Action, the Core Resolution or Just a Dull Habit?

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi all,

This thread is picking up a new trail from Jack's Shark/Laser thread.

Ross asked, "I heartily agree. Do you have any ideas for resolution systems that are not violence based?"

Well, now, it all depends on what you mean by "resolution," but here are the systems that leaped into my mind when I read this question:

Sorcerer
Heroquest
The Pool
Over the Edge
Nobilis

Others on this site will be able to add quickly to the list, I'm sure.

The trick of these systems is that they're interested in story components, not mimicking or modeling discrete bits of physics.  In other words, instead of trying to figure out a system to adjudicate a sword swing (so much mass, so much energy, so much resistence), they model "What's the coolest thing in a story happening now?"  And that seldom has anything to do with what a character is doing.  It usually has everything to do with *how* a character is doing something.  And these games use mechanics that cover this aspect in spades.

So, in The Pool, for example, when a player succeeds on the roll, it's not a matter of whether his sword "hit" the target. The success allows him to describe how his character succeeded and start off a new set of narrative issues (if he so chooses).  He's doing a chunk of narrative, not a discrete sword swing.

These games are *very* different in style and intent of what "success" means, and if anyone here is unfamiliar with them, you might want to start checking them out, because they turn the "assumptions" of RPGs on their heads.

And yes, aside from a few kinks that are sometimes unique to armed conflict, the core mechanic is used again and again for each one of them.  Combat isn't what's being modelled, so this is easy.  Story is what's being modelled, and so you simply use the same mechanics because as long as it's story, you're using the mechanics.

Christopher

[ross_winn]

I should also ask the qustion: are there any games that spend as much energy mapping the conflict resolution of social and intellectual conflicts as they do with combat, or physical conflicts. I don't think that any of the games in print do this. Most designers say that 'this has to be role-played' and 'we can't have mechanics for that'. Frankly I think this is bunk. By the way, Sorcerer does come closest, but still misses the mark.

[Christopher Kubasik]

But wait Ross,

Why do we need to "map" any of these conflicts.  None of the above games "map" social or physical conflict.  They map the resolution of "conflict" -- not the tiny pieces contained within.  It's a very different assumption about how to go about resolving conflict.

Most of these debates about "giving social coflict" its due usually founder, as far as I'm concerned, on this matter of making a one-for-one model of social conflict resolution that matches physical conflict resoution.  But why do this?  At all? The systems I mention above skip over this matter entirely. They don't model physical combat at all the way we're used to assuming it has to be modelled.  The Pool, in particular.  (The Questing Beast is in print, if that matters to you, and uses the Pool as its mechanic.  The Pool rules are available online.)

I remember my quest for trying to give social interaction it's due in "debating mechanics" and what not when working at game companies.  I've learned since then that what I needed to do was leave the whole paradigm of "one notch, then another" notch conflict resolution behind.

And yes... Sorcerer, Heroquest, The Pool, Over the Edge all say, "use this mechanc to solve all conflicts."  They do it in different ways, but that's it.

Christopher

[Marco]

Most of these debates about "giving social coflict" its due usually founder, as far as I'm concerned, on this matter of making a one-for-one model of social conflict resolution that matches physical conflict resoution.  But why do this?  At all?

Christopher

Because the excitement is either in the exercise* or the content.

In the case of a court-room drama, the interest comes from taking a person who appears terminally guilty and proving their innocence. In this case what's important is the content: you would not be satisfied with Reversal of Fortune if you did not see *how* Dershowitz made his case.

A system that can give you low-level-of-abstraction resutls for combat ("I hit him in the vitals!") will not as easily yeild the same level of abstraction for debate.

And for me that makes all the difference. And as you pointed out, it's hard to do.

-Marco
* There's no question that a good strategic system for determining the outcome of a debate could hold interest (move, counter-move, etc.)--but still, if the debate is the primary point of play, I don't see how it could be satisfying if the actual arguments weren't made. So I think a court-room resolution system would work well for a game where the PC's were lawyers but the point of the game wasn't the practice of law.

[ethan_greer]

I haven't read it myself, but a friend of mine bought it - Dynasties and Demagogues is a d20 system sourcebook published by Atlas Games, and it has a detailed system for political intrigue that is set up similar to d20 combat.  Might be worth checking out from a theoretical standpoint.  Also, this thread has some interesting design ideas to the effect of modeling things other than combat using a combat-system-like set of rules and mechanics.

[Mike Holmes]

Good Cites, Ethan. And Marco has a good point. If "System Does Matter", then if a game is "about" something other than Combat, then it should have mechanics that deal with that in proportion to what a game which was about Combat would. In order, at least, to satisfy players looking for the same high Points of Contact requirements (me). For me to say otherside would be hypocritical.

