"Cheese it!" or Changing Conflict Types

Don’t sell yourself short. You understand it perfectly.

I disagree, I don’t think it implies that at all. “Dragon attacking” is not a conflict, it’s a description of what is happening to the adventurers. “A dragon flies overhead and descends with teeth and claws bared, what do you do?” The conflict hasn’t happened yet, but the dragon is definitely attacking. If they say they hold their ground you tell them “Seeing the bulk of the dragon descending on you, you realize that your feeble weapons have no hope of piercing it’s thick scales.” If they insist, then feel free to kill them. If they decide to flee, then that is the point where the conflict starts, and it’s a flee conflict.

I think Thor hit most of these points, I just wanted to clarify how you were reading that passage to make sure that the points being made make sense.

True, but that never applies the other way around, because PCs can’t be in Conflicts that they can’t… be in. As such, the example in the text with the dragon is misleading and confusing, because the Might 3 PCs can’t actually be in an asymmetric Conflict with a Might 6 dragon.

The question was really one of which abilities/skills were used, and if the PCs we eligible of Death straight off as consequence of failure.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Here’s what the text says: “A dragon (Might 6) can kill adventurers, but the adventurers (Might 3) cannot kill it. In cases like these, the targeted party can only accomplish what is reasonable according to their relative might. Thus adventurers may only flee from an attacking dragon–since they cannot kill, drive off or capture it.

In other words, while the dragon may have the Might to kill adventurers, the adventurers can only engage it in a flee conflict. The dragon doesn’t get to choose they type of conflict.

If conflicts were symmetric, that would mean that the outcome is always dictated by the players: if they run, the GM captures. If they drive off, the GM flees or drives them off in turn. etc. etc. But that’s not the case.

If the PCs run, the GM could capture. But he could also trap them some place. Or drive them into some other force. Or injure them. Or, if they’re already injured, kill them.

Ah. Asymmetric Conflict Goals. I get it.

I still think the example was tricky, though. It seems that paragraph isn’t really about what players can or can’t do to a dragon (that’s an Order of Might issue), but about what a dragon can do to the PCs if it wins any Conflict. It probably could have benefited from what you said here. “If the PCs run, the GM could capture. But he could also trap them some place. Or drive them into some other force. Or injure them. Or, if they’re already injured, kill them.

EDIT: Sorry. Not trying to be critical. Just exploring why I misunderstood to be sure that I understand.

But that is true normally if the PCs flee, isn’t it?

At this point my understanding is the that when the PCs are the lower Might that the Conflicts cannot have asymmetry, because the PCs/players are forbidden from initiating a conflict of those types.

EDIT: Which is why I found the example used in that section confusing given that from the title + first sentence it seemed to be about asymmetric goals that could happen.

As Ludanto said it’s about the Goals of the conflict not the Might. It’s asymmetrical because the players don’t determine an outcome on a failure, the GM does. Just because they picked flee as the conflict doesn’t mean that the result of the failure has to be that they are capture. If their enemy had no interest in capturing them, maybe it just drove them off, or maybe there is another twist the GM has in mind, or maybe the GM would prefer to have the PCs get away but with conditions. That sort of thing.

Then what is the point of this first sentence in the section???

“If your order of might is different than your opponent’s, this may cause asymmetry in your conflict goals.”

Just because they picked flee as the conflict doesn’t mean that the result of the failure has to be that they are capture. If their enemy had no interest in capturing them, maybe it just drove them off, or maybe there is another twist the GM has in mind, or maybe the GM would prefer to have the PCs get away but with conditions. That sort of thing.

But that is always true.

page 72,
GM Wins

If the GM wins, consult the table below for suggestions. Enterprising GMs should feel free to add to this list. The results are by no means exhaustive.

Another way to say it: The Order of Might limits how the PCs can start a Conflict, and limits the way NPCs can finish a Conflict.

EDIT: To elaborate, when the PCs enter a Conflict, they can approach it any way they like, limited only by common sense and Order of Might. When the NPCs win a Conflict, they can do as they will with you, limited only by common sense and the Order of Might.

(PCs pretty much choose their desired result up front. The NPCs get to choose their result at the end.)

No.

