RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[Lanefan]

That is NOT AN ACTION. You would have to describe 'I knock him off balance.'

How is "I try to knock him off balance" not an action declaration? Same as "I try to disrupt her spell casting" and similar.

Sure, the DM might want clarification as to HOW you intend to try these things; but as declarations I think they stand up.

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.

Like it or not, some players are happy to leave the "how" piece to the GM to fill in. And in other cases the how might be fairly obvious and thus not really need to be stated.

 

[FrogReaver]

How is "I try to knock him off balance" not an action declaration? Same as "I try to disrupt her spell casting" and similar.

Sure, the DM might want clarification as to HOW you intend to try these things; but as declarations I think they stand up.

Like it or not, some players are happy to leave the "how" piece to the GM to fill in. And in other cases the how might be fairly obvious and thus not really need to be stated.

Or more importantly, one can also ask, ‘how do you slice at his throat’ - showing that being able to ask how isn’t the differentiator for action vs non-action.

 

[FrogReaver]

Who told you this?

Why does it matter? Do you disagree with the statement?

 

[clearstream]

What RPG are you talking about?

As you know, I distinguish between game texts and phenomenology of play. So I am asking myself - would it be possible to design or interpret a game text such that

(a) game text requires GM to establish setting, situation, and goals/stakes that matter within them; players establish their characters​

(b) game text systematizes the endpoint, so that when goals/stakes are resolved the scene resolves​

(c) game text systematizes the payoff - impacts on setting/situation/characters​

4e skill challenges are a good example. I'm thinking of the DMG72 onward game text. What if I simply put weight on text instructing me as GM to set things up? In the 4e DMG is text addressed to GM like this

Define the goal of the challenge and what obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal. The goal has everything to do with the overall story of the adventure.​

Many folk back in the day appear to have made the sort of reading I propose here. Thus, if 4e skill challenges are an example of closed-scene-resolution, do they stop being closed-scenes given the game text is interpreted as I've said? No one has yet been able to say why. Rather they revert to building "players set goals" into their definitions.

So now I have defined Manbearcatian-closed-scene-resolution, which I assume to require players to set goals/stakes, and Clearstreamian-closed-scene-resolution, which does not. In terms of gameflow, both can fit Harper's diagram.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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 the player is declaring an action to look for documents in the safe, and there is (somehow-or-other) fiction that establishes there are no documents there, then something has gone wrong, because the player thinks something is at stake - "Can I get the documents from the safe" - when it fact the answer (no) is already settled.

I don't see how it is coherent to have both "GM's secret backstory exists" and "GM is not allowed to block player actions due secret backstory."

And any piece of "myth" that is not already revealed to the players is "GM's secret backstory."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

The issue is with the opposite. We are trying to solve a mystery and the GM has pre-established the facts of the case. Players do not know these. I don't see how this is compatible with conflict resolution. There could easily arise a situation where the "GM's secret facts" would unbeknownst to the player make the goal of their announced action impossible. "I.e. the clue is not there, the butler did not do it, 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.

Sure.

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!

I feel conflict resolution and no/low myth go logically together. I also feel task resolution makes most sense in a situation where the game has objectivish fictional reality that the players are prodding.

 

[clearstream]

As you know, I distinguish between game texts and phenomenology of play. So I am asking myself - would it be possible to design or interpret a game text such that

(a) game text requires GM to establish setting, situation, and goals/stakes that matter within them; players establish their characters​

(b) game text systematizes the endpoint, so that when goals/stakes are resolved the scene resolves​

(c) game text systematizes the payoff - impacts on setting/situation/characters​

4e skill challenges are a good example. I'm thinking of the DMG72 onward game text. What if I simply put weight on text instructing me as GM to set things up? In the 4e DMG is text addressed to GM like this

Define the goal of the challenge and what obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal. The goal has everything to do with the overall story of the adventure.​

Many folk back in the day appear to have made the sort of reading I propose here. Thus, if 4e skill challenges are an example of closed-scene-resolution, do they stop being closed-scenes given the game text is interpreted as I've said? No one has yet been able to say why. Rather they revert to building "players set goals" into their definitions.

