[freeroleplay] [Fringe] Conflict System

[Samuel Penn]

Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 18:57 +0000, Samuel Penn wrote: 
>> Is there a point at which no further actions can be taken?
> 
> How do you mean?
> 
>> What if two people with
>> an action on hold keep on wanting to wait?
> 
> Not sure, how do other systems handle this?

Okay, just explaining this particular point.

Imagine you have three characters - Alice, Bob and Eve. Alice and Bob
have teamed up against Eve, but she manages to surprise them both,
pointing a gun at them and telling them to surrender.

It now moves into combat resolution.

For the sake of the example, Alice wins initiative and starts to run
(she is unarmed). Eve goes next. Eve knows that Bob has the option of
going for his gun, or surrendering. If he runs for his gun, Eve wants
to shoot him. If he surrenders, she wants to shoot Alice. She waits to
see what Bob does.

It's now Bob's turn. He wants to make a dash for his gun, but knows if
he does Eve will shoot him - unless she uses her action to shoot Alice.
So he waits to see what Eve does.

We now have a deadlock, with two characters both waiting on the other.
With an initiative count down system, Alice may have gone on step 3,
Eve on step 2, and Bob on step 1. On step 0, the GM asks Eve's player
what she's doing, and she says she's waiting for Bob. Bob's player
says he's waiting for Eve. On step -1, the same. Step -2... etc.

The player will want to know the point at which they know the other
character can't do anything. If initiative keeps on counting down
until everyone is finished, this point never arrives. Several systems
have this problem, and we always seem to run into it.


d20 manages it by always ending the round on 0. If you haven't acted
by then, then tough. Your problem is that failures effectively count
as negative, so there's no zero point. There's several different types
of waiting actions, though it's been a while since I've played and I
don't recall the details (you end up half an initiative step before or
after the event being waited on).

Yags handles it by saying that you can only declare a wait for a
particular event (not a non-event). Eve can say "I'll wait until
Bob moves, and then shoot him". She can't add an "otherwise I'll
shoot Alice" to that, since Bob not moving isn't an event. If Bob
says "I'll move if Eve shoots Alive", then neither actions get
triggered and Eve and Bob lose their actions.




-- 
Be seeing you,
Sam.