I’ve encountered some people who seem to be under the impression that Sorcerer uses task resolution rather than conflict resolution. Sometimes this is because of the lack of techniques like stakes and sometimes this is because of the scale of resolution such as resolving a single whack with a crowbar. Stakes and scale do not conflict resolution make. Sorcerer does not use the term conflict resolution because The Forge theory had not yet settled on that phrase to describe the technique.

Conflict resolution means that the system operates at the level of resolving conflicting interests between characters. We only need to identify that the interests of two or more characters are in conflict and have the resolution in some way sort those interests to have conflict resolution. We don’t even need to articulate what the interests are and the interests in question can be of any level of granularity.

Example of Unarticulated Interests

A character in a bar starts getting flirty with a girl who clearly seems to be nervous about the man’s attentions.

That’s all we need to call for a Will vs. Will role in Sorcerer. We don’t know what the man wants from the woman exactly. It could be sex, information, just generally endearment. We don’t know why the woman is so nervous, maybe she’s gay or has an abusive boyfriend. We don’t know yet. All we know is that the man seems to want something and the woman seems unwilling to give it. We can establish more detail after the role decides who gets his or her way. No stakes. No goals.

Example of Small Scale

The man wants to sweep kick the legs of the woman who is about to shoot him. Clearly this is just a single moment in a much larger evolving situation. But it’s still a conflict and not a task because we have the incompatible interests of two characters. Note that we also have four possible outcomes. The man sweep kicks the woman whose shot goes wild as she falls. The woman shoots the man preventing him from kicking her. The man sweep kicks the woman but her shot lands against him as she goes down. The woman side steps the man’s kick which causes her shot to go wild. Again, notice that we have no idea what the larger scale situation is.

Contrasted with Task Resolution

A man needs to jump over a fence while chasing a woman. The fence is not a character in this situation. The man is not in conflict with the fence, he’s in conflict with the woman. To resolve the jump over the fence does not resolve the interests at hand. The fence is a complication on the conflict of the man trying to catch the woman and the woman trying to get away.

Another point of confusion is the role of “helper” rolls. These can also feel like task resolution because they don’t really resolve anything at all. An example of the helper roll is the book where the character with Martial Artist Cover rolls that and then rolls over any victories to his primary Stamina roll. Another example might be rolling Lore against the Power of a demon to discover a weakness.

The reason these aren’t task resolution is because they only make sense in the context of an actual conflict. A character can only ask if his Martial Artist Cover is relevant if something else is at hand to be relevant about. Same goes for looking for the demon weakness. These rolls are a STEP in the conflict resolution procedures. They are not the resolution themselves.

I think people have difficulty figuring out when to use helper rolls. The purpose of these helper rolls is to eliminate GM Fiat when the answer to obviously relevant questions would VASTLY alter the nature of the situation. Think back to your GMing history and remember all the times a player would ask something that would require a judgment call on the part of the GM. I know these situations always made me uncomfortable because I knew my answer would greatly sway the momentum of the situation. I think some people who have been GMing for a long time have learned to shoot past that unease and make a snap judgment. I never did and now the Sorcerer rules mean I don’t have to.

Consider the situation where the player asks, “Hey, given all my knowledge of Sorcery do I know anything USEFUL about this demon?” That’s a damn good question and even if I made a judgment call we still wouldn’t know just how useful it is. The rules give us both. Roll Lore vs. Power. Roll the victories over to an action relevant to whatever it is it turns out you know. This is the idea behind the Past rules in Sorcerer & Sword. “Hey, I used to be the captain of the guard can I round up a few guys to go storm the castle?” Again, that’s a damn good question, make that Past roll. No fiat required.

Jesse

This is awesome stuff. I really must try to play some Sorcerer sometime this year.

Hi Jesse,

We've already Whispered, so you know I think this is cool. I'd like to add an observation I've recently had about Sorcerer and conflict resolution.

In Sorcerer, you don't roll dice just because you're character is trying to do something. You bring out the dice only when there's a conflict of interest.


Here's an example:

Let’s say PC Maggie wants money from NPC Ben to start her company, and NPC Ben wants to get into PC Maggie’s pants.

