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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thefutilist" data-source="post: 9855894" data-attributes="member: 7044566">The first system I used was a 50/50 conflict resolution system. When two characters conflict, roll the dice and see which one wins.As a default the PC is Halden but depending on the system it could be all three of the primary characters. Before the encounter even started I noted a few things. One is that I don’t think I had the circumstances fleshed out enough. Why is Ansillia in the ruined church? Had she been hunted to exhaustion, was she just resting and the party was launching a surprise attack? Was it a surprise? I decided that Ansillia was waiting for the party. She knows she’s being pursued, she doesn’t yet know Halden is a pursuer. So her idea is to confront them to get them to stop.I framed the scene in the church with the party entering, Ansillia sitting where the burn up pulpit used to be and her Ahasi warriors in front of her.How hard I frame in is something I’ve been thinking a lot about. My default is to start outside the church and let the players describe a general approach. One downside to this is that it becomes a tactics game about the approach and stealth and all of that. I’m not necessarily adverse to such things but it makes me appreciate tech like the engagement roll in Blades in the Dark and the Read a sitch roll in Apocalypse World. As it stands I didn’t bother with any kind of approach roll and so just cut to the insideThe first round of play proceeded as follows:Ansillia now knows that Halden is after her and is a bit disappointed that he’d help track her down, presumably for money. She threatens the party and says she doesn’t want to kill them but…Note: With the system we decided that players can’t be affected by social conflict rolls but PC’s can. Whether this exchange would require a roll is interesting. I noted in Sorcerer if this was a threat that was taken at all seriously Ansillia getting a good roll could maybe shut everything down then and there. With a total victory the player could still take a subsequent action as they choose but they’d be at one dice.Anyway the party didn’t respond to the threat and so it came down to combat. I could have potentially split this into several rolls but doing so with a simple system is something I’m going to return to at another point. This roll was going to resolve into either:The Ahasi warriors are now slain by Drenem and Halden or Drenem and Haldem are disarmed, wounded and captured.They ended up captured.Ansillia then took a knife out and was going to slay Drenem. Telling him that he had been warned. Halden plead with her to spare him. We rolled and he failed and so she slit Drenems throat. Had Halden chained up and took him prisoner whilst she figured out what to do with him.At this point we ran through some other scenarios in a more abstract way. Here are a few of them.Halden persuades Ansillia to spare Drenem. She would have tied them up, taken their weapons and continued on her way. Or maybe she would have taken Halden prisoner anyway and left Drenem there. Which I think would have been cooler, this was really down to my inspiration as the GM.If they’d beaten the undead then Ansillia would have made a break for it. That probably would have gone as follows.Halden wins he captures her.Halden loses and she’s getting away but he still has the choice to stop her by putting a crossbow bolt into her. Then another roll would decide whether that’s a success or not.Note: It’s interesting how wounds and damage could either heighten a lot of this stuff or drain it of drama entirely.So much of this system depends on in the moment orchestration but we’d got a few different outcomes.Fail the fight Drenem dead, Fail the fight Drenem alive, Win with Ansillia captured, win with Ansillia fleeing because of a miss, win with Ansillia fleeing because Halden didn’t shoot, Win with Ansillia dead.6 outcomes. Only one hard choice, which is whether Halden shoots or not following a success and then a failure. All six outcomes were very different but I’m fairly happy with how I run basic conflict resolution. Although I do want to scrutinise it later.</blockquote>

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