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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8649751" data-attributes="member: 70468">You’ve hit on the distinction Baker is making between task resolution and conflict resolution. The first one, task resolution, is a fundamentally sim-oriented approach. It’s modeling whether someone can perform the activity in question. It’s divorced from why the PC may be attempting it. That’s how it is possible to open the safe but find no evidence or acquire information that proves to be false. Those facts are meant to exist in the world independently of the PCs and their needs, so it makes sense that those outcomes are possible.Conflict resolution is about whether the PCs accomplish their intent. It would be poor form (if not cheating) on the GM’s part for them to have a player test for a conflict and win, then negate their win with false information or an empty safe. It’s the equivalent of killing the PCs (“rocks fall”) after they win a combat encounter. In both cases, they won, but the GM negated that and took away their victory.This relates to the diagrams [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER] shared and [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] reposted because conflict resolution provides a concrete way to end a scene that task resolution does that. After all, task resolution is just answering whether the PCs did the thing they did. It’s the equivalent of making an attack roll in combat. The hit may finish off the opponent, but it may not. The difference between combat and task resolution is that combat has a procedure to determine when it has ended (one side is dead or routed) while task resolution typically does not. The exception are tools like skill challenges, which allow the GM to frame the scene but the combined results of the PCs’ task attempts bring it to a resolution.</blockquote>

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