Systems and Creating/Extending Conflict

[Eric J-D]

While I have been away from this forum doing some research several threads in this forum have emerged that address an issue I have been thinking about for some time.  (I am thinking of these two in particular   http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17177.0 and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17067.0)

Since I have been encouraged by several people to take a stab at designing a game, I have been thinking seriously about the issue of player control over the SIS.  I know that I want a conflict resolution system rather than a task resolution system, but I am conflicted about whether to have a mechanic that distributes a high amount of control over the SIS to players or not.  The issue comes down to how best to do this and still manage to create a high degree of tension among all the game participants.

Lately I have been thinking about this particularly with respect to the issue of conflict (that staple of narrative).  To ground this a bit more, let me give the by now familiar example of what differentiates conflict from task resolution: the guy who breaks into the safe.  In task resolution systems what is at stake is whether or not the task succeeds or fails (does the guy open the safe or not) whereas in conflict resolution what is at stake is the player/character's goal (to get dirt on some other guy).  As we all know, in task resolution one can succeed at the task (open the safe) but not find any dirt on the guy (since the GM has decided that there was nothing incriminating in the safe).  In conflict resolution success=finding dirt on the other guy, and whether this comes in the form of opening a safe, rifling a desk drawer, hacking into a computer, etc is irrelevant .

Okay, so let's say that Jack (a PC) wants to see if he can get some dirt on Ramon (NPC) and that he is doing this because he suspects that Ramon had a hand in wrongly convicting Jack's father of a crime (the death of an innocent person).  If we were playing Sorcerer this would be a conflict resolved by a Will vs. Will roll or something like that.  Now, ordinarily victory for Jack would mean he finds some dirt on Ramon, and it would be up to the player to narrate how exactly this came about [e.g." I go to Ramon's office late at night and ransack his office in the hope of finding some dirt on him"].  And if this were  Sorcerer Jack's success would end that particular conflict and we would move on to the next one.

Now, let's say I am the GM and both the player and I are really primed to load Sorcerer's premise into as much of the game as possible (i.e. "How far will you go to get what you want?").  If the tension was to be heightened in this particular conflict, I (as GM) would probably improvise a fairly obvious Bang at this point: "You slip the incriminating (disk, diary, letter, whatever) into your pocket when the door of the office swings open and a middle-aged man in cleaning clothes pushing a vacuum enters...).  As GM, I toss off this Bang because I want to present the player/character with a moral conflict.  It is obvious the janitor knows the character isn't supposed to be here, but it is also crucial to the player/character that he leave with this information which he believes will exonerate his father.  How far is he willing to go to achieve this greater goal?  Will he attack and possibly kill this janitor and be guilty of the very act for which his father was wrongly convicted?  Will he try to get past him and risk the possibility of being apprehended by the police later? 

Suffice to say that in Sorcerer it is the GM's job to heighten tension regularly in the form of Bangs.  What I want to know is what systems contain mechanics for the player to introduce a conflict like the one I describe above?  And before everyone shouts Universalis, I know about that one already.

I gather that Tony (of Capes fame) has something called Event cards which allow players to establish certain events in the SIS (subject to veto by other players I think).  So in the example from the "How story evolves over time" thread, we know that the love interest WILL plummet from a high place, but we don't know how or why she falls (does she throw herself off the building, is she pushed, or is the fall caused inadvertently by the lover, etc.) nor do we know whether she will be caught or not.  Tension is thus preserved because none of us know how exactly the event comes about, what its outcome will be, or what it will mean for the story being created.  I suppose that makes  Capes a candidate for the type of thing I am asking about, but what other games are there that use such a system?

