Expanding IIEE

[Ben Lehman]

Hi everyone.

So I'm designing this little RPG http://www.balefulengine.net/tsuu/rpg/polaris/polaris.html">Polaris which has it's IIEE ripped off somewhat from The World, the Flesh and the Devil by way of Otherkind and Pretender.  But it's a little different.  And its making me think that IIEE isn't really enough.  (if you want to see how it works in more detail, check the website.)

See, when you get into a conflict in Polaris, almost nothing is set in stone.  The first thing you do is talk about what the situation is, maybe-kinda-sorta, which is non-mechanical.

But immediately after that, the mechanics start, and the players determine in a very set, mechanical way what sort of elements will appear over the course of the conflict.  In this sense, the system has kicked in way before Initiation, right?  I mean, we're defining things all the way back at Situation, systematically, and Situation isn't even on that map.  We can even define things before this right-here-right-now situation, like bringing in a character who wasn't there before (via a relationship trait.)

But... check this.  Nothing has even entered the shared imagined space yet.  We are only determining what elements will exist in the challenge.  We aren't even determining how they will be used.  And, at the same time, we're determining the stakes of the challenge.

*after* all of that, there's a dice roll, which tells us if the results are generally good or bad, and assigns (essentially) a temporary GM.

Only after all this has played out do we start initiating the actions, and playing out the scene.

So, I would say, these mechanics are taking place really really early in the IIEE cycle -- so early that there aren't even names for them.  I'm tempted to say we need to exapnd IIEE into SSIIEE, which would be the following:

Situation
Stakes
Intention
Initiation
Execution
Effect

The last of these, not oddly, sets up a new situation.

I'm not sure whether Sitch or Stakes comes first, though.

I think that Polaris does a lot of mechanics pre-sitch, and that Pretender and Otherkind definitely do.

Thoughts?  Where am I totally wrong?

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

I think of IIEE as being already embedded in an existing conflict. By conflict I'm talking about concrete events ("zombies attack laundromat") not abstractions ("is it wrong for the government to study zombification?").

Conflicts exist within scenes.

So, the big frame or box is Scene.

The little frames or boxes in a Scene are Conflicts. Some of the stuff in a Scene may not be Conflict, by the way. That's OK.

Then, in order to get the conflicts resolved, the IIEE kicks in.

Trollbabe is written explicitly to keep this stuff organized during play,  making sure people get in their "say" at every level and assigning where the buck stops in each case.

My final point is that I don't think IIEE is incomplete, because it's confined to resolution of concrete conflicts/actions. You're correct to identify the larger context in which it must occur, but that seems fairly straightforward and clear to me, without need of revising anything.

Best,
Ron

[lumpley]

I'm crossposting this with Ron.  I agree with him that this is already present and accounted for, but I think it's worth the attention.

I prefer "stage" to "situation," since Situation already means something.

If you map out a whole conflict, you've got:
Stage & Stakes, then some number of iterations of IIEE, often leading into new Stage & Stakes (that is, the next conflict).

Unlike IIEE, S&S can happen in either order or all intermixed.

I wouldn't group S&S straight in with IIEE, because every IIEE doesn't come with its own S&S.  Depends on the game.  Otherkind looks like SSIIEE, but Dogs in the Vineyard looks like SS{IIEEs}.

It seems to me that your rules for establishing S&S can be anywhere from totally-independent-of to totally-incorporated-into your rules for IIEE.  I was going to use Trollbabe as an example of one nice way to handle it, even before Ron mentioned it.

-Vincent

[Ben Lehman]

Hi Ben,

I think of IIEE as being already embedded in an existing conflict. By conflict I'm talking about concrete events ("zombies attack laundromat") not abstractions ("is it wrong for the government to study zombification?").

Conflicts exist within scenes.

So, the big frame or box is Scene.

The little frames or boxes in a Scene are Conflicts. Some of the stuff in a Scene may not be Conflict, by the way. That's OK.

Then, in order to get the conflicts resolved, the IIEE kicks in.

BL>  Right.  My point here is about IIEE as an analysis tool for conflict resolution mechanics -- I simply think that there are some conflict resolution mechanics (I think we can count Otherkind and Pretender as successful designs, right?) which really have system and all sorts of things coming in before IIEE.

I will note that all of these resolution mechanics are imbedded within scenes.  When I talk about "situation," I'm talking about a little micro-situations that happens within the scene.

To dig up the old chestnut:  What does "I hit the monster" mean?

In Polaris it means "I would like to initiate a sub-scene in which my guy hitting the monster is a possible outcome" or perhaps "My guy and the monster -- doing the whole 'mutual hitting' thing:  What's up with that?"

In Pretender it means something very similar.  I've only read "Otherkind" but I get the feeling it works in the same way.

What I like about adding Stakes and Situation (I'm still not sure about the order) is that it makes a full cycle.  Which is to say that Effect shapes a new Situation, and likewise raising and lowing Stakes.

yrs--
--Ben

(edit: crossposted with lumpley, who raises good points.)