All-opposed, but...

[taalyn]

I've described elsewhere here at the Forge how all of Aisling's 'rolls' are opposed. So-called 'unopposed' draws draw on the Doorness or Carness to determine difficulty.

But, what about situations such as the following?

Tom has the Nature "modern Urban guy" with a Hand of 4. He wants to approach the Gypsy caravan, but isn't sure how to do so without offending anyone. He doesn't have any knowledge of Gypsies in particular (he doesn't have any other pertinent skill), but the Seanchaí thinks he has a small chance of having read about it somewhere, allowing him to draw against his Nature.

How does the Seanchai determine the difficulty here? Does he simply use Gypsyness? But that seems too broad. Perhaps Gypsies have a 'secretive' trait, and that could be used for the difficulty?

The issue here is whether this is actually opposed or not, and if it is opposed, by what. I think I may have stumbled across the correct 'opposed' answer in defining a 'secretiveness' for Gypsies. But does anyone have other ideas about how this examples fits into Mike's opposed-unopposed theories?

Aidan

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings taalyn,

I've described elsewhere here at the Forge how all of Aisling's 'rolls' are opposed. So-called 'unopposed' draws draw on the Doorness or Carness to determine difficulty.

But, what about situations such as the following?

Tom has the Nature "modern Urban guy" with a Hand of 4. He wants to approach the Gypsy caravan, but isn't sure how to do so without offending anyone. He doesn't have any knowledge of Gypsies in particular (he doesn't have any other pertinent skill), but the Seanchaí thinks he has a small chance of having read about it somewhere, allowing him to draw against his Nature.

How does the Seanchai determine the difficulty here? Does he simply use Gypsyness? But that seems too broad. Perhaps Gypsies have a 'secretive' trait, and that could be used for the difficulty?

The issue here is whether this is actually opposed or not, and if it is opposed, by what. I think I may have stumbled across the correct 'opposed' answer in defining a 'secretiveness' for Gypsies. But does anyone have other ideas about how this examples fits into Mike's opposed-unopposed theories?

That's an interesting example, which I could foresee answering any number of ways, but to start...

You already said it yourself when you wrote "allowing him to draw against his Nature"; key word: against.  That makes it an opposed action.

However a lot more is going on here than merely overcoming his innate nature, you also want to try to see if some inkling of knowledge can be drudged up from memory, or perhaps miraculously gained by osmosis, that will allow the character to achieve a certain end.

What you have here is a intricate and involved scenario that would, were it my call, require multiple roles.  First, prioritise.  If the most important is overcoming the character's nature then they need to actually succeed in that roll, otherwise that ends the situation there.  Dead cold just like that, nothing ventured and nothing gained, do not pass go, leave the cheese alone and pass me the crackers.

Yet, despite all that I said above, I have to say that I really need more information.  What are we talking about here, precisely?  What is the situation?  What traits, skills, or other abilities are likely to be directly involved (and more importantly how do they function within your game's context)?

But, overall, I'd say that you are trying to squeeze too much into a single roll when what you will probably need to do is break this up into smaller rolls for each specific detail/obstacle that the character needs to overcome... if you follow.


Kind Regards,

Kester "cryptically confusing as ever"  Pelagius

[taalyn]

heya Kester,

 Well, yeah, the idea is that all draws in Aisling are opposed. The question I had was what opposed the general knowledge represented by Tom's Nature.  We're trying to see whether Tom has knowledge of how to properly approach a Gypsy camp - does he just stroll up and say "Yo!"? Or should he sit quietly nearby and hum? Or Give a loaf of bread and 3.5 blqnkets to the oldest woman he see? Let's say he needs their help and wants to impress upon them that he cares about them and respects their position, and so he doesn't want to be crass or insulting.

  How would this be split into lots of separate draws? What would we be drawing on? His Charisma could be a factor, and could introduce a bonus to the draw, but the basic task (for our purposes - in game, I'd probably just use Charisma) is whether he has the knowledge or not. Specifically, what opposes skills that 1) aren't based on obvious physical resistance and 2) classically fall into the 'unopposed' category. That's why I think this is a theory question...

