I was running a Fudge game taking a Conflict Resolution style approach but I am not sure I got it quite right and as a result the ending was a little blah.  It is not first time I’ve incorporated Conflcit Res in a game, though it is still a fairly new technique for me.

The adventure itself was a one-shot night of the living dead kind of scenario, the party and various NPC in a saloon, zombies all around trying to get in. As this was our ‘Christmas special’ game, instead of zombie it was radioactive snowmen.

Without going into a blow-by-blow account, the scenario eventually reached a point where, right before the dawn, the snowmen went for one last desperate push. The party came up with a plan that pretty much involved everyone in the inn forming a human chain to delivering buckets of water up to the roof where the pyrokinetic PC brought it quickly to boiling so that it could be tossed on the snowmen below.

So maybe it wasn’t the most stylish plan ever conceived, but it's all we had. We set the stakes as: success = the manage to keep the snowmen at bay till dawn, failure =  the snowmen get a access to the second floor. We then had to figure out who would role and what attribute was relevant. As it was a plan that involved a lot of people working together, we agreed it would be a “leadership” roll.

The rolls succeeded, the snowmen were held back till dawn and boy was that an anti-climax.

In retrospect I guess this kind of ending would be problematic with any system, but I was wondering whether I just did not break down the conflict to a small enough level.

Hi! I'm replying here becasue your post struck a chord with me.  I'm in a similar situation to you, trying to incorporate conflict resolution into my games, but not really nailing it yet.  I think you're correct in thinking of it as a whole new skill that needs to be mastered.  It's difficult at first to come up with stakes that aren't immediate win/lose situations, and I think you're right that breaking it down into smaller steps is a great place to start.  I played a couple of games of "The Pool" recently, my first foray into a game that openly supports CR.  The first game went allright, but I felt like there were a few times when the dice rolling felt anti-climactic, like I was rolling just becasue I felt like I should.  There were cool moments, and I was able to make some scenes run really nicely by having combat scenes with stakes other than "you beat him up"/"He beats you up".  Then I read Vincent's blog post about CR, and it really brought home to me how sim ple CR really is.  It's as simple as saying "what's at risk is..." or "the danger is..." at the start of every roll.  You can incorporate task resolution into any rule system. I think I was kind of stuck thinking that I had to run the entire conflict between two characters as a single dice roll.  Instead, in the second game, I could make great multi-stage combats, so, for the first roll, the main character had to fight through the swarm of demon bats, then she had to catch the gypsy wagon going full tilt along the highway, then she had to defeat the gypsy witch inside.  All with lots of complications along the way. 

There were still a few glitches.  A few times I got caught with no real alternative to success.  The player whiffed a few dice rolls, and this left me floundering for a little while, trying to come up with a scenario other than "they drink your blood and you die".  I think this is partly the result of me planning pretty poorly, and not anticipating the conflict very well.

The other thing I was shy of doing was really kicking the player in the pants with the conflicts.  It worked better in the second game, where I put more important stuff on the line.  I started using conflicts like "ok, either way, you convince him to come with you, but if you fail, he won't trust you anymore, and his love for you will die a little"

One thing I didn't try, but it sounds like it could have been useful for your game is "either way, this bad thing happens, but if you succeed, it's not so bad".  So, in your game, you could have framed the conflict as "either way, they'll break into the second floor - what's at risk is they'll get in with overwhelming numbers." and lead into a second conflict with a desperate last stand in hand to hand combat if they win, or a desperate break for freedom from the encircling hordes should they lose.  Basically, you've got to work out where you want the conflict to lead, and be prepared for either outcome.  This is more difficult in games where the conflicts are framed more by the players, but that's not something I have much experience with.

You may want to visit EvilHat's FATE page and look at an article there called "Twists" found here: http://www.faterpg.com/dl/twists.pdf .

What it talks about are gives and takes as the situation is being described that ramp up and down the final roll.  It is intended to encourage more detailed and thoughtful planning for actions.  Since FATE is very well given to conflict resolution, it really works out well.  Each twist to and fro allows you as the GM to present a problem and have the group try and find a way to overcome or reverse it as well as allowing the players to do the same.  Each step of the player's plan can be met by some aspect of the Zombie menace as well.  The give and take makes the single roll turn into a bit more "oomph" for the drama at the table of that final roll.

Now, for me, the next issue to look at in this situation is how to handle conflict framing.  If the scope of the session is making it through the night, then the conflicts need to be broken down (either as twists that the PCs get to "untwist" before the roll, or as conflicts unto themselves).  For example, if you want to ramp up the tension and lead to more conflict, frame the conflicts as follows:

• Conflict One - Staying Hidden from the Zombie to make it to the House vs Time Pressure of Zombies chasing them while they try and fortify. (adding a twist to next conflict).
• Conflict Two - Co-ordinating the teamwork required to get the group able to fortify the house (this is a bout 60% of the conflict in "Night of the Living Dead" - everyone had a different idea what to do and how to handle it and a pecking order had to be established).
• Conflict Three - Initial Zombie wave - Hold the house together vs zombies get inside and force a rout into the woods.
• Conflict Four - Depends largely on what happens previous, but let's call it "Make it through the Night OK vs. Losing people"
• End of Session - Dawn comes, for better or worse.

In each step, have a twist scaled to what each PC is doing.  Can the Pyro keep his powers scaled down to do the job when his nerves are pushing him to "flame out"?  Does the psychic start to hear the voices of the dead in his head, and can he fight them to do his job the more effectively?  Find chinks in their armor to test with twists to the main conflict (or sub-conflicts, but I won't beat that horse anymore).  Most importantly, encourage them to find chinks in the Zombie situation as well.  "These guys are slow, maybe we can use that..."  In FATE 2.0 or Spirit of the Century, these become aspects that are guessed and tagged to gain modifiers to the roll.

The idea is not to have a crime drama where the conflict is "solve mystery vs they get away".  You want some core conflicts to play with like "Get answers from the Gun Moll vs Gun Moll convinces you she is an innocent in all this".  The trick, like many things in this gamer's life, is to make sure that BOTH options are interesting, but that one is preferred.  If they get something good both ways, they won't fight.  If the "bad end" is a total fizzle, your game will follow.  That Gun Moll who the group thinks is a good girl will show up later and let them have a chance to figure out there is more to her than meets the eye, for example.

When negotiating the conflict stakes with players, make sure to keep the scale down to what you are comfortable.  Make sure that the framing aids in keeping that drama building and the play fun.  It's an art, but practice makes perfect.

All very good points Judd. Many thanks.