At the heart of my system are the characters that drive the story; and the key players are intended to be the heros, PCs. As the focus of my game is intended to be the characters I wanted players to have as much control during the character building and improvement phases of the game as possible. If someone asked me the question: "So if I use your system, what kind of character can I build?" my answer to them would be: "Anything you can imagine, in time." The character building system and the character improvement system uses the same principle: a skill set.

Skill set
A skill set is simply a term describing the entire breadth and width of a character's abilities. Not everything a character can do is represented by a skill, for instance climbing a ladder, or tying a shoe, etc. Skills such as these are considered to have already been mastered by a character and they are not replicated by the skill system. Equally, I wanted the skill system, the whole of my game system, to encourage roleplaying--that is to encourage creativity, critical thinking skills, problem solving, and such like. Therefore my system intends to replicate only those skills that the player himself cannot mimic. In application what this means is my system does allow characters to take skills that mimic: knowledge, wisdom, charisma, diplomacy, bartering, intelligence, wit, charm, etc. This means that skills a character takes are always either skills describing complex physical tasks or supernatural abilities.

Miscellaneous skills
This is one of three categories that describe all skills. The Miscellaneous skill category includes any and all skills that mimic physical activities that are not considered combat-related or magical in nature. I have skill lists in my core rules, however my system is not about lists of skills. The skill lists I provide serve merely as examples. Players can select from the provided skill lists, but they are encouraged to build their own skills. Building a skill is quite simple, there is one rule that guides the player/GM:

1. The parameters of the skill must be defined in concrete terms with a clearly defined cause and effect.

The skill system is designed to break down professions (e.g. a lock smith) into component parts, each part being its own skill. The intended effect of this is to:

a) Create characters that can be on a sliding scale from highly focused and specialized in one or a few areas of expertise to characters who are jack-of-all-trades being able to do a little bit of everything.
b) Simulate the dedication it takes for experts to become singularly skilled at their artform.
c) Offer players, freedom to pick only those skills that they want their character to be able to perform.
d) Create non-combat characters who are as talented and valued as combat characters.
e) Encourage characters whose ability to think, learn, create, and problem solve are not predicated on a finite number.

Task resolution
A character's ability in each Miscellaneous skill is measured by a descriptor ranging from clueless (untrained) to Neophyte (beginner) all the way up to Grandmaster (highest level of skill). There are twenty-six descriptors in all counting clueless which in effect is descriptor zero. The difficulty of a task is measured by thirty-one descriptors ranging from simple (easiest) all the way up to Impossible (hardest). Impossible tasks are impossible to complete unless the character has some form of additional assistance other than their skill--this assistance may come in the form of a special tool, or innate talent, or magical assistance. The success or failure of a task is decided by a percentile roll. The character's level of skill is matched on a chart with the difficulty of the task which determines a target number. The percentile roll must be less than or equal to this target number for success.

What decides task difficulty?
Some tasks may have a base difficulty attached to them, for instance performing a handstand, while other tasks may have a variable difficulty attached to them, for instance picking a lock. In this case the difficulty will be decided by the complexity of the lock which will differ based on the value of what it is protecting. For many tasks the difficulty will be based in part or in whole on the environment. Using the handstand example. If conditions are perfect the difficulty to perform a perfect handstand might be one level. However, what if a strong wind is blowing and the ground is not level? In this case the strength of the wind might add three levels of difficulty and the sloping ground might add two levels of difficulty which would raise the overall difficulty to six. All of the skills are affected by relevant environmental conditions. For some skills the difficulty of a given task is predicated solely or almost solely on environmental conditions. Take the the ability to sneak about without making noise as an example. Certainly the skill level of the sneak comes into play, but what affects the difficulty of the task--sneaking past that guard? What kind of equipment is the sneak wearing? Does any of it clank or jingle as they move? What kind of clothing is the sneak wearing? What kind of boots? Are their boots hard soled or stiff? Do they squeak? What sort of surface is the sneak moving over? Pebbles? Sand? Snow? Carpet? Grass? Cobblestones? Will their footsteps echo? Is there is any background noise? Perhaps running water or a crackling fire? Is the guard distracted? In conversation with another guard maybe? Or half asleep? Or drunk? Maybe he's a little hard of hearing? All of these factors are taken into account in determining the difficulty of the task. Now it sounds like a lot of information to consider, and it is. I use a base modifier for the task difficulty for key elements. For instance moving over carpet may increase the difficulty of the task by only a little whereas moving over snow may increase it by a lot. Generally there will only be between three and five key conditions that will modify the difficulty.

Success/Failure
Depending on the nature of the task, failure may or may not penalize the character. Success in a task always nets a character an amount of experience based on the difficulty of the task in proportion to their skill level. If a skill is too easy for a character they may not get any experience at all. If a character fails a task but does not fail by a wide margin they still earn experience for the attempt, but a smaller amount than they would have earned for success. This mechanic is designed to model the fact that we can learn from our mistakes, however I did not want to reward failure equally well or better than success and encourage failure.

Questions? Comments? Like it? Hate it?

