Ah, yes, armed conflict. I will answer any additional questions that anyone has, but let me state a few basic things:<br/><br/>Initiative order is normally determined by Notice score, as most of the PCs have Notice at either 1 or 2 (a sensible approach, given its secondary, but important, role), this will generally mean that you have some intermingling of PC and NPC actions. To prevent waiting times between every single action action, I will instead lump enemies that go before the PCs together, and then lump everyone else (even those who would normally go concurrently with the PCs) afterwards. A single turn will as such have the following organization:<br/><br/>"Fast" NPCs --> PCs --> "Slow" NPCs --> Next turn.<br/><br/>As a small summary, there are generally three sorts of actions that you can take during a conflict, only one of which can be selected and performed per turn:<br/><ul class="bbc_list" style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li>Attack: roll a skill to deal stress to an opponent, with the ultimate goal of taking them out.</li><li>Create Advantage: roll a skill to place an aspect on an opponent, which can later be used for the above</li><li>Overcome: A bit more rarely used, but if a character needs to cross a raging river, climb a tree, or escape a pursuer during combat, it might come into play</li></ul>Lastly, a character can always choose to take no action, which allows her to defend at +2. Defense is reactive only, and can be applied to any of the above when they might inconvenience you. Barring unusual circumstances, only one character can defend against a given action.<br/><br/>A little bit more on attacking: stress is, effectively, free. At the end of each scene, any stress you've accrued is cleared out and your track resets to zero. Consequences, as their name suggests, are significantly more severe. Mild consequences reduce the stress from a hit by two, moderate by 4, severe by 6 and extreme by 8. If treated (an overcome action with a difficulty equal to the stress represented by the consequence: Fair +2 for a mild consequence and so on), the consequence is renamed appropriately (Bloodied turns into Bandaged, for instance) goes away in a single time interval. If not treated, it goes away in two intervals. The time intervals are, respectively:<br/><ul class="bbc_list" style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li>Mild consequence: One scene, so after the next combat or other significant event.</li><li>Moderate consequence: One session, normally a single gaming session. In this case, I'm thinking that it'll last until the next minor milestone.</li><li>Severe consequence: One scenario, or approximately every three sessions. Again, I'll be working off of the minor milestone marker as above.</li><li>Extreme consequence: Hopefully, we won't see many of these, but if we do, it takes a major milestone (the end of a significant plot line) to even rename them. They cannot be treated.</li></ul><br/>Why would you want to suffer any of these long-term problems? Well, it's because being Taken Out is a very bad thing. Against certain foes, it may mean PC death, but I will very explicitly state which ones these are, and there won't be many. Otherwise, it means being knocked unconscious and left, unarmed, in a dangerous locale, being taken prisoner by highly unfriendly enemies, or something equally dangerous and difficult to wriggle out of.<br/><br/>I've mentioned, at least a few times, the Concession mechanic. If you're worried about being Taken Out, contact me either here or via PM, and we can negotiate the terms of the PC's Concession. Doing so gets a Fate Point, plus one Fate Point more for each consequence suffered during the combat. Concession is always advantageous to the individual's opponent, but it does give some recompense for that advantage in the form of roll-boosting power later down the line. Being Taken Out offers nothing to mitigate its negative aspects, in addition to being harsher, narratively speaking.<br/><br/>All of this information and more is covered in the Conflicts section (160-177) of the Fate Core.