I took the bolded parts to mean that regardless of Infection manuever choice, the GM must launch one conflict scene per maneuver, and played accordingly. I thought that was to encourage the GM to always be challenging the players, so you don’t have Infiltration phases where the GMFoNs sit back and quietly use builders all the time.
Of course, I suppose if you take that passage literally, it becomes possible for the GM to get two conflicts, 3 builders, and 3 ‘other’ scenes (color or interstitial). Since the GM can initiate a conflict scene with any character, and FoNs who didn’t initiate conflicts get building scenes, you initiate both conflicts with non-FoNs, leaving the FoNs with a builder each; the word “or” in “the GM also may take one color scene or interstitial per figure of note” seems to indicate that the GM gets 3 scenes (assuming 3 FoNs), and could take 3 color, 2 color & 1 interstitial, 2 interstitial & 1 color, or 3 interstitial.
And that reading is probably counter to BWHQ’s intent. Thoughts?
Literal interpretation is always my favorite. However, at BWHQ, even though my subordinate Lord Pilot can instigate a firefight, we tend to attribute the conflict to one of the GMFONs. So even though my Forged Lord isn’t there, the scene counts as his conflict for the maneuver.
It’s my favorite too (which is yet another reason your games appeal to me). I tend to ascribe conflicts to a FoN if s/he’s backing them somehow. When the mafia head sends his goons to Corner & Stab a PCFoN in the Face, I count that as his conflict even if he’s not personally there. I’d think exceptions would be things like when a PCFoN has a complicated relationship with someone who’s not strongly connected themselves to a GMFoN, and that someone initiates a Duel of Wits, or the like (and the scene we had like that never went to a DoW, so it’s still just past the border of Hypothetical Land and is therefore verboten).
So, are you saying that the “or” operator in “color scene or interstitial” is intentional and indicates the GM only gets two scenes per GMFoN: 1 conflict/builder, and 1 color/interstitial? Because I looked all over these forums for the answer to that question, and what I saw led me to believe that my reading was incorrect. And for the sake of spelling it out explicitly, does that also confirm that the GM has one guaranteed/mandatory conflict per maneuver, even if he or she scripts, say, a Conserve?