RPGing and imagination: a fundamental point

[clearstream]

Not quite but those are interesting questions. I’m focused more on the conflict resolution case, with the addition of some binding predetermined fiction. Your explanation gives 1 method - you’ve changed the players stated goal, a subtle change but it’s still been changed!. This would be the case I mentioned earlier of the DM saying no to the players stated goal after resolution. In practice the player generally accepts this change for whatever reasons (would be interesting to explore), but for my interests at the moment I don’t see anything that hinges on whether the player accepts or rejects that subtle kind of change.

I’m a bit undecided about say yes. If yes is the resolution then it’s either in the safe as the player wanted for his goal - in which case you aren’t saying yes to his stated goal - so really the same analysis here as if it had went to resolution.

It also strikes me that the actual location of the dirt in conflict resolution wouldn’t be the kind of detail to be predetermined as the precise location just wouldn’t matter. In which case the whole discussion around that may be moot. However, if true it does still shed some light - one method of avoiding the issue may be to highly restrict what is bindingly predetermined. If this is done and the details given to players before they interact with those things then i think its possible to have binding predetermined fiction in a day yes or roll dice system - which probably comes as no surprise to many here. I guess that brings me to - what kind of fiction can be predetermined in such systems. Maybe people and any predetermined details relevant to them that you share the moment they are introduced in play? I suppose one could also do this with special objects so long as shared when the object was introduced in play.

Just a note on say yes. Think about the intended focus of your play. In a PbtA game text, that's what the written rules expressly cover, right? In more general texts, it's a choice made by participants. Say yes to everything else, because it's not the intended focus of your play. Don't stall on things you don't care about.

Agreed that we are kind of in the weeds with the exact location of the dirt. But again, don't prep things that don't matter. If your play is about torturous demonic contracts in exquisite detail with nothing elided then you're probably going to need to prep some devilish clauses. But you can likely do without exacting street maps and building floor plans.

 

[clearstream]

2. Can you elaborate on the differences between task resolution and your drama resolution. I want to make sure it’s really a new concept and not just a substitution of jargon.

It's more a rehabilitation of the task resolution construct. I think that "task resolution" is a poor term that misdirects. Folk have grown accustomed to it. If we continue to use it, some will continue to use it to mean something absurd, while others might decide to use the rehabilitated construct. Therefore a new term seems warranted, but that's not a hill I particularly care to die on.

Old task resolution thought that we were interested in resolving tasks for their own sake. That it was widely used was inexplicable, given resolving tasks for their own sake has zero utility to play. Drama resolution - or rehabilitated task resolution - rests on the following

(i) Players don't declare intentionless performances: it makes no sense to detach intent from performance.​

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(ii) If you go ahead and resolve intent with task, then what you're differentiating conflict resolution on the basis of is immediacy. How close intent is to performance. That's blurry, everyone will draw lines in different places.​

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(iii) If you don't resolve intent with task, you have something else in mind. Either you are that preposterous figure - arbitrary-GM - who thinks ponies might well be found inside safes. Or you're focused on something else that matters when "imagining is the core of the play of the game".​

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(iv) In various of my posts above I've laid out why I think that the principle followed is alignment of performances with dramatic purpose.​

Suppose one thinks (iv) is wrong. That's fine: it would be good to hear other notions for what principles, rubrics, norms or purposes guide GMs who are not simply arbitrary (their decisions defy coherent explanation). I've also said, incidentally, that conflict resolution has costs, too. Consider if car A is the perfect car and car B has a ding on the bonnet. Wouldn't we always choose car A!? It's important to ask - why do so many choose car B if car A is perfect? You need to entertain that there might be some respectable reason for going with B.

 

[Manbearcat]

I would say that your model fails both Gamists and Simulationists @clearstream .

* If you're a player in challenge-focused play with a certain sort of systemitized engine (like Moldvay Basic), paramount to play is (i) the currency of turns with respect to various clocks/upkeep (wandering monster, light, rations/water, rest requirement), (ii) your strategic exploration of your environment to mentally model risk/limit costs/amplify gain, (iii) your assessment of your individual competencies + your team's competencies, (iv) your assessment of the various threat levels of dangers/obstacles, and (v) the attendant evaluation of your governing decision-space (both moment-to-moment and the throughline of it).

