Hi all,
Just discovered and bought SotI – really impressed with the feel and tone of the game, but still working through exactly how moves work, particularly for combat. I’ve roughly hashed out how I think it works, but would appreciate corrections, feedback, house-rules, custom moves or whatever.
Sven (PC) and Bjorn (NPC) are enemies who meet each other by chance . Famously angry and foolhardy, Bjorn attacks Sven.
Sven accepts a physical challenge and rolls +young for a total of 10. He decides that he will win the challenge, and act honourably (he wants the witnesses to see him win the fight lawfully, skilfully and bravely). Sven strikes Bjorn with his sword and kills him. This means that Sven tempts fate (since he didn’t choose not to do so when he accepted the physical challenge). He rolls +wyrd for a total of 6; disaster strikes!
At this point, he might suffer great harm, in which case he rolls +young as usual and picks consequences if he succeeds. If he has armour, it might protect him from great harm, and might break or impede him depending on the result of that roll. Alternatively (maybe it fits the fiction better) the MC might decide that Sven’s heirloom sword breaks when he kills Bjorn, simultaneously depriving him of an incomparable weapon and bring a prophecy of doom to the brink of fruition (a völva told his grandfather that if the sword ever failed in battle, so too would the lineage fail and wither).
If Sven had chosen to win the challenge and to not tempt fate, his win-at-all-costs fighting might lead to someone calling his honour into question.
If Bjorn had a spear, Sven would have had to find a way to get past it in order to strike Bjorn; I’m getting pretty uncertain here, but I suppose that could be tempting fate, accepting a physical challenge or something else. I guess it might be part of the initial accepting a physical challenge roll, in which case the tempting fate failure seems very likely to be Sven getting impaled on Bjorn’s spear.
Part of my uncertainty here is that the fight can potentially become something like 6 rolls at this point, which isn’t specifically prohibited or anything but definitely feels like it runs counter to the mechanics/fiction balance of SotI.
Am I over-thinking it? Have I missed something? And how should PvP fights be handled? It seems like the kind of thing you’d want to be prepared for…
Thanks in advance!
I don’t think you’re overthinking it, just that you need to be ready to do this on the fly. Sagas is a game where one move snowballs into another, such as when you mentioned Sven’s fighting possibly prompting someone to call his honor into question. This is definitely a game where that’s supposed to happen! 🙂 The main goal is to make calls which meet the spirit of the game.
.
I agree with Andy Hauge. 😉
The one thing to keep in mind is that you should take a step back sometimes and not hyper-focus on the same player. The snowball can sometimes get rolling really fast–find ways to drag the other players into it!
That’s a pretty awesome explanation, actually. It makes me wish I were running this game, but group #1 opted for World of Dew instead, and Group #2 is… unlikely to be interested.
Not really sure about PvP, honestly. PvP has always been a weird space in my brain when talking about PbtA games.