John wrote: All of these factors are taken into account in determining the difficulty of the task.

You should be asking questions of us, not the other way around. After all, surely you had some reason to post these ideas here?

That said, I find the basic philosophy screwy: if you only model skills the players can't mimic, then you should only have supernatural skills, surely? Unless you're playing with somehow limited people most other things they can mimic quite fine, so fighting, thief skills, craft skills, languages and such are right out...

But that's not really relevant; if magic/fighting/craft is the split you're happy with, then you should go with it. My personal experience is that this kind of fiddling with the ultimate skill system is a pretty common rpg designer hobby. Only rarely do I see fruitful games growing out of it, though, because the designer fails to make the skill system become an engine in a fruitful gaming experience. In practice all these elaborate skill systems seem to play just like GURPS, my own early tinkerings included.

If you're interested in seeing fruitful skill systems in action, I recommend The Shadow of Yesterday and Runequest. You'll notice that these don't work because of their detailed (or not-so-detailed) realism, but because they motivate interesting play interactions by tying the skill system into something meaningful (massive game advantage for relatively small investment in the case of TSOY, religious cult progression in Runequest).

TonyLB wrote:

John wrote: All of these factors are taken into account in determining the difficulty of the task.

By whom, and for what purpose?

By the GM, whose goal is to oppose the players in any way he can get away with?  By the players, whose goal is to provide their characters with a level of adversity that will earn them the praise of their peers without getting the character killed?  By other players, whose aim is to apply social pressure against actions they don't like and social encouragement for actions they do like?

John, I think you'll find with more reading on the Forge that Tony's pointed questions were not accusations, but really well-formed questions designed to understand your design priorities.

That said, there is nothing wrong with designing a game where the GM does everything he can within the rules to oppose the players. In fact, games like Dogs in the Vineyard and My Life with Master work best when the GM is not pulling punches and the game designs allow the GM to play balls-out "against" the players without ruining things. Games poorer for design put the GM in a position where they have to carefully balance adequate challenge with keeping the players alive/happy/etc.

Furthermore, players crave that all-out challenge in certain kinds of games. When I play Dogs or MLwM, I want the GM to assail me ruthlessly because the game puts the real choices in my hands, regardless of what the GM does to me.

It seems to me that you're trying to write a skill system that captures reality to the Nth degree. Do you think game play will be better for it?

The skill system is designed to break down professions (e.g. a lock smith) into component parts, each part being its own skill. The intended effect of this is to:

a) Create characters that can be on a sliding scale from highly focused and specialized in one or a few areas of expertise to characters who are jack-of-all-trades being able to do a little bit of everything.
b) Simulate the dedication it takes for experts to become singularly skilled at their artform.
c) Offer players, freedom to pick only those skills that they want their character to be able to perform.
d) Create non-combat characters who are as talented and valued as combat characters.
e) Encourage characters whose ability to think, learn, create, and problem solve are not predicated on a finite number.

John wrote: Yes, the GM determines the difficulty of the task. As I said it is often influenced by environmental conditions. Is it the GM's goal to oppose the players in any way he can get away with? I would hope not. Are you suggesting that the mechanics open up the system to abuse by GMs or even encourages abuse by GMs? I'd like to understand the point you are making with that statement.

I wrote a bunch of comments in response to your first few paragraphs but when I got to your last paragraph I had to delete them all. Read on...

I accept your premise that removing social skills from the game could prevent a player from playing a character with intelligence or charm beyond their capability to roleplay it. That does indeed defeat my goal of giving players freedom to play any character they can imagine. I'll be. So either I have to redesign my premise, or, social skills need to be in. Wow. Thank you. You have no idea how insightful that question was.

Let me ask you this:

Based on that decision--to include social skills--would it then follow in your mind that a character's attributes; i.e. strength, speed, etc., would also need to include things like intelligence, etc? My thought is yes. As I have removed that from my design I will have to put it back in, which really is not difficult to do because the mechanics of the system works identically for all associate skills. But I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this.

I urge you not to ignore Tony's questions. He can provide a lot of insight into things, too.

Would I also include abilities like intelligence, etc.?  Well, that depends.

If you goal is to provide a system that can describe any conceivable character in game terms, you'll need game terms that span the vast space of human creativity. There are two ways to do that: 1) create an attribute or skill for everything conceivable, or 2) use freeform traits. The first is an impossible ideal. You always end up leaving something out and thus your player can't create his high-functioning autistic character or whatever. The second requires more of players but gives them ultimate freedom to create their own ability score and skill names, essentially. You write "High functioning autistic 7" on your sheet and that gives it teeth in the game. Nowhere do the rules explain how to interpret that, so you need rules that help players interpret things on their own, or at least to help them come to some resolution when there are disagreements. One potential downside of freeform traits is that not all traits are written equally. For example, "Good at throwing stars 10" probably isn't as useful as "Ninja 2."

I'm curious to see your responses to my other comments, and to Tony's.

TonyLB wrote:
My point in asking the question is to see whether you have an answer to it, and if so what that answer is.

