RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

Is it really very mysterious how different this is from (say) DitV?
I don't understand this framing. No one here is asserting games don't play differently. What is being assessed on my side is the definitional framework being used to describe these games, whether an alternative definitional framework is more accurate and how this particular definitional framework applies to various games.
 

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I’m being told
1. Myth is GM curated backstory. No myth is the absence of this.

2. Games with any as of yet unrevealed backstory are not conflict resolution. If necessary I’ll find the quote, but hopefully this isn’t in dispute.

3. DitV is conflict resolution but has at moments in play unrevealed backstory.

Somethings not adding up here.

No Myth: The extreme version of "setting, backstory, and continuity are emergent features of play, established exclusively (save for a few, loose pieces of primordial material before the opening of play in order to generate conflict/strife and generate opening situation) through the process of play and the back-and-forth of participants." Orthodox Dungeon World is a good example of this. Here is a 4e No Myth game that I'm GMing on here for @darkbard and @Nephis . Any reading of that thread should make the concept clear.

Conflict Resolution: A technique with corresponding procedures and game tech that focuses on the collision of competing goals/motivations/interests. A mountain opposes your climb because it doesn't want you to ascend it. Your drinking habit opposes your sobriety because it doesn't want to lose its grip on you. The editor-in-chief doesn't want to run your story because they're captured by the influence or capital of the story's antagonist.

Task Resolution: A technique with corresponding procedures and game tech that focuses on whether the acting character is competent to perform a task, typically with resolution adjudication concerned with a model of causality and granularity of time and space.

Closed Scene Resolution: Conflict Resolution procedures and game tech that systematizes both the mechanical boundaries (start, end) of a scene and how the scene evolves both mechanically and situation-wise until the scene meets and resolves its codified endpoint.


EDIT - Please don't tag me back in this. That is just a courteous assist. I don't want any piece of this conversation.
 

Because what is resolved is not whether or not my blow slashes his face (the task) but whether or not I force him off-balance (the goal of the declared action).
Thank you. But I don't think it's that clear. Is the action 'slashing at his face' or 'trying to knock him off balance'? I think those are both actions. In which case you are intentionally picking the one that allows you to frame this as conflict resolution. But suppose we picked 'trying to knock him off balance' as the action. Does that selection change the scenario to task resolution?
 

No Myth: The extreme version of "setting, backstory, and continuity are emergent features of play, established exclusively (save for a few, loose pieces of primordial material before the opening of play in order to generate conflict/strife and generate opening situation) through the process of play and the back-and-forth of participants." Orthodox Dungeon World is a good example of this. Here is a 4e No Myth game that I'm GMing on here for @darkbard and @Nephis . Any reading of that thread should make the concept clear.

Conflict Resolution: A technique with corresponding procedures and game tech that focuses on the collision of competing goals/motivations/interests. A mountain opposes your climb because it doesn't want you to ascend it. Your drinking habit opposes your sobriety because it doesn't want to lose its grip on you. The editor-in-chief doesn't want to run your story because they're captured by the influence or capital of the story's antagonist.

Task Resolution: A technique with corresponding procedures and game tech that focuses on whether the acting character is competent to perform a task, typically with resolution adjudication concerned with a model of causality and granularity of time and space.

Closed Scene Resolution: Conflict Resolution procedures and game tech that systematizes both the mechanical boundaries (start, end) of a scene and how the scene evolves both mechanically and situation-wise until the scene meets and resolves its codified endpoint.


EDIT - Please don't tag me back in this. That is just a courteous assist. I don't want any piece of this conversation.
If you don't want me to tag you then please don't tag me. This one way stuff just doesn't work for me.
 

DitV coined "say 'yes' or roll the dice" and is a paradigm of conflict resolution.

And is not "no myth". The GM is required to prep a town for each scenario, and the game provides extensive advice on how to do so, and on how to use the town in play.

The difference from "secret backstory" is that one of the GM principles in DitV is to actively reveal the town in play.
If that's the difference then imagine DitV* which is the same as DitV but without that principle of actively revealing the town in play. Suppose both GM's do the same things in both games and actively reveal the town in play. Everything turns out exactly the same, yet DitV you would say didn't have secret backstory and thus was conflict resolution and DitV* did have secret backstory and thus was not conflict resolution. Is that an accurate assessment?
 

