Conflict in the Middle - A Crossed-Wire Act

[Paul T]

Callan,

OK, I follow you in terms of the whole "if play sucks people will stop playing" angle. I don't understand why you brought it up here, or what you want me to take from it, however.

As for...

I think I understand it now. But...to me, it's kind of 'say yes, or the observer rolls dice'.

No, it really is "say no until you roll the dice". Because the observer has no reason to call for the dice unless you say 'no', and say it strongly. If you're not saying no, the observer has no reason to roll the dice.


Paul

[Paul T]

Fred,

I'm not sure where you're going with your example, but... it's close to what happens in this game, but not quite there. You see, the observer does not decide what the conflict is about. The Narrator and Protagonist do. The observer merely says, "ok! Enough! Roll the dice already!"

Part of what is being explored in this thread is whether this is a bad design. My own so far is that it doesn't seem to be... but there was this one hickup (described in this thread), and I'll be looking forward to more playtesting, which may or may not reveal a serious problem.

One possible different design that comes to mind as a combination of your suggestion and Per and Gregor's suggestions would be this mechanic:

-During a scene, an observer may suggest a point of contention for the Protagonist. (e.g. "Can you turn your back on this girl?")
-To do so, the observer slides forward one Coin.
-If the Protagonist is willing to fight for this goal, he says so, and we go to a contest, as written in the rules with the point of contention becoming the "Goal".
-If the Protagonist refuses, the Coin stays in the middle of the table, and will be added to the "stake" of the eventual conflict. (If one never materializes, I'd be tempted to say that the Protagonist gets this Coin.)

Now, here's the catch: if the Protagonist refuses, they immediately and irrevocably lose that point of contention. In this case, the Protagonist would have to agree to rescue the girl if he wanted to avoid a contest.

This is interesting, but might be a little too intensive for this game. The Protagonist player already gets into serious pain and trouble in every scene as written (unless he is very, very lucky), and this would push the game into nose-bleed pain territory. (An RPG for masochists, perhaps?) Worse, in addition to all the pain, this would remove the Protagonist's only input into the fiction.

Additionally, I suspect this would make it harder to come up with Risks.

But interesting, anyway.


Paul

[FredGarber]

OK.  I read the rules, linked through Gregor's AP, so I have a better understanding. (and I'll use your pronoun conventions, too). Please ignore my previous example.

I think Paul, as Observer, was too forgiving.  If the Protagonist and the Narrator aren't giving you exciting conflicts, withdraw your Stake Coin.  As soon as the Observers do that, that turn ends, right? The Protagonist doesn't get the chance to move towards their Goal, and the Narrator doesn't get the chance to win Coins.  And then you say "That wasn't exciting enough."  The next go-around, the two are more aware that you are watching for higher stakes conflict.

Also, Per and Gregor they weren't using the rules.  If they found themselves in a conflict that really was interesting and had value to them, then they don't need to indicate it with subtle body language. The Protagonist can say "Gee, I wish some Observer would call for a story mechanic." 

All told, Paul, I think you had your Designer hat on, and not your Player hat on. 

But this has been a very interesting thread of a method to keep players engaged in play even if their characters aren't involved in conflict.

[Valamir]

Hey Paul, as someone who's spent a bunch of hours designing gamist and gamist-esque mechanics...here's where I think the weak point in your design is.

The currency mechanic earns the Observer resources if he accurately predicts the protagonists interest in the conflict.
But it also penalizes the Observer for getting it wrong.

This by itself is not a problem, but on top of this you want the Observer to call the conflict at the right time narratively as well.  I think that's a pretty tall order, and I wonder if the success you've seen with the mechanic so far is primarily due to you and your playtesters being on the same "timing wavelength".  My gut reaction reading this thread is that your Scottish experience would be the more normal save with groups pretty tightly attuned to each other.


Possible suggestions:

1) eliminate the risk of loss for the Observer.  This would eliminate one potential source of hesitation that could cause the observer to miss the opportunity.  The Observer would still be motivated to not go to conflict frivilously, because they want, after all to gain resources.

2) Incorporate some mechanical signalling by the protagonist and narrator that would cue the Observer.  Not knowing the rules, I don't know what form this might take, but some variation on having the protagonist commit resources (i.e. ante up) before the conflict is called might work.

3) Attack it from the other side:  i.e. tighten up the parameters on what the protagonist and narrator can freeform about.  From your write up I'm reading:  "I as the observer was waiting for the right moment to call for conflict, but the players instead of getting deeper into that conflict were sideslipping into something else and the right moment never came".

Assuming that's accurate...what possibilities are there to just not let them do that?  I'm thinking of the effect Polaris Key Phrases have here.  The Key Phrases pretty much keep the narration focused on the "thing we're on about" and forces on going escalation of that "thing"

Consider:  "I'm doing X", "but only if Y", "But only if Z", "and further more A", "But only if B" until finally the "thing" is just so BIG that someone can't handle it and uses one of the "out phrases" like taking it to a die roll.

I'm not saying to use the key phrases, but what if the narrating players were constrained in some fashion so that their back and forth narration required going deeper on the "thing" rather than skipping over to a different "thing".  That would seem far more likely to reach a point where the moment of conflict becomes clear, and well built up.

