In a game I ran this weekend we had a situation come up that I wasn't sure about.

The player character, a murderous inkeeper wanted a magic amulet that he could use to change his wife back to her true form.

The wife, an NPC who had been twisted by sorcery into a flesh eating hag wanted to hold onto and destroy the amulet as she believed it was innately evil.

So the amulet was there.  I described the hag wife grabbing it.  The player said that he also wanted to grab it so we had a conflict.

We played out the conflict and the player beat me.  I said that I'd have my character keep hold of the amulet but I'd happily take damage.  I wanted to see if the guy would continue to beat his decrepit wife.

He wanted the amulet more than he wanted to harm his wretched spouse but that's what he got because I'm a mean GM.



We thought about the situation again.  If he'd described his character getting the amulet first and I'd been to one to object and challenge it then the conflict would have ended with him holding the amulet.

Maybe during the conflict he could have described his advantage dice as having seized the amulet but still being accosted.  I perhaps didn't let him.  My answers to his moves, even when I was losing, were described with the amulet staying with me but the advantage coming from some other source, such as position or pain.

My question is whether I can use my answer, even when losing, to describe the advantage of the winner?

Or is this mechanical encouragement to push the players into action to describe their characters taking an action before another player does?