Simulationism and Conflict Resolution

[ironick]

Caveat #1:  

I had trouble deciding which forum to post this in, because it is for a game I want to design, but I have too much on my plate right now to devote much time to it, so I figured I'd put it here.  If it would fit better somewhere else, I've no doubt it will be shifted shortly.

Caveat #2:

This topic may have been discussed elsewhere already.  If that is the case, please point me in the right direction.

On to business!

I was thinking about a game idea that I had in mind, and from my understanding of GNS it seems to me that my idea would be more in the vein of Simulationism.  However, I recently played a superb campaign of Dogs in the Vineyard and was really impressed by the conflict resolution system, so much so that I wanted to see if I could make CR work with my game idea.  I also realize that most Sim games focus primarily on task resolution as opposed to conflict resolution, so my question is this:

"Can conflict resolution work in a Simulationist game, or are the two concepts antithetical to each other?"

If the answer to the first part is "yes", can anyone provide an example of a game that does this well so I can check it out myself?

Nick

[Bob the Fighter]

Hey Ironick,

I dunno about a particular game, but there's no reason why you can't have conflict resolution mechanics.

Whaddya mean by a "Simulationist game", exactly? Is it purely Sim, or are you just placing a heavy importance on creating a particular setting/tone?

I don't think there's any reason why it couldn't work. Check out the Role Playing Theory Open House at Lumpley's website: there's an essay on putting CR into D&D, which I think we could agree is rather Simulationist.

If you could also include a sense of what you want to accomplish with a merger of CR and Sim, that'd be helpful too. I understand that you can't really work on the game right now, but I figure we could talk about your design goals.

[ironick]

I guess that based on my understanding of Sim, it just seems to me that task resolution is usually more suited to replicating the kind of "realism" that Simulationism tries to shoot for, whereas conflict resolution seems like it is generally a better fit for Narrativist games.  I just don't think I've ever really seen a conflict resolution system built into a Sim game and most Narrativist games I've seen seem to use conflict resolution.

Am I mistaken in the idea that each resolution technique is more suited to one Creative Agenda because it works better or is it simply that I've gotten this idea because TR is more prevalent in Sim games and CR in Narrativist games?

Damn...I will post more later, but I have to get up early.  Stupid jobs, interfering with hobbies.

Nick

[ironick]

Can't sleep, so here I am again :)

The game concept I have is not Purist for System because I really don't want too much crunch and rules for every little thing, and it's not High Concept either because I'm not really trying to represent any genre or tropes.   I would say I would be focusing mainly on Situation primarily, followed by Character.  The basic set-up was inspired by an old David Bowie song, "Five Years", in that there is some sort of doomsday coming, everyone knows about it, and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it.  It's the Sword of Damocles dialed up to eleven.  What I want to explore is how people react to a sudden change like that, when the most valued commodity suddenly becomes not money or goods, but simply time.

I don't want to get too much into this, because as I said, I can't even make time to design right now, but I guess my design goals are to explore with versimilitude the sociological ramifications of such an event, particular through an organization that mainly wants to help humankind pass on with dignity and grace, rather than kicking and screaming all the way.  Humanity on its feet instead of its knees, if you will.  

Hope, love, despair, and hate would all play major parts in the overarching theme; given that, it just seemed to me that conflict resolution would be a more appropriate system than task resolution, but my desire to Explore the Situation seemed rather Simulationist.  I don't recall any Sim games with CR systems, so I was trying to figure out if this is a function of suitability for Sim, or if it was merely circular reasoning (e.g., people don't use CR in Sim because nobody else does it).

Maybe I'm trying to force a Narrativist concept into a Simulationist frame, I don't know; my grasp of GNS is pretty fuzzy.   Right now I'm mainly curious about CR in Sim, though.

Nick

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Actually, it all sounds bog-standard Narrativist to me. it strikes me that you are trapping yourself in the same old, same old confusion that if Exploration is even involved, the endeavor must be Sim.