  Aidan

[Kester Pelagius]

Good Evening Mistress taalyn,

It's a female sounding name- isn't it?- and if you're not I hereby humbly apologize for any trangend.. er.. mix up of.. er..  MOVING along...

;)

 Well, yeah, the idea is that all draws in Aisling are opposed. The question I had was what opposed the general knowledge represented by Tom's Nature.  We're trying to see whether Tom has knowledge of how to properly approach a Gypsy camp - does he just stroll up and say "Yo!"? Or should he sit quietly nearby and hum? Or Give a loaf of bread and 3.5 blqnkets to the oldest woman he see? Let's say he needs their help and wants to impress upon them that he cares about them and respects their position, and so he doesn't want to be crass or insulting.

  How would this be split into lots of separate draws? What would we be drawing on? His Charisma could be a factor, and could introduce a bonus to the draw, but the basic task (for our purposes - in game, I'd probably just use Charisma) is whether he has the knowledge or not. Specifically, what opposes skills that 1) aren't based on obvious physical resistance and 2) classically fall into the 'unopposed' category. That's why I think this is a theory question...

Ah, IC.  Well, I know this is probably no help, but I think it would largely depend upon what Tom's player decided to have him do.  Unless we are talking about totally generating character response based upon rolls?

In theory a character is governed by their player's impulses, which often manifest in strange and bizarre ways.  Actions that require the referee to arbitrate based upon the choices made, or rather the direction which those choices lead the character and the resultant reactions that are required to be resolved.

Luckily, I've never been one much given to theory, or prattling on for paragraph after para... urm... heheh

Ok, here's the best I can think of:  Unless you have a set of predefined possibilities to govern how such a meeting could transpire, I'd say this would be pretty much up in the air.  And *heavily* reliant upon what the player actually does during the encounter.

Though I think you answered your own question when you asked:  "what opposed the general knowledge represented by Tom's Nature"; the answer would be Ignorance.  His ignorance is directly opposed to his knowledge.  As to his nature, if he is a shy type, but the situation requires him to be out going, then you'd have to balance his introverted nature against the requirements for him to act extroverted.

Or am I totally missing the point?

And I think I'll stop typing now, afore I make your eyes bleed.  ;)


Kind Regards,

Kester "running away" Pelagius

[taalyn]

Good Evening Mistress taalyn,

It's a female sounding name- isn't it?- and if you're not I hereby humbly apologize for any trangend.. er.. mix up of.. er.. MOVING along...

Well,

 Taalyn is a gender neutral name in the lang it belongs to (one I made up my very own self), and my real name is Aidan (as in Aidan Quinn), very much a masculine name, but I am gay, and have friends that call me Mr. Lady (even though I'm not a flamer). This is the place for theory, but RPG theory, not queer theory...

 So, I think we're even.


On to other issues...

 I think saying that ignorance opposes his knowledge is pointless. Might as well say his tsrength is opposed by his weakness, or his dexterity by his clumsiness. Ignorance gives no value to the situation.

 I'm not making my question clear. Let me try again...

  Is there a situation where the opposition is very vague? Where it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine what is Opposing during a roll? If everything is theoretically opposed, how would such a situation affect Mike's theories about opposed/unopposed rolls (that one or the other doesn't exist, depending on how you read him)?

  My example doesn't work - I've answered myself on that (the Secretiveness of the Gypsies rated as another standard attribute). But now I wonder whether anything can be said to be unopposed at all (which may or may not disagree with Mike's theories, depending).

 Aidan

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings taalyn,

I think saying that ignorance opposes his knowledge is pointless. Might as well say his tsrength is opposed by his weakness, or his dexterity by his clumsiness. Ignorance gives no value to the situation.

Are you sure?

Look at my post above, posting out of ignorance is taking a chance.

Do I (the poster) venture the risk of typing a comment, or not?  Should I even comment at at all?  If I type nothing, then that is the net result.

If this were a game one could say I rolled to overcome my nature to not give offense, yet it was a risk in opposition to. . . what?  Common sense perhaps?  After all, based upon the outcome, that could be considered a marginal failure.  If this were a game.

Which it isn't.

Live and learn.

Is there a situation where the opposition is very vague? Where it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine what is Opposing during a roll? If everything is theoretically opposed, how would such a situation affect Mike's theories about opposed/unopposed rolls (that one or the other doesn't exist, depending on how you read him)?

