The nature of conflict

Now let’s talk about conflicts. There’s a lot to dig into here and I’ll probably break this up into several posts.

Conflicts are a way of resolving disagreement between players about what should occur in the shared fiction. Winning or losing this conflict determines whether, or how, the shared fiction changes.

It’s also a way the game enforces quantitative results that impact the covenant and the magi. If a player wants to affect a trait of the covenant, another player’s mage, or their own mage during play a conflict must be played out. Winning or losing this conflict determines whether the trait change occurs.

Both these types of conflict are played out in the same way.

When a player states an intention that other players disagree with or that causes a quantitative change in traits, a conflict is declared.

The one who initiated the conflict is termed the “protagonist”. The one who responds by challenging the protagonist’s action is termed the “antagonist”. These terms apply for the length of the conflict regardless of whether they accurately reflect who is a hero or villian in the shared fiction.

The protagonist specifies a conflict type that corresponds to one of the four traits (Vigor, Craft, Influence, or Insight). The antagonist then responds by specifying a second conflict type in the same fashion – either the same trait or a different one.

These conflict types will grant rank bonuses to cards of the suit matching the trait and will color all the following narration of the conflict.

If the conflict type is Vigor – Influence, the conflict could be understood to be a shouting match of insults, where the eruption of physical violence is constant threat. Any narration should incorporate elements of physicality, violence, threat, or persuasion in some meaningful way. In addition, all clubs (Vigor suit) and all hearts (Influence suit) played during the conflict gain +2 to their rank (e.g. play a four of hearts and it counts as a 6 of hearts).

A Vigor – Vigor conflict could be described as a race, or a wrestling match, or a sword fight. Any narration should incorporate elements of physicality or violence in a strong and obvious way. In addition, all clubs (Vigor suit doubled) played during the conflict gain a +4 bonus to their rank (e.g. play a 9 of clubs and it counts as a 13 of clubs; equivalent to a King of clubs).

Protagonists and antagonists will likely choose the conflict type based on the predominance of cards of a given suit in their hand. If you have a lot of diamonds (Craft suit), the rank bonus you gain means it’s worth declaring a Craft conflict type.

Once the conflict type is determined, the protagonist now states the win and loss condition for the conflict – essentially what consequences occur when the conflict is resolved one way or another. Both conditions should be short (one or two sentences) and must answer the question of “why”. The conditions must state clearly and definitively the intent behind any consequence (e.g. “If I win, I kill the noble” is insufficient if what your intend is “If I win, I kill the noble so that I can marry his daughter unopposed”). The means, or “how”, by which your intent is achieved can be defined or left vague, to permit more freedom of narration during the conflict (e.g. “If I win, I can marry the noble’s daughter unopposed” is fine). In addition, a win condition must actually be beneficial to the protagonist (or his interests) and a loss condition must actually be harmful to the protagonist (or his interests). Finally, the conditions must pertain in some fashion to the fictional conflict at hand. They shouldn’t be completely arbitrary or unrelated.

Conditions considered invalid (they don’t meet these standards) should be vetoed by the group and revised by the player who stated them. Conditions where the intent is unclear should be clarified before being accepted.

Now the antagonist has the option of either (a) accepting the conditions as stated or (b) revising one of the conditions (either win or loss) in any fashion desired, so long as they still adhere to the guidelines for conditions. If the antagonist modifies one of the conditions, the protagonist now gets the same options – he may modify one of the conditions (the one the antagonist modified or the other one) or accept them as stated. This process continues, alternating the protagonist and antagonist, until one of them accepts the conditions as stated.

When the conditions are accepted, the person who accepts them gets to states the number of tricks that will be played to determine who wins the conflict.

Once all these steps are performed, the conflict is played out using cards from the players’ hands. Since this post is getting long, I’ll discuss this further in the next post.

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