RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Manbearcat]

Yes!

Not really where im going but might be a happy side discussion.

The framing I’m talking about is from us analyzing post play experiences and examples. In that analysis it depends entirely on how what happened is framed by the analyst and not on what actually happened.

Or perhaps a challenge would be more illustrative. I believe I can frame any task resolution as a conflict resolution. So which do you think I cannot?

Or maybe it’s better to say this way, all tasks where there is uncertainty of outcome are themselves conflicts.

Trying to get my head around what you're saying here.

It seems like you're using "framing" here to discuss the post-play framing of an excerpt of play rather than the GMs role/responsibility in framing situations/obstacles for players to engage with/overcome? Is that correct? If so, its not clear to me how this does work during the moments of play, where the actual experience of play happens, which are driven by the idiosyncratic processes and structure of play and the individuated roles of each party (including system here among GM and players)

How about this. Lets go with text above which I've bolded to flesh out what it is you're driving at.

The spoiled text below is from Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard (p 33) which employs all of the seminal of conflict resolution.

Spoiler: Dogs in the Vineyard Conflict Resolution

Conflict & Resolution

The shopkeeper from Back East? His wife isn’t really his wife. He’s the procurer and she’s the available woman (a prostitute). Their marriage is a front.

Your brother’s son, your nephew, is fourteen years old. He’s been stealing money from his father, your brother, and taking it to visit this woman.

Your brother is in a bitter rage, humiliated by his son’s thievery and grieving his son’s lost innocence.

He’s going to shoot her.

What do you do?

Overview

We’ll use dice to resolve the conflicts the characters get into. The dice determine not just how the conflict turns out at the end— who wins?— but also how the conflict goes throughout. They provide reversals, escalation, daring advances and desperate retreats, broken bones, cutting betrayals, and all the other juicy goodness a conflict should have.

All the players who have an interest in a particular conflict roll their own dice. Your dice represent your bargaining position in the conflict: the more dice you roll, the more say you have in how the conflict goes. This is because your dice give your characters’ actions and reactions weight, consequence. When you have a character throw a punch, you use your dice to back it up. When your character takes a punch, your dice determine whether he shrugs it off or down he goes.

To launch a conflict, we begin by establishing what’s at stake, setting the stage, and figuring out who’s participating. Every participating player takes up dice to match the circumstances and throws them down all at once. From there on, the conflict plays out kind of like the betting in poker. One player “raises” by having a character act and putting forward two dice to back it up, and all of the other players whose characters are affected by the act have to put forward dice of their own to “see.” When you use dice to Raise and See they’re gone: put them back in the bowl and don’t use them again in this conflict.

Depending on how effectively you See, you might have to take Fallout Dice: dice representing blows your character took— hard words or punches or knives in the ribs or even bullets— and when the conflict’s over you’ll roll them to see how badly your character is hurt.

If you’re losing, you can get more dice by escalating the conflict. Someone’s getting the better of your character in an argument? Pull a gun. That’ll shut ’em up.

Anyone who has too few dice to See when they have to— and can’t or won’t escalate— is out of the conflict. Whoever’s left at the end gets to decide the fate of what’s at stake. Everybody deals with their Fallout Dice, and then the conflict’s done!

So what happens here is:

* The PCs and NPCs in question have Stats, Traits, Relationships, Belongings which have a title and a dice rating.

* The situation is framed by the GM.

* The players declare what they're intending to do.

* Before we launch into the conflict resolution mechanics, we decide collectively what is at stake so its very clear to everyone the implications of what we're getting neck deep in. This is imperative for the motivations of the characters to be expressed by subsequent play and for the interaction with the game engine at large to be realized.

* We muster our dice relevant to this conflict and we roll them out in front of each other so (a) its clear what our individual positions are and (b) we can coherently/functionally perform the back & forth necessary to play out the conflict; Seeing Raises in a strategic/thematic way (which likely includes taking Fallout when we're "just talking" vs when/if we're "getting physical/fighting" or we've "gone to guns/mortal combat"), Helping allies to hopefully Reverse the Blow or to See a Raise that they can't See without your Help die, Giving when it makes sense (possibly to avoid perilous Fallout), Escalating to "physical/fighting" or even "guns/mortal" (and therefore raising the stakes) when/if it makes sense.

