One of the primary ideas behind Quadrivium is the Tragedy of the Commons. The idea that the actions of a given individual when in competition with others for a shared resource can negatively impact the resource and thus diminish its utility for all users (including the individual themself). Covenant Resources are the shared resource and players are forced to balance the good of the community and their own long-term good against the short-term utility of using the resources to win conflicts.

Council Meetings are one of the places where the “long-term” utility of a Covenant’s resources come into play. These resources can be used to restore a character’s Harm, improve a character’s Traits, support Companions, and more.

Note that in every phase of the sequence except the first, the starting “acting player” is the player who acted last in the prior phase.

The sequence of a Council meeting is this:

1) Covenant Repair

2) Bidding for Resources

3) Pay Support for Companions

3) Mage Actions

4) Decide number of years elapsed

Covenant Repair

Starting with the last player to be the Antagonist and continuing clockwise, each player in turn is given one opportunity to spend Council Votes to restore Harm to Covenant Resources or pass.

Each player can restore Harm on any number of Covenant Resources in one of two ways.

Individually – The player expends 3 Council Votes for each point of Harm they restore on a single Covenant Resource.

Collectively – The player places one or 2 Council Votes on a single Harmed Covenant Resource. One each of other players’ turns, they may add to this collection. Once the amount equals the number of total players that single Covenant Resource is restored. If all players take their turn and there is insufficient Council Votes, the expended votes are discarded and the resource remains Harmed. Note that not every player needs to contribute, so long as the total is equal to the number of players. This is a way of spreading the cost of repair out among all the players, at the risk that the Council Votes are wasted.

Bidding for Resources

A single card is drawn and the suit of the card is used to determine the Covenant Resource that bidding begins with.

Starting with acting player and continuing clockwise, each player may bid any number of Council Votes (up to their maximum) to have first pick of the Covenant Resource under bid or pass. If a player wishes to have first pick they must bid higher than any prior bid (meeting the prior bid is insufficient) or pass. A player who passes may no longer bid on this resource. The bidding continues around clockwise (skipping players who pass) until there is only one bidding player. The winning player must discard Council Votes equal to their bid and may be the first to select from this resource. Note that if no players bid (e.g. all players pass) then the initial acting player for this resource is considered the winner.

Starting with the winning player and continuing clockwise, each player on their turn must do only one of the following:

A) Pass and take nothing. Once a player passes, they are forbidden to take from this resource again during this council meeting. They still receive their turn, but may only pass, declare a Duel, or raise the Ante.

B) Take a single point from this resource, if any remain, or Harm a single point of this resource if none remain (essentially taking past the limit of sustainability).

In addition to the one of the actions above, a player may also choose to do one the following supplementary actions:

A) Declare a blocking Duel (see below) on this resource (only if they passed).

B) Pay one or more Council Votes to raise the Cost of Taking from or Harming this resource. This amount now represents the Cost in Council Votes that any future player must pay to Take from or Harm this resource. Note that using a supplementary action to take resources is also subject to this increased cost. Any future player may choose add to this cost by expending additional Council Votes (not including votes the player expends to pay any existing cost if they take from this resource).

C) Take further resources beyond the first point at a cumulative cost of 1 Council Vote each (e.g. a second point for 1 Council Vote, a third point for an additional 2 Council Votes, etc).

When all players have passed, access to this Resource is closed. Bidding is begun on the next Covenant Resource clockwise in the same fashion. Essences are always bid on last.

Pay Support for Companions

Each mage must now pay support for every Companion they have. Companions require a number of points of Wealth equal to the number of uses they provide (e.g. a Vigor Companion with 3 uses requires 3 Wealth).

If a mage cannot pay the full support for a Companion, they take Harm equal to their unsupported uses (e.g. a Vigor Companion with 3 uses support for 1 Wealth take 2 Harm).

Mage Actions

Once all resources have been bid on and passed, each player may perform one of the following

Duel for Resource

Decide number of years elapsed

Harm can arise from a Conflict (as part of negotiated Conditions) or by player choice to continue to utilize a resource after it has already been exhausted.