So, Maggie says, “I want you to give me $300,000.” Now, let’s say there was more roleplaying and such, and she’s trying to Persuade him. If she had a Persuade skill, Maggie's Player might use to win Ben over. In Sorcerer we'd use Will vs. Will. So, we make a Will vs. Will, right?

Well, not so fast. In Sorcerer, the use of resolution mechanics is completely situational and determined by the fiction.

Here’s the thing in this situation: I’m playing NPC Ben, and he isn’t adverse to giving Maggie the money. In fact, he sees it as an opening to getting what he wants. So there’s no roll. Maggie’s Player doesn’t roll dice, because there's no conflict of interest yet.

Instead, NPC Ben steps up to Maggie and says, while putting his hand on her hip, “Well, maybe we can work something out.”

Now, he’s trying to seduce her. Is there a roll? Does Maggie need to defend? I don’t know. It’s all situational and depends on how Maggie's Player responds.

If Maggie says, "Okay," no rolls are needed. If Maggie removes Ben's hand from her hip and says, "Give me the money, and only the money. I need this deal Ben, That's all I'm asking. For old time's sake," and I know Ben doesn't think that's a good enough reason, now we roll the dice because there's a conflict here. And, as Jesse points out above, we at the table don't know how it's all going to turn out. It isn't just if she'll get the money. She might end up giving him a kiss by the time everything is done. But we had to just keep roleplaying along until we reached a moment where we knew, from establishing the fiction, that a conflict of interests had been reached.

It might be obvious to many, but for me realizing that clicked a lot of pieces about Sorcerer into place. You don't roll to see if your character succeeded or failed at something. You roll because there's a conflict of interests.

CK

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: Jesse</cite>After a SINGLE die roll:

The man could be bleeding from a wound as the woman menacingly advances cocking back the hammer for a second shot.

The man could be bleeding while holding a gun on an unarmed woman.

The man could be uninjured holding a gun on an unarmed woman.

The man could be prone after having just dodged a bullet.</blockquote>

How so? I understood the resolution as a zero-sum game, i.e. one party's degrees of success are another party's degrees of failure. That would make for two possible outcomes, i.e. simultaneous win or simultaneous loss are not possible, considering you have one opposed roll (which is a feature of the system I don't like). Or have I missed something?

EDIT: Actually there are no explicit degrees of failure in Sorcerer but the currency ensures they kind of exist.

Christopher & Josh,

You're both a little ahead of me. There's a whole separate post coming on Social Conflict and whole separate post coming on How the Dice relate to the Narrative.

Bifi,

Ah. How familiar are you with the Sorcerer rules? This is not a simple opposed roll situation. This is a full on complex conflict which actually means in terms of fictional details there's a lot more than four outcomes resulting in a large matrix of logistical outcomes. There's actually 12 possible mechanical outcomes each of which will spin the narrative logistics slightly differently.

Basically whoever goes first the other has the option of either giving up their action to fully defend or defending with just 1 die and keeping their action.

Consider the woman goes first, the man doesn't abort and fails to defend with his one die but then she also fails to defend against his action.

That's how you end up with him shot AND holding the gun.

Jesse

Posted By: WillHThat's not really one single die roll. It's four. It is one single conflict. Was that what you meant?

Yes, sorry. I really meant, one pass through the resolution system. Sometimes I see the dice as having not really been fully rolled. Kind of suspended still in motion until the "final outcome." But yes, in reality, it's four physical die rolls.

Hi Jesse,

That's interesting. I didn't mean it as an example of Social Conflict, per se. I was just trying to illustrate the difference between task and conflict resolution. Sorry if I muddle anything. (Sincerely.) The same would apply to combat, really. If one character wanted to shoot another, and the other character wanted to be shot, I wouldn't require a roll. No conflict of interest. But you've got a plan, and I'll step back.


Also, while all you were posting I wrote up the outline for Joshua's question.

Since I did all the work, I'll post it here, but I'll be quiet from now on. (Promise!)


Hi Joshua and Micael,

Mechanically it works like this:

The Players for the Man and the Woman roll. From this roll initiative is determined, and these serve as the rolls for the attacks for each Character. Defense rolls against attacks are made if the PC is attacked, and is a second roll, while the attack rolls made by Players sit out on the table, used as needed in order of Initiative.