For people playing these game engines, there is a serious cost to the foiling of their System 2 (logical analysis, deliberation, reason, associative memory) thinking as it pertains to the task resolution model inherent to these games where competency-assessment and management and "nothing happens" or "the GM saying no" is weighed in the costs of (i) and (ii) above (and the cascading effects of this) and in the added duress it places on (v).

The granularity of action/space/time (and how it indexes the game engine), "nothing happens" or "GM says no" as a consequence of action resolution, competency & causality-indexing resolution and monster design (the fixation on PCs and NPCs working off of the same chassis is an expression of this) is important. You don't have to devise challenge-based engines like this, but there are games that do. In those games that do, these salient features of task resolution do featured work.

* If you're a certain sort of player in a setting exploration game where the deep-immersionist, experiential priority of "being there", it seems to be that their reliance upon System 1 (intuitions, substitution-based heuristics, emotions) and how their sense of competency & causality-indexing, their sense of granularity of action and scale, and the propensity for "nothing happens" (because "nothing happens" is a feature of common existence) is extremely important to their sense of being "jarred" vs being autobiographically "immersed."

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Conflict resolution procedures and resolution techniques/features work against so much of the salient features of task resolution that the players above depend upon (and their System 2 and System 1 thinking is anchored to). And we know this because they've expressed these things for as long as I've been in the hobby with an uptick in the last 20 years in intensity and frequency.

 

[clearstream]

I would say that your model fails both Gamists and Simulationists @clearstream .

* If you're a player in challenge-focused play with a certain sort of systemitized engine (like Moldvay Basic), paramount to play is (i) the currency of turns with respect to various clocks/upkeep (wandering monster, light, rations/water, rest requirement), (ii) your strategic exploration of your environment to mentally model risk/limit costs/amplify gain, (iii) your assessment of your individual competencies + your team's competencies, (iv) your assessment of the various threat levels of dangers/obstacles, and (v) the attendant evaluation of your governing decision-space (both moment-to-moment and the throughline of it).

For people playing these game engines, there is a serious cost to the foiling of their System 2 (logical analysis, deliberation, reason, associative memory) thinking as it pertains to the task resolution model inherent to these games where competency-assessment and management and "nothing happens" or "the GM saying no" is weighed in the costs of (i) and (ii) above (and the cascading effects of this) and in the added duress it places on (v).

The granularity of action/space/time (and how it indexes the game engine), "nothing happens" or "GM says no" as a consequence of action resolution, competency & causality-indexing resolution and monster design (the fixation on PCs and NPCs working off of the same chassis is an expression of this) is important. You don't have to devise challenge-based engines like this, but there are games that do. In those games that do, these salient features of task resolution do featured work.

* If you're a certain sort of player in a setting exploration game where the deep-immersionist, experiential priority of "being there", it seems to be that their reliance upon System 1 (intuitions, substitution-based heuristics, emotions) and how their sense of competency & causality-indexing, their sense of granularity of action and scale, and the propensity for "nothing happens" (because "nothing happens" is a feature of common existence) is extremely important to their sense of being "jarred" vs being autobiographically "immersed."

---

Conflict resolution procedures and resolution techniques/features work against so much of the salient features of task resolution that the players above depend upon (and their System 2 and System 1 thinking is anchored to). And we know this because they've expressed these things for as long as I've been in the hobby with an uptick in the last 20 years in intensity and frequency.

After writing my last I was pondering the same thing. I found it helpful to directly prompt for additional notions. The key is that the construct must explicate.

So as you say, one could have other creative purposes in mind. Leaning on my analogy of the sculptor and strokes of the chisel, one is still resolving scene against a creative purpose or ideal. Measuring performances towards that; and this has utility... it can, as you show, inform design and play.

Then we're still not resolving tasks for their own sake and I retain reservations about using one label for what are in fact distinct principles of resolution.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Helping scale down stakes - from "She tells us everything" to "She trusts us on this one thing" - isn't saying no or even putting things off. It is scaling down.