* Whoever is "left standing" in the end gets to decide the outcome; the fate of what was deemed at stake at the outset of the conflict.


Ok, so here is what I want to know. Take the conflict outlined in the above. The player's PC's older brother has grabbed his rifle and he is headed to the eastern shopkeeper's store to shoot the shopkeeper's "wife" (who is actually a prostitute in his employ). The player's PC is the younger brother who is priest armed only with a gun, his holy book, and a sacred duty to uphold the faith an mete out justice. The player declares that, despite all the Sins of the shopkeeper and the prostitute (Sex, Deceipt, Disunity, Worldliness, Faithlessness) he wants to prevent his brother from committing Violence (killing without just cause is a terrible Sin against The King of Life). He runs after him attempting to "talk his brother down."

Sub in your conception of task resolution for the conflict and structured loop above. What I'm looking for is for you to show me how we determine (a) the details of the mechanical architecture/process that encodes how we resolve the situation, (b) when the situation is resolved, and (c) if the player of the brother's PC satisfactorily (to the player) resolves the situation...without using the GM to do the heavy lifting of mediation/ruling upon (a) and without using the GM to determine both (b) and (c).

(a), (b), and (c) in Dogs in the Vineyard (and like conflict resolution) are all systemitized meaning "the superstructure of play that is leaned upon is system." I need for you to illustrate how your conceived superstructure of the task resolution you're envisioning isn't "sub GM for system."

 

[FrogReaver]

Trying to get my head around what you're saying here.

It seems like you're using "framing" here to discuss the post-play framing of an excerpt of play rather than the GMs role/responsibility in framing situations/obstacles for players to engage with/overcome? Is that correct? If so, its not clear to me how this does work during the moments of play, where the actual experience of play happens, which are driven by the idiosyncratic processes and structure of play and the individuated roles of each party (including system here among GM and players)

How about this. Lets go with text above which I've bolded to flesh out what it is you're driving at.

The spoiled text below is from Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard (p 33) which employs all of the seminal of conflict resolution.

Spoiler: Dogs in the Vineyard Conflict Resolution

Conflict & Resolution

The shopkeeper from Back East? His wife isn’t really his wife. He’s the procurer and she’s the available woman (a prostitute). Their marriage is a front.

Your brother’s son, your nephew, is fourteen years old. He’s been stealing money from his father, your brother, and taking it to visit this woman.

Your brother is in a bitter rage, humiliated by his son’s thievery and grieving his son’s lost innocence.

He’s going to shoot her.

What do you do?

Overview

We’ll use dice to resolve the conflicts the characters get into. The dice determine not just how the conflict turns out at the end— who wins?— but also how the conflict goes throughout. They provide reversals, escalation, daring advances and desperate retreats, broken bones, cutting betrayals, and all the other juicy goodness a conflict should have.

All the players who have an interest in a particular conflict roll their own dice. Your dice represent your bargaining position in the conflict: the more dice you roll, the more say you have in how the conflict goes. This is because your dice give your characters’ actions and reactions weight, consequence. When you have a character throw a punch, you use your dice to back it up. When your character takes a punch, your dice determine whether he shrugs it off or down he goes.

To launch a conflict, we begin by establishing what’s at stake, setting the stage, and figuring out who’s participating. Every participating player takes up dice to match the circumstances and throws them down all at once. From there on, the conflict plays out kind of like the betting in poker. One player “raises” by having a character act and putting forward two dice to back it up, and all of the other players whose characters are affected by the act have to put forward dice of their own to “see.” When you use dice to Raise and See they’re gone: put them back in the bowl and don’t use them again in this conflict.

Depending on how effectively you See, you might have to take Fallout Dice: dice representing blows your character took— hard words or punches or knives in the ribs or even bullets— and when the conflict’s over you’ll roll them to see how badly your character is hurt.

If you’re losing, you can get more dice by escalating the conflict. Someone’s getting the better of your character in an argument? Pull a gun. That’ll shut ’em up.

