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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 9227011" data-attributes="member: 6795602">Right, so long as a players aim's are being upheld that's enough to establish something as conflict resolution.But that brings up a good question -Can players have any aim or goal with any action?   Even in games with conflict resolution we are told no.  Your aim must match up with the fictional position.  You can't just say in the opening scene that my aim is to resolve all conflicts by sitting on the ground!  In fact, there's restrictions not only what your action can be but what your aim can be.  Whether these restrictions are derived from game text or Norms, they serve the same purpose.Yes, except see below -I think it's both!  Players have multiple simultaneous goals, even D&D ones.  Micro goals and Macro goals.  Often a Micro goal is related to a Macro goal.  Macro- "I hope to find incriminating pictures in the safe".  Micro- "I want to see what's in the safe".  Depending on which player goal we reference in this situation we can frame the same interaction as either binding that goal to outcome or not.  That's what I meant by we can frame it either way earlier.This gets to the heart of outcome binding!  But the explanation is there is often some 'play' around the players stated goal and the DM's interpretation of it.  The player said he wanted to pick the lock, not get in the safe.  And while I dislike the notion of the DM pedantically following through with the player doing exactly what they claimed, it's not as if the stated 'aim' was negated - just the one we all believe is there implicitly. To summarize - is the 'aim' to pick the lock or to 'pick the lock to get in the same', or to 'get in the safe' or 'to find the pictures', or 'crack the safe to open it to find the pictures inside'. We can even see this somewhat in a different example you gave where the aim = 'crack the safe to find pictures', but the fiction on success becomes you crack the safe finding it empty but find the pictures beside it.  The DM didn't actually fulfill the players stated aim here.  He instead substituted the aim for a more simple but related one of 'find the pictures'.</blockquote>

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