taking the blow

[chris_moore]

Does "taking the blow" mean that you lose the conflict stakes and get fallout, or are they separate things?

[James Holloway]

Taking the Blow means you take Fallout, but don't lose the conflict. It's a regular See, except that you used more than two dice -- you then Raise as normal, but will take Fallout later.

[Vaxalon]

Ideally, it should be narrated as a temporary setback in the conflict.

[Jonas Ferry]

I agree on the temporary setback, and it's something I'm struggling with myself. I keep forgetting it, but when I do remember it the conflicts flow so much more naturally and taking the blow makes a lot more sense.

For example in my last game, during the initiations, I forgot about it in one of them and remembered it in the next. In the first one, a woman-chasing Dog was put on kitchen duty during a festivity. His teacher told him to go do the dishes with a sum of 16 or so, so he had to take the blow. Ideally he would have been forced into the kitchen without losing the stakes of whether he managed to seduce another Dog, but instead he took the blow and tricked someone else into doing it for him. That made it harder to come up with something reasonable as fallout.

The second initiation was a Dog who's afraid of horses, but who's forced by the teacher to overcome the fear. She was commanded into the horse's paddock, refused, but had to take the blow. That meant she went into the paddock and later took fallout, temporary lowering her Will. That made much more sense.

In a verbal conflict, I could see taking the blow as having to agree with the other's latest argument, but still clinging to the conflict. Perhaps that one argument sowed a seed of doubt in the PC that he'll have to confront as fallout later on.

[Eero Tuovinen]

The different Sees are simplest to understand if you think of them in strict task resolution terms: when the opponent Raises, he has to  supply narration of an action that your character cannot ignore in terms of the stakes. This is his task. If he cannot do this narration, he has to fold out of the conflict. Not negotiable, not a matter of taste. Then, when you See:
- If you Take the Blow, you have to narrate how you fail in stopping the opponent in his task. Because this is always a possibility, the opponent's task may not imply immediate resolution of the stakes. You failed in this task, not in the conflict.
- If you Block, you have to narrate how you stop the task from happening, or pre-empt it's results. Whatever it was that the Raise was trying to do, it failed. Again, the original Raise has to be such that it's failure does not imply you winning the stakes.
- If you Return the Blow, you have to narrate how you so handily stop the task that you gain a temporary advantage. It's just like a Block, except more so.

See? It's an embedded, regular task resolution system, except the player gets to choose whether he takes a failure, success or a critical success when Seeing. When you remember this, you'll have less trouble with the level of abstraction in the game. It's not actually abstract at all, it's just that some people tend to skip over the prohibitingly limiting narration rules. But properly "Eh, I can't think of anything, I'll just skip it." has no place in DiV narration. If you can't narrate it, you can't do it.

[lumpley]

Eero nails it.

-Vincent

[Vaxalon]

I wonder what people think, does this aspect put DitV into the "task resolution" category?  Personally, I think it's something of a hybrid, or a "both" condition.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Please, not that discussion again. I already said everything I have to say about task vs. conflict resolution earlier this summer, anybody can find the thread in rpg theory. It seemed that the discussion wasn't useful to anybody then. In a nutshell: yeah, doh, every game has both systems. (How would you have events in the game without resolving tasks, being that action = task? Similarly, how could you not have conflict resolution, when meaning = conflict) The fact that most games leave either the task or the conflict resolution up to GM narration is incidental. DiV is an example of a game where both are mechanical.

[lumpley]

Eero nails it again!

Eero is the pwninator of this thread.

John Kim, if you're reading this, please link for us your excellent recent construction of task vs. conflict resolution. Something like: in conflict resolution you establish the stakes then decide who wins them, in task resolution you decide who wins and then establish what was at stake.

-Vincent

[Bill Cook]

I'm tenatively excited. Eero's explanation is like a woodpecker on the side of my head; I know the answer's there, but it's having trouble getting inside my brain. I actually couldn't find the link. Was it the lecture one or another? Please post it.

It'll probably gel after a few more rereads.

There's something that's bugged me about this approach to resolution ever since I ran a one-shot of TSOY a few months back. Its resolution is similiar to DitV except (1) each participant has their own Stakes, (2) parallel and perdendicular actions replace the poker vernacular and (3) Fallout is applied after each round. But there's still this WTF of tasks resolving and the conflict continuing. I had a mage arguing with a prince. The mage intended to carry the king's body away in a cart. The prince intended to keep him in the castle so he could obtain a burial token tucked within the folds of his wrap. During one free-and-clear, the mage player cast Enthrallment and the prince player summoned guards. Well, it's not as though a mind control spell is a rebuttal, and it's not like guards dragging you away is an interjection. And they both succeeded; Reason damage for the prince and Physical damage for the mage. But continuation of the conflict became rudely counter-intuitive. If the prince was a mind slave, how could he persist? If the mage was tossed into a dungeon, how could he drive ponies?

[dunlaing]

I've not had a chance to actually play DitV yet (and the example is from a whole 'nother game anyway), but,...

...the way I see it, there are two requirements in Seeing a raise.

First, you have to have the dice to do it. You can't See my 17 raise if all you have are two 2s and a 3.

Second, you have to be able to think of the narration for the See. You can't See my "I totally mind control you" 17 if all you have is a 7 and two 5s unless you can come up with something that makes sense as a Take The Blow. "Your mind control sets in and I start following your commands, but thanks to my indomitable will, I'm still able to make a goofy eye motion to my trusted lieutenant, who shouts 'Dangit, he's mind controlled agin! Jump the feller in the funny robes, men!' and knock you down."

Or, you know, I could just be wrong.