So, you've told me one thing that the GM's agenda isn't (outright unbridled competition).  Now, can you tell me what the GM's agenda is?  What's he supposed to be doing, and how does doing it reliably contribute to the game?

Adam wrote:
I urge you not to ignore Tony's questions. He can provide a lot of insight into things, too.

Would I also include abilities like intelligence, etc.?  Well, that depends.

If you goal is to provide a system that can describe any conceivable character in game terms, you'll need game terms that span the vast space of human creativity. There are two ways to do that: 1) create an attribute or skill for everything conceivable, or 2) use freeform traits. The first is an impossible ideal. You always end up leaving something out and thus your player can't create his high-functioning autistic character or whatever. The second requires more of players but gives them ultimate freedom to create their own ability score and skill names, essentially. You write "High functioning autistic 7" on your sheet and that gives it teeth in the game. Nowhere do the rules explain how to interpret that, so you need rules that help players interpret things on their own, or at least to help them come to some resolution when there are disagreements. One potential downside of freeform traits is that not all traits are written equally. For example, "Good at throwing stars 10" probably isn't as useful as "Ninja 2."

I'm curious to see your responses to my other comments, and to Tony's.

You probably ought to read the following design patterns in the free book Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games, by John Kirk III: Attribute, Skill, and Trait.

Before we really go much further about redesigning your skill system, can you tell me a bit about the resolution system and how these skills will be used? Do you understand the difference between a task resolution system and a conflict resolution system? If so, does your system resemble one of those?

Here's my follow up to those other questions you raised Adam.

It seems to me that you're trying to write a skill system that captures reality to the Nth degree. Do you think game play will be better for it?

I guess that is not an unfair statement given the number of factors I suggest including in setting the conditions for pass/fail though that is not my intention. My purpose with this part of the design is to attempt to explain why such and such task is difficult or easy to succeed at. I like to know "why?" this works rather than just "how do I make it work?" Does that make a lick of sense to you? What are the any potential pitfalls--as you see them--to this mechanic, i.e. does it put too much emphasis on success/failure?

Let's break this down a bit. Goal (b) seems to relate to desire for "realism." Goal (c) seems to relate to player wish-fulfillment. That is, give the player the tools to create the character they really want to play. The "only" in that sentence confuses me, however. Goal (d) seems a design priority to de-emphasize combat play (probably relative to your prior experience with D&D or some other game).

Gaol (b). A desire for realism? In some ways yes. Most of all I am trying to present a sharply defined contrast between specialization and non-specialization.

Goal (c). You're pretty much on the money with this one. The "only" may have been a misplaced word, it was essentially a loose reference to the fact that I do not use character templates. Every character is built from the ground up.

Goal (d). If de-emphasizing combat play means bringing its importance in the overall scheme of the game more in line with other parts of roleplaying then yes, that is absolutely my intention. I don't want any particular part of my system to overshadow any other part of my system. I want players to decide for themselves what is important to their character and then choose those skills that reflect that decision.

Goal (e) confounds me a bit. Characters don't do any of those things. Players do them for their characters. We can pretend that characters do those things.

You're right, goal (e) was incorrectly worded. I wrote characters when I meant players.

Even so, you have removed any modeling of those things from your design -- your system "intends to replicate only those skills that the player himself cannot mimic." Do you mean to say that because you don't have skills for things like Diplomacy and thus leave all diplomacy up to the player convincing a GM that he has been sufficiently diplomatic, that player's character's abilities are "not predicated on a finite number" (ability score or skill number)?

With respect to this I don't have a lot to say except you are correct. I cannot pick an choose which "abilities" for lack of a better word to model and still meet my goal of giving players total creative liscense over their character. Fortunately this can be easily fixed, I think.

I've got to say this is tough to do but revealing and useful. I suspect you've done this more than once with a budding gung-ho designer :)

John wrote:
The GM is supposed to extrapolate what key conditions present at the time the character attempts their task have a significant impact on the character's chance of success.

Adam wrote:
You probably ought to read the following design patterns in the free book Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games, by John Kirk III: Attribute, Skill, and Trait.

Before we really go much further about redesigning your skill system, can you tell me a bit about the resolution system and how these skills will be used? Do you understand the difference between a task resolution system and a conflict resolution system? If so, does your system resemble one of those?

Tony, yes I see what you are getting at. And you make a good point. Here's my answer or at least my attempt to answer.

Taking into account every single factor that would influence success/failure would be not just arduous but also impossible. The idea is to choose the key elements that influence success/failure. These key elements come from a pool, essentially a list. If I take your example of the thief running across the rooftops:

In this case as you point out the GM is indeed narrating many of the difficulties. He is narrating how steep the roof is, whether there is enough wind to hamper the thief's progress, the natural slipperiness of the roofing material, and whether or not it is raining making it even slicker. In these instances if a decision had not been made prior to the thief's decision to run across the rooftops it would become a very subjective decision at the whim of the GM. If the GM had previously determined that rooftops in this town are flat and made of coarse slate, that today it was storming hard--both wind and rain--then it would be a less subjective decision. To be honest I'm not sure that there is an answer to the subjective decision question as it seems that it would be up to the GM. Do they want to make this task easier or harder? And why? Is there an answer to that question?