But you know what, let's not even get into that. I think you ought to design the game which suits your creative urge, and worry about GNS-classification later, if at all.

It seems to me that for some, me included, specifying Creative Agenda carefully helps greatly with game design. For others, it can turn into a hideous tangle of second-guessing oneself, and your post reads a lot like that to me.

So to repeat - all you need to concern yourself with is that the game you're designing has a "unified point" feeling to you as you go, and to work with any and all aspects of system/rules so that they're faithful to it. I really don't think you ought to bother yourself with naming that feeling or point.

Best,
Ron

[ironick]

Thanks, Ron!  I was quickly coming to that realization myself, but hearing it from someone else makes it easier.  I think a lot of newer Forge folk like myself run into that problem, especially after reading the GNS articles, because we're so inundated with this unfamiliar theory and we're all afraid that if we don't come into the process with a conscious list of design goals for a creative agenda that our games will be incoherent.  I love this place, but it can be overwhelming sometimes!

Thanks to everyone for their words, as well, but no one still has addressed my original question, which is (reworded): "Is task resolution more suited to Simulationism than conflict resolution, or is the lack of CR in Sim purely due to the fact that no one explores the option because, well, no one does it?"

In other words, is TR inherently better suited for Sim than CR, given the goals of the Agenda?

Nick

[contracycle]

There was some discussion about this when HeroWars  came out.  My position is that I think conflict resolution can provide for better sim.

Becuase the issue in Sim is not "fairness", unequal inputs, and some subjective interpretation of inputs, are not inherently problematic.  On the other hand, IME all game system have boundaries, and this is sometimes hard to reconcile with sim.  Therefore, conflict resolution ala HeroWars should allow a group with a high level of trust to deliver more accurate simulations than they did before.

[Andrew Norris]

Hi, Nick.

My opinion is that task resolution isn't inherently better for Sim. I think the reason it's been used that way in the past (apart from "everybody does it that way") is because it's pretty easy to conflate granularity with accuracy. I don't think there needs to be such a connection at all.

For instance, I think HeroQuest could be used as a solid Sim engine if a group was so inclined. I'm not sure that it would even look that different. You could think of it as generating plausible statistical results, then narrating the events that led to that outcome.

Another thing to remember is that Sim is exploring something, but that something doesn't have to match up with what is "real". Feng Shui simulates fight scenes in Hong Kong action movies by allowing heroes to attack a bunch of mooks, roll the dice, then determine how many of the crowd are taken out -- I think that's pretty close to a conflict resolution case, except that you don't get to choose the stakes.

Similarly, In my last campaign, I used CR for combat almost all the time. We were attempting to create a Tarantinoesque sensibility for our fight scenes, so the players would describe what they wanted to do, we'd roll the dice, and I'd narrate the results. This was one of the reasons we stopped using task resolution; it didn't let us simulate the results we wanted.

I think you might enjoy some of Vincent (lumpley)'s discussions on conflict resolution on his blog. Some of his articles seem to support my view, while at least one contradicts it. (http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/opine.html , under "Open House")

[TonyLB]

Conflict Resolution is often counter to cause-and-effect treatment of the world.  CR says "This happens this way because of what it will mean," and "what it will mean" doesn't really enter into a logical cause-and-effect treatment.

Task Resolution loves the cause-and-effect treatment.  It enshrines it.

Cause-and-effect is a technique, which is not necessarily associated with Simulationism.  But they appear together fairly often.  Often enough that I think that many players who frequently enjoy Simulationist play think that they can't get it without cause-and-effect (the same way some Simulationist-favoring players think they can't get their agenda without immersion).

So, to the extent that your CR rules explicitly undermine the technique of Cause-and-Effect, they will be uncomfortable to people who associate the technique with their fun.  The group that will find that uncomfortable has a large overlap with the group that will enjoy Simulationist play.