It needs to be read concurrently with the other principles and the expositions of them - which I've quoted at some length.

No we don't. I am tired of with this obfuscating of what is actually happening, twisting of meaning of words and piling a ton of questionably related citations.

What you describe there is saying "no." It is "not really," but that is still form of saying no. Now the GM has good reasons for doing this and these may be different reasons than in some other game. But what is really happening here is the GM blocking the players original suggestion, and that by normal understanding of English language is obviously saying "no."

It might be worthwhile to discuss these different ways and reasons for blocking the player's wish, but unless we can agree on the plain reality of it actually happening this is going nowhere.

 

[clearstream]

So here is conflict resolution:

it's conflict resolution iff the process of resolution decides what happens next in regard to player goals​

Player goals are any goals players choose to pursue, regardless of how they're expressed or established. And here is rehabilitated task resolution:

it's task resolution if the process of resolution decides how a performance counts toward a creative purpose​

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Creative purpose could be dramatic vision, could be strategic challenge, could be elevated appreciation.

 

[clearstream]

I'm not sure it'd be satisfying because the system's not really backing it up, which tends to invite problems, but you could do it on an ad hoc basis, right? I'm thinking specifically of the suggestions that Baker makes here under Practical Conflict Resolution Advice. There's an effort to frame stakes and reduction in GM authority as far as strict choice of outcome. There'd have to be some sort of negotiation around consequences, but it should be possible to play CoC using these principles.

Although 5e is far from the focus of this discussion, I have a long-standing interest in the ramifications of what I've called "consequences-resolution". Ideal practice follows what Baker writes in answer to "Do you have any ideas on how to effectively and meaningfully implement 'what's at stake' in a non-narrativist game?"

This is important - "Say the magic words every single time, when the dice are in their hands but before they roll 'em." In play, this lets players express goals they want to pursue through their choice of performances. It's a great example of why the lense of negotiation is valuable.

Anyway, thank you for drawing attention to that blog post.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

@clearstream how I would understand it is that whilst most action declarations involve both 'how' and 'why', conflict resolution prioritises 'why' and task resolution 'how'.

So in the safe example in task resolution a success can look like "you open the safe, but the papers are not there," ('how' was honoured) whilst in conflict resolution "you fail to open the safe but find the papers in the trash bin," is a valid success ('why' was honoured.)

But of course it is perfectly possible to have a situation in either where both are honoured; "you open the safe, and the papers are there", and in such instance they look identical, which I think was what @FrogReaver was getting at earlier.

 

[clearstream]

@clearstream how I would understand it is that whilst most action declarations involve both 'how' and 'why', conflict resolution prioritises 'why' and task resolution 'how'.

So that's what I resist. The 'how' never matters on its own. Suppose I climb really, really well. Top-notch climbing! Why does that matter?

It's the effect that performance has that matters.

So in the safe example in task resolution a success can look like "you open the safe, but the papers are not there," ('how' was honoured)

Why were the papers not there? What did we honour, and what was our purpose in honouring that?

whilst in conflict resolution "you fail to open the safe but find the papers in the trash bin," is a valid success ('why' was honoured.)

Agreed.

But of course it is perfectly possible to have situation in either where both are honoured "You open the safe, and the papers are there", and in such instance they look identical, which I think was what @FrogReaver was getting at earlier.

Agreed.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So that's what I resist. The 'how' never matters on its own. Suppose I climb really, really well. Top-notch climbing! Why does that matter?

It's the effect that performance has that matters.

Usually there indeed is some effect, in most cases rather obvious one. I think most task resolution systems are rather simulationistic, and are interested in representing causal effects. So good 'how' tends to produce an effect, as that is what causally makes sense.

Why were the papers not there? What did we honour, and what was our purpose in honouring that?

We honoured the character's capability to open safes.

And yeah, in a myth dense environment sometimes we get 'duds' with task resolution. This is because in such a game task resolution is just a tool that simulates the capability of the character, and is just a part of resolving the conflict or a scene. Most of the resolution is about the players interacting with the environment, using it to their advantage. I think you kinda aimed for something similar with your 'drama resolution' but I posit it often is is not about drama but about creative problem solving.