Hey, that's -my- conflict!

[Brand_Robins]

Oh bloody hell. Stupid computers.

Yes, Tony, I think that would be an excellent thing. It's something like what I was thinking of when I said a call and response system -- a shout out to let people know that the bomb is coming. I currently use a social-contract level system bit in some of my games for this, and for people to call out when they need others to get more heavily into the conflict as well.

I do think that a lot of conflict resolution systems have this, implicity. But I also think that making it explicit can be useful to a lot of people -- and probably a very good tool for setting up levels of conflict in scenes.

[Mark Woodhouse]

I am trying to do something similar for a game-in-development, so here's how I'm implementing it ... ignore as much of the jargon as possible, this thing is in "jumble of partial draft" state.

Story Goals reflect plans, plot points, or character agendas that really change the status quo of the story in major ways. To resolve them, you'll need to pursue many smaller victories along the way, pushing on to the realization of your master plan.

Story Goals are written on an index card and given to the Game Guide. On one side of the card, write the Goal Type and any clues to the nature of the Goal. On the other side, write down the Importance and the actual Goal.

Story Goals have four things you need to define when they are created.

Type – Loving, Fateful, or Painful. This affects how the Goal is resolved, what effects it can have, and how you or other players can add Chips to it.

Importance – Write this down on the back of the Goal, but don't reveal it except when you're ready to try to Resolve the Goal. This number ranges from 3 to 10, and is the number of Chips that must be accumulated on the Goal before it can be resolved. The effects of a Story Goal are limited by its Importance... (I have a table here that makes no sense without the rest of the rules: basically, it ranges from low Importance things like getting a minor power-up or resolving a subplot up to "resolve the Big Season-Long Plot")

Goal – write down what you want to have happen when the Goal resolves on the back of the card. You needn't be highly specific, but you need to at least define what kind of effect you want to have and a target (if any).

Clue – In addition, you should put 1 clue about what the ultimate goal is on the Goal card to begin with. Each time someone adds Chips to the Goal, you must reveal another clue.

Basically, you put the big things you want to have be turning points in play out there, and you have to spend Currency to power them up until they hit their Importance level. At that point, the goal is live, and can be claimed and contested. Anybody can put Chips on a Story Goal, and anyone who has contributed to it at any point automatically gets to add a character to any scene where it is contested. As it gets chips, it also becomes more clear how people want to have it go, as each contributor adds a Clue to it.

If only one player is really committed to a Story Goal, it may take a long time to "ripen", maybe even past relevancy, but if everybody is "buying in", it can "ripen" pretty quick.

Is that the sort of thing you're thinking about, Tony?

[Supplanter]

I wonder whether it would help if, in addition to a system for resolving a conflict, you had a system for letting players defer a conflict.

Sure. You also then need a "cloture system" too, to bring deferrals to an end, either through consensus or conflict. ("Yeah, let's do this" OR "Tony wants cloture, Danny wants to prolong the deferral, [system goes here] Tony wins" OR "Since the deferral, Jen has done X, Y and Z, cementing her stake in the conflict Tony, you gotta deal with Jen now.")

Best,


Jim

[Mike Holmes]

Deferal exists mechanically in some games. In HQ, if you roll a tie, the contest is defered. I just went over that in another thread. Since you can cause this in HQ with Hero Points in some instances (OK well only 5%), it's similar to what you're talking about. Another example from HQ, if you're doing an extended contest, a "round" can be any duration. So you can engineer it so that the next round will not resolve for as long as you need it to go. I've never seen this done, but I'm sure it's possible.

I've seen the "tie means deferal" elsewhere, and I like it. Though I agree that giving the power to players to do so is a very interesting option.

Anyhow, to get back to the problem from the thread, I hear you saying to me at one point that you did try to point out that there was a burgeoning conflict going on, trying to show it to players. So in that case it seems like their fault for not seeing what you were up to, if they didn't get it. I mean it sounds like it was pretty plainly telegraphed not only by you, but by the GM that such a conflict was coming. So to only start to address it after a decision was made does seem a tad dense on their part.

But I'm not sure what's to be done. Do you suspect that this sort of problem will happen again? Is it just a lack of them "getting" player cues?

Mike

[Josh Roby]

So to only start to address it after a decision was made does seem a tad dense on their part.

Isn't the declaration of that decision a part of the address, though, and easily seen as an 'opening salvo' to be answered by other players chiming in?

[Brand_Robins]

Isn't the declaration of that decision a part of the address, though, and easily seen as an 'opening salvo' to be answered by other players chiming in?