Only the actual outcome of the situation, I think, will be able to determine that.

My example doesn't work - I've answered myself on that (the Secretiveness of the Gypsies rated as another standard attribute). But now I wonder whether anything can be said to be unopposed at all (which may or may not disagree with Mike's theories, depending).

Hmm.  Mike, any comments?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[SrGrvsaLot]

Actually, Knowledge opposed by Ingorance and Strength opposed by weakness might not be such a bad idea. If you take "Ignorance" to be the inverse of "Knowledge" then you can make a knowlegde test against the inverse of his knowledge score (actually, what I'm thinking of is more like the mathmatical term "compliment," but there's no need to get technical). Suppose the maximum knowlege skill rating is 10 (this only works if your skills have maximum ratings), and the character has a rating of 4. Then if you want to see if he knows a given fact you can make it an opposed contest 4 vs 6 (because 4 + 6 = 10). The higher the rating, the less "opposition" he has to face from his own ignorance.

Just an idea, though actually, I might snag that mechanic for another system, so even if you don't ues it, the excersise wasn't a total waste.

[Garbanzo]

Aidan-

I'm not seeing this as a hard question.

There are two different considerations, here - opposed vs. unopposed, and difficulty.

My take on "opposed" vs. "unopposed" is that they describe types of resolution.  And that going "all opposed" or "all unopposed" is to give consistency.

I haven't kept up with the Aisling stuff, but I'm assuming "all opposed" means that when I draw my motes and figure all my stuff, my opponent/ obstacle is doing the same.  The result of the interaction is who draws the most successes, or whatever.


I don't see how this applies to Urban Tom and the Gypsies.
With NPCs, it's easy to figure, when a player swings a sword, how the opposing values work.
For "doorness" and "carness," don't you just pull it out of your ass?  There's not a chart somewhere that grades these things (based on how much iron is in a thing, or whatever), right?

So whether Urban Tom decides he wants to climb a telephone pole or talk to a gypsy, he decides (presumably) the angle of attack.  And the Seanchai pulls forth an appropriate difficulty, and things get compared.

Whether the Seanchai calls the opposition total "tallness" or "telephone pole-ality" or "gypsy mystique," it's the prime role of the GM to be able to account for all a player's options in accordance with the game-reality.  
I see this as just a prime example of this.

-Matt
(Who's hoping he's responding to the question put forth...)

[M. J. Young]

Aidan--

I'm sorry that people seem to be having so much trouble with this question; I hope I can do better.

Let's take your example and expand it.

Tom wants to be accepted at a fiesta in a Central American city.

Tom wants to be accepted in a small town in Ireland.

Tom wants to be accepted in a Scottish university cafeteria.

Tom wants to be accepted by a troupe of Gypsies.

The problem of course with Kester's solution is that it isn't a matter of Tom's knowledge versus Tom's ignorance; it is the difficulty of the situation itself. Those celebrating central Americans are likely to hug him, hand him a drink, and have him dancing with them even if he resists. The Irish may look at him suspiciously, but if he knows enough to enter the pub and buy everyone a round he's probably made at least a few friends. In Scotland he will be expected to act in a decorous and reserved manner, and it will be an uphill battle to get anyone to acknowledge his presence. The Gypsies? Well, if he's not careful, they'll drug him and rob him and leave him lying in the dirt, because he's not really a person if he's not a gypsy.

So you clearly do have an opposed resolution situation. Tom is in a sense going up against the resistance of the group to outsiders, how insular they are. This is the thing the referee has to determine.

Someone suggested that it was just a matter of what Tom decided to do; but this, it seems to me, may be exactly what is at issue. That is, I've studied at least a bit about gypsies, so I know some of their traditions, but I'm not certain exactly how one would approach them to win their confidence. (I do know how to ask where the bathroom is without offending their cultural sensibilities--hey, you've got to prioritize, right?) The question we want to know isn't whether Bob, who plays Tom, knows what Tom should do to win their acceptance; it's whether Tom knows what to do.