[timfire]

Task resolution is certainly better for for certain types of Sim, depending upon what you're trying to emulate. But that arguably holds true across all three CA's.

[Bob the Fighter]

Hi Nick!

I think that you could use either resolution style for your game, but I'll narrow that down a bit.

If you use task resolution, you could make that part of how Time is ticking away, how the crude, physical world interferes with everyone's wish fulfillment in their last days on Earth. This theme could be reinforced by using a standard-issue Karma mechanic instead of Fortune. Such a thing could *really* highlight what a pain in the butt it is that the world's ending.

If you use conflict resolution, you could make it part of a larger theme, in which folks are all floating high on their passions and dying wishes. Conflict resolution might be useful for glossing over muddy little details, making it more about competing character goals. If such is the case, Karma would almost assuredly be anathema to this theme. I might also advise making nonhuman/inanimate obstacles far less of a consideration, or maybe some extension of someone's agenda.

If you stick with the time's-running-out theme (from the TR example), conflict resolution might make things even more dire: Karma mechanics would let more powerful/passionate characters run right over folks with smaller hopes and dreams, adding a sense of dread to resolution.

If you use the dying-dreams (CR example) theme with TR rules, the game could really hone in on petty squabbling and how it's tearing mankind apart.

I think there's a lot you could do.

[ironick]

Thank you all so much for your insights!

I think just having to explain what I'm going for to other people has really helped me out immensely with this future project.  Two jobs and an upcoming wedding make for little time to design, but I have a much clearer idea now of the direction I want to head.

I really want to highlight the fact that in the face of a looming world-ending disaster, none of the petty shit that people normally worry about even *matters*.  Everything is chaos and suffering, and the majority of people have simply been broken by despair and apathy.  Still, there are a few people who think that humanity should go out with dignity, so they work to ease the suffering of inevitable death.  Of course, there are those who, in their pain and frustration, lash out and care for nothing but their selfish base desires.  Of course, the end is a foregone conclusion, so no one really has anything to win except getting to choose how they go out.

Looking at that, it really seems to me that to utilize task resolution would not do the emotional themes justice, so I definitely think CR is the way to go for me.  I'm just gonna let it flow and see what I come up with, and hopefully it won't be a steaming pile ;

Nick

[Lee Short]

Conflict Resolution is often counter to cause-and-effect treatment of the world.  CR says "This happens this way because of what it will mean," and "what it will mean" doesn't really enter into a logical cause-and-effect treatment.

I think the rest of your post is right on, but this part I'm not so sure about.  I think CR per se just says "this happens this way" and not much else.  

To be honest, I'm not  sure what you mean when you say "this happens this way because of what it will mean."  To who?  The players?  The characters?  

I think that Heroquest CR is actually pretty close to cause-and-effect.  It's just cause-and-effect at a macro level, not a micro level.  Gorak's Warrior keyword value of 4W2 gives him a big advantage in the conflict with his opponent, a Warrior of 8W.  What it will mean to who, that enters the resolution at best as an augment, a small effect.  The active keywords are the major causes and the active augments are the minor causes, at the macro level.  The resolution system says nothing about the micro-level cause-and-effect, though -- and that iis what Task Resolution is all about.  In Conflict Resolution, this micro-level cause-and-effect is not provided for by the system.  If the players want it, they must generate it on their own -- after the CR system has given them the cause-and-effect on a macro level.

[Lee Short]

In case it wasn't clear -- Nick, I think you'd do very well to take a look at Heroquest.

[Andrew Norris]

...Still, there are a few people who think that humanity should go out with dignity, so they work to ease the suffering of inevitable death.  Of course, there are those who, in their pain and frustration, lash out and care for nothing but their selfish base desires.  Of course, the end is a foregone conclusion, so no one really has anything to win except getting to choose how they go out.

While I agree with Ron that you should just design and not worry about GNS at this stage, I would like to say that you've stated a dynamite Premise here. You might do well to think about including mechanics that emphasize the dichotomy stated above.