Stakes and consequences in action resolution

[pemerton]

This thread is a spin-off of the DC to tell that a NPC is telling the truth thread.

It starts with some context, sblocked for length, and then a question:

[sblock]

for certain character that type of analysis is perfectly fine. Heck, I do it as a player myself. But not everyone wants to play that way. Sometimes players want to be caught off guard instead of making a cost-beenfit analysis for every roll of the dice.

<snip>

to me, if you say you tell the player the consequences of their actions, so they can make a more informed decision and not get caught off-guard by knowledge they didn't have (ala Hitchcock) then that means to me that when they are about to jump over the pit you tell them that if they fail they will fall on the hidden spikes coated with poison in the bottom of the pit.

<snip>

After all, knowing there are spikes and poison below is the same as knowing there is a bomb under the table, and when the players go to roll, they know exactly what the stakes are. But to me, that is revealing far more about the scenario than they have any reasonable way of knowing, without them having tested things out.

<snip>

If my players want to be cautious and look for answers, to investigate and try and piece together clues about their surroundings, then they are more than welcome to.

<snip>

However, I'm not going to force that mind set on them and I'm not going to assume they would be happier analysising everything. If they do not ask questions and just charge forward, then I assume their character is not asking questions and is just charging forward.

I can only speak for myself.

To me, you are the one who is making "analysis" a focus of play, by requiring "testing things out" in order to establish what is at stake in the play of the game.

My approach is the opposite: the players choices about PC build, thematic and goal orientation, etc, establish what is at stake, and then I as GM build that into the ingame situation. A player can choose to play his/her PC as analytic, or reckless, but either way the player knows that his/her interests/thematic concerns will be at stake in the game. They don't have to choose between playing an "analytic" PC or alternatively guessing what the GM might have in mind.

[/sblock]

You are going to have to explain this to me. How is not telling the players the immediate consequences of their actions making analysis a focus of play and making them choose between being analytic and guessing what I have in mind?

If a player wants to take time to study a situation, they can make that choice. IF they do not, they can make that choice. I'm not making anything a focus, I'm simply running the game and letting them make the decisions they want to make.

The first sentence of your second paragraph in the last quote is the answer to the second question (making them choose between being analytic and guessing what I have in mind) in your first paragraph.

That is: when you run the game without telling the players the immediate consequences of their actions then their decisionmaking options are, basically, two: they can play their characters analytically, studying the situation to try and ascertain what is at stake; or they can play their characters non-analytically, perhaps even recklessly, in which case they don't know what is at stake in the situation except by guessing what you, the GM have in mind in your framing of the situation.

In suggesting that this makes analysis a focus of play, I am adding in an additional conjecture: namely, that at least from time-to-time the players want to know what is at stake in a situation, whether for the basic reason that they don't want their PCs to die, or sometimes for more complex reasons that reflect the current circumstances of the fiction (eg they want to know whether they should smash the vessels of magical fluid to stop those from powering the enchanted widget that is sustaining the eldritch field that feeds the ritual-of-whateverness). In such circumstances, the players come under pressure to analyse, because a non-analytic/reckless approach (eg "I run up to the vessels with my battle axe and smash them all!") runs the risk of producing an adverse consequence relative to these important player (and PC) goals in the scenario.

If my additional conjecture is false then my suggestion that analysis becomes a focus of play is also false; but at least for many D&D games run broadly in the style you're describing the conjecture is true, I think, even if it's not true in your game.

Notice also that, in the example of the player of the reckless PC who declares I run up to the vessels with my battle axe and smash them all, the player can succeed in the action declaration (ie all the vessels of magical fluid are smashed) and yet fail in his/her goal, of depowering the enchanted widget and thereby stopping the ritual, because the GM has actually already decided (in his/her dungeon notes, say, or it's in the module text) that the magical fluid actually dampens the power of the eldritch field, and smashing them generates a magical power surge that bring the ritual immediately to fruition. So the player who chooses not have his/her PC study the situation and instead simply to act is in many ways hostage to the GM's prior decision-making about the nature of the situation. S/he isn't making any sort of informed or deliberate contribution to the overall state of the fiction.