Okay, a lot of different things that need replies. Lemme try to organize this.

Task Resolution

There's nothing wrong with using Task Resolution, but it has some pitfalls you'll want to design for.

In your locked-door example, the motivations of the players seems clear enough: "They want to move through the door with as little fuss as possible," as you say. That's their intent. Lockpicks are only one way to accomplish that goal. Others include: They produce the right key. They use engineering knowledge to remove bricks or the hinges. They use magic to make the door open. They break down the door with a strong shoulder. They cut the door open with a laser. All of those things are valid, but the players don't really care if they pick the locks, per se; they just want the damned door open.

Then there's the "whiff factor." Task resolution can cause players to fail at critical moments and really take a crap on the story, to use a colorful term. Basically, if you stat up a character who is supposed to be great at picking locks, you don't want to fail that encounter because you couldn't pick the lock. Task resolution forces your hand there, but conflict resolution would let you deal with the whole door issue at a high level, still let the player bring in lockpicking skills, but let the player or GM narrate failure in a creative way ("There's something blocking the door on the other side" or "A guard comes before you can finish.")

Setting Difficulty Numbers

There are lots of ways to do this. For example, my Verge RPG actually has the player himself tell the GM how difficult the conflict is. He can make it as easy or hard as he wants but his chances of experience-point rewards are proportional to the risk he takes.

It sounds like you're going the traditional route, such as that used in D&D 3E, where the GM is the arbiter of everything outside the character. Really, such a GM is free to make the situation as hard as he wants. Be sure to give strong guidelines for what is a "fair" situation. You can't account for every situation in your rules though. What's the modifier for performing open heart on a rooftop in the rain? Or even in a hospital? How do you know? (Or, as you ask, "Why?")

What Kind of Game?

All I know about your game is that you want super-detailed characters. I don't know what players are gonna do with them though. Maybe you don't even need them that detailed. Let's step back.

These are the standard three questions we ask everyone about their new game design:

1. What's the game about? That is, what would you say is the most important aspect of the game?
2. What do characters do? What's the "core story" of the game? D&D's is "A group of adventurers travel to a dangerous dungeon, kill all the monsters there, and take their stuff, thus rising in power to tackle more dangerous dungeons."
3. What do players do, and what tools does the game give them to do those things?

I've got to say this is tough to do but revealing and useful. I suspect you've done this more than once with a budding gung-ho designer :)

John wrote: To be honest I'm not sure that there is an answer to the subjective decision question as it seems that it would be up to the GM.

Task Resolution

If you could go into a little more depth regarding the pit fall of task resolution? If I understand your example correctly you are saying that while task resolution says "You failed to pick the lock so you can't get through the door because it is still locked", conflict resolution says "You failed to pick the lock because a guard approached and you had to stop what you were doing and duck for cover". Does that more or less encapsulate the difference?

If it does, what is the intended potential difference between the two outcomes? In the task resolution outcome the character wasn't up to scratch, whereas in the conflict resolution we don't know whether they are up to scratch because they never got to complete the task. Does this mean that the attempt to open the lock is unresolved or is the act of the guard interrupting the task intended as an alternative way of saying "it's not going to work, try a different approach"?

Setting Difficulty Numbers

I have to say I rather like the idea of the player setting the difficulty number, it's an interesting take. How does it operate in situations where there is a lot at stake vs. very little or nothing at stake?

I agree that there need to be well defined guidelines indicating how difficult any given task should be.

What's the game about?
I would say the most important aspect of my game is as you say super detailed characters.

What do characters do?
A character reflects their player's desires. If their player wants to play a do-gooder then the character will reflect this in what they do. If the player wants to play a villain then the character will reflect this in what they do. Ultimately in order to achieve this goal the character must do two things: (a) stay alive, (b) seek out challenges to conquer in order to grow more powerful. (The more challenges a character faces and overcomes the more powerful they become, and the more powerful they become the more convincing they will be as the do-gooder or the villain.

What do players do, and what tools does the game give them to do those things?
Players create and guide characters who can do things that they can not and will not ever be able to do. Through their character's, players fulfill a fantasy or desire to behave as someone who is larger than life. The game gives players the opportunity to build (an ongoing process) a character that embodies their fantasy someone. I would hope too that players view the game as cooperative social interaction. i.e. I help you and you help me and we have fun doing it.

What's the game about?
I would say the most important aspect of my game is as you say super detailed characters.

Ultimately in order to achieve this goal the character must do two things: (a) stay alive, (b) seek out challenges to conquer in order to grow more powerful. (The more challenges a character faces and overcomes the more powerful they become, and the more powerful they become the more convincing they will be as the do-gooder or the villain.

Hi John,

If the GM had previously determined that rooftops in this town are flat and made of coarse slate

Yes I do see the conflict of interests. And if you'll excuse my language this is some interesting s**t. I'm not ashamed to say that y'all are shaking up my world. And that's a good thing because I think it needed shaking.

So the idea with these bias points is to allow the GM to affect an outcome to his specifications by compensating the players in exchange. That way its a win-win situation. A neat idea. It allows the GM to become an explicit participant rather than pretending to be a passive observer.