So now I have defined Manbearcatian-closed-scene-resolution, which I assume to require players to set goals/stakes, and Clearstreamian-closed-scene-resolution, which does not. In terms of gameflow, both can fit Harper's diagram.

Following from this thinking, I believe that it should be put that

(a) game text requires the group to establish setting, situation and characters, with goals/stakes that matter within them that players will pursue​

​

So the crucial step is ensuring there are goals/stakes that players will pursue. If players will not pursue the goals/stakes (and I intend the connotation of volition in "will"), how can their performances be predicted to resolve them? Conversely, if they pursue them, one can predict their performances will resolve them.

 

[pemerton]

The issue is with the opposite. We are trying to solve a mystery and the GM has pre-established the facts of the case. Players do not know these. I don't see how this is compatible with conflict resolution. There could easily arise a situation where the "GM's secret facts" would unbeknownst to the player make the goal of their announced action impossible. "I.e. the clue is not there, the butler did not do it, etc."

Using GM secret backstory to break the relationship between success at the task and winning (ie achieving the goal) is (by definition) not consistent with conflict resolution.

Whether a mystery with GM-authored backstory has to be adjudicated in that fashion is a further question.

For instance, consider Apocalypse World. There is no player-side move When you try and crack open a safe . . .. And nor is there a GM-side move Tell them they're stymied.

The GM might have prep which tells them where such-and-such a thing is located. If a player has their PC look elsewhere, and no player-side move is triggered (eg the PC is not acting under fire, and is not reading a charged situation), then the GM makes a move, typically a soft move. The point of these is to escalate, by increasing the pressure on whatever it is that the player (as their PC) cares about in the situation.

Maybe the GM says "As you start mucking about with the safe, you hear voices outside. It sounds like some of Dremmer's gang have turned up." In that case, perhaps the player replies "They're still outside? Then I work the tumblers as quickly as I can!" Now that's acting under fire, and so the dice are rolled ("If you do it, you do it"). Suppose the result of the roll + Cool is 10 or more - so the PC gets the safe open. Now the GM has to make a move, again a soft move, and There's nothing interesting in there is not a GM-side move. Maybe the GM decides to offer an opportunity - there's something in the safe that is precious to Dremmer, and now the PC has leverage against the gang members who are about to burst in . . .

One thing that a player knows, going into AW, is that the true crunch-points involve people, not things. This is evidenced by the basic moves, which are about threatening, manipulating or fighting people, reading them, or acting while under "fire" from them. So when breaking into a safe, the stakes are always going to be primarily who rather than what. (This contrasts with, say, classic D&D where the most basic stakes are what - in particular, what sort of loot - rather than who.)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Using GM secret backstory to break the relationship between success at the task and winning (ie achieving the goal) is (by definition) not consistent with conflict resolution.

Whether a mystery with GM-authored backstory has to be adjudicated in that fashion is a further question.

For instance, consider Apocalypse World. There is no player-side move When you try and crack open a safe . . .. And nor is there a GM-side move Tell them they're stymied.

The GM might have prep which tells them where such-and-such a thing is located. If a player has their PC look elsewhere, and no player-side move is triggered (eg the PC is not acting under fire, and is not reading a charged situation), then the GM makes a move, typically a soft move. The point of these is to escalate, by increasing the pressure on whatever it is that the player (as their PC) cares about in the situation.

Maybe the GM says "As you start mucking about with the safe, you hear voices outside. It sounds like some of Dremmer's gang have turned up." In that case, perhaps the player replies "They're still outside? Then I work the tumblers as quickly as I can!" Now that's acting under fire, and so the dice are rolled ("If you do it, you do it"). Suppose the result of the roll + Cool is 10 or more - so the PC gets the safe open. Now the GM has to make a move, again a soft move, and There's nothing interesting in there is not a GM-side move. Maybe the GM decides to offer an opportunity - there's something in the safe that is precious to Dremmer, and now the PC has leverage against the gang members who are about to burst in . . .

