This is an important step that takes place before stakes setting that is worthy of its own post.

The Conspiracy of Shadow game's kicker was that the cell of PC pirates had to save someone from a hanging in order to gain vital information from the old sailor who was wrongfully accused and found guilty only because the courts were corrupted by the conspiracy of Lovecraftian admiralty.  One of the PC's was in a crowd that was surrounded by the Governor's soldiers.

PC: *throws a destiny point* the road is made of loose cobble stones.

Me: Cool.

PC: I pick up a cobble stone and throw it at the soldiers here to quell the riot, showing the people what they can do.

My first instinct: Roll to hit!

*Screeching breaks*

Me: What is...what is your intent?  It isn't to hit and damage a guard, really, is it?

PC: No, it is to inspire the people in the audience to revolt at this injustice, making a diversion for my fellow crew members to get away.

Me: Right, roll but don't use your physical skill, roll in your dramatic skill (which I knew was much, much better, the roll was a resound success).

Me: Your stone goes off the head of the officer, knocking off his powdered wig and breaking the window of a nearby shop.  The sound of the breaking glass does something to the crowd and they begin to move against the soldiers.  Rifles go off, bayonets are fixed, it is a full on riot and people are dying all around you.

There was another instance where intent took an interesting turn.

It was Burning Wheel: Jihad and the peace talks between Ur-Baron George W. Washington and the Jihadim had broken down into a brutal knife fight.  W. had the Reverend Mother cornered.

G.W.'s player: I put my sword in her heart.

Mother's Player: I bare my chest, martyring myself before the planet's news crews to show them what a monster their lord is.

Me: Roll to hit!

G.W.'s player, for about ten seconds before every roll just kind of rolls the dice around in his hand, get's the warmed up.  It took me that long for it to dawn on me and quash the roll before it hit the table.

Me:  Wait.  You want to kill the Reverend Mother and you don't care about the cameras?

GW's Player: Yes, I want her dead.  I could care less about the cameras..

Me: And you want the Ur-Baron to kill you?

Reverend Mother's player: Yes.

Me:  Um...we do not have a conflict here.  No dice need be rolled.  The Ur-Baron's cutlass plunges into the Reverend Mother's chest, into her heart, killing the crone instantly in front of the news cameras that were covering the peace talks.

Those old instincts crop up still.  Roll Initiative, roll to hit, roll damage, NEXT!  They are ingrained in my skull.  I'm making it a habit to start saying before every roll, "What is your intent?"

Stakes are set from there.

Good call, Judd. I've started asking this question myself, and I picked it up directly from you. A lot of times my players are just puttering along, declaring their character's actions as usual ("I throw a rock at the guard") and I have to dig to discover their intent as you did in your first example. I imagine as the players become more familiar with stakes-setting, they also become more accustomed to declaring intent as well as actions during player.

As it stands, I often have to say, "Wait, wait. Hold on a second. What do you, the PLAYER, want to have happen when your character does this?"

But really, I can't imagine a single game where this question wouldn't be beneficial whether it's task resolution, conflict resolution, whatever.

Bret wrote:
As it stands, I often have to say, "Wait, wait. Hold on a second. What do you, the PLAYER, want to have happen when your character does this?"

Hey Judd,

Can you talk a little bit about how Intent and Stakes are different in your view? They seem like the same thing to me: This is what I want if I win.

Perhaps one way of looking at it is two Intents form a Stake? Players state what they want. GM states what he wants. Taken together it's the Stakes.

So, just to riff on your pirate example:

The player's intent was to start a riot. What was the GM's intent? I mean, what did you get if the player lost? I'd like to hear your answer to that question, but for the sake of argument right now, let's say that you told the player, "If you lose the roll, the crowd turns on you in favor of the soldiers -- they want to see someone hang!"

So together, the two intents form the stake: The crowd starts to riot vs. the crowd turns on your character.

Is that a helpful way to look at it?

Mayhaps I should have posted this on the Stakes thread but it felt like a pre-stakes part of the ritual.

I feel like intent can be stakes if they are strong enough but they often need to be re-worded or reformed before they are solid.

1) What is your intent?

2) Okay, so if you succed, X and if you fail, then Y? *followed by any necessary adjustments*

3) Roll the dice.

But the asking of intent, while key to setting stakes, felt like a whole other epiphany to me, so maybe that is why I thought to put it in its own thread.  Discovering it was a different set of play experiences and a different light-bulb going on.  That certainly led to stakes setting but felt like a step on the road to it.

It all didn't come at once for me.

I will leave it to the moderators whether or not this should be merged with the other thread.  I wasn't trying to flood the board but in my mind it felt seperate, a baby-step before I let go of the railing and walked.