John wrote:
Task Resolution

If you could go into a little more depth regarding the pit fall of task resolution? If I understand your example correctly you are saying that while task resolution says "You failed to pick the lock so you can't get through the door because it is still locked", conflict resolution says "You failed to pick the lock because a guard approached and you had to stop what you were doing and duck for cover". Does that more or less encapsulate the difference?

That was the first thing I read and it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at first but I think I am slowly catching on:

Task resolutiong: task is important
COnflict resolution: goal of task is important

A little closer perhaps?

Yes. There are a bunch of recent threads that try to nail down the difference. The essence is that in Conflict Resolution, you nail down what is really at stake before you roll.

Some claim that the distinction in John Kirks excellent Design Patterns in Roleplaying Games (zip download) between negotiated and generalized contest is more helpful. In this post, Brand Robins points out some interesting references regarding the issue.

But John, I think you basically have it figured out.

- Frank

I read Ben's blog and the conflict resolution discussion made sense--more or less--but the task resolution discussion went right over my head. Is there are good place on hte forum to post questions about this--I mean are we trying to keep questions in one thread--or is it okay to splatter them all over the place?

Now that I am beginning to come to terms with the distinction I'm wondering a few things:
1.) Is it possible to use conflict resolution to solve tasks? Maybe a silly question, but...
2.) It seems to me, and even Ben's article seemed to suggest, that conflict resolution is in of itself just the end result of a string of results from one or more task resolutions. Am I way off base here?

I think the difference is easier to demonstrate than explain. Here are some examples. They're just examples, not the paragon of everything that is Task Resolution or Conflict Resolution. That is, there may be some other examples that do not resemble these that demonstrate a different kind of Conflict Resolution or something.

Task Resolution

Bob: We need to find the map to the secret base. Do we see those in the room?
GM: Make a Search roll.
Bob rolls some dice but doesn't get enough to find the secret papers in the file cabinet.
GM: You dump the contents of the drawers and file cabinets on the floor. You don't find any plans but you do find a safe but it is locked. You're running out of time before the janitor comes back though.
Bob: Can I crack it?
GM: Do you have a skill in that?
Bob: My Criminal Background skill should let me.
GM: All right. Roll it at difficulty 6.
Bob rolls some dice and gets a big failure.
GM: Nope. That isn't enough. You can't get the safe open.
Bob: Can I use explosives to blow it open?
GM: Sure, but the janitor will be back any minute.
etc.

Conflict Resolution
Bob: We need to find the map to the secret base. Do we see those in the room?
GM: How about we make your stakes, "You find the location to the secret base without getting caught by the janitor." Sound good?
Bob: Excellent.
GM: How are you going to find the base?
Bob: I'll search the room first. I have Search 7.
Bob rolls some dice but doesn't get enough to win the conflict.
GM: You dump the contents of the drawers and file cabinets on the floor. There's no clue to the base's location there. You do find a safe though.
Bob: I can crack that with my Criminal Background!
Bob rolls some dice and gets a big failure -- enough to end the conflict against his favor.
GM: Bummer. Well, you manage to get the safe open, but it takes longer than you thought. There's a map inside and as you pull it out of its envelope, the janitor opens the door, seeing the mess you've made of the room. He calls Security on his radio!

Okay, based on your example:

The Task Resolution prevented Bob from getting the map.

In the Conflict Resolution example the stakes were finding the map without getting caught by the janitor. So the important factor here is not whether Bob can crack the safe but whether or not he can do it before the janitor returns?

John wrote: The Task Resolution prevented Bob from getting the map.

Yes it makes sense. It is fearsomely hard for me to wrap my head around. I find myself liking the possibilities presented by conflict resolution more and more.

If Bob has misread the clues and thinks a map is in the safe, or the map was in the safe but was later moved before Bob go there, or Bob has followed a herring to get the map from the safe but its not actually there because its a trap, isn't that part and parcel of the story. Either Bob has made an error in judgement, was too slow to act on information he had, or has been fooled. In which case resolving the task of cracking the safe will at least tell him that his information is wrong or at least incomplete.

Maybe what I'm asking is is there a definite opinion about which is more appropriate under which circumstances? Task Resolution or Conflict Resolution?

I have lots of questions about this but I'm having trouble forming cogent thoughts out of them.

John wrote:
Maybe what I'm asking is is there a definite opinion about which is more appropriate under which circumstances? Task Resolution or Conflict Resolution?

Would I be correct is saying that this goes straight to the heart of the Three questions?

Where Conflict Resolution (CR) really shines is when you start adding in more elements of player authoring -- and let me tell you, it was hard to separate them in my example.  What I mean is that CR gets more fun when you let players make shit up. Instead of the GM saying there is a safe, let the player interpret his failure to find a clue in the room any way he wants. Maybe the player says, "But there's a safe that I haven't opened yet" or "What about the computer?" And the GM never mentioned a safe or a computer.

Maybe the source of information about the secret base comes from the janitor. There are tons of creative ways to get to the end point -- the stakes -- without thinking too hard about all the little tasks that you have to do to get there.