Anyone who has too few dice to See when they have to— and can’t or won’t escalate— is out of the conflict. Whoever’s left at the end gets to decide the fate of what’s at stake. Everybody deals with their Fallout Dice, and then the conflict’s done!

So what happens here is:

* The PCs and NPCs in question have Stats, Traits, Relationships, Belongings which have a title and a dice rating.

* The situation is framed by the GM.

* The players declare what they're intending to do.

* Before we launch into the conflict resolution mechanics, we decide collectively what is at stake so its very clear to everyone the implications of what we're getting neck deep in. This is imperative for the motivations of the characters to be expressed by subsequent play and for the interaction with the game engine at large to be realized.

* We muster our dice relevant to this conflict and we roll them out in front of each other so (a) its clear what our individual positions are and (b) we can coherently/functionally perform the back & forth necessary to play out the conflict; Seeing Raises in a strategic/thematic way (which likely includes taking Fallout when we're "just talking" vs when/if we're "getting physical/fighting" or we've "gone to guns/mortal combat"), Helping allies to hopefully Reverse the Blow or to See a Raise that they can't See without your Help die, Giving when it makes sense (possibly to avoid perilous Fallout), Escalating to "physical/fighting" or even "guns/mortal" (and therefore raising the stakes) when/if it makes sense.

* Whoever is "left standing" in the end gets to decide the outcome; the fate of what was deemed at stake at the outset of the conflict.


Ok, so here is what I want to know. Take the conflict outlined in the above. The player's PC's older brother has grabbed his rifle and he is headed to the eastern shopkeeper's store to shoot the shopkeeper's "wife" (who is actually a prostitute in his employ). The player's PC is the younger brother who is priest armed only with a gun, his holy book, and a sacred duty to uphold the faith an mete out justice. The player declares that, despite all the Sins of the shopkeeper and the prostitute (Sex, Deceipt, Disunity, Worldliness, Faithlessness) he wants to prevent his brother from committing Violence (killing without just cause is a terrible Sin against The King of Life). He runs after him attempting to "talk his brother down."

Sub in your conception of task resolution for the conflict and structured loop above. What I'm looking for is for you to show me how we determine (a) the details of the mechanical architecture/process that encodes how we resolve the situation, (b) when the situation is resolved, and (c) if the player of the brother's PC satisfactorily (to the player) resolves the situation...without using the GM to do the heavy lifting of mediation/ruling upon (a) and without using the GM to determine both (b) and (c).

(a), (b), and (c) in Dogs in the Vineyard (and like conflict resolution) are all systemitized meaning "the superstructure of play that is leaned upon is system." I need for you to illustrate how your conceived superstructure of the task resolution you're envisioning isn't "sub GM for system."

To me it reads as you asking me to take conflict resolution and explain that as task resolution. I don’t believe that can be done in general. My claim is not that they are the same thing. My claim is that task resolution is a special case of conflict resolution - that if you give me a task resolution I can explain how that is conflict resolution. But I don’t think a conflict resolution can typically be explained as task resolution.

Maybe an analogy would help. A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square.

Task resolution is the square and conflict resolution is the rectangle.

 

[clearstream]

Trying to get my head around what you're saying here.

It seems like you're using "framing" here to discuss the post-play framing of an excerpt of play rather than the GMs role/responsibility in framing situations/obstacles for players to engage with/overcome? Is that correct? If so, its not clear to me how this does work during the moments of play, where the actual experience of play happens, which are driven by the idiosyncratic processes and structure of play and the individuated roles of each party (including system here among GM and players)

How about this. Lets go with text above which I've bolded to flesh out what it is you're driving at.

The spoiled text below is from Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard (p 33) which employs all of the seminal of conflict resolution.

Spoiler: Dogs in the Vineyard Conflict Resolution

Conflict & Resolution

The shopkeeper from Back East? His wife isn’t really his wife. He’s the procurer and she’s the available woman (a prostitute). Their marriage is a front.

Your brother’s son, your nephew, is fourteen years old. He’s been stealing money from his father, your brother, and taking it to visit this woman.

Your brother is in a bitter rage, humiliated by his son’s thievery and grieving his son’s lost innocence.

He’s going to shoot her.

What do you do?