Thor wrote:
So, just to riff on your pirate example:

The player's intent was to start a riot. What was the GM's intent? I mean, what did you get if the player lost? I'd like to hear your answer to that question...

No worries. My intent was not to shut you down. It was just me trying to understand the nuance you were getting at. I think what you're talking about is very useful. There is a grammar, for lack of a better word, that expresses these ideas very well. I think that's what you're getting at. Don't stop.

Here's my take:
1. Situation
2. A. Player states Intent
    B. GM responds, "So if you win, you want X? Right?"
    C. After getting assent, GM states his Intent. "If you win, you get X, but if I win, Y happens."
    D. GM gets assent again. Asks if anyone wants to change intent.
3. Roll Dice
4. Resolve situation in terms of stakes.

Which is really just another way of stating IIEE. I think The Shadow of Yesterday expresses it very clearly.

Thor wrote:
Which is really just another way of stating IIEE. I think The Shadow of Yesterday expresses it very clearly.

I get what Judd's on about. His second example lays it out neatly. Until you get the answer to "What is your intent?"... you don't know whether there's a conflict to resolve. Once you establish that, then Stakes come into play.

I have to say that I had a case in a Dogs game like this. Background: Me GMing to a bunch of old-school wargamers mixed with some teenage "Games Workshop wargamers". Introduced them to Dogs, some had experience with Gamist D&D, others nothing of note. The player in question had roleplayed before but not in the D&D game (the girlfriend of one of the Warhammer players, I think.) Her Dog had a relationship with one of the town's prostitutes.

Me: "What do you do?" (I know, not good scene framing. Working on that)
Player: "Well, I go over to Sister Abigail's"
Me: "OK, and...?"
Player: "And then I try and talk about old times, how we were growing up."
Me: "Yep"
(Continue like this for a few exchanges).
Me: "OK, this is all nice, but what do you want here?"
Player: "I want to get to know Sister Abigail better."
Me: "OK, why? What do you want?"
*blank looks from the group*
Me: "What do you, as a player want to happen?"
*lightbulb goes off over Player's head*
Player: "Oh, I want her to confess her Sins to me."
Me: "Cool - lets set Stakes then. You can use all the stuff about talking of old times and so on as Raises in the conflict."
(Note: I didn't set opposing Stakes - what happens if you fail. I will do after reading this thread, however.)

The thing is that as soon as that player 'got it', she was making spectacular Raises and setting good Stakes, and I think helped the rest of the group understand how Dogs (and by extension, Conflict Resolution, I suppose) works.

One downside. This girl was invited into the D&D game a few weeks later and tried to do the same kind of things, but was (without malice, but still fairly harshly, IMO) 'slapped down' and told that she couldn't do that. She didn't participate in that game anymore.

So, to conclude, I think you need to make clear that this isn't really an 'in-character' concern. I think a lot of players are used to thinking that Actor stance is the only 'right' way to roleplay and that metagame considerations are bad. Once that is broken, I found that games become a lot more dynamic and fun. I'll find out if this is true when I run Dogs for another group (in a few weeks time) that are mainly very Actor-stance LARPers.

Introducing the concept of intent is one of the hardest things I've had to do with my regular group of players, particularly folks who are used to task resolution in their games. My players at the time were still working out what "intent" means - having experiences in "if I succeed in my roll, I get what I want."

Connecting Intent to Stakes is a crucial step, and one I know I've missed as many times as you have.

For example, in a BW game a few months ago a player wanted his character to sneak up on another character and slit their throat. Intent was established, however we didn't quite clearly address the stakes of failure or success. The intended victim didn't get the opportunity to insert himself into the stakes at all (even though he rolled observation to spot the baddie).Thus the player felt that they should have succeeded in the "throat slitting" by succeeding in the roll to sneak up and stab his target, even though the Fight! mechanics did not provide the space for them to have a one-stab knife kill on an opponent. That is to say, the intent is "throat slit" but what is at stake is whether Player A is "spotted."

it might have been better framed as:
Player A Intent: "I want to slit his throat."
GM: "Understanding that even if you suceed in your intent you may not kill him?"
Player A: (either accepts that or decides not to go through with it). "Yes, if I succeed in hurting him it will make it easier to kill him in Fight!"
Player B Intent: "Of course, I want to spot you. And stop you."
GM: "Okay. So if you succeed, player A, you've snuck up on him, he has to make a steel test, and you get to roll your attack. If you suceed (or tie) in your perception test, player B, you spot him... his intent is foiled. We go straight to Fight!"
Players Ammend or Agree.

However, in that particular situation I'm unable to see another set of possible stakes that follow this intent. Player B could have said "fine, you can stab me," but then we would be back at Judd's example where there is no conflict.

Right on Judd.

This was a huge deal for me to figure out, because I'm hardwired the same way you are. I had a lot of HeroQuest games that really went down in flames because I didn't get the point that you're making.

