[Geomancer] Conflict Resolution as Negotiation

[Jasper]

I first posted about Geomancer in this thread. Now I'm doing a major rework of the conflict resolution system, so that's what this thread is about.

First a recap of the game and why it's cool. Geomancer is a bit like Dogs in the Vineyard. Except instead of playing gunslingers in a Morman West, you play Catholic Geomancers in Indonesia. Beat that! Anyway, what do you do, as a Geomancer? It's taken me a while to figure it out, but this game is about negotiation. The characters ride into town, and like in Dogs, have a whole mess of stuff to deal with -- but they don't deal with it through geomancy really, or with violence, but with talking to people and playing off their wants. They negotiate with local priests, peasants, noblemen, demons, ancestors' spirits. It's all negotiation. The geomancy is just color.

So my major rework of the conflict resolution is about making something that fits better with negotiation as a central theme. A generic kind of, "roll some successes" will work, but is pretty boring. Luckily, I have an idea. I think it'll work really well, but I only have it in broad strokes now and need to fill in some details. Here's how it'll work (play example in italics):

* * *

Conflict resolution is played out in a series of turns, back and forth between two players. On each player's turn he can "put something on the table." This is something he promises to do, in exchange for whatever he's getting, and is called an "offering."

I'll exorcise that demon in your house later today, even though I really have better things to do.

When you make an offering, you slide a token (or something) forward, into the middle of the table. Your opponent makes offerings of his own, which he lines up opposite yours.

Okay. I'll deliver that lumber you need for the funeral pyre. But only one cord.

Unlike in Dogs, this isn't a linear, one-way process. On your own turn you can take offerings back, or modify what's there.

Only one cord? Well maybe I'll get around to exorcising that demon tomorrow morning.

Additionally, you can make "demands" of your opponent if your current offerings outweigh his own. A demand forces him to make an offering of your choice. (Demands should probably be made at the beginning of a turn, i.e. immediately following the opponent's turn.)

And aren't I performing the wedding rites for your daughter? I think you should really bring two cords.

When tokens get added for an offering, the number of tokens depends on how important the offering is to the other party. NPCs have "wants" listed on their sheets, which are rated numerically: these numbers say how many tokens get put down if that want gets met with an offering.

Each player also gets to add tokens to his side for other advantages he has in the situation. These are negotiation skills, the relationship rating between the characters and the NPC's Parsimony attribute. There are also rules for escalation, ala Dogs though not quite the same, but I don't need to get into them now, I think.

Negotiation ends when the two players accede to the current offerings or one of them drops out. Also unlike in Dogs -- and many other games -- the stakes of the conflict are not decided at the outset: both the stakes and the outcome regarding them is decided during the process itself.

* * *

Those are my ideas as they stand. Lots of handwaving around the tokens. The two big questions are these:

1. How to keep track of offerings in a usable way, so they can be removed and modified in later turns? Tokens, representing very crude estimates of weight? Dice of diferent sides or with different values turned up? Something else? I'm thinking of lining them up in some way for easy comparison, but maybe there's a better way.

2. How to introduce some element of uncertainty (chance) into it? This is easier. In general, I would like dice or some other randomizer associated with living things -- including character stats -- and static numbers associated with non-living things; it's a Geomantical thing. Any rolling should come as a skill is used though, not at the end of the negotiation.

Question #1 is really the main thing. The problem with my current ideas -- tokens or dice -- is that it's hard to keep track of what they represent once they're on the table. I wouldn't really need to quantify the offerings at all, except for the "other factors" that get weighed in, like attributes and relationships.

So I'm looking for options, here: other ways entirely to do what I want, or specifics that work better than what I'm currently thinking of. Just brainstorming really. Of course, more full critiques of the system are welcome too.

[Vaxalon]

Perhaps use cards instead of dice?  Either playing cards, index cards, or custom printed cards.

[SPDuke]

To answer question #1, I've been trying to think of things either associated with geomancy or Catholicism.  Rosaries could be interesting, but basically amount to tokens.  To expand on the idea of cards, how about cards depicting cathlic iconography or stained glass images?

Geomancy might offer the use of cards with geomantic charts.  Or how about mandalas?  Since geomancy once involved throwing dirt on the ground, perhaps you could use stones or colored sand or those neon aquarium pebbles.

