Since Steve closed his thread, I'd like to re-orient the debate a little. I'll use this comment by Clinton as a startign point.

Clinton wrote:
.....I had one player drop out of my group after Dogs. She loved the concept of the game, and we had a great time playing, but there was one scene where she wanted her character to kill and through resolution, she lost. The other characters ganged up and used some physical action, but mainly talking, to stop the character. She couldn't believe it.

I tried helping - "maybe you hesitate for a moment." (I can't remember the details, but that would have made a difference - maybe the winning roll knocked the gun away while everyone else was talking to the character.) She said, "I wouldn't have hesitated."

simon_hibbs wrote: Player: "Screw that, I gut him anyway."
GM: "Ok, you can do that. Your Relationship ability with the Healer is reduced by 10 points[...]"

Any social conflict can be broken down into attacker (influencing) and defender (resisting).  Social rolls should be voluntary with the buck stopping at the defender - the defender may choose to let the resolution system decide or simply declare his character's reactions.  Other players, such as the GM or attacker, should be able to request for a social conflict to be either summed up or turned over to a resolution mechanic (sometimes players get stuck talking in circles or just plain dragging on), but not be allowed to decide that a social conflict must be handed over to the resolution system.

Social resolution systems without absolute veto power are in direct opposition to story creation, because they allow the mechanics to define a character's motivations, beliefs, desires, limits, etc.  I'm sure that's what was going on in the Dogs example.  Her character passed through the resolution system and came out the other end a different character.  Any real theme involving the character went *poof*.

Cruciel: Out of curiosity, do you consider the limited outs, such as resource spending or escalation, to be acceptable mechanicsms for your 'absolute veto'? In those instances, you can stick to your guns if you really want to, but you have to pick your battles

An important factor in the process of applying social mechanics is the reason behind it. You can't just say "Oh, I'm convinced, though I don't want to be." In Clinton's example, I would have put it on the shoulders of the player to answer "Are there any circumstances which would have led to your not shooting the guy?" Clinton's hesitation suggestion is him trying to provide this. It could even be as simple as "Something caught the corner of my eye, distracting me in that crucial moment before the gun was knocked out of my hand." If it got to the point when it seemed likely that the player would lose the conflict, it would be her responsibility to set this sort of situation up.

Asking and answering the question "What would it take to make me fail/lose in this conflict?" could do far more to explore the character's themes and issues than to destroy them.

People like playing characters with absolute agendas.  They're really popular in the media.

"Nothing will make me stop loving you."

"I stop at nothing to retrieve the Maltese Falcon."

"I will take that hill at any cost."

Games with mechanics that touch on a character's drives and motivations make it difficult to play a character like that.

Of course, a character like that is most interesting when he realizes that his drive isn't as all consuming as he thought it was... but it's not our job as game designers to force people to play interesting characters.

Hi,

Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits is probably a good model for everyone to look at on this subject.  No one has to have their character forced into a social conflict- it only occurs if the player is willing to take the risk of losing the conflict (and thereby, saying, there is a possibility my character might be persuaded).  On the flip side of it- if you choose not to enter into social conflicts, you can't socially persuade others either, and obviously if your character is that stubborn, odds are good that the other characters will look for other ways to force your hand.

Chris

cruciel wrote:
Social resolution systems without absolute veto power are in direct opposition to story creation, because they allow the mechanics to define a character's motivations, beliefs, desires, limits, etc.  I'm sure that's what was going on in the Dogs example.  Her character passed through the resolution system and came out the other end a different character.  Any real theme involving the character went *poof*.

Albert wrote:
Cruciel: Out of curiosity, do you consider the limited outs, such as resource spending or escalation, to be acceptable mechanicsms for your 'absolute veto'? In those instances, you can stick to your guns if you really want to, but you have to pick your battles

Hiya,

Although I agree 100% with Cruciel's point, as well as with his use of my earlier text, I also want to showcase Sorcerer for an interesting solution to this issue.

In Sorcerer, dice do resolve conflicts, but they don't ever change what a character can try to do. If Bill and Steve are characters, and if Bill's player (or GM) wins a Will vs. Will roll against Steve's player (or GM) ...

Then Steve can still do whatever it is the player/GM wanted him to do. He is, however, working with Bill's victories, from his roll, as added opposition dice.

In practice, I've found this to be a fine approach and very much in tune with overall issues in Sorcerer. It also applies well to Dust Devils.

However, in HeroQuest, Trollbabe, The Mountain Witch, My Life with Master, and Dogs in the Vineyard, as well as a few other games, the "kicked to the curb today" approach, which is rather different, works very well. It's important to understand the hows and whys of the two approaches, though.

Best,
Ron

Cruciel, I guess I'm not sure I agree with you.

