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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thefutilist" data-source="post: 9262782" data-attributes="member: 7044566">[USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER]Yeah you’re exactly right about my take on the unwanted. Now the GM can unilaterally introduce something that has a similar effect but it tends to be either accidental or from prep (they’re pre committed to it). I think the two things are different enough to occupy their own categories though.So on the what comes next thing. Conflict resolution is specifically dealing with how fixed elements interact. Imagine a game board with all the pieces in place, it’s pretty easy to see how one piece changing it’s positioning effects all the others. A GM can do that no problem. What we want the mechanic to do, is unify us in the face of our collective desires and then potentially spit in our faces. So when Miss Loverlorn approaches Mr Cad and declares she loves him, we all want that love to ring true and to touch Mr Cad’s cold heart. The conflict resolution mechanic steps in and says ‘no, maybe it won’t.’Now if the GM can introduce new pieces ad hoc, then they have sole control of the situation and thus all further positioning. As an example, imagine you’re three sessions into an AW game and the MC introduces a new heavily armed gang from over the horizon. They’ve basically subverted the existing situation and created a new one. So any previous conflict resolution means what? Well it does have some effect but it’s been heavily neutered. (edit: in practice I've found it has as much effect as the GM wants it to have except when it comes to characters inner states and values, which is why you can still get character arcs in Intuitive continuity play) Now mechanics can prompt the introduction of new pieces but they’re lame and why bother. If you really want to play in that style then just have the GM introduce stuff, the mechanics don’t actually make much difference. There are some mechanics that do introduce new stuff (circles test in Burning Wheel, that Port move from Burned over, some of the stuff in Troll babe) but they tend to be very heavily constrained. Compare that to some of the ways people play PbtA where you’re introducing Ogres or whatever on a miss.Now sometimes you have to introduce new stuff so what’s going on there? I think Ron and Vincent thought that situation resolution was so obvious that there would be an aesthetic constraint against it. Like you might have to introduce the Sheriff because the setting demands a Sheriff when there’s a murder and then someone might fall in love with them and suddenly the Sheriff has become a big piece of the ongoing situation. That’s a different aesthetic process to having Ninja’s attack because stuff has become boring. I think I’m going off on a tangent here though.</blockquote>

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