In the case Joshua is asking about, here's what happened:

The Woman has the initiative. Her action goes first and she will fire before the Man can sweep her legs out from under her and get the gun.

Here's what the man can do in response to this fact:

Realizing he's about to take a point blank gunshot, he could Actively Defend, which lets him roll dice equal to his Stamina (plus Bonus Dice he can grab right now by adding color and detail) against the Woman's roll that is sitting on the table.

OR...

He can Suck It Up, which means he rolls one die (plus Bonus Dice he can grab right now by adding color and detail) against the dice the woman rolled for the attack. This is his Defense roll. He might take damage from the woman's attack, he might not. He has to roll to find out. If he takes damage doesn't incapacitate him, he'll be free to use his attack (which was the first roll he made, sitting out on the table), to sweep kick the woman and get the gun. If that's the case, the woman then gets to make a full Stamina roll (plus modifiers) for Defense. (If a character has already taken an action, he or she gets full Stamina plus Bonus Dice for the Defense roll.)

Notice that because the currency rule allows bonuses and penalties to move easily between Bonus and Penalty, any Penalty dice the Man might have incurred from his Defense roll if he loses against the woman's attack simply become Bonus Dice to the Woman's Defense roll. (In this way, the Man doesn't have to remove any dice from his attack dice, which were the first dice he rolled and are still sitting on the table.)

So, if the Man's attack works (if his attack succeeds against the Woman's defense), he gets shot, but he gets to sweep the legs out from the woman and grab the gun.

Michael, do you see how one person's penalties are another person's bonus, but that doesn't mean only one person can succeed and the other one fails?

Joshua, does that answer the question?

CK

Gaerik, Jesse, Christopher,

Yeah, I completely forgot about defending/sucking it up and I got sidetracked by the "one roll" claim (especially given that you need some dice to stay on the table). Chris, you described it very thoroughly, the process now makes a lot more sense. Jesse, I can also see why it's 12 possible mechanical outcomes.

We played Sorcerer for about 8 or 9 sessions some time in 2003-2004. Granted, it was my first stab at indies, but I remember how amazed I was by the system and how the conflicts "played themselves" when we let them. Now I also appreciate how narration is done before the rolls and during the operation so there is not much of a need for narrating success afterwards - this often leads to problems in MW/PTA groups I have seen playing when in addition to declaring stakes the players describe the "how" in detail.

I do get the currency and it definitely is one of the strengths of the system. Sadly on p. 75-77 the book uses only helper rolls and the boost power as examples, but I think I recall an example such as yours from somewhere else where instead of subtracting from one character's roll, damage was used as bonus to another character's roll (what is not the same in terms of probability of success, as one of my players quickly pointed out during the game).

If I remember correctly I think we had a problem with intentions and difficulties - i.e. for the Man only one success is required to take the gun from the Woman, which at that time seemed tactically overpowering. But from today's position I appreciate the ups-and-downs esthetics of conflict in Sorcerer.

Michal

Posted By: Josh Ballyhoo RobyWe just... roll dice when it feels like we've got a conflict of interests. So we roll in dice, and I succeed... what, exactly, constrains what my success means? And moreover, who says what my success means? Do I, as the player, say what happens, or does the GM, or what?

1) Despite the lack of formal stakes and goals there is usually a lot more creative data to go on both formal and informal. Generally we have more of an idea of "What's up" either through refinement of situation for bonus dice ("I look her square in the eye and say, "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen") or informally among the group chatter ("She is SO going home with me!"). Note: I don't know why I'm so hung up on the pick up scene in the bar.

2) That socially creative space has a phenomenal and hard to describe limiting factor. Ron's music metaphor applies in fully. Once a few notes of the song have been played there are only a few follow up notes that won't sound like dissonance or noise.

3) Sorcerer is silent on editing rights unlike say, Spione or PtA with the high card. How the data the system gives you gets creatively executed is customized from group to group for that group's specific social dynamics.

The main purpose of my posts was to illustrate that there IS a lot more data and process in that system than I think people realize. However, at SOME POINT the groups specific creative synergy has to kick in, very much in the "jam session" way Ron talks about. And in practice that's not as willy-nilly or fiat driven as it sounds BECAUSE of all the refinement, data and process the system gives you.

Jesse