I was thinking about the distinction between task resolution and conflict resolution, and noticing how conflict resolution is never used in computer role playing games, and here are some ideas I came up with, which I put forward to find out if I'm on to something, or off my rocker.

First, it should be noted that the distinction between task and conflict resolution is a fuzzy line, and a matter of taste. There are far more than 2 levels of abstraction. For example, consider the following hierarchy: Find an artifact > Explore a dungeon > Defeat the orc tribe on the second level > Ambush an orc patrol > Make a Hide check. I would categorize something into conflict vs. task resolution based on whether the group is primarily interested in the outcome on it's own, or if they are primarily interested in it as an aspect of resolving something larger.

So, supposing that you are doing task resolution - why do it if everyone is primarily interested in whats happening at a higher level? I see these reasons:
1) Boardgame style fun. In a combat situation, this is the fun of trying to find a tactically sound solution to the current problem
2) A chance to highlight some attribute of your character. I would break this down into 2 subcategories:
a) A chance to show off a skill or ability. i.e. look how strong Thrudd is! He killed 3 orcs in a round
b) A chance to show a relationship or attitude. Does your fighter consider it more important to guard the mage, or pursue the fleeing orcs. You can also show how much you character hates something by engaging in overkill (I flamestrike the kobold)
3) An opportunity to automatically add color. The conflict resolution of a fight will tell you which side won, and maybe how badly they were hurt, but it won't tell you that someone risked their life to take down the orc leader, or that someone ran away to drink a healing potion, or any other odd bit of detail that could be thrown in.

I was thinking about conflict resolution in terms of computer games, and I think the third reason is the compelling one in that arena (although the first one is also important in computer games). I haven't been able to think of a reasonable conflict resolution mechanism which is suitable for a computer game. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Steve

I was going to make a new thread on conflict vs task resolution, in reply to Simon Hibbs, split from The state of play, or refute-o-matic. However, since Grover started this new thread, I thought I would post here instead. So, as background, I recently ran about a dozen sessions of James Bond 007. You can read about the campaign at http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/jamesbond007/

Grover wrote: So, supposing that you are doing task resolution - why do it if everyone is primarily interested in whats happening at a higher level? I see these reasons:
1) Boardgame style fun. In a combat situation, this is the fun of trying to find a tactically sound solution to the current problem
2) A chance to highlight some attribute of your character. I would break this down into 2 subcategories:
a) A chance to show off a skill or ability. i.e. look how strong Thrudd is! He killed 3 orcs in a round
b) A chance to show a relationship or attitude. Does your fighter consider it more important to guard the mage, or pursue the fleeing orcs. You can also show how much you character hates something by engaging in overkill (I flamestrike the kobold)
3) An opportunity to automatically add color. The conflict resolution of a fight will tell you which side won, and maybe how badly they were hurt, but it won't tell you that someone risked their life to take down the orc leader, or that someone ran away to drink a healing potion, or any other odd bit of detail that could be thrown in.

simon_hibbs wrote:

Matt Wilson wrote: That's what the problem is with the munchkin argument. Gamers who take that stance assume that the kicking ass in combat or always getting the hot sex is the goal of every gamer and the point of every game.

Exactly right, traditional task based game systems fail here because game mechanicaly they are such blunt instruments. Their focus on simulating physical action drasticaly limits the kinds of conflicts they can even attempt to resolve.

In traditional game design the game system is there to answer questions like 'does the character seduce the agent', 'does he shoot the guards' and in the process we find out if the character is cool or not. Is he like bond or not.

In modern games we know the character is cool - it's a Bond game and he's a secret agent. How could he not be cool? The question is, does he distract the enemy agent with his kiss for long enough to plant a radio beacon on her skirt. He shoots the guards, but does he do it well enough to get to the reactor room before Henchman X.

In a traditional game he'd have to shoot each guard, and do enough damage to take them out, and have enough movement points left to get to the reactor room first. None of the game mechanics directly address the central question which is, does he make it first? Whether he makes it or not is an emergent product arrived at indirectly from the individual game mechanics. In a modern narativist game, it's the central conflict the game mechanics are resolving. The guards being shot is merely a means to an end and therefore isn't itself what we're trying to resolve.

