RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Campbell]

Okay. So would you say that on choosing tasks, players can have in mind outcomes they think those tasks will lead to?

Absolutely. That's the fundamental basis of task resolution play. You are solving a puzzle as to what sorts of fictional positioning will lead to achieving the ends you are after. You seek out information about the environment and through deductive reasoning determine a plan you hope will lead to accomplishment of your goals as determined by the referee.

 

[clearstream]

Absolutely. That's the fundamental basis of task resolution play. You are solving a puzzle as to what sorts of fictional positioning will lead to achieving the ends you are after. You seek out information about the environment and through deductive reasoning determine a plan you hope will lead to accomplishment of your goals as determined by the referee.

Hopefully you see my line of enquiry. Connect my "VM" to that picture: what continues to separate it from conflict-resolution?

 

[Pedantic]

Okay. So would you say that on choosing tasks, players can have in mind outcomes they think those tasks will lead to?

This is off topic, but I want to throw it in because it's important to me and something strictly ruled out by conventional conflict resolution: Yes, and having variability in the amount, type and risk of tasks between players and an outcome allows space for strategic/tactical decision making.

Those decisions are the whole of gameplay in other genres, to the point that if they are insufficiently represented it's routine to start asking if you're playing a game at all.

 

[Campbell]

This is off topic, but I want to throw it in because it's important to me and something strictly ruled out by conventional conflict resolution: Yes, and having variability in the amount, type and risk of tasks between players and an outcome allows space for strategic/tactical decision making.

Those decisions are the whole of gameplay in other genres, to the point that if they are insufficiently represented it's routine to start asking if you're playing a game at all.

There are different sorts of games you know. Board games leave room for area control, worker placement and social deception games. I fail to see how as a broad category roleplaying games should be any different as to not allow for different categories of games. Most games built around conflict resolution involve an admixture of push your luck, resource scheduling and/or managing a set of spinning plates you must balance while having to establish credible fictional positioning to trigger the invocation of various mechanics in pursuit of player defined goals.

 

[clearstream]

There are different sorts of games. Most games built around conflict resolution involve an admixture of push your luck, resource scheduling and/or managing a set of spinning plates you must balance while having to establish credible fictional positioning to trigger the invocation of various mechanics in pursuit of player defined goals.

That's true, albeit skirts my question. In what respects does introducing the player-stakes-regarding GM (my "VM") to tasks that players have outcomes in mind for, fail to deliver what you would otherwise call conflict-resolution?

 

[Campbell]

That's true, albeit skirts my question. In what respects does introducing the player-stakes-regarding GM (my "VM") to tasks that players have outcomes in mind for, fail to deliver what you would otherwise call conflict-resolution?

Then it obviously ceases to be task resolution and instead becomes conflict resolution (assuming the GM is bound to the constraints involved / accountable to the other players). Once the GM stops being an evaluative referee who is making decisions based on preexisting scenario and setting design than they are no longer engaging in task resolution as there is no puzzle to solve to reach your larger dramatic aims. In any moment of play it is impossible to do both.

One would hope this is applied consistently and not haphazardly.

 

[clearstream]

Then it obviously ceases to be task resolution and instead becomes conflict resolution (assuming the GM is bound to the constraints involved / accountable to the other players). Once the GM stops being an evaluative referee who is making decisions based on preexisting scenario and setting design than they are no longer engaging in task resolution as there is no puzzle to solve to reach your larger dramatic aims. In any moment of play it is impossible to do both.

One would hope this is applied consistently and not haphazardly.

Exactly, and this dissolves the mysteries around @FrogReaver's earlier comments. Task-resolution when outcomes a player has in mind are respected is the same as conflict-resolution.

@Manbearcat You hopefully now see that the crucial rules detail for my example lies in DMG237 Using Ability Scores rather than DMG244 Social Interaction. To see how, just picture that GM declares the same set of outcomes up front that game designers did when they wrote Social Interaction, and then go one step further and suppose that players chose their performances because they had those outcomes in mind.

To be fair you (@Campbell) said it in your earlier post

Sure, a GM may illicit player intent and make success always mean a player realizes their intent. If done in such a way where that is the binding expectation at the table, we no longer have task resolution. We have conflict resolution. What makes conflict resolution well conflict resolution is that it directly resolves what players are attempting to accomplish in a way that binds everyone to those results.