Overview

We’ll use dice to resolve the conflicts the characters get into. The dice determine not just how the conflict turns out at the end— who wins?— but also how the conflict goes throughout. They provide reversals, escalation, daring advances and desperate retreats, broken bones, cutting betrayals, and all the other juicy goodness a conflict should have.

All the players who have an interest in a particular conflict roll their own dice. Your dice represent your bargaining position in the conflict: the more dice you roll, the more say you have in how the conflict goes. This is because your dice give your characters’ actions and reactions weight, consequence. When you have a character throw a punch, you use your dice to back it up. When your character takes a punch, your dice determine whether he shrugs it off or down he goes.

To launch a conflict, we begin by establishing what’s at stake, setting the stage, and figuring out who’s participating. Every participating player takes up dice to match the circumstances and throws them down all at once. From there on, the conflict plays out kind of like the betting in poker. One player “raises” by having a character act and putting forward two dice to back it up, and all of the other players whose characters are affected by the act have to put forward dice of their own to “see.” When you use dice to Raise and See they’re gone: put them back in the bowl and don’t use them again in this conflict.

Depending on how effectively you See, you might have to take Fallout Dice: dice representing blows your character took— hard words or punches or knives in the ribs or even bullets— and when the conflict’s over you’ll roll them to see how badly your character is hurt.

If you’re losing, you can get more dice by escalating the conflict. Someone’s getting the better of your character in an argument? Pull a gun. That’ll shut ’em up.

Anyone who has too few dice to See when they have to— and can’t or won’t escalate— is out of the conflict. Whoever’s left at the end gets to decide the fate of what’s at stake. Everybody deals with their Fallout Dice, and then the conflict’s done!

So what happens here is:

* The PCs and NPCs in question have Stats, Traits, Relationships, Belongings which have a title and a dice rating.

* The situation is framed by the GM.

* The players declare what they're intending to do.

* Before we launch into the conflict resolution mechanics, we decide collectively what is at stake so its very clear to everyone the implications of what we're getting neck deep in. This is imperative for the motivations of the characters to be expressed by subsequent play and for the interaction with the game engine at large to be realized.

* We muster our dice relevant to this conflict and we roll them out in front of each other so (a) its clear what our individual positions are and (b) we can coherently/functionally perform the back & forth necessary to play out the conflict; Seeing Raises in a strategic/thematic way (which likely includes taking Fallout when we're "just talking" vs when/if we're "getting physical/fighting" or we've "gone to guns/mortal combat"), Helping allies to hopefully Reverse the Blow or to See a Raise that they can't See without your Help die, Giving when it makes sense (possibly to avoid perilous Fallout), Escalating to "physical/fighting" or even "guns/mortal" (and therefore raising the stakes) when/if it makes sense.

* Whoever is "left standing" in the end gets to decide the outcome; the fate of what was deemed at stake at the outset of the conflict.


Ok, so here is what I want to know. Take the conflict outlined in the above. The player's PC's older brother has grabbed his rifle and he is headed to the eastern shopkeeper's store to shoot the shopkeeper's "wife" (who is actually a prostitute in his employ). The player's PC is the younger brother who is priest armed only with a gun, his holy book, and a sacred duty to uphold the faith an mete out justice. The player declares that, despite all the Sins of the shopkeeper and the prostitute (Sex, Deceipt, Disunity, Worldliness, Faithlessness) he wants to prevent his brother from committing Violence (killing without just cause is a terrible Sin against The King of Life). He runs after him attempting to "talk his brother down."

Sub in your conception of task resolution for the conflict and structured loop above. What I'm looking for is for you to show me how we determine (a) the details of the mechanical architecture/process that encodes how we resolve the situation, (b) when the situation is resolved, and (c) if the player of the brother's PC satisfactorily (to the player) resolves the situation...without using the GM to do the heavy lifting of mediation/ruling upon (a) and without using the GM to determine both (b) and (c).

(a), (b), and (c) in Dogs in the Vineyard (and like conflict resolution) are all systemitized meaning "the superstructure of play that is leaned upon is system." I need for you to illustrate how your conceived superstructure of the task resolution you're envisioning isn't "sub GM for system."