Harm can be negotiated like any other outcome from a conflict. Usually Harm should be restricted to 1 point to a single trait, but this is a suggestion and not a hard and fast rule. So long as the outcome it acceptable and the conflict is played, Harm occurs if that condition (win or loss) comes to pass.

Resources by definition have limited use. If a character has an Insight Trait of 3, they may normally only invoke (expend a point of Insight to perform an Insight action) 3 times during the course of play. Expended points of Insight are refreshed after a council meeting (or by certain other actions) and then can be used again.

If a character chooses, once they have used all 3 points of Insight, they may still perform an Insight action by Harming a point of Insight. This Harmed point will not be refreshed, not matter what is done, until the Harm is removed. This applies equally to Covenant Resources, where they continue to be utilized after all normally available points are used up. A character may never Harm a resource which normally has no value (e.g. 0).

During a conflict where a player wishes to perform an action for which they have no remaining unexpended Trait points, there is one other alternative. They may opt to take Harm in the Trait their opponent is using against them (e.g. their opponent plays a Club, so the player opts to take Vigor Harm) in order to get a single free use of the Trait matching the suit of the card they played (e.g. an Influence action for Hearts). Expended points in the affected Trait are Harmed first. If there are no expended points in the affected Trait, the highest Trait point is Harmed and the unexpended point is lost. Note that if the opponent is using the same suit as the player, this amounts to normal Harming of the Trait.

A resource can sustain an amount of Harm equal to its normal value – a Covenant Wealth Resource of 6 can be used 6 times and take 6 additional Harm. If a resource point is Harmed twice (e.g. once all 6 Harm “slots” are used, there is no choice but to harm one of the “slots” a second time) then it is destroyed. A destroyed point permanently reduces the value of that resource and, unlike Harm, this destruction cannot be repaired. However, the resource may be improved as normal during a council meeting, effectively replacing the destroyed point from scratch.

As this post is getting long, I’ll talk about repairing Harm in the post about council meetings.

The only way to generate Council Votes “ex nihilo” is by participating in a Conflict on the side of the Antagonist.

If you are the Antagonist, you receive 1 Council Vote for taking the role. You receive an additional Council Vote per trick you win. Finally, you receive a Council Votes if you win the Conflict as a whole.

Issues: This might encourage much longer Conflicts. We may need to specify a hard cap on Conflict length (max of 4 Tricks)? Or maybe limit Conflict length based on perceived story importance? But Antagonists should want to keep Conflicts to a length they perceive they can win, for the extra Council Vote. So a weak Antagonist probably won’t set a large number of Tricks to win.

Once a Conflict starts and a player begins Aiding one side, they may not Aid the other side of the Conflict. They do not have to Aid anyone on any given Trick, but once they do their decision is set for the rest of the Conflict. I can conceive only a very few stories where it makes sense for a player to Aid both sides during the course of the Conflict, so I don’t think this is a serious handicap and should minimize Aiding just to “whore” oneself for Council Votes.

If you Aid the Antagonist and they win (whether or not your Aid was significant) you receive 1 Council Vote.

When a Protagonist wins, at their option they may give any number of players who Aided them any number of Council Votes they see fit, from the Protagonist’s own collection of Council Votes. An Aiding player or Protagonist cannot strike deals during a Conflict or agree on a payment for Aid. This occurs solely at the Protagonist’s choice after the Conflict is concluded.

As discussed earlier, Council Votes have use during conflicts and during council meetings. The use of Council Votes during conflicts has already been detailed earlier . The use of Council Votes during the council meeting will be discussed soon.

Council Votes are a player currency that act at a meta level of the game. They have no direct role in the shared fiction – the story that is constructed by the player’s play.

In many roleplaying games a single player acts as a moderator or arbiter. This role, commonly know as the Game Master (GM), is responsible for orchestrating challenges or presenting non-player characters for the rest of the players and their characters to react to or interact with.

