6.2 Starting Conflicts

The conflict begins with a description by the GM of where the conflict is set and what adversity the PCs are facing. Use broad strokes here, with lots of room for the players to add their own details.

When a conflict begins, characters might have a lower Action Pool than their maximum and some charge dice stored up from earlier conflicts, but their Strike Pool is always empty (see Ending Conflicts later in this chapter). Every player is responsible for having the appropriate number of dice (or tokens) in their pools on their character sheets.

The GM tells us players what the general area looks like. The caravan is in the middle of the wasteland. There’s barren, rock-hard ground underneath, with the wind blowing sand over it. There are bigger rocks all over the place, some several stories high. There are also some cacti around. The GM then describes how the critters flood out from behind a rock formation as we pass, and then the other demons jump out, and chaos ensues.

I’ve got my character sheet in front of me. This is our first conflict in this game, so I have no leftover dice. I’m stacking up 10 dice in my Action Pool circle, and that’s all I have for now.

Group Competence

One other thing to do when starting conflicts is to set the Group Competence rating at 1. The Group Competence determines how many basic dice each PC gets for their Maneuvers. It goes up throughout the conflict, as described in the Maneuvers section. You can use a specific die on the table to keep track of it, with the rating on the side that's facing up, or you can write it on a sheet somewhere that's visible to the players.