Hey, that's -my- conflict!

[Brand_Robins]

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. 

Yes. Or something like Mountain Witch where, even if you do die (not easy), you still have your Trust to throw around the table, putting the Fear of You into everyone else for the rest of the game. If you can stay involved without your character's direct living presence then death is okay. If not, then you need other ways.

Um, Tony, we seem to be drifting a bit. Is this still useful to you?

[Supplanter]

Yes. Or something like Mountain Witch where, even if you do die (not easy), you still have your Trust to throw around the table, putting the Fear of You into everyone else for the rest of the game. If you can stay involved without your character's direct living presence then death is okay. If not, then you need other ways.

And the ways to stay involved after character loss need to be enjoyable to you. (As opposed to Josh or Brand or whoever: the general "you".) And they're not, necessarily. Not everyone wants to be co-GM or take over an NPC etc. It's another case of "works for whom it works," Brand. ;)

Best,


Jim

[Bankuei]

Hi guys,

So sorry to have missed out on this thread!  (thanks Brand for pointing me this way!)

A few weeks ago, I played in a Dogs game where both the GM and one of the players seemed very reluctant to engage the conflict mechanics, and I realized that it was the same situation both Tony and Brand are talking about.  Like Tony's situation, it seems like they were interested in how play went, but were not willing to take the chance of risking losing Stakes by using the conflict mechanics.  I have been calling it "Floaty Play" for the moment, since it involved no clear stakes (no clear conflicts either) and everything seemed rather nebulous until we engaged the mechanics.

"Floaty Play" also seems to be the norm for games that are usually "GM fiat + occasional dice rolling" as the standard of play.  A lot of talking, with no actual resolution, unless the GM says, or someone turns to the few mechanics that are explicitly laid out for conflict resolution (usually combat), and endless back and forth until one of the players gives under the badgering or escalates to the few guaranteed inputs for players.

Chris

[Brand_Robins]

I have been calling it "Floaty Play" for the moment, since it involved no clear stakes (no clear conflicts either) and everything seemed rather nebulous until we engaged the mechanics.

I may need to split this off, but it occured to me in reading this post that this type of play is also virtually guaranteed to generate player vs player frustration and tension, and not of any good type. If you are doing the "you should be able to play out the social interactions that your character is doing and have it stick without anykind of mechanical support" route, and you are unable to change someone's mind then you are being told, conciously or not, that YOU as a person are not good enough to change their mind. You aren't smart enough to find the magic button. You are the social reject you always knew you were, unable to change people's minds no matter how earnestly you plead your case.

The point at which you have PvP argue it with "if you can change the other person's mind on your own when they have their real OOC desires on the line" as your resolution system, you have pitted the players against each other directly and given both a reason to never give in. I don't think such a system is inherently dysfunctional, if both players are focused on drama and cooperation it can work, but in many cases it goes so terribly wrong....

[Bankuei]

Hi Brand,

I see it less of a personal trigger issue and more of loading the characters to conflict but not giving any support to deal with it when it arises.  It's very common in games that establish splats, clans, and groups that hold conflicting philosophies and then tries to group them together as a unit.  In Dogs, you have similar ideals, just no clear directions about how to play them out- so conflict is a major point of the game.  For the folks I'm referring to, I think they've never had games with a functional option like that- so they probably fell into habits to avoid conflict as the method to "save play".

The endless argument comes because on some level the players want the characters to stick together, but at the same time "stay true to character", which has been loaded with more divisive elements than otherwise.  Also- the fact that most games revolve around the party-hydra play means the usual method of establishing compromise in real life ("Meet me half way or I'm not going to hang around you anymore") no longer holds water.  The characters are built to break away- but everything else from expectations of play to player authorship is trying to keep them together- you have a group trying to fit the round peg in the square hole repeatedly.

Conflict rules are social contract for the group to choose to do something, anything, rather than keep going back and forth - unwilling to do what would be reasonable ("characters split") or unwilling to have their characters compromise.

Chris

[Brand_Robins]

Conflict rules are social contract for the group to choose to do something, anything, rather than keep going back and forth - unwilling to do what would be reasonable ("characters split") or unwilling to have their characters compromise.

RIght, I agree with that.

What I was saying is that, in addition to the problems of not having social resolution systems that are active and supported (rather than being there in theory and not in practice) you are just begging for people to get frustrated not just with each others characters, but with each other as players. Two people not willing to compromise, split, or stop talking = frustration.

Especially when it becomes about IC talk to change someone's OOC mind (a clusterfuck I've seen far too often).

[Josh Roby]

Brand, that's pretty much every MUSH I've ever played on ever, right there.

[Brand_Robins]

Brand, that's pretty much every MUSH I've ever played on ever, right there.

Considering we used to play on the same MUs together, I'm betting we've got the same scars.

I think I may split this topic off, once I get some time to writeup a couple of actual plays about it.

[contracycle]

Hearking back to the deferral business and the concerns over ownership, I do think some good points were made.  I think in addition it is possible that a player may wish to defer engagement with a conflict because they want to set up something that will affect it before they engage directly and "tip their hand".  But also, there is a big difference between deferring the resolution of the conflict ala hero wars and the way that soap operas do it.

Thw HW/HQ mechanic rolls the conflict over to another decision cycle, as it were.  Thats not the same as the scene cut or the cliff hanger in soaps, in which the deferral in the conflict occurs through a change in scene and the bringing on stage of another conflict.  So I think there is "deferring resolution" as well as "putting a conflict on hold".  Note that time often stops ins soaps when a conflict is "held".

However, theres nothing to prevent the HW mechanic fgrom being used to "hold" whenever it defers.  It seems quite plausible to me, although it would be tricky, to run two simultaneous scenes with simultaneous conflict resolutions, switching from one to the other each time a step in a conflict is determined  In fact this seems so obvious now I wonder if anyone has already done this in their games?

Anyway, I think the main impediment to exercising ownership over conflicts and the like in games is the inability to talk about them.  Its hard to even convey to another player what you see as a conflict, I think, in that you are describing a set of kinda presuemed hypothetical future interactions of the SIS.  It would be easier and more specific to claim relationships with specific NPC's, and think the Mentor structures in some games cabn be used as a foothold for a specifically owned sun-plot or similar.  But this does not resolve the problem of players exercising ownership of conf;licts that arise from play, however.  I think that can be probably be addressed largely by simply naming them; establishing them as explicit objects in the game rather than implicit relationships or probablisitc projections.