Vincent Baker (probably best known for designing DitV and Apocalypse World, which is the progenitor of PbtA RPGs), has talked about this also (and has influenced my thinking about it): the quote is in sblocks for length.

[sblock]Conflict Resolution vs. Task Resolution
In task resolution, what's at stake is the task itself. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you crack the safe?

In conflict resolution, what's at stake is why you're doing the task. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?

Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting the dirt? That's how you tell whether it's task resolution or conflict resolution.

Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You can succeed but lose, fail but win.

In conventional rpgs, success=winning and failure=losing only provided the GM constantly maintains that relationship - by (eg) making the safe contain the relevant piece of information after you've cracked it. It's possible and common for a GM to break the relationship instead, turning a string of successes into a loss, or a failure at a key moment into a win anyway.

Let's assume that we haven't yet established what's in the safe.

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Success!
"You crack the safe, but there's no dirt in there, just a bunch of in-order papers."

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Failure!
"The safe's too tough, but as you're turning away from it, you see a piece of paper in the wastebasket..."

(Those examples show how, using task resolution, the GM can break success=winning, failure=losing.)

That's, if you ask me, the big problem with task resolution: whether you succeed or fail, the GM's the one who actually resolves the conflict. The dice don't, the rules don't; you're depending on the GM's mood and your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are supposed to even out.

Task resolution, in short, puts the GM in a position of priviledged authorship. Task resolution will undermine your collaboration.[/sblock]

Speaking for myself, I prefer a game which does not generate this particular sort of pressure to play an "analytic" character, or to study situations in order to ascertain what is at stake in them, and hence what potential consequences might flow from succeeding or failing at the task.

This requires that players be able to ascertain stakes or consequences in advance of declaring actions for their PCs. (That is, in advance of studying/analysing the situation.) This means that what is at stake, and what consequences are apt to flow from engaging the situation one way or another, need to be signalled by the GM in his/her framing narration. In my own experience, the easiest and most engaging way to do that is by framing the situation in a way that clearly connects to already established goals/themes/concerns/interests of the player.

I'll give a fairly banal example from the session of Cthulhu Dark that I GMed on the weekend:

One of the players had chosen, as his PC's occupation, butler. All my knowledge of bulters comes from having read Remains of the Day many years ago, and I remember the polish on the silverware being very important. So when that PC met another butler he was friends with, the NPC butler started explaining a new technique he had for making his silverware shine, which his master had introduced him to and which involved a special fluid and a galvanic current. The NPC also explained that, as per his master's instructions, the used fluid was retained and decanted into dedicated canisters. When a fire broke out, the NPC asked the PC to help him move the fluied - canisters, plus the current (open-topped) cleaning vessel - to safety. The player made his check, and didn't do terribly well, and this was narrated as him spilling some of the fluid from the open-topped vessel. Some events that followed on this, driven by the other player's play of his PC, led to the rest of that batch of fluid being spilled on that second PC's clothes.​

At no point in the narration or resolution of the situation did I (as GM) tell the player of the butler what the properties of the fluid were, or what the consequences would be of spilling it. In fact I couldn't do that because I didn't know myself yet!

But it's as clear to the player as it is to me that the fluid is significant - it's very obviously been brought into the shared fiction, and made a focus of play, because the player is playing a butler and hence has an interest in the treatment of silverware. Because everyone at the table knows that we're playing a Cthulhu game set c 1900, it's also obvious that a device involving a strange fluid and galvanically powered is sinister. Hence there's no ambiguity that spilling the fluid is a bad thing, although what the exact badness is is yet to be established.

Another element of the situation that is clear to the player, because of the way it speaks to the context established by the player's choice of PC occupation, is the relationship of the NPC butler to the master who provides the fluid and retains it once it has been used. Because the player has chosen to play a butler, it's already established in the context of the game that loyal service is, in itself, a good thing rather than a bad thing. But because we all know it's a Cthulhu game, it's also clear that doing the right thing might lead to unhappy rather than happy consequences. So without any need for me as GM to explain it, the situation establishes the possibility that the NPC butler is a victim of manipulation by a sinister master as well as the (near-)certainty that the master himself as a sinister figure. So spilling the fluid clearly has the potential to create conflict with that figure, and the "badness" that results (as per the previous paragraph) will in some fashion be related to whatever his sinister plans are.

