[One Can Have Her] Questions on conflicts

[Jonas Ferry]

I'm playtesting my film noir game One Can Have Her and this Thursday the players raised some concerns on how I handled conflicts and their consequences. This could just be my play style at the time, but I obviously want to give advice in the text on how to handle conflicts.

Conflicts are handle by regular playing cards. The participants play cards, and if one side can't or won't play more cards they lose the conflict. Before each conflict you state the goal of the aggressor for the conflict. The other side tries to stop them from reaching the goal, but doesn't state any goal of their own. The opponents get to approve the goal before the conflict turns to the cards. In play everyone drives towards conflicts. The number of cards the players have are a pacing mechanism, and when they're out the game enters a new phase. So it's important to get the players to play their cards in conflicts. I want the game to keep running without conflicts until the fictional characters disagree, then it's a conflict.

Another point I want to make is that conflicts resolve the goal for the rest of the game. If you try to seduce the femme fatale and fail you can't try again. You can threaten, blackmail or kill her, but not seduce her. Only if you play a certain kind of card the conflict is interrupted and left undecided.

In my latest playtest I had two players with a player character each. One was an idealistic gangster, the other a hardboiled journalist. The femme fatale was the daughter of a politician both player characters and the femme fatale wanted to get rid of.

In the first conflict I said the femme fatale wanted to convince the gangster to help her make her father disappear. The player didn't want to resolve this at this point in the story, while I, the game master, thought it was a perfect time.

I see a clash here between two rules I want to use:

- The opponent has to approve the aggressor's goal.
- Say yes or play cards.

Should players and the game master be able to dodge conflicts they don't want to resolve? If one side is interested and the other avoids the conflict, doesn't that run the risk of avoiding the meat of the story?

We played the conflict, the femme fatale won, and the player said his character said that "he was always on her side". The player also said he deliberately avoided being more specific in whether the character would help her or not. This makes me think what we really had was a conflict between the participants on where the story should go, rather than between the fictional characters. I don't know if or how the game should handle such conflicts.

The second conflict was when the gangster was put on death row for killing his own brother, and his gang wanted the journalist to confess to the crime and take his place. They found the journalist at a bar, he lost a conflict to avoid them and was brought out to the docks. They beat him up and the goal was to make him take the fall. The journalist lost again. Here the players suggested goals that dictate future actions of player characters should be disallowed. The goal could only be "Do you promise to take a fall", not "Do you take a fall".

This is similar to Dogs in the Vineyard. That game is all about player choices, and I'm all for choices in One Can Have Her. At the same time, promising the gangsters something when they beat you means nothing after the conflict. Does that mean it's impossible for them to make the journalist take the fall if the player doesn't want to? Or does it mean I should've been more creative in stating their goal?

Any thoughts or comments? I'm interested in how this is handled in other games, and how you handle it in play. What I specifically want to know is if limiting player choices by forcing a certain course of action is the same thing as removing player choices altogether.

- Jonas

[Peter Nordstrand]

I was in this game, and I would like to hear what other people have to say before getting too involved here. However, in this thread, I write about my own experiences GMing One Can Have Her. Allow me to quote myself:

I was able to GM this game much like I would GM most narrativist games: Look at the player characters and their characteristics, check out my list of NPCs — mostly generated during chargen, as described above — and then put pressure on the characters by generating conflict, thus forcing the players to make decisions for their characters. I am putting the characters in tough spots, but I always leave it to the players to make the decisions about their characters. If I take this away from the players, I deprive them of their ability to make a statement, and the game becomes literally meaningless.

All the best,

[Peter Nordstrand]

Hi again. I've waited long enough.

You are discussing a number of different things in your post, all important and relevant to your game. However, above everything else you need to understand the concept of Force.

Force
The Technique of control over characters' thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the character's player. When Force is applied in a manner which disrupts the Social Contract, the result is Railroading.

Never mind your other questions for now, because if you permit the use of Force your game will break down. You simply cannot use Force without fucking up the game big time. (Recommended reading, if you have the time: The "protagonism" section in Ron's Narrativism essay.) Luckily, there is a very simple solution. Conflicts are never permitted to be about a characters' decisions.

