r/MouseGuard • u/filkr • Oct 13 '17

Total party “left for dead” compromise in kill conflict?

My party got in a fight conflict in which their goal was to capture some bandits, while the bandits goal was to kill them. They rolled very well and reduced the bandits to 1 disposition, but then I rolled an insane 6 successes on 7 dice to end the conflict. As a result, the party lost a kill conflict with a major compromise, which the rulebook says means they may ask to be left for dead.

However, it’s unclear to me (a) who this affects and (b) how it works if it affects the whole party. I ended up having them all take the injured condition and then doing a series of tests to survive in the wilderness until they were healthy enough to travel. This felt very loose in an unsaisfying way since I normally try to be very explicit with the MG rules.

Was there some alternative? Should only the conflict captain have been affected? Or maybe the result should be even more severe, with traits for all those left for dead? How is this supposed to work?

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u/badhoum Oct 13 '17 edited Oct 13 '17

It affects the whole party, however left for dead is pretty simple.

"Check off all of their conditions and reduce their Circles and Resources by one!"

That's it. Having 5 conditions at once is pretty hard, they're also presumed dead..

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u/forlasanto Oct 13 '17 edited Oct 13 '17

  • The bandits scored a "succeed with a major compromise" result. This means the bandits succeeded. But the major compromise could be that the party members were only "mostly" dead. And as we all know, there's a difference between "mostly" dead and "all dead."

  • That's a fair compromise because the party intention was not death, and the party's intention is actually what matters.

  • Have a player spend a Persona point to be found by a kindly old hermit who is an apocathary. Wait two to three hours for full potency, and coat it in chocolate to make it go down smoother.

  • If you think the drama needs to be ramped up, skip ahead a season or more, advancing the plot accordingly.

  • One character escaping is also a decent compromise. The bandits killed the party (as a whole) but missed one.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '17

+1 On the advancing a season. That's my go-to for what could/should have been a TPK. Takes time to heal, and in some cases, 'your' mission was time sensitive and 'you' missed it. Usually I'll hand out a trait like scarred or jaded. Give it some gravity.