So, I've been reading through the FaD published adventure material, and, though I've found at least one thing I didn't like in every adventure FFG has done, with the FaD stuff the main thing I've noticed is that the method of awarding conflict is very poor. There's a pattern where the authors seem to award conflict automatically for things that shouldn't always net conflict (it should depend on why and how it was done, and the character's emotional state at the time) and also that the conflict gain seems awfully disproportionate at times. For instance in the same adventure, a PC automatically gets 7 conflict for killing a combatant [who the PC likely believes is a Pirate that has killed an entire ship's worth of people and will likely kill others] that retreats (not surrenders, retreats--which means is still hostile) yet only gets 5 conflict for willfully and knowingly turning over an innocent to be tortured to death (an evil action any way you look at it).

I was curious what others' thoughts were on this issue.

What module were you reading through?

Conflict is so personal and subjective that it's probably all but impossible to give hard numerical awards in a published adventure. I'd just take them as guidelines.

2 hours ago, LugWrench said:

What module were you reading through?

The examples were from Chronicles of the Gatekeeper, but I've seen similar issues with conflict in the others I've looked at.

1 hour ago, Stan Fresh said:

Conflict is so personal and subjective that it's probably all but impossible to give hard numerical awards in a published adventure. I'd just take them as guidelines.

While I agree conflict is somewhat subjective (and extremely contextual), the way awarding conflict is presented in the adventures does not acknowledge this in the least. That's part of my problem. It's always 'Doing x should earn at least y conflict per PC.' Period. With one notable exception I've found, the adventures don't care what the motivation for the action is, or the emotional state of the character in question (which, when it comes to conflict, should matter as much as the action itself, given Star Wars lore). Granted, sometimes the motivation doesn't matter--intentionally harming innocents is always wrong no matter your intentions, but the situations presented are never so black and white.

I would agree that it would be better if the books treated the conflict recommendations as guidelines, and had a big side-bar at the beginning talking about how to judge circumstances to reduce or eliminate or increase the recommended conflict gain.