So here's my take on how to hybridize Task and Conflict Resolution, for one specific game, for one specific genre:

You have Conflicts out on the table (presumably on 3x5 cards, since I am horribly addicted to 3x5 cards). Each player has a pool of their own six-sided dice, that they can tell by sight. Probably different colors. With me so far?

Each player gets turns, going around the table. On their turn they can attempt some Task: Hide from a guard, pick a lock, etc., etc. They have a relevant Talent (from 1 to... I dunno... 10?). The player rolling decides how challenging the activity is, and assigns themself a Challenge rating. They need to roll their Talent minus Challenge or below.

So basically, they choose a number and try to roll under it. Why would they ever choose a low number? Because if they fail then they can reroll (using some common metagame resource, about which more later). Why is rerolling good? Because every single die they roll they keep, to bid on control of Conflicts. By attempting difficult things, they build up their Effort Pool.

So why would they ever choose a high number? Because in order to spend out of that Effort Pool they need to succeed at a task. Succeeding at the task gives them the right to bid dice out of their Effort Pool onto one Conflict. Failing at the task may get them lots of dice, but it gives someone else (either their opposition or the GM) the right to bid. Whoever has the highest dice total is closest to winning that particular Conflict. However, people may only bid dice of the same value in a particular Conflict. So they can bid two 3s on one Conflict and a 6 on another, but may not bid a 6 and a 3 on a single Conflict.

I hope that this system will encourage people to self-adjust their challenge ratings in Task, so as to accomplish more in Conflicts. So, in keeping with the uber-competent super-spy motif of the characters, they will do things the horribly overcomplicated way, rather than the effective and simple way. Because they're just that cool. Does this system fragment seem well-geared toward having that behavior emerge from cold-hearted pursuit of interesting strategy alternatives?

This leave up in the air the question of what the meta-resource that gives them extra rolls is. I've gone into this somewhat already in In search of Angsty Loner Cypher Guy, but here's the updated sketch: Each player has Beliefs about their own characters and Beliefs about other characters. When someone plays their character in a way that reinforces your Beliefs about them you can give them an extra die to roll. By doing that, you instantly earn the right to reroll some die in someone's Effort Pool (either your own or another's). This can be used to help people, hinder people, or just generally screw with them.

As a forinstance: Joe has bid 3 on Goal: Get the secret plans. You have bid 5 on the same conflict. But Joe has another 3. You decided to reroll the 3 in his Effort pool, and it ends up a six. You've just helped him globally (in that he can now bid more effectively on other Goals) but crippled him locally (in that he cannot use that die to bid up on the Goal where you're in competition). Joe can thank you, or not, as he sees fit.

I like the general notion of those twinned, complementary abilities (rolling more dice and rerolling Effort), a lot. But the logistics that surround it on the gaming table are proving very elusive for me. Questions abound:

• What benefit (if any) do you get for playing to your Beliefs about yourself?
• Do you have to roll the die you get for living up to someone's expectations immediately? Or does it go into a pool to be used later?
• Is that die of your color, or their color?
• If the die is of their color, can you bid it for yourself or only for them? What would bidding it for them even mean?
• If the die is of your color, how did they get that die in the first place?

So, know that those are open questions in my mind. Here is my attempt to answer them, but if you see a better answer then I want it.

The winner of a conflict gets back all the dice bid on that conflict, both their own and those of others. They can only take advantage of their Beliefs about others when they have dice of the appropriate color to hand back. Players have a fixed number of dice (12?) in the game. When some of theirs are taken away it reduces their ability to address Tasks later in the game. If they have no more dice they can try no more Tasks (at least until they do something that encourages another player to give them back one of their own dice). When they fail at a Task-roll they may roll another die from their pool (if they have any) by acting in a way that affirms one of their Beliefs about their own character.

I hope that this system will encourage people to try to balance their desire to live up to their own beliefs about their character with their need to live up to the expectations of others. Do you think the rules as described would provoke patterns of behavior that encourage that?

Okay... asking too much, too vaguely. Let's just try to cover the Hybrid resolution mechanic first. I've made a rules writeup and an Example of Play.

How much do you think the two resolution mechanics would throw you into different modes of thinking? Do you think the desired synergy (i.e. encouraging a tactical reason to try things harder than the "safest possible task with desired outcome") would emerge?

Thanks for posting the rules and examples - it's still complicated (in a quite scary way!), but at least I understand it a bit better now.

I'm still working on Schrodinger's War, but I'll take some time to look at this more carefully and try and answer your questions.

In the meantime, here's a comment you didn't ask for - the rapid escalation this gives seems to work right for 'action movie' types of conflict, but I don't think it's as good at defining relationships as your last version.

Till later,

Doug

I agree. This layer doesn't yet have relationship mechanics strongly mapped onto it. Plus, the example is between a spy and a bunch of faceless minions, so there's not much room for betrayal and revelation.

OK had a second look, and I think I've got a handle on it.