For me it goes like this: First you need to know what it you want to acomplish, then you have to know how, then you have to know what the opposition is, and then you have to know what happens if you fail. Because we very often get stuck in the "roll to hit" model of gaming, we often skip some of those steps on the way to stakes setting. When you're on task resolution it's easy to go "you want to hit the guard, roll to hit the guard" because before anything else can happen, that task has to be completed. You can then try a new task, and on and on it goes. But in conflict resolution, you have to go beyond the naturalistic description and into the dramatic motivation.

Because of this the step that gets skipped the most is actually because of a misplacement of steps one and two (what, how). If you hear "I hit him in the head with a rock" you think that is what they want to do. However, in the situation you described this is false -- they've told you how before telling you what, and unless you go back and clear that up the rest is going to fall to crap. Getting down the difference between Thor's 2A and the simple description of character action is crucial.

To give an example of me screwing it up, I once was doing a HeroQuest game in which a player whose character was being pursued by evil beserkers described his character leaping off a bridge 100 feet in the air and into the middle of a stormy northern sea that was pounding against razor sharp rocks below. I, being a dolt, of course had him -roll to survive the fall-. Then I had him -roll to swim away-. He tied on the first, failed the second, and then ended up having his prophetic sidekick know he was in trouble and come get him with a boat.

This is an example of what not to do, as CLEARLY the intent was "get away without a fight, even if it causes me physical injury." Instead we got a "sure you get away, but can you survive swimming in the cold water!" bit of Simism that felt really flat and really lame. Had I stopped for 3 little seconds to differentiate action from intent I could have avoided the whole thing.

mtiru wrote:
However, in that particular situation I'm unable to see another set of possible stakes that follow this intent. Player B could have said "fine, you can stab me," but then we would be back at Judd's example where there is no conflict.

So basically the purpose of gathering a player's intent is to determine IF there's a conflict, and if there is to set the stage for stakes-framing?

Warren wrote:
II'll find out if this is true when I run Dogs for another group (in a few weeks time) that are mainly very Actor-stance LARPers.

Brand_Robins wrote: For me it goes like this: First you need to know what it you want to acomplish, then you have to know how, then you have to know what the opposition is, and then you have to know what happens if you fail.

Joshua wrote:

Brand_Robins wrote: For me it goes like this: First you need to know what it you want to acomplish, then you have to know how, then you have to know what the opposition is, and then you have to know what happens if you fail.

I like this formulation better than the one that required "GM Intent".  In my experience, the GM Intent is more or less irrelevant.  It's not the GM's story, it's not the GM's character.  The GM is providing opposition which is not the same as intending the character to fail.

Paka wrote: I don't think the GM's intent is irrelevant at all.  The GM is a player at the table, an equal participant and a leader.  I think their intent is driving the story to cool places.

Joshua wrote:
-- when really, the GM just wants to push the players to risk and address.

From my point of view, a common problem that I have is that I know that being truthful about intent is often going to make things harder for me as a player.  This is an old issue.  I recall in particular an early rgfa thread, where Mary Kuhner described that whenever she made her plans known to the GM, the GM would arrange for the plan to run into difficult trouble -- either because that was more dramatic, or because he genuinely believed the aphorism "no plan survives contact with the enemy".  However, if she didn't state her plans but instead kept them secret, they would usually work.  Unsurprisingly, she was driven to keep her plans hidden and act more as if she was coming up with things on the fly.  

In a game with freeform stakes based on intent, chances are that if I am deceptive (or at least cagey) about my intent, then I can get what I want more effectively.  This was illustrated for me clearly in one of the games at AmberCon, "Amber's Watchdogs", which used a variant of the DitV mechanic -- though it bore very little resemblance in general to Dogs.  Short situation: my character is a princess of Amber who has appropriate magical powers.  If I stated my intent as: I want to get alone with the leader of the opposing army to talk with him privately, then I can accomplish that without much problem.  Now that I have him alone, though, I have established the circumstances and can easily kidnap him by teleporting away via Trump.  The GM tried to make the latter a difficult conflict, but it because increasingly impossible to justify why I couldn't do what I stated given the circumstances.  

That's just one example, but there are endless variations of this.  Often, the system means that the one thing which is most difficult to achieve is your stated intent -- whereas if you stated something else, you could get that thing easily as part of narration.  For example, ask for something bigger than what you expect, then declare your gains as part of the process at some point when you can force the opponent to Take the Blow (using the DitV mechanic).  Now, maybe this is just a natural consequence of intent-based stakes-setting.  It's not a game-killing problem, after all, but it does give me pause, at least.  

John wrote:
Often, the system means that the one thing which is most difficult to achieve is your stated intent -- whereas if you stated something else, you could get that thing easily as part of narration.

