Hey, that's -my- conflict!

[Callan S.]

Then I went off to get drunk and have a bar-brawl, in order to give other people time to deal with their conflicts before I ordered them off planet.

If it was me, I'd be annoyed that this really tasty problem had come up but now I basically had a ticking clock going with how long you as a player decide to spread this bar brawl out (and it sounds only a temporary thing), before you ordered us off planet and away from the fun thing. Sure, you wouldn't just do that to everyone if you saw them having fun...but you having exclusive choice over that still feels deprotagonising. Prolly abused player syndrome, but really, who really wants to be under the whim of someone else (unless you can control it with resources)?

That's what would push me to deprotagonise you (by arguing with your choice), because I feel I'm going to be deprotagonised. But as I said, that's just me. Now, if you gave the rest of the group control of when your character ordered everyone off planet........

[TonyLB]

If it was me, I'd be annoyed that this really tasty problem had come up but now I basically had a ticking clock going with how long you as a player decide to spread this bar brawl out (and it sounds only a temporary thing), before you ordered us off planet and away from the fun thing.

Because nobody in SG-1 ever disobeys orders?  And therefore they can't treat my ordering them off planet as just another IC complication to force them to hard choices? 

Sorry, I don't buy that.  Adversity does not equal deprotagonization.  Quite the reverse.

[Brand_Robins]

Because nobody in SG-1 ever disobeys orders?  And therefore they can't treat my ordering them off planet as just another IC complication to force them to hard choices? 

Reading this, and considering the example I gave above, it makes me ponder a question: Are you sure the people in your group are interested in making the hard choices? Or at least, are interested in making that particular kind of hard choice? Because if their behavior was at all like what I described above, I think a large part of it is specifically about avoiding the hard choices.

Some of that may be various forms of AGS, but some of it can also just be from a difference in approach to game. Not everyone wants to rock with their cock out, or be about push and force in game (to use Myers Briggs terminology, it's a Judging/Perceiving issue) – and when those who aren't get into game with those who are, the results are often...

Well they're pretty much exactly what you're describing.

So, does this group normally go for the strong choice, the push, the judge type? Or are they pull players who go for the compramise, the smooth game, the percieving type?

[sirogit]

To me, the core problem of your game seemed to be "Tony wants to make an irreversible decision to conclude a conflict, and other people are trying to make that decision reversible."

This stuff about "ownership" and "earned rights" is your justification for why you should have your way. To me it seems blatantly unnessecary.

I think you're all working towards a good Narrativist outcome: You're driving towards those irreversible decisions, they're inserting their character's into the conflict and trying to represent their character's place in them well.

The problem is that words alone in the majority of situations are indeed very reversible, and thus do not make a good way to make irreversible choices. Thus, if they were accompanied by actions(Such as, I don't know, your character calls for them to be placed on a list of unfriendly societies that will take a long time to get off of.), you wouldn't run into the problem of other people reversing your decisions. Their characters could bicker about it, and expres thier extreme displeasure, but the choice has been made in story terms: Ritual sacrifice + Americn Values = Blackballed planet.

[Supplanter]

Some of that may be various forms of AGS, but some of it can also just be from a difference in approach to game. Not everyone wants to rock with their cock out, or be about push and force in game (to use Myers Briggs terminology, it's a Judging/Perceiving issue) – and when those who aren't get into game with those who are, the results are often...

Well they're pretty much exactly what you're describing.

So, does this group normally go for the strong choice, the push, the judge type? Or are they pull players who go for the compramise, the smooth game, the percieving type?

Of the group Tony played with, I've gamed with is Jen, whom I saw play three characters in two campaigns. Re the Brand Robins Three-Level Typology I just got done reading I wouldn't presume to speak to Jen's typology on the life level, but at the game level she seemed consistently to be ESFP - I'm really solid on the FP part, less so on the ES. The characters I saw her create were E*FPs - I'm least comfortable judging the second one.

The others I don't know.

Tony, if you were actually playing Dogs, would you expect that other PCs might contest your decision at the crux, even if your character had gotten some level of buyoff beforehand? Or would you be just as discommoded?

Best,


Jim

[Supplanter]

Of the group Tony played with, I've gamed with is Jen, whom I saw play three characters in two campaigns. Re the Brand Robins Three-Level Typology I just got done reading I wouldn't presume to speak to Jen's typology on the life level, but at the game level she seemed consistently to be ESFP - I'm really solid on the FP part, less so on the ES. The characters I saw her create were E*FPs - I'm least comfortable judging the second one.

Doh! Replace that E with an I at the game level. At the character level, mm, also pretty I.

Sorry for the hasty typing (as it were).

Best,


Jim

[Callan S.]

Because nobody in SG-1 ever disobeys orders?  And therefore they can't treat my ordering them off planet as just another IC complication to force them to hard choices? 

Sorry, I don't buy that.  Adversity does not equal deprotagonization.  Quite the reverse.