[Paul T]

Ralph and Fred,

Thank you for the input! You've given me so stuff to think about.

Also, I'll get back to you again when I next have a chance--things are hectic right now (holidays coming), so I might be away from the internets for long periods over the next two weeks. In the meantime, please don't take my silence in any negative way!

Fred-

You're right on with the "too forgiving" comment... except for that one problematic scene. See, it was an interesting scene. It's just that by the time I'd figured out what was going on, the other two players had already had enough and moved on.

More below...

Ralph-

I have a few questions about your first suggestion. Namely, does it change things at all if the risk of loss for the Observer is really, really low?

Secondly, in terms of the "same wavelength" issue, this is where I find it gets interesting. I haven't playtested this game a whole lot (sadly), but each time has been with different people and each group was from a very different background. All three groups were people who did not regularly play together.

Whenever the observers called for the mechanics too early or misjudged in one direction, things went well. We did have some scenes which had no conflict and so no "dice", which was also fine. However, in this one instance, this one scene, I didn't jump in quickly enough, and the players moved on, which felt a little.. unsatisfying for everybody (I'll refrain from using Per's slightly more explicit analogy). That timing issue is what brought me to post this thread. I'd love to have some more discussion of the issue.

For instance, is it possible to keep a conflict "going" for a long time, without mechanical support? Or does that break down after a while? (In the context of this game, "a long time" doesn't have to be very long, but for people like myself who are either a little sllloooowww or just want to see things simmer a little more, it should be more than a few lines of dialogue.)

Finally, I might as well post a link to the rules here:

http://ihousenews.pbwiki.com/f/Land+of+Nodd.pdf

(If anyone wants to play this game, please do, and let me know how it went. It's easy and fun. It's not as innovative as I thought when I wrote it--I've since seen some of the games developed here--but still kind of neat.)

For those of you who have the time to read a couple of pages, scroll down to the last bit, "Advice for Narrators". Do you think the advice there would help prevent this problem in future playtests?

Best,


Paul

[Valamir]

Ralph-

I have a few questions about your first suggestion. Namely, does it change things at all if the risk of loss for the Observer is really, really low?

Probably, but that would lead to other questions...namely...if its too low for the Observer to worry about (i.e. not a potential source of hesitation), what's it doing that makes it worth keeping.

With the caveat that I'm speculating purely on the basis of this thread:

If the currency is valuable, the Observer isn't going to want to lose it, there for isn't going to want to guess wrong about what the Protagonist finds interesting...I would anticipate this leading the Observer's choice to call for Conflict to be more Game motivated then Narrative interest motivated.  I'd anticpate this on the grounds that basic human nature is that most people feel worse about a loss of capital then they do about a loss of opportunity.  So if you guess wrong and get a lower bonus...that's not as bad as guessing wrong and actually losing.  So I'd expect the possibility of loss to focus the player's attention more firmly on the currency (away from the narrative) then the possibility of gain.

Secondly, in terms of the "same wavelength" issue, this is where I find it gets interesting. I haven't playtested this game a whole lot (sadly), but each time has been with different people and each group was from a very different background. All three groups were people who did not regularly play together.

That is interesting.  And you observed the particular pattern expressed in this thread only with the Scottish players?  Maybe its the Kilts :-)

Whenever the observers called for the mechanics too early or misjudged in one direction, things went well. We did have some scenes which had no conflict and so no "dice", which was also fine. However, in this one instance, this one scene, I didn't jump in quickly enough, and the players moved on, which felt a little.. unsatisfying for everybody (I'll refrain from using Per's slightly more explicit analogy). That timing issue is what brought me to post this thread. I'd love to have some more discussion of the issue.

If it was just one scene, is it possibly just one of the "moments that didn't work" that every game has from time to time?

Is there something about it that leads you to think this would be more of a trend that needs to be "fixed" vs. just an aberation?

[Paul T]

Ralph,

As far as the "opportunity loss" for the observer goes, you're right, of course. Either it's a factor, or it's not.

And my design goal IS that the player consider it from a "game" perspective... however, the idea is that the most advantageous move for that player is one and the same as the best moment in the story for the other players.

Is that an impossible goal? It seems to have worked pretty well most of the time so far, but there hasn't been all that much playtesting yet. In particular, all the games have been too short to get into the meat of the game--not only the whole converging plotlines thing, but also the idea that playing this game, the players all settle into the same groove, since everyone reaps the biggest in-game rewards when the story is the most engaging.

At least that's the idea--the mechanics "train" the players to learn each other's likes and dislikes.

Finally, it WAS just the one scene, which leads me to hope it was just an isolated incident. However, I was hoping to start discussion about two aspects the incident brought up:

1. Does my "Narrator advice" sound like it would help groups avoid such scenes? (I haven't yet added Gregor's suggested advice from this thread.)

2. The whole issue of the timing of mechanics relative to the narration of a conflict. I was wondering whether this is an issue that's been discussed by any theoryheads, and whether anything came of it--for instance, games or AP reports that deal directly with that issue.

Best,


Paul