RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[AbdulAlhazred]

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?

Yeah, like in a 4e SC, which is what I would consider a 'closed scene' pure intention-driven kind of mechanics you get a lot more out of it when you make the intent explicit. It might not ALWAYS be needed, but "I throw my tankard at his head!" is OK, you miss, you miss. "I throw my tankard at his head, hoping to put him out of action for a few seconds so I can split before the cops arrive!" is better, because I might respond to a roll of 2 with "your tankard takes him clean in the temple and he goes down, revealing the constable standing right behind him..." I mean, that's just a bit of a basic example and there's also more to closed scene than this, but I definitely don't think you want to (and sometimes cannot) simply state actions in SCs. I mean, take the classic 'Convince the Duke' SC from DMG1, you literally cannot just say "I argue with the Duke!" It doesn't even make sense.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Upthread, @Citizen Mane pointed to Baker's advice on Practical Conflict Resolution Advice:

My friend anonyfan asks: "Do you have any ideas on how to effectively and meaningfully implement 'what's at stake' in a non-narrativist game?"​

​

I sure do.​

​

You won't have any trouble at all, and in fact your group will wonder how you got along before, if you find the magic words. I don't know what your group's magic words are but here are some I've used:​

"The danger is that..."​

"What's at stake is..."​

"What you're risking is..."​

"So what you hope to accomplish is..."​

​

Say the magic words every single time, when the dice are in their hands but before they roll 'em.​

​

At first, you'll need to finish the sentence every time yourself, with a period, like:​

"The danger is that you'll set off the trap instead of disarming it."​

"What's at stake is, do you make it to the ferry in time or do you have to go the long way around?"​

"What you're risking is being overheard by the goblins on the rooftop."​

"So what you hope to accomplish is to get through the doorway, whether this ogre lives or dies."​

​

But after you've said it three or four or ten times, you'll be able to trail off with a question mark when you want their input:​

"What you're risking is...?"​

​

And then, once the dice are on the table, always always always make it like this:​

• If they succeed, they win what's at stake. They accomplish their accomplishment or they avoid the danger.
• If they fail, they lose what's at stake - and you IMMEDIATELY introduce something new at stake. It might be another chance, it might be a consequence, but what matters is that it's more serious than the former. . . .

​

In combat, you'll probably want to have an overall what's at stake for the fight, and little tactical what's at stakes for each exchange. When you describe the setup, mention two or three features of the environment, like hanging tapestries or a swaying bridge or broken cobblestones, plus an apparent weakness of the foe, like worn armor straps or a pus-filled left eye, and then when you say what's at stake for an exchange, incorporate one of those: "the danger is that he'll push you back onto the broken cobblestones" or "so what you're hoping to do is to further strain his armor straps." This is on top of hitting and damage and whatever, just add it straight in.​

​

It's especially effective if you always give a small bonus or penalty for the exchange before.​

One thing we can see from this is that the minimum that is required for conflict resolution includes:

*Some bit of the fiction that constitutes, or establishes, what's at stake (eg a trap; swarming Goblins, weakened armour);​

​

That fiction *being known to the player so they can incorporate it into their action declaration or their response to a GM-announced action declaration (eg they know the risk is that they'll be pushed onto the cobblestones)'​

​

*That fiction being incorporated into the narration of consequences, by reference both to (i) the success or failure of the roll, and (ii) the intent of the action vis-a-vis that bit of fiction.​

This gives us further insight into the point I made in post 976: classic D&D, and the many other RPGs that are broadly similar in their procedures of play, don't need these things; and in these RPGs, the consequences of declared actions can be things that the player had no knowledge of and did not incorporate into their action declaration, and that are not related to anything the player did know of and incorporate.

It also helps us understand the relationship, in DitV, between the GM actively revealing the town in play, driving towards conflict, and working with the players to establish what is at stake in a given conflict.

Subtle, this is another element of why 4e thrives on really dynamic open-ended action scenes. Something is always right to hand, some opportunity, or some danger, and the PCs are constantly grasping at it. This takes things beyond the simple level of attacks and defenses, blows and counterblows and into a higher realm of RPG action. Its funny that I never articulated it in terms of intent-based play specifically, but just instinctively took play in that direction fairly quickly when I started to run 4e.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Then it must be a hella error prone game! This is game where characters frequently visit towns, which I presume also contain buildings with doors. And I also assume that this is a game where players can decide what their characters do. Well, that's an accident waiting to happen!

