Thoughts on conflict resolution in D&D

[ffilz]

I have some thoughts on [D&D 3.5] Conflict Resolution and other Forgey things (l that don't relate to the actual play so I thought I'd open a discussion here.

I was thinking about this last night, and wanted to thank you for posting it. A while ago, I was wondering how to make non-combat skills work better in Cold Iron. I was trying to think of a way to make them more "tactical" like combat. Conflict resolution really is a better way to go, and I should have considered that originally.

Task resolution is great if there are interesting decisions leading to the individual tasks. So a wargamey combat system is a good application of task resolution (given one is interested in wargamey combat systems). Calling for tracking rolls until the PCs fail does not produce interesting decisions and so falls flat. Far better to just make a call on a difficulty and call for a roll.

Interestingly, before D&D had a skill system added to it (or in areas where a skill system didn't apply - in one sense, D&D has had skills since the Thief class was first added), I think conflict resolution may have been used. If the PCs wanted to do something not covered by the rules, they would describe what they wanted to accomplish and anything they thought would help their cause, then the GM would assign a probability of success and then a roll would be made. Sometimes the GM might assign probabilities to several possible results. But maybe many of these cases were really task resolution.

In any case, I am going to try using conflict resolution in my future gaming. I can see how the situation where the aristocrat player was trying to drum up support would have been easy to cast as a conflict resolution. We could have agreed on a base level of success with a TN, and a base level of failure, and either definined extreme success or failure, or left them up to interpretation (since Cold Iron has an open ended resolution system, there's lots of possibilities). For example, I could have decided that a result of 20 got him the support of 1 soldier, for each +2 above that, another soldier would be gained.

Thinking back on past play of mine, I can think of numerous situations where conflict resolution would have improved play significantly. One scene in particular that comes to mind was a situation where the PCs retreated from a fight into a room with no exits, and then realized there must be a secret door since an opponent they had chased into the room was no longer there. Instead of calling for numerous Spot checks, it would have been better to cast it as a conflict. If the PCs succeeded, they found the secret door before their enemies bashed through the door. If they just missed, they found the door just as the enemies bashed through.

Frank

[Bankuei]

Hi Frank,

There are a few things you can do to spice up D&D's skill system as it stands...

-Conflict resolution & stakes-

As you rightly mentioned, its not just enough to set a conflict, but there has to be both a benefit for success, and a penalty for failure.  Being very clear on what both of those are before rolling the dice is a must.

-The most ignored rule in D&D-

Remember how it says that having special benefits give a +2 modifier each time?  This is where you can encourage some "tactical" thinking on the parts of the players by having them describe doing an action in a way that would help the skill, thereby earning a couple of bonuses.

-XP reward, where have you gone?-

In second edition, folks got something like 25 xp for successfully using a skill.  3.0 + dropped that idea in exchange for "Challenge Ratings"... but while traps are given CRs, stuff like debating the fate of the empire isn't...  You can either choose to start assign XP values to certain activities based on difficulty and stakes, or you can go with a flat xp bonus for skill use.  I'd recommend anywhere from 2 times to 5 times the DC being rolled against, depending on how much you want to open up skill use as a viable advancement method.

Once you reward XP for it, people start doing it more.  This same idea works in Tunnels & Trolls to a good effect.

-T&T's- uh, I mean C&C's resolution mechanic!-

Recently the D20 version of OD&D, known as Castles and Crusades lifted the idea off of T&T and many people's OD&D house rules to simply make all skill type rolls the result of attribute checks.  

You roll D20 + the character class level for things that makes sense with the class(Rogues sneaking, Rangers tracking, etc.) and the ability modifier.  This is also modified if the Attribute in question is a class speciality or one that your character has chosen personally.  

This allows players to have characters that are more universally competent rather than in the handful of skills that they usually end up with.  You'll want to do some tweaks to the classes who get more skill points, so that they're not completely weakened in comparison, but its a good option.

Chris

[xenopulse]

I think this really does have great potential.

In my last game session (the AD&D 2e game I posted about in AP before), we spent the first 1.5 hours trying to find the entrance to the bandits' cave. Now, we were really careful. Sneaking through the woods, making orientation checks, getting lost, not looking in the right quadrant or failing our spot checks, etc. Those 90 minutes were fucking dull for everyone; but my old-school GM thinks that this is the way that the game is supposed to go. So those old notions stand in the way of our fun.

Oh yeah, and my character got knocked out by the first hit inside the cave, so I watched the others fight for over 2 hours while I had nothing to do. But that's, as we know, the old problem of uninvolved audience (because, as being KO, I am also not allowed to make suggestions to other players because my character is not able to).