As I said, there's nothing very special about this example: I have used it simply because it's recent and so is easy for me to recall. But hopefully it shows what I mean when I say that I prefer an approch which establishes what is at stake in a situation, and hence implicitly establishes consequences of failure without the players needing to declare actions for their PCs that invovle studying or analysing the situation. And it does this by drawing on shared understandings between player and GM as to what is significant for the players in their play of their PCs, given their build choices, evinced thematic concerns, genre expectations, etc.

I've used this sort of approach in GMing AD&D, and 4e D&D, and I think it could probably be applied in 5e D&D also if one were so inclined.

 

[Manbearcat]

Attaching this here from the original 5e thread due to relevance. I’ll habe further thoughts after I read the OP and have a minute.

"Meaningful Consequence"

My take on this will always append "upon the gamestate" to that. Because they don't spell it out in the section on Using Ability Scores, here is the likely best reference point for what the designers meant by "meaningful consequences."

DMG p 27

In constructing a narrative, beware of "false action," or action for its own sake. False action doesn't move a story forward, engage characters, or cause them to change. Many action movies suffer from false action, in which car chases, gunfights, and explosions abound but do little more than inconvenience the characters and eventually bore the audience with their repetition and dearth of meaningful stakes.

I think this is a good working definition that is cribbed from many-a-modern-game.

If the gamestate isn't changed in some appreciable way (if the arrangement of the fiction and the actual table time we spend conversing and rolling dice barely notices a blip on its collective radar screen), "false action" and "consequences without meaning" are what has just transpired.

Whether you think "false action" or "consequences without meaning" have some kind of other utility (I get that some people find these instances of play "immersion enhancing" or something to that effect) is another matter (a gamestate neutral matter).

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've used this sort of approach in GMing AD&D, and 4e D&D, and I think it could probably be applied in 5e D&D also if one were so inclined.

Snipped all but this last as I only have comment here.

5e actually fights back as a system if you try to fully embrace this. The resolution mechanics in 5e differ from both AD&D (which had none asude from 'roll under stat') and 4e (which used the system such that expected chance for success/failure remained pretty static). 5e's bounded accuracy and largely defined DC structure (easy/medium/hard/etc) against increasing bonuses means that success/failure resolution works well for tasks, but isn't well suited for conflicts.

That said, awareness of this can lead to GM principles to keep task->conflict tightly coupled and avoid the success at one but failure at the other. I find using the goal and approach nethid works well to help keep this coupling intact. This lets me use the 5e task resolution systems to couple into overall conflict resolution.

Trying to use 5e's task focused mechanics to do conflict resolution leads to disappointing results. Just the ad/disad mechanics fight against doing this by making success/failure less probable. I've found this doesn't do satisfactory conflict resolution, which really needs more balanced success/failure chances to function well.

 

[Umbran]

Speaking for myself, I prefer a game which does not generate this particular sort of pressure to play an "analytic" character, or to study situations in order to ascertain what is at stake in them, and hence what potential consequences might flow from succeeding or failing at the task.

Okay. But, do you see how this may look to others - that by disconnecting task resolution from conflict resolution, for many people this will feel like a loss of cause and effect within the game world?

Some will also see this as the Inspector Clouseau approach to gaming - I can bumble along having no idea what's going on or what I am doing, but save the day, regardless. That is surely a kind of game some will find fun, but to many it will seem absurdist.

In addition, this approach does come with a cost - it turns a scene where the player tries to do something awesome, and ends up looking dumb. I spend a lot of resources to make sure I crack that safe, for nothing. But then, I turn around, and the paper I wanted was right there all the time! The resulting fiction is not about a great thief and safecracker - it is a fiction about a person who spends effort but only gets what they want by dumb luck.

