RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[FrogReaver]

I like your notion of "well-formed" here (my bolding). Contrary to some of my earlier posts, suppse task resolution is defined like this

It's task resolution if it can be resolved and have a meaningful effect on the game state ignoring intent​

The theoretical move is to detach intent and see if it can still be resolved. I believe all agree that you cannot do that with conflict resolution. That gets around my firm intuitions that players express intention in their choice of performance, and that we never resolve performances for their own sake. @AbdulAlhazred @FrogReaver WDYT?

I’ll add this thought. Maybe what you are getting at is more around the ‘try’. That is when you try to do something to try and accomplish something, then it doesn’t particularly matter what you are trying to accomplish, because you could try to accomplish anything as that part will have no impact on what fictionally happens. It still matters what you try to do though.

Which brings me to this-
i kind of feel like we are having a philosophical discussion about intentional action.

I flip a light switch and the lights turn on. Was my action to flip a light switch or to turn on the lights or to flip the light switch and turn on the lights. Was my intent to flip the light switch or to turn on the lights or to flip the light switch and turn on the lights,

Until this is nailed down I don’t think there’s a clear difference between intentional actions and intents of actions. Which when applied to the reasoning above would show intent that does matter to the resolution, being found within what you’ve called the action.

Thus, while I understand what you are getting at, I cannot agree till actions, intentions and intentional actions all get defined a bit more clearly.

 

[Manbearcat]

They're not "axioms". They're characterisations of RPG techniques and approaches.

What is being said "no" to? What does this actually look like in play? Can you give us an actual play example?

Can you illustrate this with reference to DitV? Or HeroWars? Which are the two RPGs I mentioned as contradicting your claim that conflict resolution requires a no myth approach?

You seem to be envisaging the play of DitV as analogous to a dungeon crawl, only with the doors being in houses rather than rooms.

What do you think the canonical approach is to mapping, in DitV?

Also, do you think it's relevant that the poster in this thread who (as best I know) has the most play experience with DitV - @Manbearcat - has consistently agreed with my characterisation of it, while disagreeing with yours?

DitV stake-setting (along with probably BitD P/E handling) is the paragon of this thread’s “negotiation.”

The number of times I’ve said “no” or even had anything in the neighborhood of what felt like or what one might consider a haggle over “what are the appropriate stakes for a conflict” is about zero. And I’m not exactly a pushover/softy!

It’s pretty well abundantly clear what the stakes are in any given conflict so there often is only marginal conversation around the subject, if any. @hawkeyefan , you played in my last Dogs game. Is there any moment that sticks out to you where we had an issue with stakes-setting and subsequent or follow-on conflicts?

The final Town was themed around:

* “What happens when (The Flood and Revelations-esque) calamity and tragedy underwrite the utility of the Sin of Worldliness while undermining the structure of Stewardship, the concept of community, and the virtue of Faithfulness?”

* "What happens when the material means, fortitude/physical well-being, and emotional reserves for ceremony and burial are scarce and the flock feels the weight of that (perhaps having to compete for them)?"

* "What happens when the Faith and flock is pressured to turn to (questionable) outsiders (of which one of your numbers was once an outsider) for deliverance, lest all potentially fall to decay and ruin?"

Maybe the “deal with the food-stealing orphan in the bread line” conflict and then the subsequent “bread-line mob fighting over provisions” conflict in that last Town?

 

[FrogReaver]

This claim is, in my view, false. There is no use in abstract points that are not connected to actual RPGs with actual techniques.

If only you could have been around to tell Baker that before his initially abstract designs influenced the concrete designs of what would become your favorite games.

For instance, how can we have a serious conversation about conflict resolution, without considering the difference between how a game like Burning Wheel establishes consequences in the course of resolution, and how a game like Apocalypse World does the same thing?

By talking in the abstract.

Until we consider the actual instances, abstractions are pointless. No one, thinking about vehicles purely abstractly, conceived the difference between a wagon, a steam engine, an internal combustion engine-driven car, and (now) an electric car. These possibilities, and the differences between them, were conceived of by actual familiarity with the relevant bodies of knowledge and technique that lies behind them.

It’s usually the other way around. The vehicle didn’t design itself. Someone had to have an abstract idea of what they were trying to achieve first.

Abstract speculation reveals nothing except the limits of the imagination of the speculator.

Logical derivations are not speculation.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

They're not "axioms". They're characterisations of RPG techniques and approaches.