Does CR de-emphasize individual character abilities at all?

No. In fact, CR opens the door to emphasizing different character abilities than TR would usually allow.

For example, if you need to find the plans before the janitor catches you, and you're using TR, likely the GM has planned a series of obstacles that are overcome by "key" character abilities and no others. Locked safe? Probably only one or two skills will get past that.

CR (especially combined with more player authority to narrate and create setting elements) encourages more creativity. The player can redefine the tasks that lead to the end-goal and bring in his Stubborn ability or his Chummy with Blue-collar Workers ability.

Do you have any questions about how Conflict Resolution and Task Resolution might apply to your game design?

Yes I do:

If I were to use Conflict Resolution instead of Task Resolution, what about my system would need to change:

Task: Climbing down the cliff face to reach an injured party member
Resolve how: Climber's skill vs. sheerness of cliff face interescts to give percentile chance of success, roll percentile dice
Succes: Climber makes it down safely
Failure: Climber falls

That is how it would work currently. So to move to Conflict Resolution what would need to change?

What would have to change? The entire mindset of you (the designer) and the players and GM.

Conflict: Can I heal my party member before they die?
Success: You heal the party member.
Failure: They die from wounds.
Resolve how: This is up to you, the designer. ;)

There are different mechanical ways to resolve conflicts. You can do it in a single roll with multiple modifiers. You can do it in a single roll with no modifiers, though this leaves a lot of players feeling "flat." You can do it in a series of rolls. I'm sure there are other ways. Here are some examples (assume the stakes of the conflict have already been clearly stated and it's just a matter of using dice to resolve the conflict).

Here's how Dogs does it:
The player has a bunch of traits rated in dice (e.g., 1d6, 3d6, 2d8). The GM also has a bunch of dice. Both sides roll. Each side takes a turn Raising with two dice (pushing them forward) and the other side must See (match) the total on the dice with dice from his own pool. See with two dice and you Dodge or Block. See with three or more dice and you Take the Blow (and take Fallout, which can change your character). See with only one die and you Reverse the Blow. You can always Give (forfeit) without taking additional Fallout.  Every time you push dice forward, you have to narrate the use of that trait. At the end, the winner narrates what happens according to the stakes, colored by the traits that were brought in.

Here's how Verge does it:
The player has a bunch of traits rated in boxes (e.g. [ ] [ ] [ ] is three boxes). Some help him (Strengths, Allies, Gear) and some hurt him (Weaknesses, Enemies). The player bases his initial dice pool on a single useful "helpful" trait and maybe adds in his Drive if he's putting it all on the line. The total number of boxes give the player that many dice. The player tells the GM how many dice to roll against him and other players can increase that number a couple dice each if they want. More dice for the GM = more risk for the player = more rewards for the player. The player and GM roll their initial dice and count successes (details not necessary here). Some narration occurs based on who is "winning." The player decides if he wants to go another round (if he's winning, probably not; if he's tied or losing, he probably does). If the player continues, he checks off a box for one of the "helpful" traits, explains the use appropriately, and rerolls all his non-success dice. Then the GM checks off a box of the player's "hurtful" traits, explains the use appropriately, and rerolls all his non-success dice. The situation is reassessed and the player can choose to continue again. When the player finally decides to stop, either the player or GM narrates the result according to the stakes, colored by the traits that were brought in.

Here's how My Life with Master does it:
Characters have just a few traits. If the conflict is violent, the player uses one set of traits; if the conflict is non-violent, he uses another set of traits. The traits give the player dice to roll. Maybe the player role-plays his character or the GM role-plays the Master in a certain way to get an extra die to roll (e.g., a d6 for Desperation). Dice are rolled. The results are narrated according to the stakes.

Does that give you some ideas? I recommend reading some of the better Actual Play reports to understand how different games do things. Better, see if you can try out some of these games we talk about with your friends. You might like The Shadow of Yesterday, which is free online in text form.

Okay well despite all of your hard work I have to admit to being bumfuzzled. What if there was no cliff and just an injured party member. Now I would expect that if you wanted to save their life you would need to be able to effectively apply some kind of skill, whether it be healing magic or medical knowledge, in order to stop them from bleeding to death. Are you saying that Conflict Resolution opens up the range of possibilities in saving the wounder party members life? So if you don't have healing magic or medical knowledge you can try something else, like praying for a miracle? If so, how is that different from Task Resolution? Consider me bumfuzzled Adam.

Does Conflict Resolution use specific abilities and skills in narrating success or failure but employs only broad categories of traits? So your Knowledge could be used for say bandaging the wounds to stop the bleeding, or you could use Divinity to pray for the miracle, or Magic to heal the wound?

John wrote:
Are you saying that Conflict Resolution opens up the range of possibilities in saving the wounder party members life? So if you don't have healing magic or medical knowledge you can try something else, like praying for a miracle? If so, how is that different from Task Resolution? Consider me bumfuzzled Adam.