In Quadrivium, there is no GM. Instead, each of the players has control of a single character (their mage) and the opportunity to oppose the actions of other player’s characters. The reasons to provide opposition include:

(a) you disagree with their intention for how the shared fiction will develop

(b) you think that opposition will enhance the shared fiction (stories without opposition or challenge generally lack interest)

(c) opposition is required by the game rules because a player wants to make a quantitative change to a character or Covenant resource

(d) you want to earn some Council Votes

When you oppose the action of another player’s character, you must choose how this opposition will occur. Sometimes, it will be obvious. A player who states that their character is attacking a dragon should likely be opposed by an Antagonist electing to take the role of the dragon. But a player stating his character learns a secret, without specifying how, is leaving a lot of potential for an Antagonist to define the nature of the conflict. The conflict could be represented specifically by the opposition of a single character (e.g. a battle of wits with a sage who holds the secret). Or it could be represented abstractly by assigning character stats to a journey that must be undertaken or a mountain the must be climbed. Personalizing an abstraction or inanimate object in this way is fully permissible so long as other players agree it makes sense to do so.

Additionally, an Antagonist can always oppose another player’s character with their own mage if they are willing to do so.

Still, the prevalent pattern for roleplaying is that players are cooperating against the GM. How does this change in a game of Quadrivium.

Well, the ideal is that players are still cooperating with each other (e.g. we’re all having fun). Hopefully everyone at the table is interested in collaborating to create a good story (e.g. we’re making a cool story). But in addition to that, the rules should engage each player’s self-interest on a personal level (e.g. I’m doing well) as well as offering the fun of competition.

The balance is potentially delicate and should be self-correcting to a degree. Players who act as antagonists receive Council Votes, but encourage other players to use Covenant Resources to resist them. Council Votes allow players to not only compete for, but restore or improve Covenant Resources (in addition to permitting some actions in Conflicts). Too much opposition makes Harm to the Covenant likely. Repairing Harm to the Covenant absorbs a large portion of the Council Votes generated by opposition, making that opposition less advantageous. Opposition should then lessen to the point where these forces balance to the group’s satisfaction.

Hopefully I can produce a flowchart to better visualize the currency flow of Council Votes and Covenant Resources in the game. Next post I’ll discuss actual numbers with Council Votes.

But, the more power magic you invoke, the greater the chance that you will fail and the greater the consequences if you fail, in the form of Taint points.

Taint points do two things. They have a guaranteed, immediate, and temporary effect on magic ratings. They also have a non-certain, future, and permanent effect on Trick card rank value.

Immediately, the number of Taint points a character receives act as a negative modifier to the magic rating used for the magic contest they were received in. So if a character has a magic rating of 3 and receives 5 Taint points, their magic rating is decreased to -2 immediately.

The delayed effect can arise as part of the Winter Council phase of play. If a character has any Taint points, the owning player draws a number of cards equal to their total Taint points acquired since the last Winter Council. As each card is drawn, it is placed face up in front of the player.

If a face card is not drawn during this process, the cards are discarded and any Taint points the character has are lost. This also means that any negative modifiers to the character’s magic ratings, due to Taint points, are also lost.

If a face card is drawn, the player should stop drawing cards. All Taint points, and negative magic rating modifiers they cause, are lost as described above. However, the character has been Corrupted by magical energies. A character can gain at most a single point of Corruption each Winter Council if they have any Taint.

The suit of the face card drawn indicates which Trait is Corrupted this time (e.g. clubs = Vigor, diamonds = Craft, etc). Each point of Corruption interferes with the mage’s ability to perform effectively using one of their four Traits. This is represented mechanically by a permanent modifier applied to all future Trick cards, of the suit associated with the Corrupted Trait, that a player plays on that character’s behalf. The modifier is -1 rank per point of Corruption in that Trait.

Players are encouraged to describe how the Corruption manifests or interferes to cause this modifier. Examples of this include, but are not limited to:

-Deformation, withering, aging, weakness, or other infirmities of the flesh (e.g. cataracts or lameness) that interfere with Vigor activities.