I'd say, "Yes, at least in most trad RPGs in which the differentiation between conflict and task resolution is absent and social systems for determining order of play outside of combat deliberatly avoided."

[spaceanddeath]

I wonder whether it would help if, in addition to a system for resolving a conflict, you had a system for letting players defer a conflict.
...
That would, in some sense, have allowed me to maintain my "investment" (i.e. the deferrment doesn't change my mind, or change what the decision is going to be) but give people time to jump in and add their own investment in the importance of the issue (possibly even rivalling or exceeding mine).

Rock on. That's a great idea, Tony. Outside of a formal mechanic to implement it (not that it couldn't be used, just because I see a lot of potential for use in games that wouldn't understand what its for), I think it'd be a great addition to the social contract of several of the games I play in.

~Mo

[TonyLB]

Here's an added thought:  If player A is set up to resolve a given conflict for Stakes X ("Talk to these elders, and the possible stakes are 'how earth relates with these people') and Player B wants to defer that conflict then player B must offer additional Stakes Y ("Talk to these elders, and the possible stakes are now also whether Daniel can live with himself and continue to work with SG-1").

Or ... I don't know.  Maybe that's what I'm actually talking about when I talk about "player investment" ... the stakes that people have made, for themselves, concerning a given conflict.  The thing about how we treat the religious elders wasn't just about the elders, or the fate of galactic diplomacy:  that stuff can get handled by people off-camera.  The conflict matters when it becomes about whether not-Jack would compromise his principles in order to get along with an alien race, or whether he would stick to his guns.

Sort of like Issues in PTA, but in a more dynamic "attach as you go" way.  Hrm.  I get the impression that this is going to have to head over to Indie Game Design (which will involve me actually figuring out how to integrate the concept into Misery Bubblegum) pretty soon.  Which is a good thing, but I don't know where it leaves this conversation.

[Josh Roby]

Tony, you're playing moving target!  Now I'm hearing that you didn't feel like the other players had a personal stake in the conflict's results, but wanted input into the address to that conflict.  Which could be ownership of the conflict seen in another light, but does put a finer point on it.  Assuming that I'm not reading too much into things.

[TonyLB]

Tony, you're playing moving target!  Now I'm hearing that you didn't feel like the other players had a personal stake in the conflict's results, but wanted input into the address to that conflict.

Oh no, quite the contrary!  I think that the players very much had personal stakes in the conflict, but were not willing to ... urgh... to put them up as stakes.

The word is being used in two different (and confusing) ways, I think.  And I'm not helping.  Let me try to help.

They had an interest in the outcome of the conflict.  It was important to them.  It was something that would change how they played the game, and that's why they badgered me about it.  If they hadn't been interested then their behavior would have been just annoying, rather than understandable.

But they weren't willing to stake what was important to them on the outcome of a conflict.  Or, rather, it certainly wasn't their first instinct:  nothing in their past experience or the game system said to them that if they felt they had something to defend then they needed to put that up explicitly as something they could lose.  And that (I think) is part of the reason why my attempts to say "Okay folks, here's the conflict!  It'll be this thing, right here!  Who's in on it?" fell flat.  They had no basis for understanding me when I asked things in that way.  Why would they want "in" on anything like that?

Because I wasn't thinking (and probably wasn't conveying) "Okay folks, what are you interested in on this conflict?"  I was thinking "Okay, here's what I'm putting on the line.  Does anyone want to meet that ante by putting something on the line from their character too?"  And if that's the question I conveyed (again, this was a while ago, so I'm not sure) then the other players would quite naturally have said "Gamble some element of my character or his destiny?  Uh ... well, no.  No, I'm not planning to do that.  Odd question."

So, for instance, Delenn's character was some sort of anthropologist/spy.  She never did make it exactly clear.  It was a mystery.  But, anyway, I gather that it was a big deal to her to be able to examine other cultures from a non-judgmental point of view.  I think that was her interest, though it was never explicit.  And it was never explicit (in part) because she never saw any need to say "Okay, my stakes are whether the team can treat this culture in a non-judgmental way."  Because, vague as the rest of it is, I know that if anybody had said that to me, I'd have been ready to deal with them on those terms.  That would be such a stark difference of opinion that it would be terrific to play out.

Instead, Delenn argued out of character that I was violating her chance to deal with the cultures in a non-judgmental way.  So she was (for whatever reason) still maintaining her interest but also still refusing to put it up as stakes by having the discussion in-character.

