Fiddling with Negotiation/Conflict Resolution Simulations

[dikaiosunh (Daniel)]

This represents my first shot at thinking about design, so I hope this is specific enough for feedback... I apologize if some of it is long-winded, but I want to make sure there's enough meat to give folks a good idea of what I'm interested in doing.

I'm a long time gamer, but the line of thought I'd like some help with actually comes out of a job situation:  a significant portion of a job I've just started involves teaching students about negotiation and conflict resolution (and also teaching other teachers about how to teach it...) (besides being a gamer, I'm also a newly-minted professor, but this comes out of some work I'm doing for an NGO... I don't mean to sound mysterious, the other specifics just aren't really that relevant).  And, a significant portion of how CR is generally taught is through simulations.  Having helped facilitate a number of them, and having read through a bunch of the theory here on the Forge, I've started trying to think about them as "actual play" instances - and how they might be tweaked.

Most simulations are, unsurprisingly, set up in a very self-consciously Simulationist manner (I know GNS is somewhat deprecated as a framework, but I'm not as handy with the Big Model terminology).  The facilitators ("GMs") put together a packet for participants that generally includes background on the context of the simulated negotiation (e.g., history of the relevant conflict, who the major players are, etc.) and then sheets of information on the "character" to be played.  Of course, there aren't any sort of explicit "stats" - characters are bundles of specified interests, powers (e.g., can or cannot decide to make certain concessions on the part of his/her government), personality traits, etc.  Fitting with this, the "resolution mechanic" is fairly simple - you can get what your character wants out of a negotiation just in case you can actually convince the other players (in character) to go along.  Because most participants are motivated to be there for one reason or another (e.g., they're students in a CR degree program, or they're voluntary participants in a professional development program) the honor system at the core of the approach (in my experience) usually works fairly well, and facilitators generally just observe and (during the simulation itself) intervene only to clarify factual points, etc.

So far as it goes, I think this is a fairly good way to do things, since a major goal is often to give participants practice in actually negotiating disputes.  But that's not the *only* goal - they're not just negotiation training tools, they're also often used as teaching tools, to illuminate *why* certain kinds of conflict are difficult to resolve, or to get participants to think about how their own emotional responses get tied up in the roles they're trying to play (in this case, to highlight how American third-party mediators are often coming from a different context than participants in conflicts they are trying to mediate), or to make polemical points about how we could relate to people in ways that would make conflicts less fraught (to take three "actual play" examples I've encountered).

Usually, such agendas manifest in two ways.  First, the designers/facilitators will "stack the deck" in the set-up, e.g., making it impossible to resolve the conflict unless people approach with a particular kind of technique, or flat-out giving the mediator players instructions to use a certain technique.  Second, there is generally a "debrief" after the simulation is run, where everyone breaks character, comes together in a plenary, and discusses what they've learned with the facilitators, which can include explicit addressing of the educational agenda of the simulation.

Since a couple times I've seen this really fall flat (even if students usually to some extent tell the facilitators that, yes, they got that out of the simulation, you can often see that they're saying what they think the facilitators want to hear), it struck me that there might be a problem similar to trying to get Story out of a simulation just by setting the parameters right and assuming interesting Story will happen.  The analogue here is that the standard practice seems to be trying to force some sort of reflective learning to happen through deck-stacking and debriefing while the major engine of the event is essentially a training exercise that rewards finding ways to "win" (i.e., get the maximum amount of your character's interests fulfilled).

So... I've been trying to think of ways to take the educational/creative agenda to heart in the overall design of the exercise.  Clever use of the details of the situation to get one's way isn't *always* the primary thing we want to reward.  I've been trying to think of other sorts of mechanics that one might introduce, but without being able to come up with anything very good (maybe part of my mental block is that my gamer experience is almost entirely table-top, and this is more like a LARP).

To take a concrete sort of educational/creative agenda, say you want participants to reflect on how to come to grips with an interlocutor/opponent's moral perspective on a situation, even if you don't ultimately agree to it (this can be important in getting past hardened positions where each side sees themselves as just reacting to egregious acts of the other side).  The *details* aren't important, and might not even get you there if the participants don't identify with the way that the facilitators (and/or, if using a simulation based on a real conflict, the participants in the conflict) do.  What's important is creating an interesting situation of moral conflict, limited identification, and (hopefully) deep compromise (or participant reflection on why compromise didn't happen in character).  So you'd want some sort of mechanic that allowed participants to grapple *directly* with that issue, say by allowing them to introduce moral conflicts that resonated with them (i.e., the real people playing the simulation). 