-Materials and products of craft tarnishing in the mage’s presence (e.g. music sounds harsh, food turns bitter, etc). that interfere with Craft activities.

-Difficulty relating to and understanding others (e.g. megalomania or paranoia) or foul moods and vile smells that interfere with Influence activities.

-Hallucinations, delusions, madness, and other warped beliefs that interfere with Insight activities.

Over time, mages who use magic frequenctly will become Corrupted; which reduces the rank of the Trick cards they play. One way they can raise the rank of the Corrupted Trick cards is by using magic to bolster their rank value. Frequent use of magic will trigger more Corruption. And thus, a vicious cycle.

However, the game as a whole is somewhat abstract about how things occur. I’m fine with that, but it means that the magic system necessarily can’t be as specific (and thus as flavorful) as the source of Quadrivium’s inspiration, Ars Magica. I love Ars Magica’s magic system, but it’s way too arcane (in all senses of the word) for use in Quadrivium.

The way I’ve decided to model magic is very simple. Magic adds a rank bonus to a Trick card, the amount of which varies depending on the strength of the magic used.

A character’s ability with magic is rated individually in each of the four Traits. So a character may be very skilled at Influence magic, but less skilled at Vigor magic. The rating indicates the number of cards the character gets to draw for free during a magic contest – note that these cards do not go into the player’s hand, but are used immediately for the mnagic contest.

If a character has a magic rating or 1 or more in this Trait, they may opt to use a single card from their hand in the place of a single card they would normally draw. If a character has a magic rating of 0 or less in this Trait, they must contribute a card from their hand (they draw no cards for free).

During any trick, the protagonist or antagonist player may declare that they are initiating a magic contest as an action. This interrupts play of the current trick, but can only be done once per player (pro- or antagonist) per trick. The character uses the magic rating of the Trait corresponding to their current Trick card to play out this magic contest.

The player initiating the magic contest must declare the power of the magic they are attempting, from 1 to 10. The power determines two things. First, if the magic is successful, every point of power grants a +2 rank bonus to the character’s Trick card. Second, the power is the number of cards their opponent draws for free against them in the magic contest. If the initiating player’s character has a negative magic rating for this contest, the opponent gains a number of additional card equal to the negative number (e.g. a -2 rating equals 2 additional cards for the opponent in a magic contest).

If the opponent represents an NPC that has magic resistance, for every point of this protection they draw an additional card when opposing a magic contest.

The initiating player’s cards and the opponent’s cards are compared. If the initiating player has at least one card that is higher ranked than all of their opponent’s card, their character wins the magic contest and their current Trick card gains the appropriate rank bonus based on the magic’s power (+2 rank bonus for every point of power).

If the opponent has at least one card that is higher ranked than all of the initiating player’s cards, the character loses the magic contest. In addition, the initiating player’s character gains 1 point of Taint for each of the opponent’s cards that is higher ranked than the initiating player’s single highest card.

If the initiating player is losing the magic contest, they may opt to Claim or Harm Essences from the Covenant to draw additional cards in the contest. For each Essence they Claim or Harm, they draw an additional card to compare against their opponent’s cards as normal.

Aid cards, Traits, Companions, Items, and Assets may not be used for magic contests. Nor may other Covenant Resources. Council Votes may be used during a magic contest to draw new cards or bid on Claiming or Harming Covenant Essences.

Actions are operations that can be invoked by a player by expending player, character, or covenant resources. Actions, depending on the resource involved, may be performed at any time or only during a conflict.

Player resources include Council Votes and cards in hand.

Character resources include Traits (Vigor, Craft, Influence, Insight), Companions, Items, and Assets.

Covenant resources include Servants, Coffers, Relations, Archives, and Essences.

Actions can have one of the following effects (dictated by the type of resource used):

-Modify a resource (or prevent one from being modified).

-Modify the rank of a card (either by a fixed value or by the rank of another card).

