anyway.

The answer seems kinda obvious to me, and it's something I learned from um... you.  So obviously I must really be missing something.

Lemmie put out my solution and you can tell me where I'm missing something.

There's no conflict between the characters because they don't exist.  There can only be conflict between players.  That conflict can be (but does not have to be) represented by characters.  Therefore if there is a conflict then there must be a different player at each end.  Therefore if you own characters on two opposing ends of a conflict then you have choices.  The first choice being to relinquish control of the character that represents the opposing side of your conflict (with the other player).  The second being that you still use the resources of the character that's on the opposing end of the conflict to demonstrate how they fuck up their own end of things.  Meaning that your character serves your goals when they oppose their own fictional goals.

I happen to like the second option there.

To state it another way;  Let's say that you've got control over Abby and Beth, and I've got Charles.  Abbey is on one side of a conflict and Beth and Charles are on the other.  That means that you own characters on each side of the conflict and I have one.  Assuming that I want Charles to win the conflict and you want Abby to win the conflict then it would appear that Beth is the problem.  She really isn't.  In the fiction she supports Charles but in reality she supports Vincent.  And I imagine you narrating Beth's actions/statements as being not just innefective in her goals but maybe stepping all over poor Charles' more eloquent words.

That seems like a solution to me.

Of course, there's the possibility that you're talking about a situation with just Abby and Beth being in conflict.  But you can't be talking about that.  Because that would make you a silly monkey.

Oh!  Or you could make things even simpler and not have character sheets at all.  But then, you knew that because you taught it to me.  Because character sheets are really just player resource sheets.  You could do something like having each character be represented on a single sheet by one or two traits that they could bring into play.  Then maybe do something where you replace the attributes of a single character with the attributes of the group of characters.

But anyway, you knew all that.

"I imagine you narrating Beth's actions/statements as being not just innefective in her goals but maybe stepping all over poor Charles' more eloquent words."

Oh now - that's interesting. Hey, I shoulda thought of that.

It still leaves unsolved the problem of her big pile of dice, but group PC rules can take care of that...

Thinking.

Yeah, I like that too.

But I still want to move away from the big pile of dice belonging to each character, and more to some collective groups of dice.

Like, everyone can use:

Grogs:
Valiant Captain Jean 2d10
Martyn the coward 3d4
The Gate Guards 2d6

Where everyone has access to these dice, but only one person can pull them in in any given conflict.  Like in the Shaab-al-Hiri roach.  But there has to be some reason to avoid doing that.

What about—when you do so, the fallout level changes, from something that affects one person, to something that affects more of the Covenant?

I think my solution would be two levels of resource. I'd have die pools, which represent bits of setting with significance to the situation. In your case, Mirrors, right? (And maybe Touchstones too.) And I'd have traits that give the characters access to those pools. (Loving a specific Mirror would be access to that pool.)

So, the die pools are collectively owned by the players, and the individual access points to them are owned by the characters. Access points might be qualified as:

Removed
Balanced
Close

If you're Removed from a pool, you can only ever pull one die from it; and if a conflict includes multiple characters with access to the pool, you get none. If you're Balanced to a pool, you pull all but one die from it; and if a conflict includes multiple characters with access to a pool, you pull an equal share of what's left after anyone Close to the pool takes their dice. If you're Close to a pool, you can pull everything from it. In a conflict that includes multiple characters who are Close to the pool, work it out with the other players of Close characters how much you pull. You'll divide the dice equally amongst all the Close characters. Balanced characters will split what's left.

Conflict outcomes could either result in fluctuation of the pool, or have impact on a character's quality of access to it.

Paul got to my followup first. That's basically what my comment was getting at in the marginalia but I had a somewhat more specific Dogs hack. So, the big resource pool is made up of all these large player goals, maybe even with catageories, something like:

Vincent's POOL
————————-
Politics: The Magus are blamed for war 3d4
Politics: The covenant betrays it's people 2d8
Love: A marriage is built from the ashes of betrayal 3d6
Religion: No one suspects the inquisition 4d10
...
...
...

They let the player put right out what they want to see happen in the grand scope of the game and they're right there on the sheet. They aren't truths in the SIS yet, but sort of potentials with mechanical weight.

Then your characters are just little cards with stuff like:

Camille
——————-
Down one stage for LOVE
+2d6 for politics

Horatio
——————-
+2d4 for Religion
lose one die for politics

In a conflict with a character on either side you just apply all the required mods and you know what your big resource pool now looks like for that conflict.

Make any sense?

-Tim

Hey, how about this—

each character has one attribute only.

Each time you get into a conflict, you can add a new attribute to the characters involved, if you like.

That way, all of your basic characters could be on one sheet...

yrs—
—Ben

*funny* I had to think a sec to parse what Ben meant by 'sheet'. The AM homebrew has so many characters that are sheetless, or are two lines on the commentary pages.

Up in the fishbowl, MB (but not, I believe, my MB) said this:

Just a question: what type of 'playing quanta' you think this game will have? I'm thinking about something like DitV 'towns': one town=one session, more or less. What about solving the multiple charatcer problem by limiting in some way the choice of characters at the start of the session/quantum?

And I'm thinking that might turn out to be the most satisfying answer.

Anything requiring a break with "my resources as a player are linked to my character" will mean too much redesigning, I think.