This can lead to another kind or analytic play - When the GM asks wy I am doing a thing, what do I include? "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain! *AND* to not look like an idiot in the process?"

At no point in the narration or resolution of the situation did I (as GM) tell the player of the butler what the properties of the fluid were, or what the consequences would be of spilling it. In fact I couldn't do that because I didn't know myself yet!

And, I think many readers will say, "Yes, then in actuality, the player did *NOT* know the real stakes." When we set stakes, we know exactly what it is we stand to lose. If I don't want to lose the stakes, I don't bet. While the player knows the fluid is significant, they don't know in what manner, or what spilling it really means - they do *not* know what there is to lose here. Will the stuff make them grow tentacles? Will the scent of it lead amorous fish men to them? Nobody knows! That's hardly a solid example of knowing what the final cost of failure will be, and does not tell them how much of their resources they should spend on success (which is a very real part of knowing stakes ahead of time).

While you are demonstrating the techniques, I am not sure you're demonstrating that this actually gives the player any more control.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Okay. But, do you see how this may look to others - that by disconnecting task resolution from conflict resolution, for many people this will feel like a loss of cause and effect within the game world?

Some will also see this as the Inspector Clouseau approach to gaming - I can bumble along having no idea what's going on or what I am doing, but save the day, regardless. That is surely a kind of game some will find fun, but to many it will seem absurdist.

In addition, this approach does come with a cost - it turns a scene where the player tries to do something awesome, and ends up looking dumb. I spend a lot of resources to make sure I crack that safe, for nothing. But then, I turn around, and the paper I wanted was right there all the time! The resulting fiction is not about a great thief and safecracker - it is a fiction about a person who spends effort but only gets what they want by dumb luck.

This can lead to another kind or analytic play - When the GM asks wy I am doing a thing, what do I include? "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain! *AND* to not look like an idiot in the process?"

You're attacking the example of how things can go wrong, not what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is advocating.

And, I think many readers will say, "Yes, then in actuality, the player did *NOT* know the real stakes." When we set stakes, we know exactly what it is we stand to lose. If I don't want to lose the stakes, I don't bet. While the player knows the fluid is significant, they don't know in what manner, or what spilling it really means - they do *not* know what there is to lose here. Will the stuff make them grow tentacles? Will the scent of it lead amorous fish men to them? Nobody knows! That's hardly a solid example of knowing what the final cost of failure will be, and does not tell them how much of their resources they should spend on success (which is a very real part of knowing stakes ahead of time).

While you are demonstrating the techniques, I am not sure you're demonstrating that this actually gives the player any more control.

Well, this is like saying that dealing successfully with the trap on the door to the bbeg lair isn't resolving the bbeg. It's asking for too much horse for the cart.

Knowing the liquid is important is plenty sufficient to knowing you don't want to spill it. In the style of play [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is advocating, the effects of the liquid really depend on more play establishing those effects. Having it spilled on you just opens up future play possibilities involving that aspect. Recall that the established state of the liquid is that it us important to the master and that it may be sinister. Whether it makes you sprout tentacles later will be up to later play establishing this -- it's not currently determined. As such, there's no final consequence to be revealed, so pemerton's play has exactly as much horse as it needs to pull its cart. Calls for more are misassuming the needs in play.

This style is very different from traditional play as evinced by D&D (4e notwithstanding). It's easy to make incorrect assumptions based on prior experience where the GM has preplanned things like the nature and effect of the liquid. This isn't yet established in play, though, so the exact nature of the liquid will be established in later play according to the mechanics of play.

 

[Umbran]

You're attacking the example of how things can go wrong, not what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is advocating.

Then I misunderstood the purpose of the quote, and I am not sure why it was included. Hopefully, he'll elucidate for me.

Well, this is like saying that dealing successfully with the trap on the door to the bbeg lair isn't resolving the bbeg. It's asking for too much horse for the cart.

I don't think so. To claim you let the players know the stakes, and then layer consequences on them later that weren't part of the proposal, is not fair. That's like, "You lost a hand of poker an hour ago. Now, give me $100 more."