I know there are games out there that do this (I think, e.g., Unsung does a really good job at it), but there are certain side constraints of the context that make me worried about using a system designed for RPGs.  Basically, the target audience don't think of themselves as "gamers," they think of themselves as professionals and would-be-professionals getting training, and most would (I think, based on odd looks I've gotten from some colleagues with whom I've broached this sort of topic) see that as incompatible (rightly or wrongly) with "just playing a game."  So any system needs to not feel "game-y," in a sense that I can't quite put my finger on.  Dice, e.g., would be right out.  And I'm not sure how far I could push even in terms of giving resolution rules, though it seems like you'd *have* to go beyond the current implicit "decide what your character would do" rules. 

Anyway... I hope this doesn't boil down too much to "what do you think?" but if I had to encapsulate my questions, it'd be: what sort of system/mechanics could I develop that would allow participants to more explicitly address the educational goals of a simulation, while not being such a radical departure from existing practice as to scare away the target audience?

Thanks for any input.

[On a side note, for any other teachers out there... does the standard course structure of "short assignments - midterm - long assignment/final exam - grade," possibly with a couple group projects or class presentations thrown in sometimes seem about as arbitrary as the idea that every RPG must have a combat system, hit points, and xp/levels?]

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

As something of a pioneer in the types of games (grappling with the issues) that you're talking about, I hope my thoughts will be useful to you.

Here is my suggested reading & play list:

Universalis - dice are involved, but only as a subset of explicit, currency-based description rights

Pace - tokens are spent to ensure successes against adversity, but one only gains tokens by losing; no dice or anything similar is involved

Best Friends - tokens are spent to "push" against superior opponents, but must be given to those characters (friends) that one's character hates most; also see my variant in Actual Play which governs scene-setting; no dice or anything similar is involved

Polaris - everyone has a specific role relative to any given player; events are governed by explicit rights/responsibilities for one's role; conflict is resolved through a series of key phrases which branch off of and twist back upon each other; a single die is occasionally involved

1001 Nights - everyone has a specific role toward a specific player; narration is governed by a currency system; the most important outcomes apply not the characters in the story, but to the meta-characters who are telling the story

Any of these, I think, would get past your friends "gaminess" gate, although retaining a fun interactive or ritualized factor which makes it into an organized activity rather than just sitting around gassing and making things up. They'll also give you a broad spectrum of comparison for thinking about what kind of social and ritual dynamic you want to emphasize in your design, at a larger-scale level than merely "do I hit."

Best, Ron

[dikaiosunh (Daniel)]

Ron,

Thanks for the reading list (and I am, of course, aware of your pioneering status - it's because of the wealth of thought this community has put into these issues that I thought to post here!).  I've just finished reading Universalis (and, I might add, Sorceror - though I made the mistake of ordering Sex& right before it went out of stock, temporarily I hope), but I haven't looked at the other systems you mention.  Best Friends, especially, sounds promising for what I'd like to do.

I think part of the problem, as I alluded to, is almost less details of the system and more overcoming the culture that doesn't think of these simulations as games at all (though there's increasing interest in computer games... exactly the wrong direction, IMHO) - and that leads to some hostility to any attempt to break out of the simulation and confront the game-as-game.  It may be more a social contract issue than anything else.  Maybe if I can convince some of my more established colleagues to mess around with some games, I can get over that hump...

Daniel

[Noclue]

also often used as teaching tools, to illuminate *why* certain kinds of conflict are difficult to resolve, or to get participants to think about how their own emotional responses get tied up in the roles they're trying to play (in this case, to highlight how American third-party mediators are often coming from a different context than participants in conflicts they are trying to mediate), or to make polemical points about how we could relate to people in ways that would make conflicts less fraught (to take three "actual play" examples I've encountered).

I think it would help me to have those AP examples in detail. It seems that to improve upon the simulation you are going to have to reduce these contextual relationships to stats, values, and experiences (Individualism 5, Capitalism 6, etc.). Then your conflict resolution mechanic will have to work off these numbers to model how actual mediations occur. The benefit to be gained would be that the participants would be forced to behave in certain ways through the social conflict resolution and could not just play Americans in sheep's clothing. However, its tricky to get the mechanics to model the real world correctly and you have to be careful not to offend anyone's sensibilities too.

Usually, such agendas manifest in two ways.  First, the designers/facilitators will "stack the deck" in the set-up, e.g., making it impossible to resolve the conflict unless people approach with a particular kind of technique, or flat-out giving the mediator players instructions to use a certain technique. 

Can you enumerate what these techiques might be?