Contrasting combat system outcomes

[thefutilist]

or Ansillia could even drop the Lotus to distract a pursuing PC (this is the interaction between equipping "weapons" and performing actions), so she escapes but gives up the Lotus.

I'll respond to other stuff later but I wanted to mark this out.

Ansillia having to choose between her life/being captured and the Lotus, never occurred to me but seems an obvious thing in hindsight.

 

[pemerton]

I'll respond to other stuff later but I wanted to mark this out.

Ansillia having to choose between her life/being captured and the Lotus, never occurred to me but seems an obvious thing in hindsight.

I thought of it because, in a Trickery conflict in my last Torchbearer session (i) some Gremlins were trying to steal weapons from the PCs, and (ii) one of the PCs equipped a (useless in combat, because) blunt sword as a prop (which gives a bonus on a certain sort of action declaration in a Trickery conflict); and (iii) when the PCs won the conflict, they owed a minor compromise; and so (iv) I suggested that the Gremlins stole the prop sword and took it back to their lair.

The example with the Lotus would be somewhat like that, but in the context of Flee/Pursue rather than Trickery.

The Torchbearer compromise opens up a lot of consequence space. But it also opens up the possibility of a lot of "distance" between the resolution of the conflict, and the final outcome. It doesn't really have "teeth" in Vincent Baker's sense - it relies on the table bringing discipline to make it an extrapolation of the fiction rather than a "writers' room".