I like the idea of introducing a test case like that. It seems worth putting forward a take using a performance==outcome binary to take a harder look at that. Before doing so, I want to make sure we agree that in DitV, GM decides how NPCs react and picks up and plays dice for them. Yes? To avoid this being a trap question, I'm asking so that I lean on nothing more than what I could lean on running DitV.

 

[Manbearcat]

To me it reads as you asking me to take conflict resolution and explain that as task resolution. I don’t believe that can be done in general. My claim is not that they are the same thing. My claim is that task resolution is a special case of conflict resolution - that if you give me a task resolution I can explain how that is conflict resolution. But I don’t think a conflict resolution can typically be explained as task resolution.

Maybe an analogy would help. A square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square.

Task resolution is the square and conflict resolution is the rectangle.

Honestly, I'm not clear on what we're doing right now. I'm not clear what conversation we're having.

I thought:

* You were disputing Harper's schematic which juxtaposes conflict resolution and task resolution, specifically the convention of task resolution being reliant upon comparatively (or totally) unconstrained GM Fiat where conflict resolution is reliant upon systemic constraint and governing superstructure.

* Following from that and other things you wrote, I thought you were then communicating two things:

1) That task resolution can substantively replicate conflict resolution.

2) That it can do so without a reliance upon GM Fiat (which it must do in order to illustrate 1).


Net: I'm very confused on what work "frame" is doing in the following statement: “I believe I can frame any task resolution as a conflict resolution.” If we're not talking about a claim regarding the substantive reproduction of the course and experience of play such that task resolution and conflict resolution are indistinguishable from one another (which necessitates illustrating 2 above), then I'm not sure what we're talking about.

Maybe talk about what "frame" is doing in the above sentence in a way that is fundamental to the course and experience of playing a TTRPG? That might help clear things up a bit for me. In particular, if you can connect that to your dispute of Harper's diagrams?

I like the idea of introducing a test case like that. It seems worth putting forward a take using a performance==outcome binary to take a harder look at that. Before doing so, I want to make sure we agree that in DitV, GM decides how NPCs react and picks up and plays dice for them. Yes? To avoid this being a trap question, I'm asking so that I lean on nothing more than what I could lean on running DitV.

Yes, the GM creates the Towns. That includes the named NPCs motivations and their Stats, Traits, Relationships, Belongings and a batch of proto-NPCs. Yes, the GM plays the NPCs but they do so within the systemic constraint inherent to the game and the governing superstructure.

This includes:

* Create Towns with some "Something Wrong." NPCs with a claim to the PCs’ time, some NPCs who can’t ignore the PCs’ arrival, and some NPCs who’ve done harm, but for reasons anybody could understand. This includes making the situations "grabby" via:

* Generate and provoke thematic conflict toward the premise of the game broadly that provokes PCs.

* Generate and provoke thematic conflict toward one or more PCs in particular (which indexes their PC Traits, Relationships, etc).

* Generate motivations toward or away from sin and strife, toward or away from The King of Life, toward or away from The Faith's hierarchy of Stewardship, toward or away from the roles of The Faithful, toward or away from The Territorial Authority, toward or away from Eastern influence, toward or away from The Mountain People, toward or away from Sorcery and Demonic Possession, toward or away from the PCs.

* "At every moment, drive play toward conflict."

* "Say yes, or roll the dice."

* Bring the Town and your NPCs to life and follow the rules (the encoded superstructure of play which is not "opt-out").

 

[FrogReaver]

Honestly, I'm not clear on what we're doing right now. I'm not clear what conversation we're having.

I thought:

* You were disputing Harper's schematic which juxtaposes conflict resolution and task resolution, specifically the convention of task resolution being reliant upon comparatively (or totally) unconstrained GM Fiat where conflict resolution is reliant upon systemic constraint and governing superstructure.

* Following from that and other things you wrote, I thought you were then communicating two things:

1) That task resolution can substantively replicate conflict resolution.

2) That it can do so without a reliance upon GM Fiat (which it must do in order to illustrate 1).