Or since it's Indonesia, maybe you could use orangutans.

I did a little wikipedia research on geomancy, and learned that one form boils down to a sort of binary code using groups of either 1 or 2 dots.  For some sort of randomization, how about using small stones with roughly two sides (like the kind of stone you might skip across water, only smaller. . . maybe something like those clear aquarium stones people use as counters for Magic the Gathering) and you use permanent marker to put 1 dot on one side and 2 dots on the other.

Hopefully this'll spark your imagination!

-Steve

[Jasper]

Cards might work...the issue is really less about the color of the system than how I get all this information on the table in a usable way. Suits might help keep track of the different kinds of offerings, and each offering could be a little stacks of cards... I'll have to fiddle around with it.

Here's a simpler question. Have any other games had negotiation or bargaining as a principle mechanic? In particular, I'm wondering how formal other games -- if there are any -- have been about determining the weight of different offerings. Games with bidding might be helpful too, depending.

[Bill Masek]

Jasper,

It seems to me that there are two problems you are experiencing.

1:  If all tokens are of equal value, why would anyone exchange one tokens at a rate greater then 1:1.

2.  Why do players, mechanically, want their opponents counters.

3:  There is no difference between consensual negotiation and out and out conflict.  (This is not a problem but a difference could add random elements to the game and might be fun.)

Here is one recommendation.  Take it for what its worth.

All characters have a set of Attributes (resources, skills, magic abilities, etc) with a rating.  This rating represents the number of tokens they generate for use in that specific attribute.  After a certain period of time (in game day/week or play session) the number of tokens in each attribute resets to the value of that attribute.

Players can barter tokens from their characters attributes as you mentioned in your first post.  When the barter is agreed upon both players discard tokens equal to what they gave up and gain tokens equal to what they received.  They may barter or spend tokens they receive in this way as though they had the relative stat, even if they do not.

If a player wants something done without negotiating, or if negotiations go south, a player may attempt to force their opponent to comply.  To do this, they must discard one or more tokens from an appropriate stat (like Gun Slinging or Seduction or what ever else is appropriate).  That player then rolls one dice for each token discarded.  The coerced individual may then discard tokens from any relevant attribute (such as Gun Slinging or Virtuous) and roll a number of dice equal to the number discarded.  Both sides may continue to discard tokens and roll dice until both sides are satisfied.  Who ever has the highest total wins.  Note that each character may only use one attribute.

The winner may then discard tokens from any relative stat to steal tokens from the looser at a 1:1 ratio.  Note that the winner may discard from any number of appropriate attributes.

Example:
if Jenny wants to seduce the son of the town's mayor in order to steal his money, she could barter seduce for wealth.  If the mayor's son had no use for seduce, she could try to force him to give her the wealth with her seduce attribute.  The mayor's son could defend himself with his innocence attribute.  If Jenny wins, she could discard tokens from her seduce attribute, her criminal attribute and her just plain evil attribute to steal tokens from the mayor's son's wealth attribute.

I believe that this would solve the issues you brought up in your game.  I hope it helps.

Best,
         Bill

[Jasper]

Thanks for the thoughts, Bill. I like where you're going with the exchange system suggestion, but first lemme backtrack a bit, to the 3 problems.

It seems that I haven't quite been clear on what the tokens are for. Tokens aren't a resource, they're merely counters to keep track of negotiation process: they put a numerical value on the different "offerings" so they can be compared. Frex, I might say "I offer to clean up your garage," and so I slide 2 tokens forward -- the tokens don't come from an existing pool, they just represent my promise to clean your garage; and I use 2 because you really want your garage cleaned. I could also say, "I'll pay you $50" and that might also be worth 2 tokens. So tokens are abstract negotiation "money" with no existence outside of that.

So...problem #2 isn't really there, because tokens don't get exchanged. And #1 also isn't there because in fact you do always end up with equal tokens on the two sides. That's the aim of negotiation: to balance the tokens and thereby arrive at a mutually acceptable deal. But I like how, in your example, things don't have to be balanced, and both players can accede to an imbalanced settlement. What I'm not sure about though is how that imbalance should be carried over into other conflict. An alternate solution would be to introduce "favors," a little like your transient stats but focused on people instead of skills -- so in the next negotiation with the same person, the imbalance can be rectified.