Knowing the liquid is important is plenty sufficient to knowing you don't want to spill it.

No, it isn't. There's any number of times when a thing is important because it is a critical resource of the BBEG, that ultimately the PCs want to destroy. Maybe spilling it on the floor, ruining it, is exactly what the PCs want. At this stage, they don't know. Heck, the GM didn't know. How on Earth can you claim to be honestly informing the players of the stakes if you don't know them yourself?

Note - I actually know what the answer to this question should be, as I've used this method before many times myself. I disagree with pemerton that relying on the assumptions of genre is the proper way to use this*, largely because it relies on everyone being on the same page without actually communicating about it, which is not reliable. "Everyone knows," is a way to ensure some people don't get the memo, as it is an excuse to not communicate with the players.

The proper answer is that, when the player decides to help move the goo, the GM says (for example, in FATE language)), "If you fail, you are apt to spill some of the liquid on the floor, or on yourself. This will not kill you directly, but may result in a mild consequence for your character or a similarly sized aspect on a scene." Since supposedly everyone knows it is important, there's no reason to avoid explicitly saying so. Putting a bound on how much impact it may have is setting the stakes. Now, the players actually have some idea of how big an issue they are looking at, and can choose their investment in avoiding it appropriately.

This is *part of how* the function and importance of the goo is created in play.




*Or at least it is not a good way to explain this. When describing a process to people who don't use it, you need to include all the formal steps, and then note which ones you later learn to elide over. I suspect pemerton's group has some internal unspoken agreements, because they are familiar with him, and they elide over the formal step because they have trust. But that doesn't apply to the folks reading the thread - they don't necessarily trust pemerton, or the process he's describing.

 

[Lanefan]

If the gamestate isn't changed in some appreciable way (if the arrangement of the fiction and the actual table time we spend conversing and rolling dice barely notices a blip on its collective radar screen), "false action" and "consequences without meaning" are what has just transpired.

Whether you think "false action" or "consequences without meaning" have some kind of other utility (I get that some people find these instances of play "immersion enhancing" or something to that effect) is another matter (a gamestate neutral matter).

"False action" potentially has a couple of very significant utilities:

For the characters: use and erosion of resources (ammunition, spells, health) in systems where resources matter and-or are not easily replenished. Not gamestate neutral.

For the GM: distraction and obfuscation of what is really going on - i.e. red herrings thrown in such that the PCs have to determine what matters from what doesn't. Maybe gamestate neutral.

For all: even if the action is "false" the characters still gain xp and sometimes loot from it. Not gamestate neutral.

Wandering monsters are almost always an example of false action as defined here.

 

[Manbearcat]

"False action" potentially has a couple of very significant utilities:

For the characters: use and erosion of resources (ammunition, spells, health) in systems where resources matter and-or are not easily replenished. Not gamestate neutral.

For the GM: distraction and obfuscation of what is really going on - i.e. red herrings thrown in such that the PCs have to determine what matters from what doesn't. Maybe gamestate neutral.

For all: even if the action is "false" the characters still gain xp and sometimes loot from it. Not gamestate neutral.

Wandering monsters are almost always an example of false action as defined here.

Good post Lanefan.

I'll try to get a reply up afterwhile.

 

[pemerton]

5e actually fights back as a system if you try to fully embrace this. The resolution mechanics in 5e differ from both AD&D (which had none asude from 'roll under stat') and 4e (which used the system such that expected chance for success/failure remained pretty static). 5e's bounded accuracy and largely defined DC structure (easy/medium/hard/etc) against increasing bonuses means that success/failure resolution works well for tasks, but isn't well suited for conflicts.

That said, awareness of this can lead to GM principles to keep task->conflict tightly coupled and avoid the success at one but failure at the other.

<snip>

Just the ad/disad mechanics fight against doing this by making success/failure less probable.

Thanks - this is a useful contribution and deals with something that I've been curious about, but on which it's hard to find clear commentary, namely, the effect of the 5e DC rules.