-Change the suit of a card.

-Manipulate a player’s hand (e.g. draw new card into hand, take a card from a player’s hand, etc).

There is a large variety of actions that can be taken within those categories.

Covenant Resources of any type permit only on thing during conflicts – immediately drawing a card from the draw deck into your hand. The player Claims a resource of choice from the covenant (or Harms a resource of choice if none of a given type remain to be Claimed). This forces the player to immediately draw a card from the draw deck. The suit of the card drawn is changed for all purposes to match the resource expended (Vigor for Servants, Diamonds for Coffers, Hearts for Relations, Spades for Archives).

Essences are a special case of this. They can only be expended for Magic contests and permit an extra card to be drawn in that case only (the card’s suit is unchanged).

Companions are associated with a single Trait (Vigor, Craft, Influence, Insight). Using a Companion will permit the conversion of a single card of the suit matching the Trait (e.g. Hearts for Influence Companion) to a suit of any other type. Companions may have one or more uses, depending on their power. Companions can be Harmed in order to activate them more times than their power permits.

Items are associated with a single Trait. Using an Item will permit playing one or more cards of the suit matching the Trait, from a players hand, against a card of the same suit played by an opponent in a conflict. The rank of the opponent’s card is reduced by the combined rank of the cards played from the player’s hand. Items may have one or more uses depending on their power. Items can be Harmed in order to activate them more times than their power permits.

Assets are associated with a single Trait and permit a single additional use of the associated Trait (as if the character had spent a Trait point). Assets cannot be Harmed, and a character may never have more than a single Asset associated with each Trait.

The Vigor Trait of a character may be used in conflict if the player plays a club for the trick. By expending a point of Vigor, a player may play any number of clubs from their hand. The combined rank of the cards played from their hand is added to the rank of the original card.

The Craft Trait of a character may be used in conflict if the player plays a diamond for the trick. By expending a point of Craft, a player may take either the winning or losing card from the trick into their hand once the winner of the trick is determined. If both players expend a point of Influence, the first to do so chooses first.

The Influence Trait of a character may be used in a conflict if the player plays a heart for the trick. By expending a point of Influence, a player may play any number of cards from their hand as Aiding cards.

The Insight Trait of a character may be used in a conflict if the player plays a spade for the trick. By expending a point of Insight, a player may take a card at random from their opponent’s hand and put it into their own hand; they then give a card of choice from their own hand back to their opponent. The opponent must receive a card back from the acting player, so if the acting player has no cards in hand the opponent receives their own card back.

A player may expend 2 Council Votes to draw a card from the draw deck (or 1 Council vote if they are the Antagonist). The suit of the card is unchanged.

A player may expend 5 Council Votes to restore 1 use to any character resource (Trait, Companion, Item, or Asset), up to its maximum value. This cannot be used to repair Harm.

A player may expend 10 Council Votes to switch all cards in play for the protagonist and antagonist. This means that the trick card, plus any aiding or other cards, of the protagonist are swapped with the trick card, plus any aiding or other cards, of the antagonist. Even after the cards are swapped, they retain any rank or suit modifiers they received prior to the swap (from conflict type, aiding, Influence or Vigor Trait use, Magic, etc).

If a player A wishes to Claim or Harm a Covenant Resource, player B (e.g. any player not currently involved in a conflict against player A as protagonist or antagonist) may bid Council Votes to prevent them. Player B offers a number of Council Votes (minimum 1) to player A to accept in the place of the Covenant Resource. If Player A wishes to refuse, they must outbid player B by offering player B at least one more Council Vote than they were offered. Player B may refuse by increasing the bid and so on. If at any point player A accepts, they receive player B’s Council Votes and cannot Claim or Harm any Covenant Resource for this trick. If at any point player B accepts, they receive player A’s Council Votes and player A may Claim or Harm a Covenant Resource of their choice. If one of the players is outbid (he cannot offer a raise in response because he has insufficient Council Votes to cover it) he must concede and accept his opponent’s offer.