What Tony said. It's up to you-the-designer to determine how traits/skills/attributes/etc. apply to conflict resolution. It's extremely cool when you can drag your Big, Excellent Boots 3d8 into a conflict that seemingly has nothing to do with it: "Is my character Socrates convinced that the other Dog killed Virgil?" "Cut back to when the other Dog was hatching this plan. Socrates' boots and one watchful eye peek out from around the corner. He sees the other Dogs planning the fake death of Virgil."

Are you less bumfuzzled?  If not, I recommend seeing a doctor! Or asking more questions. =)

In fact I am more bumfuzzled than when I started. My head is starting to hurt so I'm going to give it a rest for today and revisit this again in the near future. If I don't get this straight I may need a straight jacket.

Hi John,

Yeah, I'm not surprised you bumfuzzled...but your still asking some really good questions, regardless!

If Bob has misread the clues and thinks a map is in the safe, or the map was in the safe but was later moved before Bob go there, or Bob has followed a herring to get the map from the safe but its not actually there because its a trap, isn't that part and parcel of the story.

Hey there. New poster here, but I've been following this thread with interest.

If I can get a clarification that might help out, is the major difference between task and conflict resolution basically in GMing style? How does one put rules around that kind of structure, aside from just saying in the book, "use your skills creatively, and give input to the story"?

I love the conflict resolution style of play, and have tried to put it into my game as I GM, usually with great success. Feng Shui introduced the concept to me, originally. I'm just not sure how one might integrate the concept into a system's structure.

Hi,

maybe I can add another angle to this. The basic problem many people face when trying to grab conflict resolution is this: They take a scene from their task resolution game, like your “climbing the cliff”, and ask: “How would that scene work with conflict resolution?” The answer is: It wouldn’t. Because conflict resolution is not about that.

How climbing a cliff fits into conflict resolution totally depends on why you climb the cliff. With a conflict resolution system, you have a whole new way of approaching your negotiation of the shared imagined space.

So you have decided what your character wants. His goal. If your system is task resolution, the interesting part is yet coming up: How are you going to get it? So you try to climb up the cliff. If that doesn’t work, you try something else.

Conflict resolution is different. It takes away the “how” and focuses on the “what”. What do you want? And what are you putting at stake to get it? That’s what gets resolved. How it happened is also established, but without using resolution mechanics. It doesn’t matter whether you climb the cliff or not. All that matters is that you make it to the cathedral in time to stop the wedding.

Like Tony said, this has nothing at all to do with how to resolve the task or conflict at hand. If you use “skills”, that means you seek for some kind of connection between the in-game probability of the fictional event desired, and the statistical chance of the desired resolution outcome. This is a very common approach.

However, you might just as well say: If it is at all probable with regard to in-game verisimilitude, then it can happen. Whether it does happen or not, as determined by the resolution mechanic, depends on something totally different. You might use “story points”, “destiny ratings”, or whatever else you come up with that suits the purpose of your design. In both task and conflict resolution.

Make sense?

- Frank

Thanks but that just serves to continue to confuse me. Callan's post was much clearler and I'm going to stick with that.

If you're confused, try to explain what you understand and what you do not. We can answer your questions and correct your misunderstandings, but it is hard to teach this from scratch. This isn't Forge University. It's Forge Apprenticeship. You put in some work and we'll help you with it. We'll guide you along.

If you think -- based on your limited understanding -- that you want your game to have Conflict Resolution, why don't you toss out a strawman CR system for your game (this is the Indie Game Design forum) and we'll tell you if you've nailed it or if you're drifting. We want you to be successful, but right now we're talking in theoreticals and I think we've begun spinning our wheels.

Your homework:

• Name your game -- you can always change it later
• Decide if you want to try out Conflict Resolution in your game
• If so, design a simple CR system for your game -- just the basics -- and show it to us in a new thread
• If not, show us your Task Res system and we'll move forward with that
• If you want, ask me for some pointers to threads about CR/TR -- a current thread is A skill to cultivate: Setting Stakes -- I won't inundate you otherwise
• Refine your answers to the Big Three -- these should read like marketing copy on the back cover, not like a design document -- then post them to us

Does this approach work for you?

Here's a little hint that opened my eyes to the difference between task and conflict resolutions.

Everything players do is aimed at something. They have a goal, something that's at stake. They don't have their characters pick the lock for the sake of picking the lock, they want something behind it, and they want it to use it in a certain way; picking the lock is just one of the things they think will get them what they want. With me so far?

If you only have a resolution system for the particular tasks, but no mechanics that tie them into the goal, it's a task resolution ("TR") system.

If you have a resolution system in which every action you do contributes to resolving whether you get your goal or not, you have a conflict resolution ("CR") system.

Let's use the example of the office in which your character is trying to find something with which to blackmail the owner of the office. That's your goal as a player, no matter what system you're using. Now:

In TR, you may or may not share with the GM what your goal is. Often, people just start doing tasks in the hope that they will contribute to achieving the goal. "I search the desk." You make a search roll. You may or may not find something. There may never have been anything to find, and so you don't know if the task will actually help you achieve your goal. You go through task after task, and whether or not they somehow address that goal depends on the GM. If he already planned out that implicating documents are in the safe, you can waste a lot of time searching the other parts of the office, rolling tasks that don't matter for your goal. But the GM, in old-school task resolution systems, is not going to tell you that; that would be sharing out of character information with the player, and in those old-school TR systems, that's frowned upon.

