
Alternately you can just start a new conflict for that, but that means you’ll probably get hit with the stick (form damage) in the end negotiation of the first conflict. If you keep it in the same sequence you might just get ahead, so it might be worth the shot.
Am I on the right track here?
All the best,
D.
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