Conflicts

Conflicts and opposed situation resolved by playing one or more Hands. Each Hand determines the outcome of one Action attempted by all participating Actors. Conflicts are used instead of Automatic Actions, when one Actor attempts to do something that is opposed by another Actor. A Conflict ends when the fiction says the objective is resolved, one side withdraws, or elimination occurs.

• Stakes
  • A value between 1–5 representing how dangerous or consequential the situation is.
  • Stakes set the ante amount, bonuses and damage.
  • Announced by the GM at the start of the Conflict.
• Hand
  • One complete card playing resolution cycle inside a Conflict
    • (Engagement → Commit → Reveal → Resolve → Outcome → Update State).
• Ante
  • A bid played on an Aspect card.
  • Amount that must be bid set by Stakes.
• Bid
  • A Bid represents exertion, focus, leverage, or commitment.
  • The number of Chips (Attribute Tokens) an Actor commits to an Action card
  • Is capped by the Actor’s Trine Score (TS) for the Aspect that the Attribute bid belongs to.
  • Bid tokens (Chips) are placed on top of a card played when committed. Returned to the Actor's chip stacks after a Showdown.
  • Refreshes at the end of a Hand (unless reduced by Damage).
• Wildcards
  • Special heroic tokens of PC Actors.
  • A Wildcard adds +1 to any Attribute bid when calculating a Showdown total.
  • Wildcards refresh once per Conflict.
  • An Actor may spend at most 1 Wildcard per Hand
  • Do not count against the Trine Score cap.
• Damage
  • The removal of Attribute Tokens from an Actor’s Chips.
  • Damage represents injury, depletion, loss of capability, or structural harm.
  • Damage reduces AV and may render Attributes unusable.
• Elimination
  • Removal from a Conflict due to inability or unwillingness to continue (most commonly from being unable to ante, or all Attributes in one Aspect reduced to 0).
  • Elimination represents retreat, surrender, exhaustion, loss of leverage, panic, or disengagement.
  • Elimination is not automatically death and is resolved according to the fiction.

Stakes is a single scaling number for an entire Conflict (not per Hand, not per Actor).
It represents the “table stakes” of the Conflict: when you sit down with dangerous opponents, everyone brings their best game.

Stakes Formula:
Stakes = (Highest Actor Rank) / 5 (1 minimum)

The GM computes Stakes secretly from statblocks (NPC Rank stays hidden) and announces only the Stakes level.

• 1 — “Low Stakes”
• 2 — “Hot”
• 3 — “High Stakes”
• 4 — “Deadly”
• 5 — “Mythic”

Each Hand follows the steps listed below in order. Extensions, if any are used, must plug in to one of these named steps. These steps are called the Contract:

• Engagement → Who is in the Conflict, what are the Stakes.
• Commit Aspect → Ante, Aspect choice, intent, and target.
  • Ante → Bid Stakes amount of Chips into the Pot from Aspect you intend to play.
  • Aspect → Play one Aspect card encompassing the Attribute that was Anted.
  • Intent → State what your Actor intends to do (truth or bluff that can be justified)
  • Target → Name the target of your Actor's Action (Person, Place, or Thing)
  • Reveal TA → Show Aspect cards & Ante tokens that were played.
  • Resolve TD → Determine Trine Dominance wins pairwise between Actors, award Pot tokens.
• Commit Action → Play Action (Attribute) Card, bid Chips, Justify.
  • Play Action Card → Commit an Action Card.
  • Bid → Place Attribute Chips on Action Card.
  • Reveal AT → Show Attribute cards & Bid tokens that were played.
  • Justify Action → State a brief reason why your Action matched your intent (if you bluffed).
  • Resolve AD → Determine Attribute Dominance winners & Compute margins.
• Outcome → Determine who went first, apply Damage, check for Elimination, adjust Chips stacks.
  • Action Priority → Determine who goes first between Actor–>Target, apply damage unopposed
  • Margin → Calculate Showdown Totals between opponents
  • Apply Damage → Loser of Showdown applies Margin as damage to Attributes
  • Token Refresh → Return tokens bid in Step 3 to Actor chip stacks.
  • Elimination Check → Remove any Actors from the Conflict who have all three Attributes of an Aspect reduced to 0.
  • End Conflict / Next Hand → Proceed to Step 1 of the next Hand, unless the fiction has determined that the Conflict has been resolved.

No Extension may introduce special-case flowcharts that bypass the Contract. They must modify calculations at a named step.

Each Hand follows these four steps, and their sub-steps, in order.

GM:

• Confirm participants, who is interacting in the Hand?
• Announce Stakes for this Conflict.
• Check for Resolution: conflicts should end as soon as the fiction says the goal is resolved (escape achieved, objective taken, surrender offered, retreat succeeds, etc.). Do not grind to total elimination unless the fiction demands it.

Under the Gun (UTG) Assignment

UTG determines the first acting player during the Commit Aspect and Commit Action phases. This rule preserves narrative initiative without imposing a persistent mechanical disadvantage on one Actor.