Contrast this with CR. You explicitly tell the GM what your goal is. "I want to find something with which to blackmail the owner of this office." Now the resolution system determines whether you achieve the goal or not. The actual tasks could be made up by you, or the GM, depending on the particular system. The important point is that you now will not do tasks that have nothing to do with your goal, and further, you will have a resolution of your goal after you've used the system. There's no guessing which task is the right one. There's no wasting time doing things that you think might help you, but really never had a chance to.

You can see that some players will prefer TR; they don't want to break down that in-character versus out-of-character line. They want to simulate what a reasonable person would actually do, even if it has no chance of getting their goal done. Or they just want to have a "let's see what this does" approach to playing, where their characters just do tasks as they come up without tying them into particular goals. Maybe they come from a different angle altogether and believe that mind-reading, like Tony said, is a challenge for the players that gives them the opportunity to shine ("I knew it would be in the safe!").

Personally, I like CR systems because I don't have time for TR. I want my goal explicit and addressed, whenever something comes up in play. I don't like guessing or wasting time. But, as I said, that's me.

I hope that helped the issue. I'd suggest taking Adam's advice and figuring out how that works for your particular design.

That was a good example. It seems to me that any TR system out there can easily switch to CR by simply having players state their goals and then resolving the outcome. A couple questions for you:

1.) If there is an explicit statement made about the player's goal does it automatically make it CR.
2.) How does CR account for a situation where there is no incriminating evidence in the room? Is the resolution a failure, or does the GM simply say: "Sorry, there's nothing here."? And does that happen before or after whatever resolution mechanic is applied?

Excellent questions.

1) No. It will only be conflict resolution if there's a consistent way that, once the goal has been stated, the mechanics will directly contribute to addressing it. In my example, you could say, "I want to find incriminating materials." In old school groups, the GM will usually say, "Ah. Okay. Go ahead." But then you still have to guess whether or not searching the desk is a good thing to do. So, you're right in your first paragraph that to a certain degree, players can switch to a CR system by changing their play style, but you need both "state goals" and "resolve the outcome." I.e., if the GM said, "Okay. Make a search roll. If you make it, you get it. If not, you don't." If you do this reliably for every goal that comes up, you have CR. However, this leads into your second question:

2) Your options are:

a) The GM vetoes the attempt. Either the GM has other plans (and we're getting into railroading territory), or he has things figured out in advance and does not want to change them on the spot. The latter is the typical old-school pre-created dungeon style, and a lot of people like to play that way. However, to me that's very limiting in where you will allow the story to go. Basically you can still have a CR system, but you're giving the GM the power to frame which stakes are acceptable. That's actually a part of every system, because the player could say, "I'll build a weapon that instantly destroys the world," and in most systems (except maybe Capes) the other players (e.g., the GM) would have a way of saying, "That's not a reasonable stake, we won't do that." You need to make explicit in your game, if you use CR, how that process of selecting acceptable stakes works.

b) The evidence may not have been in the room until the moment the player wins the CR roll(s). That is, you're giving the players the power to enter facts into the story simply by introducing a conflict about it. This requires a shift in your idea on GM-player division of authority, but once you start thinking about it, you'll see how powerful that can be.

You cannot veto it after the roll, i.e., roll it and when the player succeeds, say, "Well, you do your best but there was no evidence." That violates the CR principles (above) that the stakes are determined before the rolls and resolved through them, because they're actually resolved through GM fiat.

Alright, if I accept your anser to (2.) then my next question is:

2a.) How does CR account for the player who wants the find the incriminating evidence dropped by the criminal in the street? How does CR use "setting" in the equation? Does requiring the character to go to the office and break in in order to find the evidence break CR?

I'll answer you in PMs, since we're drifting further and further from the point of this thread (which is your particular skill system).

I think were on topic, in terms of investigating the viablity of CR in relation to this design. We just need to avoid rambling.

That was a good example. It seems to me that any TR system out there can easily switch to CR by simply having players state their goals and then resolving the outcome. A couple questions for you:

1.) If there is an explicit statement made about the player's goal does it automatically make it CR.

2a.) How does CR account for the player who wants the find the incriminating evidence dropped by the criminal in the street? How does CR use "setting" in the equation? Does requiring the character to go to the office and break in in order to find the evidence break CR?

John wrote:
Alright, if I accept your anser to (2.) then my next question is:

2a.) How does CR account for the player who wants the find the incriminating evidence dropped by the criminal in the street? How does CR use "setting" in the equation? Does requiring the character to go to the office and break in in order to find the evidence break CR?

It's a collaborative effort with give and take. I like that. It means that you can construct the skeleton of a story, but how the plot unfolds is not predetermined. Nice. I believe I am gradually moving to understand how CR can be implemented in my game design. I don't have any other questions right now, but when I do I'll be sure to put them up in this thread.