Why do you need to disagree about most trivial things? If we accept GM prep about safes existing and PC action of looking in the safe to be axioms then certain logical conclusions follow from that.

What is being said "no" to? What does this actually look like in play? Can you give us an actual play example?

Sure:
Scaling down from "she tells us everything" to "she trusts us on this one thing" is saying no to "she tells us everything."

Can you illustrate this with reference to DitV? Or HeroWars? Which are the two RPGs I mentioned as contradicting your claim that conflict resolution requires a no myth approach?

Can the players choose what their characters do in these games or not? Can they choose whom to talk or where to go? I think answer to these is yes.

You seem to be envisaging the play of DitV as analogous to a dungeon crawl, only with the doors being in houses rather than rooms.

No I don't. But I think listening at a door is something a character might do literally in any game. If you think that there is specific reason why that is not the case, then provide it.

What do you think the canonical approach is to mapping, in DitV?

Not very exact because it is a low myth game.

Also, do you think it's relevant that the poster in this thread who (as best I know) has the most play experience with DitV - @Manbearcat - has consistently agreed with my characterisation of it, while disagreeing with yours?

So I don't think what you say about the game is wrong per se, it is that you're omitting things and making overtly generalised and ambitious statements. @Manbearcat described the game too, and included the game being rather low myth in the description. This is for some reason a fact you refuse to admit, as you have decided that you need to fight my observation that conflict resolution works better in a low myth environment. I find this curious, as in the past you have made yourself many examples of conflict resolution that rely on low myth.

 

[FrogReaver]

DitV stake-setting (along with probably BitD P/E handling) is the paragon of this thread’s “negotiation.”

The number of times I’ve said “no” or even had anything in the neighborhood of what felt like or what one might consider a haggle over “what are the appropriate stakes for a conflict” is about zero. And I’m not exactly a pushover/softy!

You seemed amenable to me agreeing - so I wanted to say I agree with this!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Maybe the “deal with the food-stealing orphan in the bread line” conflict and then the subsequent “bread-line mob fighting over provisions” conflict in that last Town?

That may have been the only one that was unclear and needed some clarification. Otherwise, it was always explicitly stated what the player wanted and what the opposition wanted. We worked that out before rolling dice.

 

[Campbell]

So, the theory actually came out of play/design. It was developed alongside of it. Sorcerer (as a free text file) was released in ~1996. Much of the community that would start developing this stuff met each other on the Sorcerer mailing list. It was the conversations about the games they were designing that laid much of the groundwork.

The theory actually went through a lot of iterations on that mailing list. Before we had an inkling of conflict resolution or Story Now we had the conception of GM as bass player.

 

[Campbell]

It's obvious to me that in the vast majority of play is done with intention. Resolution isn't about meaning though. It's about how we fundamentally decide as a group what happens next. What goes into that decision making process.

 

[clearstream]

It's obvious to me that in the vast majority of play is done with intention. Resolution isn't about meaning though. It's about how we fundamentally decide as a group what happens next. What goes into that decision making process.

What I'm thinking about meaning is that TTRPG play is a purposeful activity in which we find different groups satisfied with different play. Their acts have meaning within the context of, and toward building out, their play.

Why then would some groups find value in resolution of specifically what players aim to do, while others find value in resolution of or towards... something else.

We've proposed candidates for what that something else could be. Players intend their acts as a continuation of the development of meaning in their play. They accept constraints in view of the shared meanings it allows them to produce. They accept resolution systems that entail their continuations might not be as they wanted in view of the shared and bespoke meanings they enable. Results of the sort and reached in the ways fitting to the group's playful purposes.

If my meaning context is one of strategic challenges, it makes sense to consider how well my chosen resolution method sustains strategic challenges. Otherwise my choice is somewhat inexplicable... perhaps I choose task resolution for aesthetic reasons related to the feeling of stepping through its process? The glove laid down is I suppose to come up with an explanation for why folk want to decide what happens next in different ways!?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@clearstream, I think preference for task resolution is usually paired with preference for simulationism. In such an approach we don't want a successful lock-picking roll to lead to finding the papers in the trash bin next to the safe, as the character's lock-picking skill measures their ability to open safes, but not their ability to randomly find plot-related items due sheer luck. In this sort of play interacting with the objective fictional reality is also an important aspect of the game, so we need to take that reality into account when resolving outcomes, even if it sometimes means that the player's desired outcome will not come to pass.