I was going to write a post explaining the mindset that I had while I was creating the conflict system for Gamecraft 2.0, but I thought it might be more to the point if I just post a snippet of the text, itself. So, here you go, your first look at a portion of Gamecraft 2.0.
Attacking and Defending
Any skill can be used to attack or defend, depending on the situation. For example, in a heated social situation it wouldn't take much of a stretch to use Influence as an attack, or Awareness as a defense. Similarly, in a combat situation you could easily use Melee as an attack, and defend with Athletics. In any given situation, your attack and defense skills are all based on what you can justify.
When one character attacks another, she first declares her attack skill; this is the skill she is using in order to inflict damage or a penalty (more on that later). The defender then chooses his defense skill, with which he opposes the aggressor's attack roll. Then, both parties spend tokens and roll (generally as a basic action), adding all relevant bonuses or penalties.
The defender's defense skill can be virtually any skill, provided he can justify its use. Athletics is easy, as is Melee if you want to parry; however, you could make a good argument of Awareness in combat, as well, or Influence or Subterfuge in a social situation. In any case, actively defending against an attack requires you to spend at least 1 Finesse token and a basic action. You can defend against subsequent attacks without spending any more Finesse, but you have to make your defense roll with a penalty die for each subsequent attack after the first. You can, of course, counter these penalty dice with bonus dice by spending more Finesse on defense. Note that, if you don't spend any tokens on defense, your roll is effectively a chance roll as a reflexive action. If the defender wins the roll, the attack is averted to no effect; the sword is parried, or the verbal barb is countered.
If the aggressor wins the roll, she may either inflict damage or inflict a penalty. If she inflicts damage, she inflicts damage (either hard or soft, depending on the situation) equal to her degree of success. Using a weapon can increase this number with a good roll. If, on the other hand, she chooses to inflict a penalty, she may inflict a penalty die to one skill of her choice, plus an additional penalty die for every 2 marks in her degree of success. These penalty dice need not be applied to the same skill, but each skill loses one penalty die per round.
Damage
If a player receives damage from an attack, it gets applied to his skills; which skills it gets applied to is up to that player. A player can distribute received damage amongst his skills in any way he sees fit . . . provided he can justify it to the GM. For example, if the player receives 6 points of damage from an opponent's gun shot, he could easily justify giving 3 points to Athletics and 3 to Melee, as a bullet wound tends to make it harder to move around and swing a sword. However, it might be a fair bit harder to justify taking it to Subterfuge or Academia, though by no means impossible. The bottom line is, the GM can override a player's damage choices if he thinks they don't make sense.
Now, all that is very interesting, but what does damage actually do? Well, the first thing it does is simple: each point of damage translates into a penalty die for the skill it's applied to. That means if you've got Athletics 6 and that skill has taken 5 points of damage, you're going to be rolling 5 penalty dice on any Athletics rolls. Furthermore, if your damage to a given skill exceeds your ranks in that skill, that skill is considered zeroed out. A zeroed out skill can still be used, but you'll have penalty dice equal to your ranks. If a skill goes into negatives, any overflow damage is applied to your token pools. Each point of damage lowers both your current and total tokens in that pool by one. If, at any point in time, your token pools are all empty, you're considered disabled and are out of the fight.