A player may discard a face card from their hand during a conflict to restore 1 use to any character resource (Trait, Companion, Item, or Asset), up to its maximum value. This cannot be used to repair Harm.

A player may throw a trick to discard and redraw all cards they currently hold. This is accomplished by placing a card face down for the trick as normal. After the opponent has placed their trick card facedown, but before the cards are revealed, the player announcing that they “concede the trick”. The cards are not revealed and the opponent automatically wins the trick. The player discards all cards in their hand and redraws from the draw deck the same number of cards they discarded +1 (for the card they conceded).

If a question ever exists of who should act first in a trick, the protagonist should act before the antagonist.

Each trick is played in the same sequence:

First the protagonist, and then the antagonist, take a card of their choice from their hand and place it face down in front of them. The card which each side selects and places in front of them is designated as their Trick card.

Once both Trick cards are facedown on the table, they are flipped simultaneously to reveal their suit and rank.

The Trick card suit corresponds to the Trait (Vigor, Craft, Influence, or Insight) that the player is relying on to win this trick (and thus a portion of the conflict). This Trait, in complement with the selected conflict types, will be incorporated into the player’s narration for this trick. The suit will also determine what Trait or Resources the player can expend to perform actions to improve his chance of winning.

When the Trick cards are revealed the player with the highest ranked card, regardless of suit, is designated as the current winner (and his opponent is the current loser) of the trick. Jacks count as 11, Queens as 12, Kings as 13, Aces as 14 for purposes of rank. Remember that a Trick card of a suit matching one or both of the conflict types gains a rank bonus. In the case where the rank is tied, suits take precedence in the alphabetical order: club, diamond, heart, spade.

Note that in the many cases, the current winner and loser are temporary designations that may change once aiding or other actions are performed. However, in the case where a Joker is played no aiding or other actions are permitted. The highest Joker (if more than one is played) takes the trick immediately with no recourse. The next trick is played.

In all other cases, where Jokers have not been played, once the Trick cards are revealed players not currently involved in the conflict may now offer aid to either side. Starting with the player to the left of the protagonist and continuing around the table, each player has one opportunity to play a single Aid card.

Aid cards are played face up and perpendicular to the Trick card they are aiding (either the protagonist or antagonist). Aid cards may be of any suit and grant +2 rank to the Trick card. If an Aid card is of the same suit as the Trick card, and it is of a higher rank, the cards switch places (e.g. the Aid card becomes the Trick card, the Trick card becomes the Aid card).

Once each non-involved player has had one chance to play an Aid card, no further aiding is possible.

Applicable rank bonuses from aiding and the conflict type are taken into account and the current winner of the trick (player with the highest ranked card in front of them) is again determined. The current winner of the trick narrates first, followed by the current loser.

The narrator briefly describes their action, with the primary focus being an activity of a type affiliated with the suit of the card they played, but colored by the conflict types. The narration can be of a present event or of a past event that impacts the current action. The narration should primarily deal with actions taken by the narrating player’s character or performed at that character’s direction. Aiding actions may be narrated as well, but are not required to be mentioned.

For example if a player plays a diamond (Craft) card during a conflict of types Influence – Vigor, they might narrate to their opponent the following:

“My character flings a pouch of money violently to the floor, which flies open, scattering silver at your feet. He shouts, ‘Enough of your talk! Perhaps silver will quiet your pratling tongue where reason fails!’”

The main action here is clearly presenting the opponent with a bag of silver, money being associated with Craft. However, the money is obviously a bribe to persuade their opponent, which is an Influence activity. And it is presented in a violent or physical fashion, which is a Vigor activity. In this way the card suit (Craft) is the dominant focus but the conflict types both figure prominently in the narration as well .

The narrator cannot narrate anything which contradicts either of the win or loss conditions. No narration during a trick should invalidate either of these conditions from being a viable outcome.

The currently winning player first describes their action without mentioning its effectiveness on their opponent. A player narrating swinging a sword violently at their foe should not mention the blow landing. A player wooing a maiden should not state that he wins her heart.