Thus in play we're going to use our resolution mechanic to figure out whether Tom understands how to approach them, and then if he's successful, we will assume either that[list=1][*]The referee will inform Bob how Tom should approach them, so that Tom will do it correctly, or that[*]However it is that Bob decides Tom acts as he approaches the Gypsies will be the correct way to do it in this case.[/list:o]It makes little sense to say that we're going to determine whether Tom can win the gypsies over to his side based on Bob's knowledge of Gypsies, unless we're in a game that assumes Tom is Bob. Rather, we are assuming that Tom knows things Bob doesn't, one of which might be how to approach Gypsies and win their favor. If he does, he succeeds, however it's played out; if he doesn't, he fails, however it's played out. Whether it's played out as

Referee: "In order to win the Gypsies over to your side, you must greet them with the secret greeting words of their own language, which you read once, and offer them the handle of your weapon."[/list:u]or as
Bob: "Tom remembers that the way to win Gypsies over to your side is to boldly enter their camp and challenge the strongest male to a wrestling match, after which, whether he wins or loses, he'll have proved his manhood and be accepted by the group, so he does this."[/list:u]--at that point it doesn't matter, as long as we've decided that Tom succeeds in being accepted.

I hope that clears up both the question and the answer.

More generally, any time you've got a resolution moment and you're not certain what the opposition is, ask yourself this question: why is there any draw at all? Why is it that the character can't just do this without a check? Whatever the obstacle is that prevents him from just doing it, that's the opposition.

Does that help at all?

--M. J. Young

[taalyn]

MJ, that does help. The issue hasn't been about Aisling (if it had, I would've posted it elsewhere), but rather whether the opposed/unopposed theory can break down. Your description clarifies the issue for me, and basically agrees with Mike (or at least, one reading of him). There are no such things as unopposed rolls.

Aidan

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

M.J. nailed it. Your first question is whether a conflict exists that carries any weight at all, in terms of stuff that I would call "protagonist" and "Premise."

If not, no roll. He approaches the gypsies with caution and all due respect, and they get it without any iffiness. Proceed to Actual Stuff (as players, GM, etc, see fit) without wasting time on unnecessary car chases.

If so, then roll. Set a generic TN or dice-pool number for such situations.

Playing Sorcerer, for instance, is entirely predicated on the above approach to Fortune in role-playing: a fence to jump during a chase isn't the same game-mechanics thing as a fence to jump just 'cause it's there, even if it's the same size, shape, and location in the imagined game-space.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Sorry I took so long getting here. I could have cleared up a lot of this earlier.

Basically your taking a really artistic interperetation of my idea. Not a bad interperetation. But there's a far more mundane ay to go about it. You simply oppose the task by the "difficulty" of the task.

How hard is it to know about Gypsies? I dunno, call it a 2 difficulty. What does it matter what you call the "opposition"? Doesn't matter at all. All that matters is that there's another number in the calculation. So when you do the proverbial jumping the chasm, I don't propose that you are overcomming the chasm's "Chasmness". I just say that you're going against a difficulty 3. Or more or less depending on how wide the chasm is.

That is, I just use something that looks just like a traditioal system. You just roll for both sides.

That's what seems to get people all stumbled up. They seem to feel that you can only roll for a "Side" in a contest if there's some acting element. But that's just not usually the case. Doesn't mean that you can't roll for something that's completely static. That was the point of the rant. You can roll for things that are static, and not roll for things that are active. It doesn't matter. In the end you have some chance, and it's all the same no matter who rolls or what you do. As long as you've thought it out before hand, any combination will work. (this is a really simple concept to me, but somehow people can't wrap their heads around it).

So, just pick a difficulty from a scale that compares itself to the scale of attributes. Say you rate unlocking a safe at 4 (because of it's Lockedness). Then you think, hmmm, knowing about Gypsies, that's quite a bit easier. So I'll rate the opposing diffiiculty at 2.

That's all there is to it.

Now, in all this MJ and others made some pretty good points about certain things which shouldn't be ignored. But the answer to the basic question is really simple. Just give it a number.

Unless you want to get all essestential with it, and say that everything has certain essesntial natures, and that's what you're rolling against. Which would be fine. Just unneccessary, and problematic as you point out. If you want a label for the opposition, then in the example it would be the "Unknowableness of the Gypsies" rating. Or some such mystical nonsense.

Mike