Net: I'm very confused on what work "frame" is doing in the following statement: “I believe I can frame any task resolution as a conflict resolution.” If we're not talking about a claim regarding the substantive reproduction of the course and experience of play such that task resolution and conflict resolution are indistinguishable from one another (which necessitates illustrating 2 above), then I'm not sure what we're talking about.

Maybe talk about what "frame" is doing in the above sentence in a way that is fundamental to the course and experience of playing a TTRPG? That might help clear things up a bit for me. In particular, if you can connect that to your dispute of Harper's diagrams?

On 1 - not claiming that. I’m attempting to hone in on what the fundamental difference in task and conflict resolution is. That’s the discussion I was trying to have.

On 2 - I don’t believe GM fiat is fundamental to that difference. There’s nothing inherent to conflict resolution that precludes GM fiat. Nor is there anything inherent to task resolution that necessitates fiat. *we tend to have different conceptions of what counts as GM fiat so discussing this may be a bit fraught.

I would dispute bakers diagram for various reasons. In this particular case it’s the notion that task resolution is fundamentally different in structure than conflict resolution, because back to my previous claim - it’s a special case of conflict resolution, at least so long as one defines the specific conflict and other parameters to align with the conflict resolution model - aka framing.

 

[clearstream]

Honestly, I'm not clear on what we're doing right now. I'm not clear what conversation we're having.

I thought:

* You were disputing Harper's schematic which juxtaposes conflict resolution and task resolution, specifically the convention of task resolution being reliant upon comparatively (or totally) unconstrained GM Fiat where conflict resolution is reliant upon systemic constraint and governing superstructure.

* Following from that and other things you wrote, I thought you were then communicating two things:

1) That task resolution can substantively replicate conflict resolution.

2) That it can do so without a reliance upon GM Fiat (which it must do in order to illustrate 1).


Net: I'm very confused on what work "frame" is doing in the following statement: “I believe I can frame any task resolution as a conflict resolution.” If we're not talking about a claim regarding the substantive reproduction of the course and experience of play such that task resolution and conflict resolution are indistinguishable from one another (which necessitates illustrating 2 above), then I'm not sure what we're talking about.

Maybe talk about what "frame" is doing in the above sentence in a way that is fundamental to the course and experience of playing a TTRPG? That might help clear things up a bit for me. In particular, if you can connect that to your dispute of Harper's diagrams?



Yes, the GM creates the Towns. That includes the named NPCs motivations and their Stats, Traits, Relationships, Belongings and a batch of proto-NPCs. Yes, the GM plays the NPCs but they do so within the systemic constraint inherent to the game and the governing superstructure.

This includes:

* Create Towns with some "Something Wrong." NPCs with a claim to the PCs’ time, some NPCs who can’t ignore the PCs’ arrival, and some NPCs who’ve done harm, but for reasons anybody could understand. This includes making the situations "grabby" via:

* Generate and provoke thematic conflict toward the premise of the game broadly that provokes PCs.

* Generate and provoke thematic conflict toward one or more PCs in particular (which indexes their PC Traits, Relationships, etc).

* Generate motivations toward or away from sin and strife, toward or away from The King of Life, toward or away from The Faith's hierarchy of Stewardship, toward or away from the roles of The Faithful, toward or away from The Territorial Authority, toward or away from Eastern influence, toward or away from The Mountain People, toward or away from Sorcery and Demonic Possession, toward or away from the PCs.

* "At every moment, drive play toward conflict."

* "Say yes, or roll the dice."

* Bring the Town and your NPCs to life and follow the rules (the encoded superstructure of play which is not "opt-out").

I think the Social Interaction rules in the DMG indicate how declaring consequences up front can make task resolution play out akin to conflict resolution (for obvious reasons, really.) So as a first take I will run through that procedure, and then let's rake it over...