The other issue with exchanging tokens from fixed pools (in your suggestion) is how to account for actions, like my cleaning your garage. Or were you proposing that I would offer up, say, Fitness tokens to do something like that? It seems kind of strange to then have "my" fitness floating around and being traded with other people then -- though, yes, I realize it's an abstraction. Still, I like some of the dynamic that produces...I'll have to keeping thinking about it.

[Nogusielkt]

1. How to keep track of offerings in a usable way, so they can be removed and modified in later turns? Tokens, representing very crude estimates of weight? Dice of diferent sides or with different values turned up? Something else? I'm thinking of lining them up in some way for easy comparison, but maybe there's a better way.

2. How to introduce some element of uncertainty (chance) into it? This is easier. In general, I would like dice or some other randomizer associated with living things -- including character stats -- and static numbers associated with non-living things; it's a Geomantical thing. Any rolling should come as a skill is used though, not at the end of the negotiation.

1: I think you may have this problem no matter what.  There are just too many things that can be offered to keep track of anything easily.  The only thing I could think of was to separate them into 5 categories: Future Goods, Future Services, Past Goods, Past Services, and Other.  Then, when each is offered, you keep them in a separate pool (just for organizational sake).  If you offer Future Service A and Future Good B, that goes in the first pool.  When you offer again, you either modify that pool or start a new one.

2: I have no idea what you are going for... Would it be bad to have skills oppose each other, like a countdown clock that, when a failed roll occurs, negotiation is hampered or ended?

As to what was said earlier, if someone holds something over the person they are negotiating with (blackmail is the easiest to think of), then the negotiation may never be equal.  However, that doesn't mean you can't still put an "Other" token into play to show how much you are pushing that blackmail or have negotiation start out with an "Other" token on the opposing side because of their relationship with you.  Of course, that's really only if you want both sides to balance the amount of tokens they pitch in.  I think that it would be easier to keep track of how valuable resources are that way.  A jug of water may be nothing in one place, but 3 tokens in the desert.

[Jasper]

Thanks for your comments too, Nogusielkt.

You're right, #1 will never go away -- it's just a matter of minimizing confusion. Categories are probably best. Right now I'm pondering two ways of organizing it. Broadlhy you have three categories: traits (which are always "on the table" and not part of offerings), offerings, and escalations. Of course, as you say, offerings themselves will come in innumerable types. If I were to organize those I might break them down into: immediate material exchanges, promises of material exchanges, and promises for action/work. It's at least a start. Playtesting will probably have to reveal which ones make the most sense.

A countdown clock is a really cool idea. Because right now, you can just negotiate until the cows come home, eventually hammering out a bargain. And while some times that's reasonable, people in real life become frustrated and give up. The GM in particular could probably use some kind of gauge to know when NPCs get sick of it and walk away. Maybe a limit on the number of turns (each turn consisting of a new offering of change of offerings), dependant on...what? Relationship score I suppose, or some entirely separate "Patience" rating.


On the last points: that's exactly how I'm picturing it working. This is where the NPCs desires come in: a PC offering gets a value assigned based on what the NPC thinks of it, not what the player thinks of it, or any abstract worth. Blackmailing would definitely be included, and gets covered both by the variable costs and by the escalation rules -- it would be a form of "threats" which is the third level of conflict, just below violence.

[TonyLB]

But I like how, in your example, things don't have to be balanced, and both players can accede to an imbalanced settlement. What I'm not sure about though is how that imbalance should be carried over into other conflict. An alternate solution would be to introduce "favors," a little like your transient stats but focused on people instead of skills -- so in the next negotiation with the same person, the imbalance can be rectified.

Well, geomancy is (at least in part) about freeing the flow of blocked energies, yes?  And negotiation, at least at the master-trader level is about temporarily shortchanging somebody in order to get the resources to make a deal that will bring back enough resources in turn to repay them, yes?  Aren't these, in essence, the same process?

Super-simple example time:
  - Filka owns the gambling den.  He wants respectability.  People (particularly the mayor) treat him poorly, though he is a rich man.
  - Jorgan is the butcher.  He has a great deal of meat.  He also, however, has a great deal of debt to Filka.  He cannot afford to give away meat, no matter how righteous the cause, or he will default on his debts.
  - Prana is the mayor.  His daughter is to be married (to a minor noble, no less!)  Once the wedding is concluded, Prana will be a rich man.  Now, however, he has too little for a grand wedding.  Nor, being a man of pride and standing, would he ever ask for charity.  Such a thing is unthinkable!