This is a fantastic thread that has helped clarify things in my mind as well.

I just want to offer a thought.  This discussion of stakes is strongly reminiscent of a variant I've seen that limits the structure of arguments in a Matrix game.

How it relates is that after someone makes a declaration of what occurs (i.e. Protagonist setting stakes), two of the optional arguments you can make in response must be in the form of:

(a) "Yes, But.."
(b) "No, Actually..."

I know it's been touched on before, but I think this solidifies it even more.  As I see it, when someone offers stakes your stakes can either (a) Confirm with Consequences or (b) Negate with Consequences.  Does anyone else see other options that don't result no conflict (GM Says yes)?

Myrmidon wrote:
This is a fantastic thread that has helped clarify things in my mind as well.

How it relates is that after someone makes a declaration of what occurs (i.e. Protagonist setting stakes), two of the optional arguments you can make in response must be in the form of:

(a) "Yes, But.."
(b) "No, Actually..."

John wrote:
Often, the system means that the one thing which is most difficult to achieve is your stated intent -- whereas if you stated something else, you could get that thing easily as part of narration.  For example, ask for something bigger than what you expect, then declare your gains as part of the process at some point when you can force the opponent to Take the Blow (using the DitV mechanic).  Now, maybe this is just a natural consequence of intent-based stakes-setting.  It's not a game-killing problem, after all, but it does give me pause, at least. 

If I stated my intent as: I want to get alone with the leader of the opposing army to talk with him privately, then I can accomplish that without much problem.  Now that I have him alone, though, I have established the circumstances and can easily kidnap him by teleporting away via Trump.  The GM tried to make the latter a difficult conflict, but it because increasingly impossible to justify why I couldn't do what I stated given the circumstances.

Paka wrote: I think we are caught on a semantic rusty nail sticking out from the overall structure here.

Are we cool?

Because I am a pedant:

Brand Robins wrote: First you need to know what it you want to acomplish, then you have to know how, then you have to know what the opposition is, and then you have to know what happens if you fail.

hix wrote:
Because I am a pedant:

Brand Robins wrote: First you need to know what it you want to acomplish, then you have to know how, then you have to know what the opposition is, and then you have to know what happens if you fail.

Seems like after you first know what it is you want to acomplish, then you need to know 'why' you want to accomplish it. That seems to be the key to getting to the intent.

And I'm finding these 2 threads extremely useful.

I think stakes are overlooked in gamism as well. Things go into particular tasks, like in a game I ran once where a player had killed a shelled monster. He then starts declaring tasks that revolve around starting a fire. In the end we find out he wants to burn out the meat and make armour out of it (a good idea). But it was the wrong way around to discover it, drama wise. The drama of gamism starts at the declaration of the objective, then builds up towards a climax as the player makes any sucess toward that. But in this case, we didn't get that build up because the very thing that builds it up (the fire making tasks) had already happened, when we found out the objective.

Also, conflict resolution is awful for this. Gamism thrives on the player drawing on all the resources/tasks he can perform, in order to pursue his objective. In games like nar, doing that just gets in the way of the next address so it's understandable that you'd want to skip it with conflict resolution.

Yes, Callan, which is why I'm hopeful for Christian's Beast Hunters game, which addresses just that issue (and uses CR).

Yes, Christian was good enough to introduce some ideas in a thread I started about address of challenge. The ideas grew into the beast hunter game (and good on him for getting out and doing it!).

The game has three different phases and mechanics to go with them, all related to the same general challenge. I think it's more than just getting something out of the way with one roll, despite conflict resolution being included. Perhaps one might think of it as mechanical examination of the challenge, but for a change it isn't by task resolution (but at the same time, not defaulting wholey to conflict resolution).

I always seemt to have a hard time understanding PDF's. But from the ideas he posted/PM'ed and from the PDF, that's what I see happening. What do you think, Christian?

This discussion made me think about a lecture I saw recently. It had nothing to do with roleplaying but with motivation and how to reach your goals (as an individual and/or as a company). The lecturer (Kjell Enhager) spoke of three vital questions that needed to be answered:

1. What do you want?
2. What do you have to do to get what you want?
3. What/who/how do you have to be to be able to do this?

The last question is sort of about mood and state of mind as an invidual and about competence for a company. What does this have to do with the discussion at hand? To me, the first question is about your Intent. The second is about the Task and the third, well that's the Stakes. Basically you need to put stakes on the table, make your character risk something, so that the Task becomes avaliable. In some cases there is little or no conflict. That's when the stakes are so low that you can easily put your character in a position where the task itself can be resolved easily or with little fuss mechanically. Does this make any sense to you? Are the questions helpful? It's late here but I'll pop in tomorrow or Sunday and elaborate a bit further.