The rawest version of task-resolution I can think of has no outcome in mind. And the rawest version of conflict-resolution has no performance in mind. TR would answer the question then, solely of performance. It produces no binding result. CR then tells us result. It produces no binding performance. And that isn't what folk want or experience.

@pemerton in my post #705 I quote the same musing from Baker that you pick up in your #729. Something one can ask is why Baker settled on binaries for AW moves, i.e. Fictional-position==Outcomes? And why did he deem training up virtuous-GMs (via principles, agenda, examples and monologues) a necessary job for his game text?

Harper's diagrams aren't detailed enough to show this, which can be seen by picturing what else I could write in the "Situation Resolves" bubble of the first chart. "Situation Resolves by Designer Fiat", "Situation Resolves by Player Fiat", "Situation Resolves by GM Fiat", "Situation Resolves Randomly". Any of those still produces the same orderly flow. The difference between task and conflict resolution isn't about the orderly flow.

 

[clearstream]

This is off topic, but I want to throw it in because it's important to me and something strictly ruled out by conventional conflict resolution: Yes, and having variability in the amount, type and risk of tasks between players and an outcome allows space for strategic/tactical decision making.

Those decisions are the whole of gameplay in other genres, to the point that if they are insufficiently represented it's routine to start asking if you're playing a game at all.

To my reading, @Campbell's comments, in particular

Once the GM stops being an evaluative referee who is making decisions based on preexisting scenario and setting design than they are no longer engaging in task resolution as there is no puzzle to solve to reach your larger dramatic aims. In any moment of play it is impossible to do both.

acknowledge concerns like yours. I put it that

Conflict resolution: What are legitimate outcomes from this fictional position? (What outcomes is it not reaching for players to propose)​

Task resolution: What outcomes can this fictional performance legitimate? (@Campbell's puzzle, your strategic/tactical decision making)​

But to my reading @Manbearcat explains (in this thread and elsewhere) many ways that there can be strategic/tactical decision making under conflict-resolution. I suggest that can only be true given player choice of outcomes is constrained. Otherwise, can't they just pick outcomes without respecting the game state!?

It is thoughts of that kind that lead me to equanimity about who decides. So long as a binary like performance==outcome is in place, what counts as legitimated can be sufficiently-well constrained. If you give up the binary you get my "rawest versions" that no one wants and might not be feasible. (Tacit binaries such as those formed by norms around the table still count.)

The design choices that produce game as game are thus those that set in rules some of the terms of "legitimate". There may be no version that both meets your preference and gets rid of adversary-player / referee who makes the decisions counter to what character-players want as outcomes. Which means that in functional game designs conflict-resolution can accept some amount of VM-fiat. ("VM" being that MC, GM or referee who gives regard to the stakes/outcomes players care about.) Just like in DitV if NPC dice beat players, GM decides (as VM if the game text is successful.)

If it's binaries then that give us sound play -

null==outcome (rawest "conflict-resolution" - yes to your outcome, regardless of what you do or what it costs)​

performance==null (rawest "task-resolution" - is this even humanely possible?! "you climb the wall, why?" "..." "but it's the season ball and you're in tails, in a ballroom packed with people" "...")​

stake==outcome (I don't care what you do, only what it might cost you)​

performance==outcome (assay performances that compell VM to attach the outcome you want, which express mechanics can influence e.g. PF2e, D&D3e, TB2, D&D5e social interaction)​

fictional-position==outcome (a superset containing performance and whatever else about fiction could matter)​

game-state==outcome (a superset containing fictional-position, and whatever system state could matter)​

​

Leading to -

stakes+game-state==outcome​

​

Hence it's vital to get clear commitment from player... fiction-first is one approach. Players also need a way to state outcomes they want... perhaps through their choice of performances. I trust I have now sufficiently muddied the water.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not claiming there is no difference between them. The claim is that you are incorrect on the fundamental difference between them.

Really?

Based on your extensive experience of GMing and playing conflict-resolution-based RPGs, would you care to enlighten us on what Vincent Baker and John Harper have in mind?

What I see in every one of these examples are proposals that the conflict/aim is something 'larger' than the task itself. But what I want to ask is - what if the characters conflict/aim is to accomplish this task?