You started this thread by talking about imagination. It is weird game of imagination if it falls apart when perfectly easily imaginable action is attempted. To me that seems more like some sort of computer game where you are only allowed to click specific things. Not that I think that DitV is like that at all, I think you're just making overly broad normative claims about how it ought to be played which probably do not align with the reality.

What I literally see when I see a statement like that is that the person making the statement is entirely unaware of the structure and concepts, the HOW of playing DitV in a fundamental sense. Its almost like someone who doesn't know the basic rules of chess commenting on a chess game. I mean, you CAN in a certain sense, but you can't analyze play, AT ALL, nor will you really understand the action. My wife can watch an American Football game, but she won't comprehend the action, though she can likely tell who's winning.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.


By talking in the abstract.


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.


Logical derivations are not speculation.

Look, go read Forge archives. THE SINGLE thing that you see CONSTANTLY is ACTUAL PLAY. In fact, the entire theme of the whole message board was basically SHOW ME THE PLAY. Sure, there was theory developed OUT OF PLAY, but play comes first! Everything starts with, and ends with the actual at the table play of the game, period. NOTHING could be further from reality than to say that VB, or RE, etc. theorized something and then went and wrote a game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I am not sure I see the difference. We of course can come up with examples of situations where either the success of failure can be derived from prep. This will happen occasionally, maybe even often. If the GM frames things towards their prep, which seems sensible, this likelihood rises. But this does not remove the possibility of rigid prep coming in conflict with the player's intent.

In any case, you now seem to be agreeing with my overall point that loose and malleable fictional reality is a logical partner for conflict resolution.


Well I'm sure detectives do. But yes, I fully realise this is not in the focus of the play, but it is a sort of thing that might occur in midst of butting into people's business whilst being a judgemental religious jerk with questionable firearm safety etiquette, or whatever it is you're supposed to do in this game.

(Seriously, I have the PDF open and I have glanced it, and this really is not the sort of game I have even least bit of interest in playing.
And not because of the mechanics.)



Right. So it actually isn't any sort of failure like you previously claimed. Just something you move past if it is not important to get to the actual meat of the game.

Well, think of it like this: If you are prepping for a Narrativist sort of game, the prep, what you establish as the 'myth' beforehand, is the stuff that is NOT IN DOUBT and thus not what the game is ABOUT. It may, probably is, important, it provides fictional position which allows the GM or players to put the stakes on the table, but it is not the focus of play. In trad play what is in the prep is the focus of play. In a narrativist game in which there's a murder to be solved, the stakes COULD involve determining who is the murderer and the question of whether or not you can solve the case, maybe the consequences of failure to do so, etc. OR it could be that the details of the murder are all spelled out in prep, and the story is about WHY and will the PC bring their own family to justice and what does that do to them. In a D&D game the prep is about which doors the PCs have to open, which monsters they have to fight, which traps they have to disarm in the course of getting the gold, and here the focus of play IS on the things that are prepared.

 

[Lanefan]

As per my post 984 upthread, conflict resolution is not something that just gets glommed onto RPG play with nothing else being changed.

For instance, it requires that there be genuine stakes, which connect in some fashion to the unfolding fiction, and which everyone at the table has reason to care about.

It also requires that we separate those stakes from the actions that the players are having their PCs perform, so that we get a contrast between intent and task.

In @Lanefan's example, of sneaking across the castle courtyard and checking out the door, does success mean that the PC is undetected? Is it possible, in the play of the game, for the player to succeed on their Stealth check and yet be observed by a scrying wizard, or even by a non-guard peeking through an upstairs window?

After the fact, I know, but my thinking was that success meant the PC had got to the door and checked it out (and knocked on it!) without being noticed by anyone he didn't want to be noticed by. Truth be told, the idea of a scrying wizard hadn't even occurred to me; but it's not unknown that the party's own wizards will scry on a scout just to make sure things are going OK, and in that case it would have been the wizard's player rolling (mostly for sheer luck of timing) to determine if the scryer happened to notice the Thief's surreptitious knocking on the door.

This does, however, also bring up the question of whether success also includes - or should include - things that are completely out of the character's control in the fiction. In this example the Thief can at least use his skills and abilities in order to control who is able to see (or, more importantly, not see) him as he sneaks around but he has no ability whatsoever to control whether or not someone happens to scry him from afar at that moment.