I mean, maybe my guy's a Conan clone. I want to make a statement like "Human will can overcome any challenge" or "There's nothing in the universe cold steel can't cut." I roll three crappy combat rolls in a row and get gutted. Some statement.

Particularly in fantasy and western fiction, the way a character fights is a primary vehicle for that character's making a thematic statement. For Conan, it's no skin off his nose if a foxy witch seduces him into doing the wrong thing; the player's sitting there going 'fuck' but he knows that later on he'll figure out what's going on and then head out for sweet revenge. But if a competent city guard rolls two natural 20's and guts him, forget about it.

I guess what I'm saying is that losing a physical conflict is not intrinsically more or less deprotagonizing than losing a social conflict or any other type, though players may find it so. (I think that a lot of us are just trained to say "well, that's the game" about combat whiffs but not about social whiffs; this is an artifact of RPG design history though.)  So if we were to follow your logic all the way through it seems like we'd have to play Karma or heavily player-driven Drama systems to create protagonized players at all...but that's not right, I don't think.

There is a fourth solution, aside from leaving social conflict decisions simply to the player (in freeform fashion), making the conflict rolls binding, or letting social attacks cause penalties to act against, and that is to reward players for giving in to social "attacks."  I've suggested a mechanic to do that in this thread.

This is just a side note about Dogs in the Vineyard: the opportunity to protect your character's integrity, to veto, exists, but it exists when you're establishing what the stakes are, not when you resolve them.

-Vincent

Bankuei wrote:
Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits is probably a good model for everyone to look at on this subject.  No one has to have their character forced into a social conflict- it only occurs if the player is willing to take the risk of losing the conflict (and thereby, saying, there is a possibility my character might be persuaded).  On the flip side of it- if you choose not to enter into social conflicts, you can't socially persuade others either, and obviously if your character is that stubborn, odds are good that the other characters will look for other ways to force your hand.

This is a fascinating thread.

Plausability is a losing argument for accepting deprotagonizing consequences. Requiring the threatened player to come up with something they can accept after they've already lost adds insult to injury. There's no glory without risk, but having Conan gutted by a city guard makes about as much sense as having James Bond laserbeamed down the middle by Goldfinger. I think the trick is to make accepting the risk explicit. And having the flexibility to spoil for a game of takers. (i.e. Ok, so you don't want to enter a debate over whether you'll betray your misguided traitor of a brother. Will you try to talk him out of it? Is this even the right direction? What is? What kind of risk would excite you, whose loss you could accept? Should we be role-playing your character blowtorching a jail cell full of nuns? More resistance, possibly? .. How much?)

Basically, they've got to commit. Some systems only support death. (Cough! D&D. Cough!) Others--like Sorcerer, DitV and TSOY--other a range of loss. DitV has these really cool, genre relevant arenas. Sorcerer and the other two, as a pair, offer two separate categories of metering effects of resolution. I assume the player in Clinton's actual play would have been less wounded by Sorcerer.

But really, it sounds like she should have been firmly qualified as being on-board for having all the fight talked out of that angry gun hand. If she wasn't, hey, she's an important part of the group's fun, right? So pull out the next book of carpet samples.

Great stuff guys! I'm sorry I don't have the time to reply to everyone, but that probably wouldn't be a very good use of bandwidth anyway.

Regarding Conan, I think this is a situation where the player has to decide what cost he's pepared to bear to never be defeated in combat. In game terms, perhaps deliberately throwing the seduction contest means the player gets extra resources to use in combat contests - or conversely in combat he trades extra successes/bonuses for future penalties that the GM get's to apply in future contests.

I agree that sometimes it's interesting to have your character behave 'out of character', but you can still have that happen. Conan's player always has the choice allow this and explore the consequences. If that's the sort of thing you're interested in exploring as a player then that's fine.

I think there is a role for games where you don't always have the final say in your character's actions, but I also believe the  amicable middle ground where some players can choose to loosen the reigns on their character while others can maintain a tighter grip is achievable.

Simon Hibbs

Rob wrote:

simon_hibbs wrote: Player: "Screw that, I gut him anyway."
GM: "Ok, you can do that. Your Relationship ability with the Healer is reduced by 10 points[...]"

Simon,
I wonder if this doesn't just push the problem back one notch. Now whoever plays the Healer (I assume the GM in your example, but could be anyone in the general case.) has lost free will.

So, I guess my question is: are you trying to accomodate the insist-on-free-will players or are you looking to accomodate mixed groups with some freewillers and some others?

