Task, conflict, scene, session and story resolution

[Jack Aidley]

I've been thinking a lot lately about Conflict resolution - I've actually been struggling with fitting ranged weapons and magic into it, but that isn't what this thread is about. It seems to me that there isn't any actual 'line' between task and conflict resolution but that instead they are just regions on a long spectrum of possible resolution crunches.

I can think of five possible regions along this spectrum, although I only know of games that use the first two:

(NB: I'm using roll, and rolling, in the descriptions below but there's no reason this needs to be fortune only, I just couldn't think of a good generic word to use)

Task - familiar to you all, no doubt, where you might roll to attack, defend or climb 10'. But even task resolution is a broad church - from ultra-crunchy 'parry', 'swing', 'thrust' divisions to T&Ts round-at-a-time dice roll.

Conflict - Lumpier still, you find conflict resolution. Where you resolve the fight as one, or the running away as one. Conflict resolution can also vary in degree: is defeating the Orcish lieutenant a conflict? Or defeating the whole band? Is mixing the poison a conflict, and delivering it another? Or is the whole process of assassination one conflict?

Scene - Instead of simply rolling to resolve one conflict within a scene you could conceivably roll to decide the outcome of a whole scene. Instead of rolling to fight Dr. Squid, and then again to rescue the damsel before she gets hit by the speeding train - one roll could decide the outcome of the scene, and then you'd just fill in details knowing the final outcome. I could see this working very well in a more story telling sense, since knowing the outcome of the scene you could plan your actions to produce the charectorial impression you desired.

Session - At this point, I think I become a little less well defined. Perhaps this should be 'arc' rather than session. The play would begin by deciding what the session was going to cover ('we attack the goblin fortress', 'we will trade beans to Glythank', etc.), then a roll would decide the outcome and play would consist of plotting out interested events that lead to that pre-determined outcome.

Story - I'm not sure this one deserves it's own category, it might be better lumped with the above. The whole story is determined by the roll. 'We will destroy the ring', 'Romeo and Juliet will find happiness together'. As before play then consists of filling in the details.

As you can see, as we move up the chain from Task to Story resolution there is a change from resolving details and building up to results to resolving results and filling in details. But even in the finest levels this occurs ("you rolled a 15? Ack, your sword blow slides off their shield").

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has followed similar lines of thought and whether anyone knows of any games that use the latter three forms of resolution.

[dewey]

Hi Jack

You're not alone...

Scene - Instead of simply rolling to resolve one conflict within a scene you could conceivably roll to decide the outcome of a whole scene.

Pretender does exactly that, with the twist that the narrator can be the player, another player, or the GM.

However, when taking challenge into account, this broader-scale resolution becomes tricky. To have a say in the outcome, the players need details to be exploited, and in the case of a session- or story-resolution mechanic they would need truckloads of detail.

Also, the reaction chain (characters react to the SIS -> SIS reacts to the characters' actions -> characters react to modified SIS -> ...) would be seriously underemphasized, because the outcome does not depend on this chain.

Still, I don't say that more narrow the scope of resolution, the better, but as usual, ask the players what they want.

On second thought, the GM can even ask the players what their goal is, and they can incorporate the scope into the answer.

So, for example, the GM asks How detailed do you want to deal with Dr. Squid?
Sample responses and consequences:
Group 1: Let's fight him blow by blow!!! -> The game enters task resolution mode.
Group 2: Skip individual attacks, we're not interested in them right now. Let's hit him hard and snatch the girl before the train arrives and get on with the story! -> The game enters scene resolution mode.
Group 3 (it DID HAPPEN!!!): The GM asked what the characters wanted to do. Players: Well, we go to the secret temple and kill the demon... GM (seeing that the players were not interested in more fighting): OK, the demon is dead. From the tome in its lair you learned that... What do you do now?

So I'd say that it wouldn't hurt if game designers thought about this and incorporated as many scopes into their systems as possible.

[Christopher Weeks]

Does MLwM fall into Scene or Conflict?  I'm inclined to say the former.  One scene is limited to one roll and one conflict and the details are made up around the results.

Chris

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Jack, if you're interested, I'd recommend picking up Dust Devils, Trollbabe, and HeroQuest to check out games which are very, very clear about distinguishing among your categories and customizing just which level is getting the attention at any given moment of play.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

Also here is a handy old post of Ron's on the subject, if I may.

-Vincent

[Jack Aidley]

Cheers Vincent!

That was indeed an a most useful post (thanks Ron!), I can see I was trying to make a line out of something that isn't.

Oh well.