Marco's particular preferences aside, however, I think that one can handle any interesting subject mechanically and have it be engaging if the system does it correctly. And some few games already do, or are heading in that direction. Here are some examples:

The Mesopotamia project by myself and Gareth Martin, though it did not get off the ground was about social change over centuries. It was inspired by the work on The Kap by Mr. Elliot, which was going to be all exploration of setting (combat was considered as one of many equal elements, but only in terms of "war", IIRC, not in terms of personal conflict). I actually playtested his MARS game, and can attest that the focus on exploration and intrigue was fascinating. I know someone else in that group that was going to do a game about political intrigue in the Papacy. Had no stats or mechanics at all that weren't related to politicking. Climb a wall? GM's call.

Heck, looked at one way, Aria qualifies as being about, well, just about everything in equal doses (including stuff like World Creation). Multiverser, as MJ pointed out in the other thread, is also a bit about "Everything". Also, one could say that Paranoia was about Combat, but it was really about timing your assassinations well. Which had a dramatically different result (though it was surprising how "combatty" the combats would become).

OTE does have a combat system, despite itself. In fact, Tweet writes that he's putting in parts of it, like Armor, only grudgingly. Which is an interesting statement itself. Not much of a Combat system, but still...

Hero Wars is right on the edge along with Sorcerer. Basically the combat in these games is a simple extension of the regular mechanics. One could see the rules for Combat as merely expanded examples of one kind of conflict that the system handles. The question becomes to what extent spending time on Combat as an "example" becomes informative as to what sort of action should occur. I think it does inform people to an extent; however, I think that it happens to match well the level to which Combat is important in both these games (the fact that HW is descended from RM and has as little Combat emphasis as it does is amazing; some would claim that it's underdone).

I think that it's more interesting to note with Hero Wars that requiring Magic Keywords for characters means that the game is at least as much about magic as it is about combat, and magic in very interesting ways. So, as I see it, HW is very much your "standard fantasy" game, done in such a way as to not allow it's slight predilictions to get out of hand. Very nice, that.

I think that there have been a lot of games lately, here and elsewhere, that are exactly what the doctor ordered. More importantly, I think that Combat is being given more appropriate weight in games. Rather than eliminate it entirely as special, it's being made to do what it ought to for each game. In InSpectres, the Stress system covers Combat and anything stressful in a way that makes the game about, well, Stress. The Physical Conflict rules in MLwM end up with the character either more weary than he was, or hating himself more, making a stark thematic statement about violence (and in that game, it's just one sort of action with equal weight in the rules to several others).

So I think that we're headed there if not formly there yet.

Mike

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Marco,

I wrote hastily in that last post.  Yes.  If one wanted a mechanic about debating...  then there should be a cool mechanic about it.  I simply jumped the rails and went off in my own direction of interest.  Sorry about that.

Christopher

[John Kim]

I should also ask the qustion: are there any games that spend as much energy mapping the conflict resolution of social and intellectual conflicts as they do with combat, or physical conflicts. I don't think that any of the games in print do this. Most designers say that 'this has to be role-played' and 'we can't have mechanics for that'. Frankly I think this is bunk. By the way, Sorcerer does come closest, but still misses the mark.

I have some different cites:  Thieves Guild (1984, from The Game Lords) is a game about fantasy-world thievery.  It spends most of its time on resolution systems like lockpicking, pickpocketing, and so forth -- and comparatively little on combat.  Admittedly this is still physical and not social/intellectual, however.  

First edition Vampire: The Masquerade also comes close.  It does have detailed rules for social and other conflicts, and comparatively little for combat.  I think the social rules are about 2 pages and the combat rules are 2.5.  This is not true of later editions, though.  

I agree that, say, Over the Edge doesn't really fulfill your criteria.  As I recall, OtE spends 2 or 3 pages explaining a generic mechanic, and then 2 or 3 pages in addition specifically on combat.  This is actually similar proportions to many rules-heavy systems.  

The thing is, the Vampire social mechanics are fairly dull (IMO).  In general, I think that trying to make a mechanic for all possible social interactions results in too much abstractions.  However, what might be interesting is mechanics aimed at particular social interactions (say a game about social climbing in a particular culture, and so forth).

[John Harper]

No time for a long response now, but I think the Wuthering Heights RPG definitely qualifies.

[Thomas Tamblyn]

Risus too.

It specificaly states that the exact same system is used for combat, horse racing, witty reparte, lawyers in court and feuding husbad/wife (or a similar selection of examples).

[Ben Lehman]

Hi all,
Ross asked, "I heartily agree. Do you have any ideas for resolution systems that are not violence based?"

Sorcerer
Heroquest
The Pool
Over the Edge
Nobilis

Having played all of these except for The Pool (albeit to greater or lesser extent,) I can safely say that all of them have some focus on Combat above and beyond all other interactions (Nobilis comes VERY close, but doesn't get there.)

That said, I have RUN many games that don't focus on combat, at a systematic level.  If I ever author my own system, it will take this approach to combat, or steal the highly tactical form of RoS, depending on design goals.  Presently, this amounts to a generalized house rule.

The central problem with combat in RPGs is that, for whatever reason, game systems want to play out combat blow-by-blow, whereas other interactions are resolved by a single roll.  One approach to changing this is to have other interactions be equally complex as combat.  This tends to make such things lengthy and tedious, and I have yet to see it done right (although I haven't read Dynasties and Demagouges and I'm willing to be surprised.)