My answer to your question - in most circumstances, what that will produce is boring play.

For instance, suppose that we have an action resolution system for power-lifting (maybe some combination of dice and resource expenditure associated with a STR stat). And what is at stake is Can I power-life 300 lb? Now our action resolution system gives us conflict resolution, without factoring in any element of the fiction beyond performance of the task.

But that is not a very exciting RPG.

Here's the reason why it works out like this:

RPGs are, at least in mainstream cases, based around players declaring actions for their PCs. That is one important thing that distinguishes a RPG from mere shared storytelling: the players "interact" with the fiction by declaring actions for particular characters in that fiction. They perform tasks.

But RPGs also, again at least in mainstream cases, aim to be exciting or engaging in some fashion. They presume that players will declare actions for their PCs with an eye to those actions achieving, or at least furthering, some goal. Not just for the sake of seeing whether or not the action can be performed.

To go back to the power-lifting example: in a RPG, aimed at exciting events occurring in play, the power-lifting would have a purpose. Perhaps the PC is freeing a friend trapped under a log - in which case, success at the task will, in a conflict resolution system, be determinative of whether or not the friend is freed. Perhaps the PC is trying to carry some treasure (say, a statue) out of the dungeon - in which case, success at the task will, in a conflict resolution system, be determinative of whether or not the statute is carried out.

In task resolution - by definition, and as Baker explains and as Harper's diagram posted by @Manbearcat shows - the relationship between success or failure at the task, and achieving or failing at the goal, is mediated by further GM decision-making that sits outside the framing and resolution of the action declaration. Eg the PC lifts the log - but then (as narrated by the GM) the log breaks, and a bit falls back onto the friend leaving them trapped. Or eg the PC fails to lift the statue, but then (as narrated by the GM) it magically shrinks itself so the PC can carry it out in any event.

You are talking about task resolution and confliction resolution with respect to the conflict/aim of 'finding photos' as if the players aims in a task resolution game and conflict resolution game would be the same. A D&D player is not going to 'aim' to find photos in a safe (unless they have great fictional assurance that the photos are in this safe), instead they are going to 'aim' to see what's in the safe.

Which is why I would define the difference between task and conflict resolution around what the game allows a player to 'aim' for.

This is a definition that tells us nothing interesting. I've played a lot of D&D, and GMed a lot of D&D. I've read a lot of D&D rulebooks and a lot of D&D modules.

Only the most terrible forbid the players from having any goals other than prompt the GM to tell us more about their fiction. Most assume that the players have some aim other than find out what th GM will tell us <is in the safe>, <is in the room>, <is around the corner>, <is in the chest?, etc. They assume that the players will be aiming to find loot, to earn XP, to achieve the quest, etc. This assumption is built into the classic game and the modules up to around 1983. Subsequent modules assume that the GM will provide the players with a "hook" that gives them an aim; and then the players declare actions to try and achieve that aim.

As @Campbell posted not too far upthread, at its best this is a type of puzzle-solving play:

That's the fundamental basis of task resolution play. You are solving a puzzle as to what sorts of fictional positioning will lead to achieving the ends you are after. You seek out information about the environment and through deductive reasoning determine a plan you hope will lead to accomplishment of your goals as determined by the referee.

Of course, at its worst it is full-blooded railroading.

The idea that a railroad is conflict resolution where the players are confined to stakes of "see what the GM tells us next" just sheds no light at all on different approaches to play.

 

[clearstream]

Only the most terrible forbid the players from having any goals other than prompt the GM to tell us more about their fiction. Most assume that the players have some aim other than find out what th GM will tell us <is in the safe>, <is in the room>, <is around the corner>, <is in the chest?, etc. They assume that the players will be aiming to find loot, to earn XP, to achieve the quest, etc. This assumption is built into the classic game and the modules up to around 1983. Subsequent modules assume that the GM will provide the players with a "hook" that gives them an aim; and then the players declare actions to try and achieve that aim.

A problem one runs into with that is what we touched on before - how far out can/must aims be? It might be that the intention best legitimated by game-state is "I want to crack the safe to see what's inside." And surely groups normally rule out "reaching" intentions that go beyond what is legitimated by game-state?