I actually had something like this happen 2 times in the last month or so with my gaming group.  The first time it happened, it actually spawned some of the best role playing I've had in a long long time.  Another player and myself had a half hour long discussion, in character, in focus of the entire group, with the rest of the group trying to help out on one side or another.  We were playing in a Japanese Ninjas & Superspies campaign, and the concepts of honor and duty and treason were the focus of the issue The discussion was on whether or not a PC had committed treason and was one of the group members honorbound to execute her.  Now if you're familiar with the Japanese concepts on the topics, you can imagine how sticky this got since we all viewed ourselves as, or were, samurai in some form or another.  The player who was the target of the discussion had no real say in the issue (it was in the script, and she played it out beautifully I thought).  And so, for a half an hour or so, I debated the philosophical merits of letting her live and redeem herself, while the other PC debated it was our duty to execute her right then and there.  In the end, the character was spared and put on the road to redemption, but her would be executioner really saw no way for that character to continue on with the group and had her gracefully bow out (although that added another plot complication much to our chagrin).  The two characters as well as the players were satisfied by the resolution and we actually felt that we accomplished something akin to combat and were happy with it and went on (till her departure of course) without any conflicted feelings concocted by dice or GM decision.

The reason for this preamble is that these kinds of situations where you have  life or death, or maybe right and wrong hanging in the balance of an argument between players should be acted out whenever possible sans dice.  This is where the real meat of roleplaying is and shouldn't be avoided or just brushed under the rug with dice.  I will leave an exception to this rule of thumb though in which a player is playing a character that they themselves have no ability to act out (the character has an IQ of 250, and a very high Empathy with a lot of debating and philosophical skills, but is being played by a High School Student who flunked forensics).  Then dice should intervene where the players can't participate up to the level of the character.

Also, social interaction often is where characters build the most respect and understanding for themselves.  Another case in point.  A character I was playing got into a fight in which I was badly beaten up by another party member for insulting his honor.  I was mad, and sulked for a time.  The GM's resolution was to say that while accomplishing a task later in the game needed to succeed, the two characters were stuck on the same task and we "bonded" during it.  Now I didn't feel bonded, nor did the other player, but the GM says so, it is so, regardless of how the players feel, the characters were resolved.  By the next week the issue was over, but I did have to remind him the other player that we had "bonded" over our task, and he wouldn't do a few various actions, and I had to catch myself from doing rude things back because of the same said reason.  But regardless, the resolution was always in the "recordbooks" with an asterix next to the title denoting "solved by GM's decision", never by true resolution.

This is why I believe that players forced by dice or GM decision to act a certain way, sometimes gain a new animosity towards the other player that can bleed over unintentionally and can be the source of bitterness between players for a time.  Or they tend to sulk even though, according to the dice, the resolution was not only amicable, but incredibly so.  This disconnect can often cause problems farther down the line too.  Often, this is why I feel it's better to let the characters hash it out to the best of their abilities in character as much as possible, because I know how much fun it is to me.  Though, just thinking about this, if I look at it from a GNS point of view, I can see this being annoying as all getout to Gamist players while the Narrativist and Simulationist would enjoy it immensely and prefer this.

I wonder what "play the page," "let the dice speak," "GM has the final word" players think about striking unsatisfactory resolutions from the record. As hard as you try to qualify risk, sometimes you'll end up with something you don't like that you didn't realize was possible. Sometimes it takes suffering a consequence to realize you can't bear it. So you might quit your job. Quit the relationship. Quit the game. In other words, it's a deal-beaker, and either as a matter of limited awareness or emotional truth, you are unprepared to face it.

I've had this happen. One session, half-jokingly, I said I killed my friend. That reality started to settle over the next few scenes. I really started to miss the guy, and I didn't like what it said about my character. So the next time the GM refered to his death, I said, "No, I didn't really mean that." But he wouldn't have it. Everyone backed him. But I couldn't stand it. It got in the way of my interest with the remainder of the session. At the start of the next session, the GM said, "I've thought about it and decided you can have that guy back."

That's a mechanic that doesn't show strongly in most Forge games. And I think it is more on target than other reccommendations forwarded in this thread. Universalis is the only one I can think of that facilitates VCR editing. Of course, you should make every effort to qualify, and I agree with the prevailing view of applying the unaltered system, but addressing remorse with something more nuanced than "GM may will it" would be a valuable stopgap. In fact, as I think of it, this is how TSOY enters BDTP.

Sydney wrote: Wow.

And I realize that, a year ago, I probably would have agreed -- but now I don't. I used to see the loss of the ability to make decisions for my character as an intolerable violation: I didn't expect that whatever my character tried would work, but I certainly expected that I'd be able to try. But playing Capes and Dogs in the Vineyard, and reading Actual Play about those games and others, has convinced me that it's equally interesting to deal with losing control. I don't know about you, but in real life, I frequently watch myself make the wrong decision even though my "true" self wants something else, and people have wrestled with this issue in some really interesting story-telling for a long time. (Including, say, Saint Paul: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak").