Back to conflict resolution--we could have saved 90 minutes of wasted time if we had a single roll. Actually, in my game, I would not have made it a roll at all. "You look around--yes I know how careful and sneaky you are--and there's the entrance. What do you do?" But it could have been, "roll on whether you're caught by a patrol before you find the entrance." In any case, this wasted time shit is really annoying, because I only play face-to-face once a month for 6 hours. Now I practically did nothing for 3.5 of those, and the other 2.5 were discussions about how to enter the cave, and the beginning of a fight I then was left out of.

Yay for conflict resolution (and aggressive scene-framing) over old, misguided notions. Yay for audience involvement.

[Andrew Cooper]

The key (as Tony pointed out to me in my thread) to making the conflict resolution really work is to make both success and failure interesting.  For example, in xenopulse's bandit cave example, I would  have had the party pick the character to roll for their Move Silent vs the Bandit's Search.  If the party succeeded then the party found the cave and got the jump on the bandit guards (a surprise round).  If they failed, the bandit's got the jump on them.  Note that I didn't use the Party's Search skill here.  I want them to find the cave and they want to find it too.  Why create a chance where you don't get what you want?  Just concentrate on the sneaking up on the guards part.  The only time I'd use the Search skill for that kind of roll is if there were an equally interesting consequence to failing in the search.

[xenopulse]

Andrew, I completely agree.

The problem with the old-school approach via task resolution is that what's at stake is: Do we find it now or do we waste game time and find it later? And that sucks.

[ffilz]

Hmm, you do raise one issue with wargamey combat, the amount of non-participation time when a PC is out of the action. This has certainly frustrated me as a player. One can involve the player by handing them an NPC or a monster to run (though I've never been comfortable with handing over a monster). Being able to contribute ideas might help some also. But all of these options would seem less than completely fulfilling.

Gaerik - definitely agree with your call on a reasonable stake (and thus the skill to use) in approaching the cave. I would use Search when time is critical (for example in my find the secret door before the enemies bash the door down example). Related skills can come into play with aid another (I would use aid another rather than Synergy bonus as you mentioned in your original post). Aid another does result in a roll, but I'm comfortable with that. It's quick, and the stakes are clear, +2 or not. It also validates the actual skill taken (Synergy just requires 5 ranks).

Chris: hmm, your thought has the benefit of eliminating "never used" skills, and actually, I was thinking a bit that a character class all by itself is a sufficient character concept, but I'm not quite sure I'm ready to eliminate the individual skills from D20. One would definitely have to take care in balancing the different classes, and one might have to look carefully at class abilities (for example, the Akashic from Arcana Unearthed/Evolved has class abilities that allow it to make a skill check in a skill the character doesn't have, and would one interpret that the Akashic's having ALL skills as class skills implies the Akashic can use any skill?).

Frank

[Valamir]

On the idea of giving a player a Monster to play, I knew a GM who would do that if a player's PC was dead or permanently out of action for a time.  He would award the player based on the experience the other PCs would be worth according to the %age of Hitpoints of damage the player controlled monster inflicted.  The player could use those XPs for their own character or on their new character.

He claimed that those players tried harder to kill other players and were far more deviously evil with how they ran the monsters than he ever would have gotten away with.

[JusticeZero]

Honestly, part of the issue is that you are very much a 'game' GM. While this is not intrinsically a bad thing. you tend to overestimate how much attention you are paying to other aspects of gaming. In both the AU game and the Talislanta game, encounters were dominated by travel (a surefire killer of characterization) and well-crafted combat encounters. Meanwhile, you were stating your goals to be more story-driven, and bemoaned the lack of character subplots (which are a casualty of travel - travel is practically a tool to destroy subplots)

Subplots began to develop anemically in AU when the party dug in heels and planted themselves in one place, but adventures that were presented to the party thenceforth concentrated more on 'excuses to get us away from home base' than on developing the characters.. something you explicitly stated on more than one occasion. I recognize that part of that is because the home base they chose wasn't very inspiring, but still. It was one of the only options for permanent rootedness that were apparent. Travel has been my bane in every game I have been in, and I suppose I am thankful that you didn't obliterate the place with extreme prejudice like many GM's I know would in order to preserve their precious nomadism.

My point is, I suppose, that you should probably acknowledge the fact that your GMing style is very 'game' oriented, and either find a group which all loves that style of play (most of the players seemed inclined in different directions, and the only reason I am so proficient in gaming is from my utter inability to develop a character in any game i've been in - *always* because of travel) or to make a concentrated effort to develop the other aspects more than the gaming angle.
Your two "problem players" in particular do not seem to resonate with a "game" approach. In fact, intricate combat settings seem to put them to sleep. This means that in most of the sessions you ran while I was there, they spent a lot of time disconnected from the action. Yes, they might have developed some minimum competence. But I never really saw them come alive, save for isolated and hard to replicate moments that weren't revolving around combat per se.