Conflict in RPGs

[Lance D. Allen]

I'm not totally sure this is the right place for this.. It's a sort of theoretical question, but I'm not exactly wanting to start a discussion, so much as pick the brains of my fellow posters. My purpose in this is in support of design goals, but I'm not going to be discussing any sort of mechanics, so I'm not certain that Indie Game Design is any better.

So, statement of confusion aside (and I'm sure Ron or Clinton will happily relocate this for me if it's not the right place) I'll get to the point.

I'm looking at types of conflicts, in the literary sense, as they apply to RPG design. For starters, we have our four basic conflicts: Man -vs- Nature, Man -vs- Man, Man -vs- Society, and Man -vs- Self.

For the most part, Man -vs- Nature conflicts are handled by the "generic" resolution system in games. What someone recently referred to as "everything else". I'm cool with this, for the most part.. My focus isn't going to be on these sorts of conflict, and so I desire no special systems for them. Man -vs- Society is another one that I prefer to mostly leave alone, as this is best handled, for my preferred mode of play, anyhow, by narrative and roleplay without a lot of mechanical involvement. Man -vs- Self falls into the middle ground between calling for specialized mechanics, and not.. But my real concern falls within the realm of "traditional" conflicts.. Man -vs- Man.

It seems to me, at first glance, that Man -vs- Man conflicts fall within one of two categories; Physical/combative, and social/intellectual. However, this feels too simple, like I'm missing something. Some types of competitive conflicts like races and such can be handled as Man -vs- Nature or Man -vs- Self conflicts, with the results compared to determine who's "winning". These conflicts are indirectly interactive.. I'm looking mainly for directly interactive conflicts.

So my question for anyone willing to take a stab is this: Beyond the two direct Man -vs- Man conflict types of physical/combative and social/intellectual, can you think of any other types?

[TonyLB]

I think that if you are defining "social/intellectual" broadly enough to make it a synonym with "non-physical" then you're saying "Conflicts can be physical or not", which pretty much covers the bases.

If you're defining "social/intellectual" to mean "What you can do with your brains or your words" then there's clearly a mass of other conflicts that don't fall into either category:  Beauty contests and Gambling leap to mind.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello Lance,

You might be interested in reading Running survivalist scenes in Sorcerer for some thoughts on conflicts. The quick summary is that I do not think the famous/memorized conflicts from English classes (Man Vs.) are worth jack shit. I think that critical, clear thinking about stories and conflicts should abandon them immediately.

I suggest that the term "conflict" is actually shorthand for the somewhat more sophisticated concept of conflict of interest. As acknowledged in the thread I linked to, physical circumstances (e.g. a sinking ship, a burning building) are best understood as arenas, within which conflicts occur.

This conflict of interest is centrally linked to Premise in Narrativist play and to Challenge in Gamist play. In Simulationist play, it is a key element of Situation.

Best,
Ron

[Lance D. Allen]

A'right. Been a busy weekend, and I was hoping if I left this for a bit, I might get another response or two.

In any case, I think you may have missed the point I was going for Ron, though you did bring up an interesting point which I'd be interested in pursuing, possibly in another thread. When I've had time to think it over a bit more, I'll post about it. For now though, I'm going to continue using the categories as convenient shorthand.


My focus for this thread is on the Man -vs- Man type of conflicts. Tony brings up a few examples that I think fit fairly well into my idea of Social/Intellectual, or they don't fit into Man -vs- Man at all. If they're not Man -vs- Man, then I'm not particularly concerned about it; It can be taken care of by the "everything else" resolution system, with results compared if necessary. Races, individual beauty pageant competitions, or gambling where very little skill is required (honest dicing, frex) all fall into this category.

What I'm trying to determine is if there is a third or even a fourth class of conflict specifically in the subset of Man -vs- Man conflicts. I am defining such conflicts as situations where your actions are a detriment to your opponent, and vice versa. Combat and debate are the primary examples of physical/combative and social/intellectual, but if you can think of other categories, that's what I want. Also understand that the definition of "Man" in this case is somewhat flexible; A bear may be a "man", a spirit may be a "man". A mountain or a sandstorm is not a man, because it has no will or interest in the fate of the conflict. Basically, anything that can actively pursue a conflict of interest can be considered a man for my purposes.

The reason for this is because I am going to be retouching and redoing my Action Resolution system for Mage Blade, and I'm looking to have specialized mechanics for Man -vs- Man style conflicts, something beyond a pure combat system.

[kenjib]

How about more abstract conflicts, such as each "man" commanding an array of resources against their opponents resources, such as armies, political capital, or financial assets?  Are these intellectual/social or are they something else?  I think it depends on what your system is trying to focus on - how granular you want to get and down what kind of taxonomy your premise benefits from.  Depending on premise I think one could potentially posit, for example, that a sea-bourne / land bound conflict division could be more important than mental/physical - or maybe a division based on ideals-driven versus pragmatics-driven conflicts - or as above a division based on personal versus resource-control based conflicts.  Is it possible that the prevalent duality of physical versus non-physical conflict resolution systems is based on RPG roots in miniatures wargaming?

This is tied to setting ultimately, and furthermore a setting which provides new dynamics that don't exist in the real world can potentially add new types of conflict based on these dynamics, such as a magic or psychic duel.

Can this topic be addressed without more specific details as to the premise of the game?  Your initial duality was already loaded with some vague premise assumptions, i.e. "My focus isn't going to be on these sorts of conflict, and so I desire no special systems for them," as well as a pre-defined frame of four types of literary conflicts that may or may not suit the goals of your game, based on Ron's comments regarding their universality.

What I'm getting at is that rather than worry about a universal taxonomy of conflict types, it seems more useful for an RPG to define it's own taxonomy based on the premise of the game.  I think it could be a very powerful framing tool for game mechanics.