They don’t have free reign if they win the fight. The GM may introduce twists or conditions as with any other test if they win the fight (with the added nastiness of compromises). So the GM still shouldn’t be killing you outright if you aren’t injured and it isn’t a kill conflict, but he can injure you and give you one last desperate chance to not die. “The dragon chases you breathing fire down your backs, you are all now injured and backed against a chasm, staying where you are is certain death, what do you do?”

eta: haha, dwight, “no” isn’t exactly a cogent argument, might want to expand on that a little :wink:

Um, ok. Technically, they can’t kill you by the rules, but I’m pretty sure everything else I’ve said is true.

I was merely aiming for “correct” and stopped when I got there. :wink: EDIT: Plus it seems he understood my objection. Bonus!

I appreciate everyone’s responses though this conversation kind of got away from me. Mainly, I was trying to figure out how to create a scenario in which players can discover a certain strategy or approach doesn’t work, and have to correct their actions. It sounds like I need to be very upfront about whether a certain type of conflict is or is not possible.

The only hypothetical that I’m still not sure about is one in which, say, one person has a magical dagger. They have the capability to defeat the creatures, but in a limited capacity. Do I still tell them upfront? Do I wait for the conflict to tell them? And what if, upon learning that only one of them has the ability to harm the creatures, they want to flee?

It’s probably not that big a deal, and involves just informing them at the outset. I do wish a little bit, though, that there were a way for characters to find themselves in over their heads and then have to correct course and get out of it.

Thor did add this.

If your players have the Might to engage a monster, but face some other restriction–it can only be killed by fire or a magic weapon or silver–that’s a different story. They can defeat it, they just can’t kill it. A spell might allow the players to enter a Kill conflict with a troll, but unless they set fire to it afterward, it will be back the next night. If they defeat a werewolf in a Kill conflict but don’t have silver weapons (or magic weapons or something), they drive it off when they win. Better find a way to kill it before it returns.

The only hypothetical that I’m still not sure about is one in which, say, one person has a magical dagger. They have the capability to defeat the creatures, but in a limited capacity. Do I still tell them upfront? Do I wait for the conflict to tell them? And what if, upon learning that only one of them has the ability to harm the creatures, they want to flee?

Are you talking about Attack only works when scripted by the player wielding the knife? Because I don’t think Conflict/Disposition is built at that level, it is abstracted above that. So even if the rolling player’s PC is not wielding the knife but the knife is in the hands of a Helping PC (or maybe just in the Conflict at all?), it can be the thing doing the actual damage. Color as needed.

Now if that PC wielding it gets knocked out, things be different! The have to Defend the character back in, I think. Or, if you are willing to dive into jury-rig rules, Maneuver the knife into another PCs hand? shrug

Maybe you’d have even more luck with help sussing this out if you got more specific, yet?

It’s probably not that big a deal, and involves just informing them at the outset. I do wish a little bit, though, that there were a way for characters to find themselves in over their heads and then have to correct course and get out of it.

Well it sounds like a situation where a quick triggering of a Test (Lore Master) makes sense, if you want to maintain the fiction and keep the knowledge sharing “in character”. That way they can always get just enough information for the game to flow but failure can keep some mystery in place?

Not that I know anything, but since the GM decides when a conflict is a Conflict, you can just let things play out and not declare a Conflict until it’s valid. If the PCs try to Riddle some mindless thing that can’t be Riddled, just describe what happens and ask the players what they do now. If they try to kill a monster that they can’t have a Kill conflict with, describe how their actions fail due to Might, and ask what they do now.

Might-increases in the game seem to apply to the whole team, even if they’re affecting only one character. See “Evocation of the Lords of Battle”, p. 54.

If, however, you really have it so that only the one character can participate in the conflict, in theory, the other characters could still help him, but then the Conflict structure gets weird, so it might be best to just let everybody participate.

If you do want the PCs to get in a bit over their heads, you could always turn that initial “We kill it!” into a straight Fighter or maybe Health test to avoid being Injured (Exhausted for helpers) as the monster hands them their backsides. Then perhaps they’ll consider trying to Drive it Off or perhaps just Fleeing.

The “single weapon increases Might” can be fluffed a variety of ways. Including “it breaks their magical protection!” The basic idea, though, is that it’s a level of detail the game doesn’t need to go into.

I missed Thor’s post! I think my problem is mostly solved.

Okay, Bret (the OP) is satisfied. Let’s let this thread settle down to nice retirement in the ol’ database.