[Brand_Robins]

Instead, Delenn argued out of character that I was violating her chance to deal with the cultures in a non-judgmental way.  So she was (for whatever reason) still maintaining her interest but also still refusing to put it up as stakes by having the discussion in-character.

Yes! Hot damn Tony, that's exactly what it is, both in your example and my Exalted example.

I still think that there is a lot of good in the idea of having a "defer that conflict until I'm ready to engage you back" mechanic. I think that's hot, and I do think it could help with this if applied constructivly and consistantly.

But I think the other issue we're dealing with here is a fundemental divide in modes of play and game approach. You and I are willing to put shit up as stakes knowing we might lose and being willing to roll with that. Other players are not. They don't want to put it up as stakes because if they do, and they lose, then they've lost what they cared about. Some of this may be "must win" sillyness, but another part of it has to do with where you get your fun. As I mentioned above, folks like you and I get it from putting shit on the line, making the hard choice, and having a chance to really hit it or really fail. Other people don't, they get their fun from cooperation, from excitement, from exploration not of "do I win" but "how do I win" and so on. (Which, I'll note, can be fully functional if the conflict is only between PCs and NPCs, and needs serious social support rules to be functional between PCs.)

I'd note that there is some aspect of conflict vs task resolution idealogy going on here, or at least the ideation that backs those ideas coming out in other logical processes. If you have a conflict that you lose, you lose. But if you have a task that you fail you can try again, try another task to achieve the same result, try another task to keep the consequences of the failure from manifesting, and so on and on. It's a well known cycle: you roll to jump the gap, you fail: so you roll to cling to the edge, you get a partial success, so you roll to climb up the edge of the wall, you fail, so you roll to grab onto a ledge before you hit the bottom....

It's something that I know drives a lot of us banky. "If I'm going to fall let me damn fall." But I'm going to have to say, straight up, that it isn't just something used by GM to fiat his way into the story he wants -- it is something a lot of RPers want because it gives them the chance to never have to put it all on the line and really, really fail. Delenn, and the players in the Exalted game I talked about, didn't want to put that up as stakes because they weren't willing to lose it. For people that are unwilling to lose, and so unwilling to play, I don' t know that the deferment mechanism would work. Even then it only works with people willing to put it on the line -- eventually, just not now.

So, the question then becomes something like: how do we either a) get people who don't want to stake anything on what they are interested to stake something, or b) get around PVP conflict when no one is willing to back down or willing to stake anything.

[Josh Roby]

But I'm going to have to say, straight up, that it isn't just something used by GM to fiat his way into the story he wants -- it is something a lot of RPers want because it gives them the chance to never have to put it all on the line and really, really fail.

Also consider that most mainstream/traditional/antiquated games use the player character as the sole means of player credibility, so comprimising player character abilities and health compromises the player's ability to actually play the game.  It is all to easy for a player to be rendered meaningless in such a situation, and so players justifyably shun character risk because it is in a very real way player risk, as well.  You're not going to fall to your death, but you are going to sit there and watch while everybody else is having fun.

Which relates directly to Brand's (a) -- rulesets need to provide and clearly convey options for player power that are divorced from player-character well-being.  Risking your character should be fun, not a direct threat to your ability to continue playing.

[Mike Holmes]

Huh, I was going to say, "Except for Gamism!" But now that I think about it, if you asked 'em over at www.boardgamegeek.com if it was better design to have player participation curtailed by interim poor play, they'd tell you no. The goal these days with play is that every player be constantly engaged fully, including the ability to potentially come back (even if small) right up until the win/loss condition is identified. So, yeah, you're right. I think this hold's true for all RPGs.

I'd almost go so far as to say that character loss is an anti-pattern, with the exception of one-shot designs (where character loss at the end of the game does not equal inability to continue participating with the ongoing game since it's over).

Mike

[Josh Roby]

Character loss is no big thing when in troupe play or with a game that specifically has replacements waiting, or makes the 'dead' player into a co-GM.  I mean, I've heard of D&D groups that kept spare PCs on hand in case of character death for this very reason.  As far as I can see, this is only a problem when there is one character per player and that character is the player's sole credibility tool.

[John Kim]

Which relates directly to Brand's (a) -- rulesets need to provide and clearly convey options for player power that are divorced from player-character well-being.  Risking your character should be fun, not a direct threat to your ability to continue playing.

Well, I would clarify this that rulesets need to provide so that the player can stay involved.  Whether this is by keeping the character around or by giving options outside of the character is a game choice.  For example, in the Buffy RPG, characters are nearly impossible to kill.  The risk is over how many Drama Points you will be drained of, not over whether you will survive.