Then there’s a major communication gap, because that’s exactly the ones it seems to me are combining no-myth and conflict resolution.
They may be combining these things, but use your brain, why can't I have conflict resolution in a game where fiction is pre-established. Does that constrain you from saying "I want to find the papers, so I am going to open the safe!"? I don't see how! Sure, if the scenario has already established that, by gosh, there are surely papers in that safe, then that will constrain the types of outcomes the GM (or whomever/whatever) can narrate in response to a failure, but that's only a rather minor constraint. For example, I could still narrate that you opened the safe successfully. Many things could result in the non-acquisition of the papers within. Guards suddenly appear, an alarm goes off, you're nabbed by the cops on the way out, etc.

Likewise no myth play can exist in a game where task resolution is in force, I see no inherent reason why task resolution is impossible to use simply because the GM didn't make up the current fiction yesterday or a week ago. Declare the task, and succeed or fail.

Now, IMHO something at least close to conflict resolution and often low/no myth techniques are some of the best approaches to Narrativist play, but game designers, GMs, and players are infinitely creative!
 

Maybe a dumb question - what constitutes a scene?

Could a scene be…

Scene Start.

You come to a chasm but can see the footprints you’ve been tracking on the other side - what do you do? Player: i try to jump across the chasm.

End of scene.
I would expect there to be a resolution of the situation here. In true Narrativist play there would probably be something at stake, at least in a bigger sense, some reason driving a PC to want to do this dangerous thing.

EDIT:
Also, is it being suggested here in the underlined portion of your quote that games featuring task resolution do not allow players to set the aims of their characters? Because, if so I don't believe any RPG does this and thus the implication being that if true, there would be no task resolution games.
No, I mean, I cannot speak for others, but presumably there are motivations, they are just not what the mechanics speak to directly. If you dice for the resolution of a task, you aren't playing a game of motivations and intent, you are playing a game of task performance. Notice how D&D is classically structured, the motives of the characters are, at best, simply assumed to conform with the action. The PCs want treasure, so they adventure, end of story. Thus we are in a game of performance, do you get GP, or do you die? Much Narrativist play disposes of this indirection, the player tells the GM what their intent is, what they want to achieve by taking an action, as well as generally describing the action itself.

Now, you can certainly have games in which players do or even must, articulate goals at some level, and yet they only describe task performance. Much of the more open-ended Trad play has some of this character.
 

Thank you. But I don't think it's that clear. Is the action 'slashing at his face' or 'trying to knock him off balance'? I think those are both actions. In which case you are intentionally picking the one that allows you to frame this as conflict resolution. But suppose we picked 'trying to knock him off balance' as the action. Does that selection change the scenario to task resolution?
That is NOT AN ACTION. You would have to describe 'I knock him off balance.' Task resolution requires the player to describe the ACTION, what is happening. You cannot resolve that declaration in games like 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, or 5e! A question must be asked by the GM, 'how'? MAYBE given the context and things like character build the how is plainly obvious, but that's just a corner case. In every one of those games I will now, as GM, ask "how do you knock him off balance?" The 'knock off balance' here is a goal, an intent, and there could be many possible pathways to achieving it. In an intent resolution system, I can resolve that statement directly, although I might still want to ask how, as it may determine various mechanical factors, or it could be a bit different process, like BitD where their is a decision made as to approach based on which attribute the player selects, etc.
 


What RPG are you talking about?

I'm strongly with @Manbearcat here. There are a family of games known for their closed scene resolution - Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, MHRP, 4e skill challenges, BW Duel of Wits, etc.

These are all conflict-resolution frameworks. That's the whole point! (As @Campbell noted.)
It seems, on reading this and various other posts here, that conflict resolution (or scene resolution) is on a somewhat more macro scale than task resolution which is more micro; and thus a series of task resolutuions can add up to a conflict resolution. In other words, a (or the) difference is granularity.

The obvious example is D&D combat: a lot of tasks (individual attack rolls, etc.) are resolved in order to resolve the overall scene i.e. a) who wins the combat and b) what condition are the survivors in afterwards.

4e skill challenges, in the adventures I've seen them placed at any rate, also fall into this: they take what would otherwise be a series of micro-tasks and roll them into a bundle to resolve the whole scene at once.
 

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