right timing & fiction for a Chaotic Free-for-All ?

It's unclear to me when and how this move should be used.
On paper it reads like an awesome way to abstract an otherwise chaotic situation, but the more I try to figure it out at the table, the less I think I understand how to use it :P

On one hand it looks like a pre-move, something you roll because of the situation to see what is happening around you and to you BEFORE you get to describe your PC's actions.
But this puts the move before the fiction: how are you stirring up the chaos? how are you calming it down?

Maybe you handle it like Read a Person? Triggers thanks to minimal fiction (you observing someone) and adds detail when you actually select the questions you want answered. What are you looking at? How are you observing? What are you saying to prompt the answers you seek? etc.

How often is this move meant to be rolled?
One of the results allows the performing of "one short action" ... is this the limit before the Free-for-All is rolled again? Or is it just a beneficial effect (making an action unopposed) but the PCs will otherwise be able to make more actions against normal opposition and obstacles before, after an MC chosen amount of time, the Free-for-All move triggers again?
Or is this wrong? Should the players FIRST describe what their PCs are doing within the chaos and THEN roll this move?

Is it possible to use the "calm down the chaos" effect to factually stop the chaos? Maybe reducing the chaos-gang Harm to zero? Or is this effect not cumulative?

And WHO is rolling the move?
If all PCs involved in the chaotic situation roll, can they select the same effect? Will this stack? Can this ramp up the Harm inflicted to crazy levels, or cool it down to zero?
And... is the crowd inflicting Harm to itself for EVERY roll?
This last point leads me to think that the move is meant to be rolled ONCE for all PCs involved... but then, who gets the benefits? who can act how? and whose stat is rolled? who gets to roll the move while the others maybe interfere/help?

This roll pretty much assumes that everyone present is fight / doing something all at the same time.

I would require that everyone who wants to be involved or is stuck being involved in the chaotic fighting has a choice to make. If they are running around with another pc, maybe they choose to let his roll decide for them, and thus try to help them out and suffer whatever consequences come his way. However, if you have say three PCs all interacting differently, I would make them all roll as part of joining into the chaos. They all roll, and they each are hit by the collective effects of the chaos.

For damage mitigation there are many ways to do it, but I assume the most reasonable is that if one person lowers the damage of everyone, cool. If someone else does too, awesome, but it doesn't stack--although it will also effect the other pc as well. Just as the first pcs lowering damage effected them. That being said, you can also cause the mob to be more violent, so I would suggest that 2 votes to lower and 1 to raise, provides a 1 to 1 counter, and 1 still keeping the violence down. That could be one reason it is important. Lowering the violence more then one step doesn't sound reasonable to me.

The mob should deal out harm once, at the same time, to all participants, just as the participants also deal in that moment and not before. If someone choose not to roll, but they were in the mob, they will also be subjected to the general harm rating of the fighting, but will not be able to add to it themselves. So that's more of a one sided harm because the area is dangerous.

Lastly, If you find that all the pcs are always involved and there are never any good options for people to choose from, maybe "bonus" lowering / raising of harm means they can pick someone out of the mob to protect or direct violence towards. I don't currently have a copy of the move to compare however, so I'm relying on memory and your words. :)

As for the one action, I would say it is hard to do things in chaos. But yeah, choosing that option should be they have the opportunity to do so without needing to act under fire or any of that. As for how much time between rolls, that depends on the fiction I'd think.

By my read, this is a high-level (in an organizational sense, not a gamey sense) move. It basically reduces a crazy chaotic scene to one move, after which it is resolved. If a big fight breaks out and it's clear there's too much going on for moment-by-moment action adjudication, ask all the PCs involved to roll for ACFFA. Effects stack, since I see no reason why they wouldn't; a fight with a bunch of PCs adding to the chaos will be way more dangerous than if there's just one, and the PCs will be much more effective peacekeepers if they work together. Then the gang does damage to itself once after the results are all chosen.

I'd say have the players describe their intentions before the roll, then have the outcome determine how successful they are, same as most moves. Get everyone's plans, then let them roll. If they succeed, they pick the options that match what they're trying to do, and if they fail, you tell them how that goes awry, same as normal. Once their rolls are resolved, figure out the damage, and deal harm. Make sure to use the gang rules; don't deal that much to every single NPC. Then it's over, and everyone runs off to lick their wounds or burn their dead or whatever it is they do after a big fight.

Depending on how many PCs add to the violence, seeing all sides 100% annihilated is a very real, but illogical possibility.

Not sure why that's so illogical. If a bunch of people are all shooting at everyone in their immediate vicinity, and they all have big weapons, and the most powerful people around are all actively trying to increase the number of casualties... doesn't seem too impossible to hit that "few survivors" tier at 5-harm, fictionally speaking.

Also, make sure the PCs are fictionally doing something to add to the chaos. If everyone's shooting each other, then one more gun in the fight isn't going to make a difference--they need to actually escalate it somehow. And when you've reached the point of multiple PCs escalating an already dangerous and chaotic situation, you probably have hand grenades and real big guns coming out, making widespread fatalities all the more reasonable.

Ultimately, though, I think that possibility is mitigated by the likelihood that PCs will not want everyone in the vicinity to die. Presumably if they're there at a fight between two or more gangs, at least one of the gangs is made up of people they care about. If they really do get into a situation where they all want to work together to make sure almost everyone goes down, and they all roll well enough to make it happen, I don't see why it wouldn't be reasonable. But I'd bet that most of the time, at least some of them will want to calm things down, not escalate them. Especially if they don't want to bank on all being able to roll well enough to protect themselves.

I'm partially in agreement with JustGS.

But in most cases when more PCs contribute to what amounts as being the same move... the ideal procedure would be to hear everyone's intentions, adjudicate which one is the FOCUS of the action, and have that player roll the move, with everyone else rolling to either help or interfere.
This seems like the simplest way to handle this chaotic move (^_^)

The only part I kind of dislike is where the MC has to pick one Player to be the main actor.
But this can, as usual, be left to table agreement or, to be a fan, to the PC with the better stats for the roll (assuming all PCs are acting towards the same goal).

I really don't think this should be rolled by just one player. The move is pretty clearly for an every-man-for-himself situation, where organization breaks down completely and it becomes, well, a free-for-all. I don't think the PCs all go into this with the same goal, like they might a typical combat move. Additionally, the trigger is simply "when you're in a chaotic free-for-all," not anything about intention or goals. If every PC is in the CFFA, and doing something, then every player should roll for the move.

Yep. The rule for all of the moves that include exchanging harm, including this move, is that everyone rolls, everyone makes their own choices, and everyone's choices apply to one exchange of harm.

-Vincent

veeery interesting snippet of information.
This is not present in the playbook previews, and I don't remember it in the original rulebook.
veeery interesting indeed.

Thanks all for the clarifications :D