One thing that a player knows, going into AW, is that the true crunch-points involve people, not things. This is evidenced by the basic moves, which are about threatening, manipulating or fighting people, reading them, or acting while under "fire" from them. So when breaking into a safe, the stakes are always going to be primarily who rather than what. (This contrasts with, say, classic D&D where the most basic stakes are what - in particular, what sort of loot - rather than who.)

I think you are evading the issue. Yes, a conflict resolution game could be constructed in such a way that it mitigates the issue, by simply avoiding the use of conflict resolution to answer the sort of questions that would lead to this sort of a complication. But considering that the safe opening which definitely is prone to this conundrum was your example, I doubt they consistently are built this way. Furthermore, mysteries often are about people.

 

[pemerton]

Then there’s a major communication gap, because that’s exactly the ones it seems to me are combining no-myth and conflict resolution.

In what way is Glorantha-based HeroWars no myth? The game line included whole books of nothing but myth (both in the literal and the technical (= established fiction) senses of that word).

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.

As I posted, who has told you (1)?

Here's a nice essay on "No myth" rpging. It opens thus:

The premise, and the reason it's called No Myth, is this: nothing you haven't said to the group exists. "You", in this case, includes the GM as well as the other players. The other half of this premise is "the [non-GM] players are the protagonists of the story."​

Here are some examples of no myth, or very close to no myth play; each takes for granted the background context of late Victorian or Edwardian London, and proceeds from there just as per the quote above: https://www.enworld.org/threads/cthulhu-dark-another-session.658931/; https://www.enworld.org/threads/played-some-wuthering-heights-today.672161/

Here's an example of play that feature conflict resolution, but was not no myth: not only were we looking at a map, that showed where various places are in relation to one another, but one of those places was the Moathouse, and I (the GM) had notes on what was in the Moathouse that I didn't just share with the players: https://www.enworld.org/threads/tor...ay-of-this-awesome-system.691233/post-9183845

Note that no one has asserted that Games with any as of yet unrevealed backstory are not conflict resolution, other than you. As best I recall, the only other poster in this thread, at least in recent pages, to mention unrevealed backstory has been me, and I made the following posts about it:

The contrast with the two main approaches to task resolution (see my post just upthread) is apparent. Puzzle-solving, map-and-key based play contains no principles of driving towards conflict or escalating. And the players follow the GM's lead, by (eg) working out whether or not the dirt is in the safe by declaring actions that prompt the GM to provide information about the (hitherto) hidden fiction.

If the game "legitimates" I want to look in the safe to see what's there, then at least at that moment of play we are looking at task resolution, serving the purpose of revealing more of the GM's (hitherto) hidden fiction to the players.

Notice how DitV expressly rules this out, via Drive play towards conflict (which includes "Every moment of play, roll dice or say yes") and its concomitant, Actively reveal the town in play. Whereas an approach in which the GM does not just "say 'yes'" to revealing the contents of the safe, but makes the players roll, is neither driving towards conflict nor actively revealing the context and possible stakes for conflict. This is classic task resolution.

These are not remarks about the presence or absence of backstory. These are remarks about the relationship between backstory and action resolution.

Have you read or played DitV? Burning Wheel? HeroWars/Quest? Maelstrom Storytelling? Apocalypse World? Any other canonical conflict-resolution system? And considered, both by reference to the game's instructions and also the experience of play, the role that "myth"/backstory plays?

It can contribute to framing. To establishing stakes (particularly consequences for failure). To the narration that bridges from scene-to-scene, or that is part of "saying 'yes'" (or, in AW, of making a soft move when no player-side move is triggered), in order to keep things moving in accordance with the principles of the game (which in all of these is some variation on "go where the action is").

The use of GM pre-authored and hitherto-unrevealed backstory is not confined to (i) breaking the relationship between task-success and goal-achievement, and (ii) being something the players discover by having their PCs perform low-stakes actions to prompt the GM to reveal it.