• On the first Hand of a Conflict, UTG is the Actor who initiated the Action that triggered the Conflict.
• On every subsequent Hand, UTG is the Actor who achieved the most Dominance wins in the prior Hand (Aspect Dominance + Attribute Dominance).
• If there is a tie for most wins, UTG remains with whoever was UTG in the preceding Hand.

Beginning with the UTG Actor, each involved Actor:

1. Pays the required ante determined by Stakes from one Attribute of their choosing into the Pot. The Attribute chosen must belong to the Aspect that will be played.
   • The ante token is placed face down into the pot.
   • Any Actor who cannot (or will not) ante is removed from the Conflict by Elimination (they retreat, surrender, fall back, lose their nerve, run out of leverage, etc.).
2. Chooses and plays one face down Trine Aspect (TA) Card (Mind / Body / Spirit).
3. States their intent (role-playing).
4. States the target(s) of their Action (for purposes of determining Outcome & Damage)
5. Everyone Reveals what Trine Aspect Card they played.
6. Everyone Resolves Trine Dominance (TD) pairwise for each Actor and the Target of their Action, and counts each Actor’s TD Wins.

Pay the Ante Pot (random, no picking):

• Keep the Ante Pot tokens face down.
• Pay the pot token-by-token to the Actor(s) with the most TD Wins first:
  • If tied, pay round-robin in table order among the tied leaders until the pot is empty.
• After payout is complete, the received ante tokens may be turned face up and added to the receiving Actor’s appropriate Attribute chip stacks.
• Any unpaid tokens become a Jackpot and carry over into the next Hand’s Ante Pot.
• Tokens awarded add to an Actor’s AV stacks for the remainder of the Conflict (or until removed by Damage).

Beginning with the UTG Actor, each involved Actor:

1. Chooses and plays one face down Action Card (it lists the Attribute that must be Bid).
   • The Action Card must list an Attribute from the TA played in Step 2.
   • The Action must plausibly reflect their Statement of Intent from Step 2, after a post-reveal justification is made.
2. Chooses how many Attribute tokens to commit as their Bid, and places those tokens on top of their cards.
   • Bid Cap: Your Bid may not exceed your current TS for the TA you played this Hand.
   • You also cannot bid more tokens than you physically have available in that required Attribute’s stack.
   • Bid tokens are normally played face down to bluff, but may be played face up to “chip bully.”
   • Bid tokens are removed from your chips stack when committed, and do not refresh until the end of the Hand (see Step 6).
   • (Optional) Play one Wildcard Token that adds +1 to the showdown total (does not count against the Bid cap).
3. Everyone Reveals what Action Card they played and what Attribute Tokens were bid.
4. After cards are revealed, each player may role-play one brief “justification line” to align the revealed Action with their Statement of Intent during Commit Aspect (see Table Culture Rules / Bluff Space Rule below).
5. Resolve Attribute Dominance (AD) pairwise between each Actor and their Target(s) and calculate wins.
   • Check for a Sweep against each opponent (an Actor wins both TD and AD against that same opponent).

Everyone at the table follows the steps below to resolve the outcome of the Hand.

1. Action Priority – Actions are resolved in ascending order of Bid size (lowest bid first).
   • The lower bidder’s Action resolves first (without considering Dominance bonuses).
   • The lower bidder’s damage (if any) applies unopposed — the opponent’s bid is not subtracted for this initial damage. Dominance bonuses apply to damage.
   • The higher bidder then resolves normally, calculating Margin using: (Bid + bonuses) − (opponent’s Bid + bonuses).
2. For each opponent pair (Actor–>Target) calculate Margin:
   • Margin = (Winner Showdown Total) - (Loser Showdown Total)
   • Showdown Total = Bid + (Wildcard, if used) + (Stakes if TD win) + (Stakes if AD win) + (Sweep bonus, if applicable)
   • Higher Showdown Total wins and the Margin between Showdown Totals is Damage vs. the loser.
   • Loser Applies Damage to Attributes. Attacker Aspect determines Damaged Aspect (Mind damages Mind, Body damages Body, Spirit damages Spirit). Damaged Actor determines which Attribute(s) to spread damage among within the damaged Aspect. AVs cannot go below 0.
3. Tokens bid in Step 3 that were not removed as Damage are returned to the Actor's chip stacks.
4. Remove any Actors from the Conflict if all three Attributes in any one Aspect are 0.
5. Continue to the next Hand, or end the Conflict immediately if the fiction says the objective is resolved (escape, surrender, withdrawal accepted, goal achieved, etc.), or if only one side remains willing/able to continue.

• Roleplay-first, double-blind preserved: before reveals, no one (including GM) may interrogate “how” to narrow a player’s hidden choice.
• Spoken narration before reveals is non-binding “table talk.”
• After reveals, the acting player may add a brief justification to align narration with revealed TA/Action tag.
• If the tag reasonably fits, it stands (“Bluff Space Rule”).

• TA cards: Mind / Body / Spirit
• 9 Core Action/Attribute cards (one per Attribute) listing broad intent tags
• Attribute Tokens (chips), one per AV
• Wildcard tokens (PCs only by default)
• TD reference card (Mind>Body>Spirit)
• AD reference card (intra-loops + cross-aspect 27 matchup table)