Greetings fellow travelers,
let’s say Lieam dies in a battle against a wild animal - maybe an snake. He has earned two checks in the conflict. What happens with these checks? Are they lost to the patrol? I would let the player give them out to other players as he sees fit, the patrol suffered because he earned these traits, letting them fall unused seems unfair to me.
Also, in a con scenario should mice death be on the table?
The player can give them out as he sees fit.
Let the players decide if death is on the table when they choose their conflict goals. As a GM, you never have to choose death stakes.
Thanks for the quick answer Luke
So let’s say they are fighting a Fox (because they will)
How will they put it on the table? The fox decides his own goal and the mice can’t kill him (nature order and stuff) i don’t understand you right now.
They can’t kill him with Fighter, but they can with Science (or Military). If they try to kill him, they put their own lives at risk.
But what if they are fighting an Owl, like in Mission of Mercy? It’s likely the mice will just want to escape or drive it off (and not want to put death on the table) but the only reasonable goal for an owl hunting them in winter is to eat a mouse. So if the owl wins, it gets its intent. How does it get its intent of eating a mouse if death is not on the table?
Right. When the mice fight to kill something, they put the lives of everyone on the team at stake.
The owl is gunning for one mouse. So if the patrol loses, they don’t ALL die. Just that one.
Given this relationship with death in the game, I try to let the players open that door first.
If the owl really wants to kill and eat a Mouse, it has to run a perfect conflict in order to do so. If the mice take off even one of its Disposition, then they have room to haggle over the outcome. Remember that you only get your conflict goal exactly as you want it if you beat the other team without suffering any loss of Disposition on your own side. You can put death on the table whenever you want… safe in the knowledge that unless the mice really screw up, you can give them a chance to escape that death even if they fail, just by being lenient during the haggling after the battle’s over.
“No, the owl didn’t kill and eat Lieam! He’s just injured!”
“Yeah, okay… you manage to get Lieam to safety before the owl eats him.
But he’s badly Injured, and… the owl is really hungry, so it flies off with a leg for a snack. Better find a healer fast…”
I don’t think so. If you win, you get your intent. The loser gets part of their intent as a compromise, or the loser gets some other thing as a compromise. Think of turning the situation around. You wouldn’t rob the players of their intent just because they lost a few points of disposition. The owl does not want to injure a mouse - it has nothing against the mice. It wants a meal. If it wins, it gets a meal. The compromise decides the terms of how it gets the meal and what the mice get in return. Injuring a mouse instead of eating one would be the kind of compromise that happens if the owl loses the conflict. Getting away with a leg is okay for, say, a major compromise in my opinion. A leg is really not much for an owl.