Guys/Gals,

I havent played yet (will be running tomorrow for first time!) and I had a quick query that I havnt been able to resolve yet by looking through the books.

What is the effect of a character being in the neutral space on the stance meter? I assume this will happen when a character who is in a conservative stance moves one space at a time over a couple of rounds towards the reckless stance.

The essence of my question would be what side of an action card gets used? Its easy enough to assume that the character will perform checks with just blue stat dice (no red or green stance dice) but some cards have different outcomes depending on the PC's current stance(conservative or reckless) so how do you resolve successes/boons/banes/chaos/comet results etc?

At the moment I would have to go with jumping straight from the 1st green space to the red and vice versa essentially ignoring the neutral space) but I seem to recall somewhere in the rules referring to characters being in a neutral stance......ideas???

You've got it pretty much right.

The player uses all blue dice (ie no stance dice) and can choose which side of an action card they use.

That's partially incorrect, you only use blue dice, but you cannot randomly choose what side of the action cards to use.

There's a dominant stance that is selected during character creation and its determined by which side of the stance meter is longest. In the case of a tie the player chooses at character creation which side is dominant.

Thus there is a fixed stance that a player character falls back on when in neutral stance. The player cannot choose which side of the card to play when he's in neutral stance.

This is explained on p. 31 of the rulebook (emphasis mine)

Whichever stance currently has more spaces
checked off is considered that character’s dominant stance. If there
are an equal number of checks in each stance, the player is free to
choose his character’s dominant stance. The dominant stance is
important during several situations, such as when characters are
performing actions while in the neutral stance.

And that's why I shouldn't answer questions without first checking the rulebook. As soon as I read you post, Lexicanum, it came back to me.

Thanks guys. I also found a repeat of the speal from page 31 on page 51 in a pretty obvious graphic explaining stance meters. Mystery solved!

I took the "frame" that you punch the chits out of and cut out the in-between puzzle frames..giving me a neutral puzzle piece. I also use that as a marker between 0-1 initiative.

jh