These are people who, on their own, will never get anything accomplished.  The flow of resources and energy in their village is completely blocked and stagnating.  Filka's riches bring him nothing but anger.  Prana's high position brings him nothing but remorse and duties he cannot fulfill to his family.  Jorgan's skill and craft are bottled up, because of his debts.  These people need help.

Specifically, they need somebody to go in and short-change one of them.  ANY one of them.  Let's say that they go in and outright con Filka into forgiving Jorgan's debts.  Then they say to Jorgan "Your debts are freed ... be a good man and freely cater Prana's daughters wedding," which he happily does.  Then they say to Prana, "Your daughters wedding will be spectacular, because of the great respect the town owes you.  Cannot you, in your wisdom, show benevolence to one of the lowly ones who made this possible?  Give Filka a place of honor at your table, that everyone might see him for the worthy man he is."

Until somebody gets short-changed (or, put more charitably, looks beyond their self-interest and does something without being fully recompensed for it) none of this can happen.

Am I making sense here?  Would this help the design goals you have established?

[Mikael]

1. How to keep track of offerings in a usable way, so they can be removed and modified in later turns? Tokens, representing very crude estimates of weight? Dice of diferent sides or with different values turned up? Something else? I'm thinking of lining them up in some way for easy comparison, but maybe there's a better way.

Suggestion: Simple letter or A4-sized black-and-white sheets with two rows of circles. Negotiators sit on opposite sides of the sheet, each with a row of circles. There´s a place to write the offering beside each circle. If you use eraseable pen, each sheet will last a while before it burns through like the good old hit points in AD&D. Or use post-it notes to connect circles and offerings. If more circles are needed, add a sheet beside the original one.

Will your game have a place for negotiations with more than two people?

I did like someone´s suggestion of "borrowed traits usable elsewhere", which would be a somewhat realistic model of a kind of barter economy. To be really attractive, though, it would require that there was an area of the game where these skills would useful outside negotiation.

Good luck with the game. I really like Dogs - I hope you succeed in creating something as good but different.

Cheers,
+ Mikael

[Nogusielkt]

Specifically, they need somebody to go in and short-change one of them.  ANY one of them.  Let's say that they go in and outright con Filka into forgiving Jorgan's debts.  Then they say to Jorgan "Your debts are freed ... be a good man and freely cater Prana's daughters wedding," which he happily does.  Then they say to Prana, "Your daughters wedding will be spectacular, because of the great respect the town owes you.  Cannot you, in your wisdom, show benevolence to one of the lowly ones who made this possible?  Give Filka a place of honor at your table, that everyone might see him for the worthy man he is."

Don't forget the player's themselves!  I would think that the player's would often be shortchanging themselves to get anywhere.  Maybe not the first thing on the table, but perhaps the first things on their minds... "The old man needs wood to build his house.  Do we have any wood?  No, we don't have any wood.  I guess we need to find someone with wood.".  If they actually had wood, they might expect to give it up, even though they may try to find someone else with wood.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Jasper, I am a little confused here. What is the intended output of this negotiation? Are the players simply running around acting as personal shoppers for idle townsfolk who don't know what they can get from their neighbors?

Reading your prior thread, it seems like the big thing that the players are up against is that towns tend to be resource-poor, and so no matter what you do, someone is going to be shortchanged; how can the characters satisfy the most needs with the least damage to goodwill for themselves and within the town?

I'm not sure how your conflict system interfaces with this question; I feel like, to be satisfying to play with, the conflict system needs to either
a) award the players with information to help them make decisions, or
b) allow them to examine the aftermath of their decisions.
As it stands, you seem to be aimed squarely at (a), but I wonder whether it would be profitable to explore (b) for a bit.

[Jasper]

Tony, yes, yes and yes. Your example is exactly what I'm envisioning. The PCs' rols is ultimately to make the townsfolk act against their immediate interests and thereby help the town as a whole. I realize now that this may have been obscured by my talk of "balanced" negotiations...but that balance is with regard to tokens, which include ways of forcing and cajoling people into action; things that aren't, in other words, actually traded. In the end, the PCs have roughly three weapons in their arsennel to make people do what's right: their own ability to do useful work for people (geomancy), their social status and ability to inflict harm, and their position as outsiders which allows them to act as go-betweens for otherwise hostile peasants. As Nogusielkt (real name?) says, the PCs' ability to short-change themselves is definitely critical.

