Ah the game of failing ice cream vans. ;)

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JoE
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Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Hi Rich, I fixed the thread heading typo (and hence Joe's quip now makes no sense). Thanks for playing on Saturday, I kinda felt my delivery was a bit flat, and I reckon I should have just trusted myself and done full prep rather than the halfway house I chose. I'd be interested in your opinion on that.

You're right with regard to conflicts. The key is to remember whoever has the most traits they are willing to bring in should win.

So, if the Director is doing their job well, you should be coming up against people you may not want to use all your traits against (Pull a gun to convince your friend to agree? What does that say about your character?)

Also, what you bring in tangentially can drastically affect the conflict. Because you can add anything that works towards your goal (and as soon as you do, it's true), you can add narrative elements that change the relationship between the antagonists and make the other player want to give.

It's also worth remembering that within the larger scheme, all you want from conflict is to generate fiction that says stuff about your character. Win or lose, what you want is to say, "yup, that resolves this truism".

You mentioned in the pub feeling like the dice don't have enough impact. One mod that has been rumbling through my mind is making two person conflicts work more like multi-person ones. That is, rather than alternating, each round the dice levels decide who goes first.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Did I type ConeVan then?

I'm sure there's a game in there somewhere ;) Maybe I can get Mongoose to publish an OGL Guide To Frozen Confectionery or something.

I think the problems I have with it are something like this: I want the mechanics of a game to determine the winner of a conflict. In Covenant, they don't seem to do that, it's pretty much all down to who can creatively use their traits most effectively.

In the game we played, the stakes were very high; failure for us was not in any way desirable. Therefore (from where I was sitting) all the conflicts seemed to just go on until the GM decided they'd gone on long enough and folded. To me, that's not really all that different from freeform play.

The example with the conflict against "the Wound" was the worst for this. Looking at it from a certain angle, that was pure GM fiat: You made up traits for the wound until you decided it was time to quit, then we won. Not that I have any real problem with GM fiat, but I feel it's something that the system ought to handle so I don't have to.

I think it's just not what I was expecting or what I wanted. But if it works for you, that's cool.

If I was going to create houserules or changes to the system, I'd probably go one step further than what you suggest. That is, rather than alternating bringing traits in, it is the "loser" who can choose to use another Trait or not. So if you have very few traits, but roll well on your first three dice, you might not have to bring any other traits in to win a conflict, while the other character desperately pulls out all the stops to roll better than you have.

Yeah, the wound conflict was a terrible choice on my part. Really shoddy. I should have framed a more suitable / personal conflict (say assassins led by Henri preventing you getting to the hospital). I didn't need the goal enough.

As it happens, that was how conflict worked at one point, you could choose to modify (which is effectively loser always modifying). What I found was that it tended to result in conflicts that were entirely one sided (I keep trying to batter you until I run out of traits, then you swamp me), rather than having as much too-ing and fro-ing.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

That's pretty much what I was thinking, and yeah, I can see the problem with that getting very one sided a fair amount of the time.

I guess it just seems that what you roll isn't that important compared to how good you are at wangling traits.

Also: Consequences don't make you less effective (less likely to win conflicts) but they do make you more likely to gain fallout from a conflict. Also, since you can invoke your own consequences as your turn, having lots of consequences could actually make you more effective, especially early on in a conflict. As in, I roll, pull in my consequences for my first (say) three turns and then smack you down with all my traits.

Hmm, they seem like a pretty mixed bag.

I dunno, I don't like Wushu either.

As in, I roll, pull in my consequences for my first (say) three turns and then smack you down with all my traits.

Yeah, that's intentional though, it maps quite nicely to the fiction the game tries to evoke. Worth also noting that you might not get a chance to pull in all those consequences, as there's a chance I will.

I guess it just seems that what you roll isn't that important compared to how good you are at wangling traits.

The way I think of Covenant conflicts is three things are at stake: who gets their goal, what it costs them (in terms of using traits you don't want to) and how much impact it'll have on the story. What you roll for is the impact, not the success.

Consequences are more about how much your character is put through the wringer by the experience, than making you as a player fail at stuff.

Edited it add: The only real negative impact they can have is when you hit writeout level (which means the GM needs to care about them more than a player, mostly). Multiple consequences make you more likely to get hit by another of level high enough to remove you from the story.

I wonder if some this doesn't come across too well in a pregen scenario, where the character investment isn't there so much. Unless you're invested in the PCs relationship to the antagonist, it all just falls apart.

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Just a couple of observations on my part:

It was the first time that I had come across using consequences yourself. Maybe I hadn't picked up on it in the game text, as my interpretation was that only opponents/antagonists could use them. Personally, I think that's a better way to do things. Gives that frisson of doubt and uncertainty.

I also noticed that I was the only one who gained a bunch of consequneces, consolidated them into story levels, resolved a truism and gained a new edge. Partially this was out of a desire to see the game mechanics in action, partially out of a deisre to see the character evolve through the story. I noticed that nobody else really did this. Thoguhts on why?

Cheers
Malcolm

Contested Ground Studios

I think the general framing on my part was pretty poor. I'd been lulled into a false sense of security by running lots of successful demos, and I wasn't hitting the scene framing hard enough (I was lax with my own scene rules). If the conflicts were worth more to the characters then truisms should be firing off left, right and centre. I think I'll tweak them before I run that scenario again. For me it was a really worthwhile experience, from this point of view as it highlighted the scenarios failings really well.

Possibly also worth noting that the game was also way more authorial than those I usually run. I tend to have more IC chat in the run up to conflicts.

For a while I've been considering adding a section to the website entitled "Options", which is alternate rules that might suit other groups more (like not using arenas, not having modify or bow out). If anybody has any suggestions for this section, I'd love to hear 'em. I'm of the opinion that just cos I like the rules as is, doesn't mean they're perfect for everybody and informed tweaks are a useful addition.

-Matt

Realms Publishing