If I've read it right, the main benefit of setting a hard (low) number for a Task is that it allows you a better chance to roll lots of dice in a single turn.

However, if you don't succeed at all during your turn, then you don't get to Create or Resolve any Goals, and (just as important) you don't get to bid any dice in that turn.

So, the optimal 'tactical' result for a turn is to roll all of your dice and succeed on the very last one. This encourages players to utilise as many of their usable traits in one turn, and to aim for a target number where they are most likely to succeed eventually.

This makes the number of usable traits a very valuable commodity (it's the equivalent of multiple actions per turn, with a random factor.) This may cause problems with overall balance unless the rest of the game acts to balance the number of usable traits between players. This may undermine some of the Angsty Loner Cypher Guy ideas you had before.

I also see that you've moved from "winner takes all" to "exchange dice bid" as the aftermath for Goal resolution. Which is very close to Story Tokens (which isn't a bad thing at all. It's a great balancing factor.)

So, as things stand right now, this is Gamist as hell and really very clever indeed. But when you mix the die-rolling strategies up with the reward straategies, then I think it's open to min-maxing and abuse.

For example, as the first player to go, I set my initial task as difficulty 1, no matter what. I also set it up so I can bring all of my traits into play. This maximises my chance of having lots of dice. If I score well and succeed in the task, I set up a goal with a hefty reward (such as Dominate, which let's me take dice from another player.) Odds are, I get to resolve it next turn.

If I don't succeed in the task, I've just rolled as many dice as I possibly can, and I'm ready to pounce on someone else's conflict. Lather rinse, repeat...

Now, I know this post is all hung up on 'balance' and 'tactics' rather than addressing the raher interesting premise that you posted originally: balancing your beliefs about yourself versus other people's expectations about you. I think that's because the level of tactical detail in this rules version is going to get in the way of exploring this (or indeed any) premise.

Is this helping any, or am I focusing on the wrong area? It may help more to discuss/recap how players can give and accept traits from each other to improve their chances of having enough dice to roll in the first place. I think that's more important (or at least, more central) than the actual task/conflict resolution part of the game.

This section of rules is definitely about tactical detail. So I'm all for feedback on that. Two things, one on the thematic and one on the tactical:

Thematic

Something that was in my mind, but somehow managed not to make its way into this draft, was the idea that each player would only have a dozen dice of their color on the table all told. So if they use a lot of traits, and win a lot of conflicts, then eventually they can't roll new dice, but rather have to cannibalize one of the dice already in their Effort pool.

I think this would help to shake up the ability of players to just dominate by spending a lot of dice: they'd eventually give all their dice away, and be working from a crippled Effort pool.


Tactical

You bring up a really solid point about how players would be rewarded for dog-piling every single Trait into their first action. That's exactly what the current rules would reward, really heavily. And I don't want that.

As it stands, using a trait is a straight benefit for the player, with no absolute statistical downside, and no relative downside (i.e. benefit to other characters that keeps everyone relatively aligned). That means that there's no control mechanism that would tell the player "enough". That's a problem. Any thoughts for what a counter-balance should look like?

TonyLB wrote: Something that was in my mind, but somehow managed not to make its way into this draft, was the idea that each player would only have a dozen dice of their color on the table all told.

TonyLB wrote: You bring up a really solid point about how players would be rewarded for dog-piling every single Trait into their first action.

TonyLB wrote: Any thoughts for what a counter-balance should look like?

Hrm... Yeah, that could work, and I'm going to keep it in the back of my mind. But for the moment I'm going to keep exploring the possibilities for Fortune-based Task resolution. As you said, it's got more of a fun feel to it.


I think I'm less interested in making a rule that says "You aren't allowed to roll any more dice right now" than I am in creating a dynamic which tactically persuades players "You don't want to roll any more dice right now."

That works when the relative advantage of a roll (i.e. how much it gains the player calling for it, minus how much it costs them and/or benefits their competition) starts high and declines.

The absolute advantage of rolling a die is, as you've ably pointed out, roughly constant... in fact I think it rises a bit, the more dice you have to match it against. So one way to make the relative advantage decline would be to have a rising benefit to the opposition with each die roll.

First thought: Opposed Tasks. After each failed roll, the GM gets a roll to try to have the opposition triumph. You're trying to sprint to the far end of the room, they're trying to shoot you. These rolls presumably go against a different target number. The opposition never adds these rolls to their Effort pool. If the opposition succeeds at their roll then (a) your character is thwarted and (b) they don't get any of the dice they rolled this action for their Effort pool.

Further refinement: With each roll the opposition's Target Number rises by one. So at each new roll, the statistical cost is the loss of a higher number of dice, plus the loss of bidding opportunity, at a higher likelihood of loss.

If B = value of bidding in this particular instance and D = value of a new die, and... aw heck. Globally I have the brains to work the probabilities on this. Locally, this afternoon, I'm too tired. My intuition is that it makes for some interesting gambles, though.