Dude, I said what I'd feel...I didn't say it'd make rational sense. If it's abused player syndrome then adversity can be missread as deprotagonisation. If abused player syndrome isn't something that ever crops up with them, then this idea isn't applicable.

[TonyLB]

Tony, if you were actually playing Dogs, would you expect that other PCs might contest your decision at the crux, even if your character had gotten some level of buyoff beforehand? Or would you be just as discommoded?

If we were playing Dogs by the rules, this problem couldn't happen.  People jumping into the middle of a conflict is against the DitV rules.  So I'm having trouble getting my brain around your hypothetical.

For those who are trying to diagnose the miscommunications in the group (who I don't even play with as a group any more), I hope that it's driving toward my original question of how/whether this could be communicated clearly.  So far I'm not seeing that connection being made, so there's not much I can contribute back.

[Mark Woodhouse]

Tony, if you were actually playing Dogs, would you expect that other PCs might contest your decision at the crux, even if your character had gotten some level of buyoff beforehand? Or would you be just as discommoded?

If we were playing Dogs by the rules, this problem couldn't happen.  People jumping into the middle of a conflict is against the DitV rules.  So I'm having trouble getting my brain around your hypothetical.

What, the rest of the people around the table can't get up in your face telling you you have to fold? Yeah, they don't have any game-mechanical way to keep you from pushing a conflict to conclusion, but they sure can agitate against your stakes or against any individual raise or escalation. This has happened to me - fellow players assume I'm not going to go to Shooting, and I do. Oh my, there's room for a lot of social pressure to take it back or back down.

Which is pretty much what you're describing happening in your game, right? Social pressure from players to back down from a conflict, not attempts to undo your decision within the fiction?

[Supplanter]

For those who are trying to diagnose the miscommunications in the group (who I don't even play with as a group any more), I hope that it's driving toward my original question of how/whether this could be communicated clearly.  So far I'm not seeing that connection being made, so there's not much I can contribute back.

Okay, you started with three questions, right?

So that's my big question:  Do players earn the right to more authority over conflicts than their fellows?  Is that a feasible way to play?  Not "Am I right, were they wrong?", because I figure we were all just on different pages.  But "Could you communicate the view I had, such that people would accept it?"

That's a "Depends," "Sure" and "Sometimes" respectively.

It's when you get into the particulars that it gets complicated. Players who reject the "No Myth" principle (implicitly or explicitly) may not find their character's attitude that malleable toward what's going on in the SIS - the story would break for them if they arbitrarily (on their view) kept their characters out of the climax. Players who have meatspace "hot buttons" may feel the social contract gives them the right to resist introducing some kinds of unpleasantness in play. (Quick hypothetical: Player A puts a lot of effort into a conflict that he decides to solve by decreeing that an offending NPC should be gang-raped.) Such players might even be formally convinceable in advance and then renege on the deal when the trigger circumstance came up. There are probably other reasons why a given play group might reject the idea. Those are just the ones I can think of.

Communicating your view and getting buy-in would be easier in advance than in the event, and easier explicitly than tacitly. It might help to explain it in terms of niche protection - this is how my character shines; please help me understand how your character shines so I can support that. If someone says, "My character can't let you get away with that," a constructive response might be, "Cool. Can we together come up with some circumstance that keeps your character from interfering? If not, can we formalize this as a conflict that I have the chance of winning so we can move on? And if it's too late to save this particular conflict, I really want us to figure out how we can formalize ownership of conflicts in the future. When I commit as much to a conflict as I have to this one, I feel a sense of ownership for it and I need to have that respected."

No guarantees that any of that works, because there's no fact of the matter about whether your character should own that conflict. It's a valid preference, though.

Best,


Jim

[TonyLB]

Mark:  Oh, gotcha.  Yeah.  I see what you're saying.

I don't think I would, initially, be as unhappy with people contesting the explicit rules as I was with them contesting the implicit rules.  If somebody says "Dude, you have to Give now," in Dogs I just give them a funny look and say "Uh ... No."  Sometimes I say it with a grin, but I'm not going to feel threatened because I know that the rules have got my back.

Now if the same person kept harping on the same subject?  Then I'd get twice as ticked off as I ever did in this game, because now I'm (a) having to hash the same issue out OOC and (b) feeling that our explicit agreement (in the form of the rules) has been violated.  In the first game I was ticked about having to hash out the issue, but I certainly didn't think that anyone was violating any explicit rules.