Finally, I would really like to hear from those of you who have run or played in such games about the issue of how tension was maintained.  Does a mechanic that allows players to introduce conflicts into the SIS work best in a fairly large group since distributing it among a large number of players means one can never know how or when it might impact you?  Does limiting the amount of veto power others might have over such introductions increase the tension made by such introductions (since each person is limited in his/her ability to alter the introduction and must therefore deal with it creatively) or does it create unrest among those who feel that it could license a player to introduce anything into the SIS (including things that break with the mood being established or whatever)?  Does it work better in games that encourage some level of inter-player competition, or does it work just as well in games that emphasize narrative cooperation among the players?

In short, I am really interested in hearing about how well this has worked in actual play, whether it is something that your groups have found enjoyable in the long as well as the short term, and whether or not you prefer it to the GM driving with Bangs model of  Sorcerer?

Thanks,

Eric

[Keith Senkowski]

Eric,

In CoS Destiny Points lets players introduce conflicts and I find it works well in combination with the GM driving with Bangs cause it is somewhat limited in how often it can be used.  Find it to be very enjoyable to play.  Both in long term and short term play.  Far more so than entirely GM driven play cause the players create their own tension cause they are introducing shit that they are interested in.  Games with player driven conflict have a built in feedback system that show you what works and what doesn't in real time, so to speak.

You can check out some actual play here.

Keith

[Eric J-D]

Hi Keith,

Thanks for your input.  I think I probably tend towards a mechanic like this (limited resource rather than endless ever-renewing pool) since I think it would achieve exactly the results you describe (increase in player investment in the conflict) without diminishing tension among the players or leading to endless arbitration about what can and can't be introduced into the SIS.

I'll have to get a copy of CoS when I get the extra cash.  It sounds like a cool game.

Congrats by the way on your performance in the Ronnies.

Eric

[Josh Roby]

Eric, are you interested in ways to let players influence what content gets added to the SIS (evil NPCs, towns in need of help, swords of legend) or what conflicts are expressed by those conflicts (the badguy's plot, the threat that looms over the town, the legend of kingship attached to the sword)?

Obviously these are things that cannot be completely separated, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of concrete rules, the distinction will become very important.  Introducing an element of content is easy -- look!  there's a guy with a sword blocking the path!  Conflict, real conflict, is a lot harder -- hey, um, you're afraid that losing an upcoming soccer match will mean that you're nothing but a hack foreigner!  Also, itemizing and costing content in terms of game currency is loads simpler than conflicts, which have all sorts of entailments that are hard to quantify.

[John Kirk]

The issue comes down to how best to do this and still manage to create a high degree of tension among all the game participants.

If you are interested in a mechanical way to create rising tension in a game, you might want to download the draft of my latest book "Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games" on the Downloads page of http://legendaryquest.com.

In particular, take a look at the Contest Tree design pattern.  This pattern works with conflict resolution (Negotiated Contest design pattern), task resolution (Generalized Contest design pattern), and combinations of both.  The mechanical properties of the pattern should be able to generate tension even if players have a high degree of control over the SIS.

[Eric J-D]

John: 

If you are interested in a mechanical way to create rising tension in a game, you might want to download the draft of my latest book "Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games" on the Downloads page of http://legendaryquest.com.

In particular, take a look at the Contest Tree design pattern.  This pattern works with conflict resolution (Negotiated Contest design pattern), task resolution (Generalized Contest design pattern), and combinations of both.  The mechanical properties of the pattern should be able to generate tension even if players have a high degree of control over the SIS.

Thanks for the response.  I was aware that you had written this book and had a chance to look at it shortly after my initial post.  It is a really fine piece of work.  I will look at the Contest Tree design pattern closely.  It sounds like it will be very helpful to me in thinking through what I am looking for.

The reason I posted this at all (rather than simply reading through your book) was that I was interested in hearing form people about their experience with such mechanics and systems in play.  As I stated in the initial post, I would be real interested in how players and GMs feel that such mechanics hold up over long term play, as well as whether or not such mechanics work best when 1) there is a fairly sizeable group so that the mechanic is distributed among a reasonably large number of participants (thus introducing  uncertainty and tension about when something unexpected might get introduced to the SIS) and  2) there is a limit set on whether or not introducing new elements to the SIS can be overruled.  I really don't have any guesses as to whether or not 1) or 2) are really necessary for maintenance of some tension in play so I thought I would draw on the experiences of others. 