Steve a.k.a. Grover wrote: So, supposing that you are doing task resolution - why do it if everyone is primarily interested in whats happening at a higher level? I see these reasons:
1) Boardgame style fun. In a combat situation, this is the fun of trying to find a tactically sound solution to the current problem
2) A chance to highlight some attribute of your character. I would break this down into 2 subcategories:
a) A chance to show off a skill or ability. i.e. look how strong Thrudd is! He killed 3 orcs in a round
b) A chance to show a relationship or attitude. Does your fighter consider it more important to guard the mage, or pursue the fleeing orcs. You can also show how much you character hates something by engaging in overkill (I flamestrike the kobold)
3) An opportunity to automatically add color. The conflict resolution of a fight will tell you which side won, and maybe how badly they were hurt, but it won't tell you that someone risked their life to take down the orc leader, or that someone ran away to drink a healing potion, or any other odd bit of detail that could be thrown in.

I came here from John's post in the refute-o-matic thread which dealt with the question of cool characters as relevant to Narrativisim. I think that's a red-herring. I don't see why a system that lets characters be competent (but neither super-competent nor completely incompetent) would be antithetical to narrativism.

That isn't to say that I'm not aware of the protagonization argument (that a character failing horrifically when 'he shouldn't' makes identification with the character harder from an audience perspective)--it's that I think that's a sub-set of Narrativism that gets mistaken for the whole. I don't see why it should be integral to that play across the board.

Like a lot of things, this seems to me to be a matter of preference which gets stated as fact from time to time.

In even a most stridently narrativist James Bond game the premise is not 'how cool is Bond?'

I think that the examples given here:

In modern games we know the character is cool - it's a Bond game and he's a secret agent. How could he not be cool? The question is, does he distract the enemy agent with his kiss for long enough to plant a radio beacon on her skirt. He shoots the guards, but does he do it well enough to get to the reactor room before Henchman X.

I use the term 'Modern games' because I'm not sure if 'Narrativist games' is the right term in the GNS sense. Narrativism in GNS is about adressing premise.

Now some games such as HeroQuest do directly enable us to adress premise in game mechanical terms. The premise 'Loyalty trumps Honour' can be addressed because loyalty and honour can be assigned ratings and used directly in the resolution system. I'm not sure that all the 'narrativist' games that have been mentioned are narrativist in this narrow GNS sense.

In a more general sense, I think narrativist game systems can be taken to mean those in which the resolution system can address whatever conflict is most imprtant to the scene. For example, at one point in the Amber novels Bleys fights his way up a narrow mountain path through literaly hundreds of opponents. He took on each one in turn, cutting his way through them. In the book, it's narrated something like this: "Through much of the afternoon he fought them, killing each in turn, slowly advancing up the mountain."

To me a narrativist game is one which can resolve this scene in a way that maps well to the way I would want to actualy narrate it as a story. The game mechanics map directly across so that an action in the narrative "he fought past a hundred men, yada, yada..." maps to one resolution in the game system. HeroQuest can do this, as can ADRPG and in fact that scene from the novels is used as an example in the rules. A game like D&D does not offer the same narrative flexibility because if we map each action resolution in D&D to a statement in the story that one scene could take a whole book to narrate.

Both are narrativist to the extent that both can generate a narrative, but D&D, Runequest, Traveller, GURPS, etc force a fixed pace and structure on the narrative, restricting your creative controll.


Simon Hibbs

simon_hibbs wrote:
I'm not sure that all the 'narrativist' games that have been mentioned are narrativist in this narrow GNS sense.

simon_hibbs wrote: In a more general sense, I think narrativist game systems can be taken to mean those in which the resolution system can address whatever conflict is most imprtant to the scene. For example, at one point in the Amber novels Bleys fights his way up a narrow mountain path through literaly hundreds of opponents. He took on each one in turn, cutting his way through them. In the book, it's narrated something like this: "Through much of the afternoon he fought them, killing each in turn, slowly advancing up the mountain."

To me a narrativist game is one which can resolve this scene in a way that maps well to the way I would want to actualy narrate it as a story. The game mechanics map directly across so that an action in the narrative "he fought past a hundred men, yada, yada..." maps to one resolution in the game system. HeroQuest can do this, as can ADRPG and in fact that scene from the novels is used as an example in the rules.

simon_hibbs wrote: A game like D&D does not offer the same narrative flexibility because if we map each action resolution in D&D to a statement in the story that one scene could take a whole book to narrate.

Both are narrativist to the extent that both can generate a narrative, but D&D, Runequest, Traveller, GURPS, etc force a fixed pace and structure on the narrative, restricting your creative control.