1. Starting attitude = Indifferent (although ordinarily Friendly, they're shrugging off the calming hand on their shoulder... still not actively hostile to their nearest kin!)​

​

2. Play out the conversation (GM says how NPC reacts). Anyone can resort to violence as they traverse this. Attitude may be shifted to more amenable (i.e. Friendly) assuming player knows what their brother cares about (IBFs.) This is a case of negotiation - via fictional speech acts - between players and DM.​

​

3. Say players negotiate their way to Friendly through leveraging the TIBF mechanic. A Friendly creature will "accept a significant risk or sacrifice to do as asked." GM has to decide what sort of a deal this is (how NPC reacts). To my reading, backing down is a significant sacrifice for their brother.​

​

4. Players want a success result (an outcome) that includes accepting a significant sacrifice to do as asked (brother eats his bitterness.) GM's job is to judge whether their performance will connect with that outcome, subject to resolution. Only players propose performances. GM legitimates the final pairing - whose resolution will be binding on all participants.​

​

5. The 'performance pairing' can straightforwardly be Charisma ability check == accepts a significant sacrifice to do as asked (eats their bitterness). Whether a skill applies is down to player fiction (fiction-first, essentially). Are they dulling their brother's suspicions with false assurances, cowing him with a show of strength or threats, or appealing to his better nature and social mores? GM must also say what the pairing is for failure - the brother's reaction is what's at stake - so "rage will blind him and he'll shoot his own kin" (resort to violence... despair will come later). Again, nothing prevents players making proposals here... that's down to group practice.​

​

6. Players have another choice here which they must make before committing to rolling: they can back down. This again depends on group practices. Some groups pre-agree that proposing a performance commits to that performance, but typically I see folk allowing clarifications... which produces this option.​

In summary, for

(a) the detailed architecture is per text found in the 5e DMG. That might feel like cheating the test, but all it's doing is highlighting that it doesn't matter who declares the pairing up front. It can be game designer, GM, players, stochastic, whatever. We can have a debate about whether we are more comfortable with game designer declaring pairings or GM declaring pairings, but because we can choose whichever works for us that ultimately has nothing to do with whether mapping consequences to performances up front makes task resolution play out in an orderly fashion.​

​

(b) the situation is resolved either with players talking their brother down, players backing down, or as the outcome of combat. It's nailed down to either the brother shoots the wife, (then maybe despairs, the procurer hires some guns, whatever... triggering a new - escalated - situation) or players talk / beat him down.​

​

(c) the GM did no more than a DitV GM would, i.e. they chose reactions, and decided on odds just as they'd choose what dice their NPC's pick up and how they deploy them​

​

So let's rake that over then...

 

[Manbearcat]

I think the Social Interaction rules in the DMG indicate how declaring consequences up front can make task resolution play out akin to conflict resolution (for obvious reasons, really.) So as a first take I will run through that procedure, and then let's rake it over...

1. Starting attitude = Indifferent (although ordinarily Friendly, they're shrugging off the calming hand on their shoulder... still not actively hostile to their nearest kin!)​

​

2. Play out the conversation (GM says how NPC reacts). Anyone can resort to violence as they traverse this. Attitude may be shifted to more amenable (i.e. Friendly) assuming player knows what their brother cares about (IBFs.) This is a case of negotiation - via fictional speech acts - between players and DM.​

​

3. Say players negotiate their way to Friendly through leveraging the TIBF mechanic. A Friendly creature will "accept a significant risk or sacrifice to do as asked." GM has to decide what sort of a deal this is (how NPC reacts). To my reading, backing down is a significant sacrifice for their brother.​

​

4. Players want a success result (an outcome) that includes accepting a significant sacrifice to do as asked (brother eats his bitterness.) GM's job is to judge whether their performance will connect with that outcome, subject to resolution. Only players propose performances. GM legitimates the final pairing - whose resolution will be binding on all participants.​

​

5. The 'performance pairing' can straightforwardly be Charisma ability check == accepts a significant sacrifice to do as asked (eats their bitterness). Whether a skill applies is down to player fiction (fiction-first, essentially). Are they dulling their brother's suspicions with false assurances, cowing him with a show of strength or threats, or appealing to his better nature and social mores? GM must also say what the pairing is for failure - the brother's reaction is what's at stake - so "rage will blind him and he'll shoot his own kin" (resort to violence... despair will come later). Again, nothing prevents players making proposals here... that's down to group practice.​

​

6. Players have another choice here which they must make before committing to rolling: they can back down. This again depends on group practices. Some groups pre-agree that proposing a performance commits to that performance, but typically I see folk allowing clarifications... which produces this option.​