There is another approach, which (oddly) I have never seen anyone use -- make combat as simple as anything else.  Thus, resolve it in a single simple contest.  Allow margin of success to determine the outcome (injury, death, or such.)  Or just let the victor determine the outcome and have a social contract enforce it.  Say that, after one roll, combat "breaks up," unless both parties want it to continue, in which case it keeps going until one of them drops.

Come to think of it, two games come very close to this.  The first is AD&D, which specifically states that each round is a minute long, and the combat rolls reflect a number of strikes.  Sadly, the HP escalation in D&D prevents this reasonable philosophy from functioned.  The second is Tunnels and Trolls, which I played a lot of as a kid, and resolves rounds in big dice-rolling parties that abstract vast amounts of combat.  The cool thing about T&T is that this really works the way it is advertised.

The nice thing about this house rule is that it can be ported to any system with a unified resolution system, and it pretty much approximates the 10-20 nearly identical rolls that go into normal RPG combat.  Want to make your Sorcerer combat simple for that non-combat driven setting?  Just reduce physical conflict to a single Stamina roll, and give the winner a number of injury/death options depending on margin of success...  Add in bonus dice for guns or knives.

Is there a combat system out there that behaves like this?

yrs--
--Ben

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Ben,

I might have misread/misplayed the rules on some of these games, but it seems to me they handle the criteria you describe one way or another.  (Though, I'll happily concede, there are special rules for damage and armor on occassion.  I consider this the price to be paid for player's concerns about their PC's health.)

So...

Sorcerer doesn't do combat blow by blow.  It does it with a series of actions, however that's defined by the player. The success of these actions can be rolled into the next series of actions rolled for for bonuses.

The trick is, you can, and should do the same thing with any kind of dramtic conflict resolution.

Heroquest has a quick conflict resolution that can be used for any sort of conflict, and extended contests for... any sort of conflict.

OtE, yes, has a couple of kinks that try to make conflict different than, say, a debate.  But I tossed them when I played it years ago.  These special case rules for the game seemed an odd and desperate clinging to the ways RPGs are "supposed" to be.  (I admit, this is an acknowledgement of your point.  But the spirit of the OtE rules seemed to go a comopletely different direction, and I followed that spirit.)

When you write, "some focus on combat," I'd be curious to hear more about that.  Because I don't see these games as having a focus on combat.  But I might be, again, misreading the text.

Christopher

[ross_winn]

Good Cites, Ethan. And Marco has a good point. If "System Does Matter", then if a game is "about" something other than Combat, then it should have mechanics that deal with that in proportion to what a game which was about Combat would. In order, at least, to satisfy players looking for the same high Points of Contact requirements (me). For me to say otherside would be hypocritical.

This was the angle I was also approaching from. Sorry I wasn't more clear.

[Lxndr]

Sorcerer doesn't do combat blow by blow.  It does it with a series of actions, however that's defined by the player. The success of these actions can be rolled into the next series of actions rolled for for bonuses.

The trick is, you can, and should do the same thing with any kind of dramtic conflict resolution.

Sorcerer comes pretty close to doing combat blow by blow, what with actions in combat/dramatic situations defined as something that "...takes about two seconds."  While that is mitigated by your commentary that you can, and should, do the same thing with any kind of dramatic conflict resolution, nonetheless the book as written does take a lot of time to describe combat in particular.  Even more if you include the discussion of damage and armor and the like.

On the other hand...I don't believe Sorcerer has "focus on combat above and beyond all other interactions."  I say this because it is somewhat evident that Sorcerer's focus is, if anything, the sorcerous rituals and humanity (and as an aside, demons).  More time, system, and page count is spent describing those rituals, humanity, and demons than there is handling combat, damage and weapons.  And yes, I am making a direct comparison there.  Combat = Rituals; Damage = Humanity; Demons = Weapons.  Think about it.  :D

Now, having read Nobilis, I have to say it takes more time, and puts more emphasis, systematically, on what-you-can-do-with-your-miracles than it does how-to-deal-with-combat-and-damage.  On the other hand, their beautiful example of play involves quite a large, showy, over-the-top running-on-bullets combat, which could be seen as a combat focus.

OtE, it's been too long.  

HeroQuest, I've never seen.  

The Pool:  No focus, whatsoever, on Combat.  No special rules for it, no precise system to handle damage apart from maybe character death (but that's optional), nothing.  It is as simple as anything else.  It resolves in as many contests as desired, from one to thousands.  The victor of the contest determines the outcome via social contract.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Alexander,

You're quite right about the Sorcerer rules as printed.  I was working more from what I've read around these threads.  The game works best when dealing in terms of "conflict resolution" rather than "task resolution" (ie blow by blow).  This has been a change playing styles of the designer and new thinking about the game specifically from the time of its writing to now.

So, again, the rules say one thing, and I concede that.  But the designer of the game now suggests something else, which is how I now play.

Christopher