But Dogs rules are not the same gradual buy-in, with options at several points, that I'm hoping to get working.  You might be able to jury-rig it, if you let people Give without losing Stakes, in order to expand the Stakes in a follow-up conflict (which would allow other people to get in on the action).  Like:

PC#1:  Stakes are "Does he take back what he said?"
PC#2:  I got no interest in that.  Feel free.
PC#1:  Okay, I shoot him in the kneecap.  "Take it back, you yellow-bellied coward!"
PC#2:  Whoa!  No way!  That's expanding the stakes!
PC#1:  Oh?  I thought it was just fallout.
PC#2:  No, no.  Now I need in.
PC#1:  So the new Stakes are ... what ... "Does my character dominate the whole situation?"
PC#2:  How about "Does your character make people respect him?"
PC#1:  Sounds good to me.  So I get the fallout I inflicted, plus all my dice fresh?
PC#2:  Yep, and I roll in with my Calming tone, 2d10.  "This ain't the way to earn nobody's respect, Brother."

In case I haven't made it clear:  This thead probably would] have been in RPG Theory when that forum was still active.  I think it's a lot more useful to discuss the theoretical with the strong grounding that we've got in the actual play, but I am hoping to make some general tools as well.

[Brand_Robins]

For those who are trying to diagnose the miscommunications in the group (who I don't even play with as a group any more), I hope that it's driving toward my original question of how/whether this could be communicated clearly.  So far I'm not seeing that connection being made, so there's not much I can contribute back.

Ah, I see, I thought you were trying to figure out what had happened and why, and missed the springboard to "How do I get the thing that I want out of game through system support." Now that its clear hopefully I can be more helpful.

Doing it by system, but not mechanics, the easiest way is probably going to be to make sure to keep clear OOC communications about not only what is happening, but where you are moving. If people around the table don't OOCly see that you're going to drop a bomb until its gone off, then they may have some right to be irked once the explosion has happened and now there is nothing they can do about it.

Really, it's not that different than the old saw with GMs of a certain type who get frustrated with their players not picking up on important clues that are "so very obvious." Certainly what you are going for may be obvious to you, but to the others at the table it might not be any more obvious than the clues a GM leaves on the railroad. Letting them know OOCly that you are taking this plot over and if they want to intercede they'd best do so quickly can yield better results. If they had known before you dropped the judgment bomb, and still hadn't bought in then clearly they have no right to -- they've forfeited it. If they did want to buy in at that point then all the scenes that folks like Josh and Mike were talking about could have been set up. They could have had their characters meet you in the hall on the way to tell the aliens to screw themselves and had a big fight then. You probably would have been less annoyed, because they would be heightening your stakes rather than trying to take them away after you'd already "won" them; and they certainly would have had more opportunity to play without feeling the hammer of doom taking away their protagonist role.

So, that's the "perfect world of lovely communications" answer. How to hardcode that into something in the games rules? Well, we've got to look at a couple things here: do you want it to be a system where once it is said it is done, or where once it is said it is still negotiable? (The difference that Ron talked about between Dogs and Polaris.) Because, in my little tiny non-designer brain, it makes sense that if you want to have a "said and done" system then you need to have some kind of mechanic for letting people know what is coming, very freaking clearly, before it comes. If, OTOH, you want a "you can fight over it even once its said" system then you can say whatever you want without warning, because people still have the ability to negotiate it out.

In your Dog's example, an experienced Dogs player should know that if they're opting out of a conflict it could get escalated to violence. If they want to stop that, they should be in it. In a Capes game, however, it would work without warning because you can always fight for control and to push things up and down. Now, I'd actually say in this context that for a new Dogs player the issue could be problematic – because if they don't know the shooty is a common result of conflicts then we're back at the "GM's really obvious clue that isn't so obvious" level. Whereas in Capes newbs don't get caught pants-down so often because they have a chance to keep kicking at it so long as they want to badly enough. (And if they don't want to badly enough, then it's their call.)

So, to try to be concise, when looking at systems for this I think the first thing we need to determine is who knows what when, and how statements of effect can be made in response to that knowledge. Once people know what is going on and have a chance to buy in on even, clear footing the choice is made. However if they do not know what is going on, clearly and not just "well you should have known" clearly, then the choice hasn't been made. At that point you can either go the hard road (too bad, it's said and done) or the cooperative road (oh, lets renegotiate).

(Which, to bring back an earlier point, may depend on what the gamers at your table want. Some people will be fine with effect being generated before they were ready for it because it gives them a chane to do something big back. Others will not because it disrupts the flow of the game in a way that reduces their enjoyment.)

[TonyLB]

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.

Like, I'm about to have not-Jack tell the aliens to shove off.  I say "Okay folks, I'm about to tell these guys to shove off.  Anyone want to defer that?" and then people could say "What?  You're gonna do that?  Oh heck, no, my character comes into the room on some pretext and that interrupts you.  That gets deferred."

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).

I know that in theory that's all really one conflict resolution system, but I suspect that breaking out the pacing from the resolution would have helped me in this situation, and might help generally.

[Brand_Robins]

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.

Yes.

[Josh Roby]

That's be awesome, Tony.  How many times in various other forms of drama do we see a big thematic statement delayed by unforseen cirumstances -- and it only increases the tension surrounding that thematic statement.