The currently losing player than describes their action in response to the currently winning player. They should describe how their action is incompletely or totally ineffective at preventing the winning player’s action from coming to pass.

At this point, if the losing player is unable or unwilling to perform actions to affect the outcome, they lose the trick. The winning player takes all cards involved and sets them next to themselves as indication that they won the trick. If no player has yet won the required number of tricks the next trick is played.

As soon as one player wins a number of tricks, specified before the conflict by the player who accepted the win/loss conditions, then the conflict ends. Alternately, a player may voluntarily state that they “yield” at any time (even if they have more tricks), losing and ending the conflict. The most common reason to do this is because the yielding player has run out of cards or resources to play, or does not wish to expend any more on this conflict.

The winner narrates a brief finale that unifies the preceding narration and explains how it causes the win (or loss) condition to occur. The narrator should adhere to, but not exceed, the conditions agreed to before the conflict was played out. Beyond this limitation, they are free to improve other details that are less significant than the win or loss condition itself.

When a conflict ends, any player who participared in the conflict (protagonist, antagonist, or aiding players) may discard any number of cards remaining in their hand and redraw until they reach their normal hand size. Being involved in a conflict is the only way a player may re-draw up to their hand size for free (e.g. without performing an action by expending a resource).

That’s conflict in its simplest case. But in the next post we’ll take a look at actions.

Assume player A is playing a mage named Argrave.

Argrave wishes to marry the daughter of a local noble. Player A hasn’t stated that this impacts any traits, but the result could make for interesting character development for Argrave.

Player A announces aloud to the table that he intends for Argrave to marry the noble’s daughter, and asks if anyone opposes. By default he assumes the role of the protagonist, since he is initiating.

Now if all the other players are okay with the wedding – fine. There is no conflict. It occurs, player A can narrate a brief vignette of the event, and play can proceed.

But if player B decides that (a) he doesn’t want this to occur so easily, or (b) he wants to earn some council votes by opposing Argrave, he can choose to oppose this outcome.

Player B states that he will oppose the outcome and becomes the antagonist. If multiple players wish to oppose then one with the fewest council votes gets the option. Ties are decided by playing a card from each player’s hand with high card winning.

Because there is opposition, it is a conflict. Player A, the protagonist, now examines his traits and cards and declares the conflict type as being governed by “Influence”.

Player B, the antagonist, does the same and declares the conflict type as also partaking of “Vigor”.

The protagonist (player A) then states his win and loss conditions. Let’s assume that the protagonist, speaking as Argrave, phrases the conditions as follows:

“If I win, I marry the noble’s daughter and receive an enormous dowry payment from her father.”

“If I lose, The noble refuses to give me his daughter’s hand, but we remain friends.”

Now player B (antagonist) rightfully consider that the win condition is either too good or the loss condition is too weak to accept as stated. He can revise one as a means to even up the win-loss proposition. He decided that to reduce the benefit the player desires and states:

“If you win, you marry the noble’s daughter only after beggaring yourself by bribing her father with fine gifts.”

The protagonist doesn’t like this but stubbornly tries to have his way again. In the example group, it’s considered bad form to revert a modified condition exactly, so he revises the win condition slightly:

“If I win, I marry the noble’s daughter and receive a moderate dowry from her father to demonstrate his respect.”

The antagonist tries a different tactic:

“If you lose, you marry the noble’s daughter against his will and he becomes a bitter enemy of you and the daughter who betrayed him.”

By stating this, the antagonist has subtly shifted the basic intent of the conflict. Originally it was over whether Argrave would marry the daughter. Now it’s about what the marriage does to Argrave’s relationship with the noble. This is perfectly legal.

As it happens, the protagonist believes this would make a cool story either way, and accepts the modification. As he was the one who accepted the conditions as stated, he now states that two tricks are required to win the conflict.

Now that the parameters of the conflict have been decided, the two players play it out. I’ll discuss how this is done next time.

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.