Therefore, I'd posit that success on intent only goes so far as what the character can reasonably try to perceive and-or control with regards to that intent. That said, this almost falls under the 'corner case' heading; as something happening that's this uncontrollable by the charcter would probably be fairly rare.

******************
To build on Lanefan's example:

Suppose that the GM's notes include that there is a magical scrying glyph, or Magic Mouth, or similar, that the PC will trigger if they do what the player is planning to have them do. How does a conflict resolution approach incorporate this?

The details would depend on the particular system. In Torchbearer 2e, the most natural way to incorporate this that occurs to me as I am typing is narrating it to the player in response to their action declaration, and building it into the difficulty of the Obstacle. And now the player also has a pretty good idea of what the twist will be if their check fails!

The Torchbearer approach works because the player has resources to try harder when the Obstacle turns out to be higher than they hoped (fate, persona, traits, wises for re-rolls, etc). In a system without such resources, it wouldn't work. Apocalypse World doesn't have such resources, but nor does it have variable difficulties: so in AW the incorporation of the concealed warning device would be different. In a check for Acting Under Fire, it could inform the result on a 7 to 9, or on a 6-. And if the check succeeds on a 10+, the GM could narrate the character narrowly avoiding triggering the device, thus setting things up (via a soft move) for some possible consequences down the track, should a hard move be enlivened.

Could the GM here just not mention the magical trap at all if the scout got lucky and didn't trip it, such that it's still available to be triggered when the rest of the party comes to catch up with the scout (and to avoid the players having to meta-knowledge their way either around the trap or into it)?

 

[Lanefan]

I think this is key as well, and it's why I keep coming back to scope; it's clear that intent in task resolution is often encoded by the available actions. Climbing somethingg or searching an area have pre-specified mechanical outcomes that do not yield to a player hoping to achieve something else. You can climb at X speed, even if your goal is to get to the top of the wall faster.

I'm fine with letting them try to climb at a higher-than-climb-speed speed in order to get up there faster, but at greatly increased odds of not getting up there at all and-or of being noticed in the process.

 

[Lanefan]

And my response of course is why? If nobody aimed to do it then why have mechanics for it at all? It's like my game, HoML, there's no mechanism to adjudicate NPCs fighting each t, the very notion is pointless.

Assuming you meant to say "...fighting each other..." here:

When the PCs have laid money down on the outcome of a fight between NPCs, or when other dramatic stakes hinge on the outcome of that fight, you'll probably want mechanics to resolve it.

 

[Lanefan]

Actually? Well, lets examine this further! My goal is to loot the dungeon, and I know (call it meta-game if you will) that the 'evil wizard' (GM) who built this death maze cunningly hid the good stuff here and there. So, I am bound to explore every nook and cranny! So what if I hear sounds at a door? By gosh I still have to open the thing!!!

Not necessarily. If you've any sort of scrying capability you can try looking behind the door, and if all you see is threats but no loot then move on. You can try to find another way around or in. You can quietly move away and come back later when the noises have stopped. You can abandon that particular chamber or area. Etc.

In fact this is exactly what we concluded quite early on. There MIGHT be mechanical reasons to listen (IE you reduce the occurrence of surprise checks against you) or maybe you will decide that you will chance opening a door where you heard nothing, but otherwise the party should go heal instead, that sort of thing. But in the end you basically open all the doors anyway, noises be damned. It was all just basically a sort of charade.

"A sort of charade" seems a rather uncharitable way of putting it. That said, if your only goal in that dungeon is to scoop its loot then yes, ideally you'll end up exploring the whole place thoroughly. But IME most of the time there's one or more other goals beside just sheer loot acquirement, and the conflict then becomes one between getting on with the mission or staying to scoop more loot.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Assuming you meant to say "...fighting each other..." here:

When the PCs have laid money down on the outcome of a fight between NPCs, or when other dramatic stakes hinge on the outcome of that fight, you'll probably want mechanics to resolve it.

Sure! But that wouldn't be combat sequence, it would be a betting sequence, possibly with combat experience giving the bettor an enhanced probability of picking the winning side, etc. I mean, the real stakes could be many different things. In some cases the outcome of the game may not need to be adjudicated at all, or it could simply be a detail without any need for adjudication if its simply, say an entree into a contact with underworld bosses or something. That would probably a typical sort of scenario in BitD, though likely an info gathering check would be involved at some point.