I will definitely be dowloading your book though.  I can't really express how impressed I was by it, even though I have only given it a cursory look so far.


Joshua:

Eric, are you interested in ways to let players influence what content gets added to the SIS (evil NPCs, towns in need of help, swords of legend) or what conflicts are expressed by those conflicts (the badguy's plot, the threat that looms over the town, the legend of kingship attached to the sword)?

Good question and important distinction.  I suppose I am interested in both.  In the example I gave in the original post (a conflict in which a PC is trying to "get the dirt" on another guy) I wondered what systems supported a player (whether it is the player in control of the character in question or some other player is not important) introducing what is essentially a Bang into a scene in order to heighten or extend the conflict.  So in the example, the player decides to introduce a janitor who opens the door to the office and discovers the character in the ransacked office.

This example is a lot more like the first than the second, but I would be really interested in hearing about systems (and play experiences) related to both.  Thanks for the good questions.

Eric 

[M. J. Young]

Eric--although Multiverser is primarily task-resolution oriented and generally limits player credibility to statements about character actions, it does have a mechanic which works somewhat like you've raised. It's something of an all-purpose mechanic, called a General Effects Roll, but it is likely to come into play in situations such as you've proposed.

Probably in the case of the man opening the safe in search of dirt, I would have two rolls. This is after the skill check by which we determined whether the safe was opened successfully. Once that's achieved, I roll a General Effects Roll. Why? It is likely that I had not anticipated this particular line of play, and so I don't really know what's in the safe or whether there's anything incriminating there or not. The GE roll creates a bell curve (3d10 preferred) from outcomes far better than you could have hoped to outcomes far worse than you could have feared. It's tied to a plain language descriptor which universalizes it and leaves it to the referee to interpret. Here are some possible interpretations of the roll, across the scale:

• It turns out that the man actually has been concealing positive proof that your father did it and several other murders; this was a close friend of your fathers who was trying to protect him.
• Your father did it, but he was part of a conspiracy which included this man and several others, the details of which are here.
• Your father was coerced into doing it, perhaps through blackmail.
• Your mother did it; your father took the blame to protect her. If it got out, she would be tried.
• This man did it, but your father knew that and took the rap to protect him. That's documented in a trust fund document which gives you all the man's assets upon his death in repayment of that debt.
• There was nothing of value in the safe at all.
• There is some exculpatory evidence here, but it is doubtful it could have proved anything.
• Your father was innocent, and this man has strong evidence against the real killer which he is using to blackmail him.
• There is documentation here showing that this man was part of a consipiracy not involving your father, but the murder was not part of the plan and he didn't commit it. The identity of the actual murderer is not entirely clear.
• There is clear evidence that this man and his coconspirators committed the murder for which your father was convicted.
• There is incontrovertible documentation in the safe showing that this man committed that murder.

That, at least, shows the way the GE roll works in play. In a sense it creates conflict resolution without conflict, as it opposes the player's hopes against the player's fears and picks a point along the scale between them.

The second GE roll is because the man has to get out of the building. Without going into detail, a better GE roll would mean everything ran smoothly, while a worse GE roll means lots of problems. It would allow such possibilities as hearing someone in the outer office (whether or not they're coming this direction), having the custodian enter, having a security guard enter, triggering an alarm, and suddenly realizing that you overlooked a surveillance camera. In the other direction, you might run into someone whom unbeknownst to you has also been trying to prove your father innocent (his mistress, perhaps, or his mistress' daughter to make it really interesting) who has an escape route ready. So the "bangs" don't have to be bad things; they can be good things that open new possibilities.

--M. J. Young