The second conflict was when the gangster was put on death row for killing his own brother, and his gang wanted the journalist to confess to the crime and take his place. They found the journalist at a bar, he lost a conflict to avoid them and was brought out to the docks. They beat him up and the goal was to make him take the fall. The journalist lost again. Here the players suggested goals that dictate future actions of player characters should be disallowed. The goal could only be "Do you promise to take a fall", not "Do you take a fall".

Actually, we suggested something even better: Make it a real, genuine decision for the player. For example, the gangsters could kidnap the Femme Fatale and threaten to kill her if the player character didn't take the fall. Now you would be empowering the player, allowing him to make a statement, which is what the game is about.

This is really important stuff. It is also Narrativism 101. Never frame deprotagonizing conflicts.

What do you think, Jonas?


Your friend,

/Peter

[Jonas Ferry]

Thanks, Peter. Your post gave me a lot to think about.

I see what you mean, but I don't think it's easy to provide an elegant solution. You know the rule where the opponent has to accept the aggressor's goal (Intent) before you start playing cards (Execution)? It's there to prevent the use of force by the participants in the game. You're supposed to be able to say "No, that takes away a thematically-significant decision from me" and find a more suitable goal.

When we played, though, I managed to bulldozer both your and Johan's objection to my stated goal. I don't know if it was because I was the game master or because you were newer to the game than me, but still it happened. How could it have been prevented? Perhaps, as I think you say, by text in the book that says that you can't have conflicts about character decisions.

The way the game is written you state the goal of the aggressor and the opponent tries to prevent it from happening. The goal of the gangsters were obviously to make Johan's character take the fall, not to kidnap the femme fatale. That could've been their goal, but the step from "The gangsters want to kidnap the femme fatale" to "So now you have to take the fall for her to be set free" isn't obvious. I don't think you mean they should have the goal "Kidnap and threaten to kill the femme fatale", with the game master promising to give up as soon as Johan's character promises to take the fall. Perhaps you think there shouldn't be a conflict resolved by the cards at all in that situation, and instead leaving the decision fully to the player?

Making goal setting something that's handled by each group as they play the game isn't enough if you want to prevent the use of Force. The question then is in what step of the IIEE chain to add the safeguard against the use of Force in One Can Have Her. Your suggestion is to add it to the Intent stage and forbid certain goals. I already have one in the Intent stage, in that the goal has to be accepted by the other side before you move on to Execution.

I would like to know if there are other options as well, and would like to clarify to myself the relationship between "Say yes or play cards" (Initiation) and reaching suitable goals (Intent).

- Jonas

[Jonas Ferry]

Peter, I've thought about this some more.

The problem I had was that I wanted to apply "Say yes or play cards" to all participants equally, both game master and players. On the tram today I realized that that would clash with the players' ability to make thematic choices. Every non-yes choice would have had to be handled by the conflict resolution mechanic! Instead I want to use the resolution mechanic to see if the characters reach their goals, after the players have made up their minds what they want their characters to do or prevent others from doing.

In the case of the gangsters who wanted the hardboiled journalist to take the fall for your character's murder, the game master shouldn't be allowed to choose "The gangsters' goal is to make you take the fall". Instead I could've had them try to beat him into choosing it, and the conflict could've been "The gangsters' goal is to make you hurt". Or "The gangsters want to kidnap the femme fatale", or something. Then the player could've chosen what to do about it, if anything.

If the goal was to hurt him and he won, he would escape the conflict unharmed. If they won he would be in great pain. I would've described the torture they put him through, but Johan, the player, could still choose not to take the fall. That would've been a very powerful statement, don't you think?

There will be a couple of pointers in the text about how you should avoid making the result of a player-character choice the goal of conflicts. I want to make sure all involved knows about this and can prevent it in the agree-on-the-goal phase of conflicts. Also, since players both want and have to get rid of their cards, they should drive play towards conflicts.

Does that sound alright to you, Peter? I think that it's exactly what you said at the playtest, said in my own words.

- Jonas

[Peter Nordstrand]

Fantastic! You get exactly what I mean.