To riff off Ron Edwards's line (which I'm misquoting) "sometimes the dice tell you today is the day your character gets kicked to the curb": We're all more or less reconciled to game mechanics that say, "sorry, you missed the target" or "today is the day you got socked in the jaw; what do you do about it?" But there's fertile ground in games that tell you "sorry, you found you didn't have the willpower to shoot someone when your friends urged you not to" or "today is the day you lost faith in your cause; what do you do about it?"

As long as that "what do you do about it" isn't closed off, the story isn't over.

wrote: Cruciel, I guess I'm not sure I agree with you.

I mean, maybe my guy's a Conan clone. I want to make a statement like "Human will can overcome any challenge" or "There's nothing in the universe cold steel can't cut." I roll three crappy combat rolls in a row and get gutted. Some statement.

Particularly in fantasy and western fiction, the way a character fights is a primary vehicle for that character's making a thematic statement. For Conan, it's no skin off his nose if a foxy witch seduces him into doing the wrong thing; the player's sitting there going 'fuck' but he knows that later on he'll figure out what's going on and then head out for sweet revenge. But if a competent city guard rolls two natural 20's and guts him, forget about it.

I guess what I'm saying is that losing a physical conflict is not intrinsically more or less deprotagonizing than losing a social conflict or any other type, though players may find it so. (I think that a lot of us are just trained to say "well, that's the game" about combat whiffs but not about social whiffs; this is an artifact of RPG design history though.)  So if we were to follow your logic all the way through it seems like we'd have to play Karma or heavily player-driven Drama systems to create protagonized players at all...but that's not right, I don't think.

Entirely sensible. It's just that when you say something like

cruciel wrote: What is does is allow you to control which aspects are open to change and what stakes are needed for character change....

Bill wrote:
I've had this happen. One session, half-jokingly, I said I killed my friend. That reality started to settle over the next few scenes. I really started to miss the guy, and I didn't like what it said about my character. So the next time the GM refered to his death, I said, "No, I didn't really mean that." But he wouldn't have it. Everyone backed him. But I couldn't stand it. It got in the way of my interest with the remainder of the session. At the start of the next session, the GM said, "I've thought about it and decided you can have that guy back."

Sydney wrote:
I'm going: "Okay, but I want to explore the loss of control." I want to play a game (at least sometimes) where "my" character changes and is put at risk in ways that I not only didn't think of, but didn't even want.

Now, that's not for everyone. That's not even for me, all the time. But it's a place worth going.

simon_hibbs wrote:
Sorry, but I'm not interested in the relative merits of allowing the dice to controll character actions or always having the player in controll. That is a seperate debate. What we are discussing here is whether it is possible to include both play styles within the same game, and strategies for enabling that.

Even a veto you swear to yourself you're never going to use provides an escape clause that, at least psychologically, changes everything. Jeff's "social skills don't get used on other PCs unless the player is willing" is an interesting idea, but the Willing and the Unwilling would be playing a very different game, even though they were at the same table at the same time. It's not impossible to design a game that would still work, I suspect; in fact traditional RPGs assume an equally dramatic difference among participants' vulnerability to events, namely between the GM and plain-old-players -- but I think the difference would be that significant. It's not something you patch with an extra mechanic; it goes straight to the heart of the game.

Sydney wrote:
Jeff's "social skills don't get used on other PCs unless the player is willing" is an interesting idea, but the Willing and the Unwilling would be playing a very different game, even though they were at the same table at the same time.

I'm with Sydney... it's a big deal in practice.

To get your mind around how big:  Imagine if you said "Combat skills can only be used (even by NPCs) against PCs whose players are willing to have them wounded or impeded."  See how the people who are Willing are playing an entirely different game from the Unwilling people who say "No thanks, we'll just be immortal and untouchable"?

Social skills, when they're really played (i.e. "I've changed your mind... now play it!"), cause much greater changes in a character than combat skills ever do.  A sword can only kill somebody.  A word can make them into somebody entirely different.

For Dogs, specifically, in Conflict Question,

Vincent (aka lumpley) wrote: Cut people out of the beginnings of conflicts ruthlessly. Don't let them say "I might want to be involved later, so I'm involved now."

TonyLB wrote: To get your mind around how big:  Imagine if you said "Combat skills can only be used (even by NPCs) against PCs whose players are willing to have them wounded or impeded."  See how the people who are Willing are playing an entirely different game from the Unwilling people who say "No thanks, we'll just be immortal and untouchable"?

drnuncheon wrote:
... you would have to frame your conflicts carefully.  You would want to say "Does the Dog convince Bob of X" rather than "Who convinces the other one?"  This is probably the best way, if all the players can agree, because everything else I can think of is going to involve more compromise on the part of the free-willers.

TonyLB wrote:
Social skills, when they're really played (i.e. "I've changed your mind... now play it!"), cause much greater changes in a character than combat skills ever do.  A sword can only kill somebody.  A word can make them into somebody entirely different.