Shreyas, they're not just shoppers -- or at least it should be more complicated than that. Maybe this is beside the point, but a lot of the negotiation is about non-material things. It's about labor and work (we need ten peasants to help with this ritual; Nell needs help fixing her cottage), legal and spiritual priveleges (John is over-using the common resources because he has the clout to do it) and any other kind of social arrangement (marriage, divorce). So a lot of the negotiation is, in fact, originally between two peasants and the PCs will have to step in as middlemen facilitators -- at some point giving someone the short-change, as Tony describes.

And yes, I suppose the towns are always resouce poor (if "resources" covers all the social arrangements, etc. from above). If they weren't, there wouldn't be any problems to solve, right? Fundamentally, the townsfolk have competing interests that get in the way of the common good, and the PCs need to sort that out.

I'm not exactly sure how conflict resolution addresses the crux of this situation either. One fundamental isue is how much to quantify any of these exchanges. A lot of them seem unquantifiable, at least in any definitive way: there are too many possible variations, which all depend on who's involved. Additionally, after reading Vincent's "Fruiful Void" posts, I'm concerned about over-quantifying such a central idea. Putting hard values on offerings seems like it will fill the "void" and get in the way of the role-playing -- instead making negotiation a resource-shuffling exercise. Ideally I'd like to avoid putting values on anything. I could say, "Play your PC while the GM plays a peasant and negotiate something if you can." The problem with this is the GM. His job is to keep up the self-interest of the villagers, but not to the point of blocking all would-be solutions. He needs some kind of guidance...

Maybe simply focus on NPC desires and be sure to include a few for each person, with the GM's goal being to fulfill of as many desires as possible. If he thinks that giving in to the PC's plans will get the NPC what he wants, then go for it. But if the NPC is served by resisting negotiations, and demanding more than is reasonable, then do that instead. But this seems like insufficient structure for conflict resolution itself. Focusing on the aftermath might do it...so too might the "flow" of traits. Actually, the more I think about that the more I can see it making sense: if, for instance, the Geomancers pull rank and intimidate someone, that trait gets spent and if they try it again, the peasants will be resentful and it won't work as well.

Still thinking...

[Jasper]

I forgot to respond to you, Mikael. Sheets with bubbles and lines...yeah. That's actually a pretty good idea. I mean, writing seems slower than pushing chits around but it's probably the clearest approach. Thanks.

Negotiations will always be between two parties, even if there are multiple people in each party. I may need additional rules for an "arbitrator" role for the PCs, ala "Let me help you hammer out this marriage contract."

[Bill Masek]

Jasper,

It appears that I was unclear in my first post.  By resource I meant all resources at a players disposal.  So Strength would be a resource, as would Money as would Joe Will Cater.  All resources exist in the abstract.  So if Joe agrees to cater a wedding for our PC Fred, then Fred will gain the resource Joe Will Cater.  (Or just Catering, it really doesn't matter how your write it.)

So, our PC Fred needs a cord of wood.  Bob will give it to him, but only if he exorcises the spirit in his house.  Unfortunately, the spirit has no desire to leave the house and Bob is not powerful enough to exorcise the sprit himself.  So Bob travels to the local priest to get help.  The priest agrees to help Bob in exchange for Bobs help conducting the sermon.  Bob trades his Piety for the Priests Exorcism.  Now he and the priest go to the ghost to exorcise it.  Bob uses his Piety as well as the priests in order to banish the ghost.  Fred then gives Bob the wood.

So Bob lost piety and gained Exorcism.  He then lost Exorcism and gained wood.  There is no reason that this needs to be at a 1:1 ratio.  He could have traded 3 Piety for 2 Exorcism, then traded that 2 Exorcism and 3 of his own Exorcism for 1 wood.  Total stat wise he is in a deficit, but that does not matter, because all of those stats will be regenerated next session.  However, he has the wood, which he wanted all along.

Also note that it is always good to trade resources, because you accumulate other people's resources, but yours reset.  So even an unfair trade can easily end up advantageous for both parties.

Best,
       Bill