In summary, for

(a) the detailed architecture is per text found in the 5e DMG. That might feel like cheating the test, but all it's doing is highlighting that it doesn't matter who declares the pairing up front. It can be game designer, GM, players, stochastic, whatever. We can have a debate about whether we are more comfortable with game designer declaring pairings or GM declaring pairings, but because we can choose whichever works for us that ultimately has nothing to do with whether mapping consequences to performances up front makes task resolution play out in an orderly fashion.​

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(b) the situation is resolved either with players talking their brother down, players backing down, or as the outcome of combat. It's nailed down to either the brother shoots the wife, (then maybe despairs, the procurer hires some guns, whatever... triggering a new - escalated - situation) or players talk / beat him down.​

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(c) the GM did no more than a DitV GM would, i.e. they chose reactions, and decided on odds just as they'd choose what dice their NPC's pick up and how they deploy them​

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So let's rake that over then...

I don’t have time to dig in too deeply and I’m going to be away the bulk of the day, but we’ve got issues right away. The most significant one is:

* The Social Interaction mechanics in the 5e DMG are not task resolution mechanics. They are classic conflict resolution mechanics.

1) I believe I was the very first person on ENW to bring these up at the release of the game, siting their function, their functionality, their kindred relationship to Pictionary and Apocalypse World.

Virtually no one had any any idea what I was talking about because “no one reads the DMG“ (apparently) as the saying goes.

2) Fast forward two years later in like 2016 and I brought them up again (as I had run the game). Again and still, no one knew what I was talking about.

3) Insofar as I did get conversation around it, it was almost universally “I don’t like artificial minigames. Social stuff should be freeform/roleplay.” That is a Trad players code for “I don’t like (the binding nature and superstructure of) conflict resolution.”

4) However…the issue (insofar as their is one…most Trad D&D players will call this a feature rather than a big), while the superstructure is there and it appears to instruct, constrain, and encode goal + play loop + win con/loss con binding result to facilitate “the minigame of conflict resolution”…its embedded in a rules text that expressly grants GM opt-out discretion any/all of the superstructure, the constraints, and the results of play if the GM deems any of those at odds with the conception of what is good for “the fun” and/or the story/trajectory of play.

That means, in the final analysis, “situation resolves” is governed by GM Fiat. So while the Social Interaction mechanics are indeed conflict resolution, the text has to be holistically indexed to determine whether “situation resolves” is governed by inviolable systemic constraint and binding superstructure or whether it’s governed by GM Fiat. The text (and culture for that matter) enshrining opt-out of system at GM’s discretion supplants inviolable with Fiat. Contra, when a text enshrines “follow the rules” and “neither plan nor subvert outcomes” it supplants Fiat with inviolable. That matters deeply to the process and experience of play for all parties. Further still, if the game delivers on what it promises by just following through on its inviolable systemic constraint and binding superstructure, that backstops everything that comes before it.


Now, any given 5e table can autobiographically encode inviolable and discard opt-out. That is Fiat at inception, but, if followed through upon over the tenure of play, becomes standard practice that informs the process and experience of play for all participants. But that game becomes (for instance) “Manbearcat’s or clearstream’s home game of 5e” which likely bears little resemblance to the rest of the “I don’t like artificial minigames, roleplaying should be freeform, and the GM needs to have discretion to opt-out of outcomes that they deem bad for fun (which is enshrined as the highest virtue in the text) and the story (which is enshrined right behind “the fun”)” 5e space that dominates the culture. That matters.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Pictionary

What?

 

[Manbearcat]

What?

The play loop of the Social Interaction mechanics is like Pictionary except sub out “draw a picture and solve the puzzle within the encoded rules” and sub in “metaphorically draw a picture of an NPC via back-and-forth and solve the puzzle of the NPC so as to achieve your goal within the encoded rules.”

And it should be noted, “it’s like Pictionary” is high, high praise, because Pictionary is an awesome game and functionally mapping the dynamics of that puzzle solving game into “solving an NPC” is absolutely excellent game design work.

Alright, I gotta GTFO for the day/evening.

 

[Aldarc]

What?

It's a competitive party game where players have to guess what word or phrase another player on their team is drawing. But that's not important right now.