The only thing that really caught me by surprise was the comment about the advantage/disadvantage mechanic. I would have thought this has something of a flattening effect.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Then I misunderstood the purpose of the quote, and I am not sure why it was included. Hopefully, he'll elucidate for me.

I'm sure he will, but it seems obvious that the inclusion of the quote was to establish that separating task from conflict resolution leads to issues. You make this same point in your post, so surely you also had this reason?

I don't think so. To claim you let the players know the stakes, and then layer consequences on them later that weren't part of the proposal, is not fair. That's like, "You lost a hand of poker an hour ago. Now, give me $100 more."

That's another misapprehension. The setting up of new possibilities in the fiction, in this case losing a hand of poker, may lead to future contests that leverage that lost hand, with clearly flowing consequences that both reach back to that lost hand and reflect the current contest. It builds, it doesn't recur.

No, it isn't. There's any number of times when a thing is important because it is a critical resource of the BBEG, that ultimately the PCs want to destroy. Maybe spilling it on the floor, ruining it, is exactly what the PCs want. At this stage, they don't know. Heck, the GM didn't know. How on Earth can you claim to be honestly informing the players of the stakes if you don't know them yourself?

That would be cool, and the players would be free to establish a new contest such that the loss of the liquid is a blow to the BBEG. The consequence to that failure, though, may be that the liquid actually represented a weakness that could have been exploited, but is now lost and puddling on the ground. Again, the consequence states build, they don't recur or have pre-set effects. You still seem to be laboring under the assumption that the GM should already have all consequences mapped out ahead of time, when this style of play actively fights against this kind of planning.

Note - I actually know what the answer to this question should be, as I've used this method before many times myself. I disagree with pemerton that relying on the assumptions of genre is the proper way to use this*, largely because it relies on everyone being on the same page without actually communicating about it, which is not reliable. "Everyone knows," is a way to ensure some people don't get the memo, as it is an excuse to not communicate with the players.

The proper answer is that, when the player decides to help move the goo, the GM says (for example, in FATE language)), "If you fail, you are apt to spill some of the liquid on the floor, or on yourself. This will not kill you directly, but may result in a mild consequence for your character or a similarly sized aspect on a scene." Since supposedly everyone knows it is important, there's no reason to avoid explicitly saying so. Putting a bound on how much impact it may have is setting the stakes. Now, the players actually have some idea of how big an issue they are looking at, and can choose their investment in avoiding it appropriately.

This is *part of how* the function and importance of the goo is created in play.

It's fine to prefer more explicit stake setting, but I disagree that this is the "proper" answer. It's your preference, and likely works best at your table, but that's far from universal.

However, in your preferred presentation, it appears that you have not really established stakes past what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] did, but you critizied him for not being any more explicit in long reaching consequences. Having a bit of familiarity with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s style, I'd wager that he was leaving the exact nature of the consequences open for the immediately following play where the players then react to the spilled liquid and try to establish new fiction in their favor. This is akin to making a "soft" move of establishing a danger and then letting the following play address that, with a success mitigating and a failure paying off in a "hard" move related to that now established danger. As I said previously, and which you elected to snip here, you were asking for too much horse for the particular cart in question.

Also, it's fairly bad form to not only quote selectively, but to snip sentences such that a single sentence is presented and dissected absent it's surrounding context. I'd rather not feel like I have to repeat myself because you're showing you might have disregarded or missed that context.

*Or at least it is not a good way to explain this. When describing a process to people who don't use it, you need to include all the formal steps, and then note which ones you later learn to elide over. I suspect pemerton's group has some internal unspoken agreements, because they are familiar with him, and they elide over the formal step because they have trust. But that doesn't apply to the folks reading the thread - they don't necessarily trust pemerton, or the process he's describing.

This is more fair, but, again, I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] adequately lampshaded this by his explicit explanation of how the genre logic and tropes explained the inherent consequences to his players. That you disagree and he shouldn't have used an actual play example and explained how things worked within it but should instead have used a different example with imbedded step by step thinking is, of course, a valid preference.