What’s really cool, though, is not that you use dice for stats, but how those dice factor into conflict resolution. First off, you determine what’s “at stake” in a conflict. At the end of the conflict, whoever is left will get to decide what happens to what’s at stake. Then you figure out the specifics of where it’s taking place (anything that might be important like who’s watching, chairs that could be smashed, exits that could be escaped through, et cetera). Then you figure out who’s participating. At this point, everybody participating takes up the relevant dice and throws them all at once. The dice you roll depend on what category the conflict starts out in: Just talking, physical, physical fighting, and gunplay. If a character has a relationship at stake, or has relationship dice representing his opponent in the conflict, he rolls the relevant relationship dice (relationship dice can cover the obvious like brother, uncle, or what have you, as well as less obvious like ‘the town drunk I helped home one time’). That’s it for the initial dice. Dice for traits and things come up when and if they’re used.
So, everybody involved has their dice rolled and out on the table. Whoever’s opening the conflict starts out by picking two dice to use as his first “raise”. You can choose any two of your dice, and as you put them forward, you must describe what action those dice represent. The action is something your opponent can’t ignore, and must fit the scope of the conflict you’re currently at (so if you’re just talking, you can’t describe your action as punching a guy in the face, you have to escalate to physical conflict for that).
Your opponent will then attempt to ‘see’ your raise. He can put forward, one, two, or more dice to see. If he can match your raise with only one die, he has “reversed the blow” and takes no negative effect, and in fact reverses it against you. He gets to keep that die to use when it’s his turn to raise. If he uses two dice to see, he has somehow negated the effect of your action with no negative effect to either of you. If it takes 3 or more dice to see, your opponent “takes the blow”, which means he’s still in the conflict, but he takes a negative effect for your action. After the conflict is resolved, he’ll take a number of fallout dice equal to how many dice he had to see with. The size of the fallout dice increases depending on the type of conflict (each fallout die from just talking is a d4, while fallout dice from shooting are d10s). Finally, if an opponent can’t or won’t see a raise, he can ‘give’, which means he’s out of the conflict, but he doesn’t take any further fallout dice.
Players then take turns raising and seeing. If there are more than two opponents, one player will raise, each other affected by your action will see, then the next player will raise and each other will see, and so on. Now, let’s say you run out of dice to see or raise, but you’re not happy with where the conflict is ending, what do you do? You escalate! This is where you go from, say, just talking to making a break for it, or throwing a punch, or drawing a gun. When you escalate, you look at what stats are appropriate to the new type of conflict and roll those dice. You can only ever roll a stat, trait, or thing once in a conflict, so if you’ve already used one stat for a lesser type of conflict, you don’t reroll it when you escalate. Likewise, once you’ve introduced a trait or item, you don’t get to roll it again no matter how many times you use that trait or thing. Eventually, somebody gives by choice or by being out of things they can roll, and whoever is left in the conflict decides what happens with what’s at stake.
After the conflict, those fallout dice mentioned get rolled, and depending on what’s rolled, you get experience, short term effects, long term effects, minor injuries, serious injuries, or you’re dying. Note that due to the size of dice associated with different types of conflict, you can’t get injured from a conflict that never escalates past ‘just talking’ and you can’t end up ‘dying’ unless guns come into the picture (a bit of dramatic license here, since obviously stabbing or severe beating could kill someone, but the game is set up so that such unglamorous things won’t off your character unless you want them to for dramatic reasons).