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Play Advice: The Slippery Slope of Stakes

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorJesse
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 1
    I’m really surprised at the number of people who are having a hard time with In Wicked Age’s resolution system. I think the problem is directly related to something I’ve seen Ron Edwards talking about in a number threads regarding the mangled understanding of Conflict Resolution and the slippery slope that the idea of Stakes have slid down. This is me attempting to provide a bit of a history lesson and hopefully some insight into how In A Wicked Age… works.

    Let us step back and re-examine Conflict Resolution vs. Task Resolution. The key concept in Conflict Resolution is that it resolves the conflict of interest between two pro-active and motivated forces. I swing a tire iron at your head while you try to sweep kick me. That’s a conflict. Just because the rules resolve these individual actions doesn’t mean it’s suddenly Task Resolution.

    The difference between Task and Conflict is whether or not there exists an opposing pro-active, motivated and intentioned force. That’s why resolving climbing a fence is TASK resolution because the fence is not out to purposefully stop me, especially in light of the person whom I trying to catch fleeing on the other side. This concept is sometimes muddled by the fact that there are times when an inanimate object can be considered to be acting with motivated and intentioned force and there are times when a living agent is really just the weapon or color being used by the real pro-active, motivated and intentioned force.

    Exercise for the Reader: Go and pick up any White Wolf game on your shelf. You’ll see two sets of rules: one where you roll dice against a GM determined target number (or number of successes or whatever) and one where you’re making an opposed roll. Try playing the game where anything that requires the former automatically succeeds and anything requiring the later is ALWAYS rolled no matter what.

    Anyway, because motivated intentional action is a) definitional for Conflict Resolution and b) sometimes difficult to grasp, designers started making identifying the motivated intention behind the character’s actions explicit so that it could be identified if there really was anything *purposefully* standing in the way of that intention. The first place I recall seeing this explicit step are the Goals in Trollbabe. Then Stakes in Primetime Adventures and Stakes in Dogs in the Vineyard.

    But somewhere along the line people stopped being explicit about what action their character was performing and ONLY stating intentions. Then a little further down this slope people started abandoning character intention and just went straight to outcomes. So…

    “I pull out some pictures of my sister at her birthday. I want him to see just how beautiful she is.”

    …became…

    “I want him to marry my sister.”

    …became…

    “He marries my sister.”

    Resolution of the first changes the situation but leaves the free will and decision making of the target intact. He may very well see that your sister is beautiful but what that means to him and what he DOES about it is still his to decide. By the last not only have you robbed all free will of the target character, you’ve resolved HUGE chunks of fiction all in one go. Even under the first one if he leaps to his feet and proclaims, “By god, I’m going to marry that woman!” he might change his mind later or other situations might interfere with the wedding plans.
    • CommentAuthorJesse
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 2
    So you might be thinking, “But if I want him to marry my sister in the fiction how do I MAKE that happen?” Answer: “You don’t.” Even under Conflict Resolution you can’t MAKE anything happen. To do that is to play outcome, right-of-way. We’re not talking about Conflict Resolution at that point. We’re talking about procedures to determine situational authority among the players at that point. Indeed, the very bottom of the slippery slope by passes the character all together, "If I win the roll then the Emperor is assassinated by ninjas!"

    Conflict Resolution is purely a within-the-fiction, in-the-moment, between-the-characters thing. With Conflict Resolution all you can do is move from clash-to-clash-to-clash (large or small scale) and see how the situation evolves from moment to moment. This is why Conflict Resolution is a Technique that greatly facilitates Story Now. You can’t MAKE anything happen (beyond the momentum of those individual clashes) and to do so amounts simply to distributing the railroading rather than centralizing it.

    That’s what’s so confusing about In A Wicked Age… to so many people. It is absolutely 100% Conflict Resolution with no potential for outcome right-of-way games (mangled Stakes). Everyone maintains 100% sovereignty over their situational components. You can’t MAKE Joe your friend. You can instill in him an appreciation for your poetry. You can’t MAKE John send his army to the border. You can clearly demonstrate that the undefended border is a real threat.

    If this disappoints you because your investment is purely in whether or not John sends his army to the border then I suggest you’re missing a rather subtle and powerful thing. Consider the huge difference between John doesn’t send his army to the border because he dismisses your protestations as paranoia vs. John doesn’t send his army despite the fact that he can clearly see it’s a significant security hole. Those are VASTLY different situations.

    Don’t fall down the slippery slope of Stakes.

    Jesse
    •  
      CommentAuthorfnord3125
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 3
    So... most of this strikes me as very excellent food for thought... but... apparently I'm still having trouble with definitions, because I tripped over this:
    Posted By: JesseJust because the rules resolve these individual actions doesn’t mean it’s suddenly Task Resolution.

    You're saying that just because the rules resolve tasks... doesn't... make... it... Task Resolution? that is... Task Resolution != task resolution?

    if that is what you're saying, i guess on some level this should have been obvious to me. that the Capital Letters made a big difference. because it's clear that Task Resolution is still used, frequently, to resolve conflicts. and obviously at some point in there Conflict Resolution has to also resolve tasks... but... i dunno. maybe i need to go to bed. this is muddling my brain right now.
    • CommentAuthorMoreno R.
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 4
    Hi!

    I am interested in the history of the "stakes" technique in indie rpgs. Somebody knows the first game who used the word with this meaning? (I think that the first game who used "stakes" was Trollbabe, but with a very different meaning). And which games, in your opinion, pushed on this "slippery slope"?
    • CommentAuthorJesse
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 5
    Trollbabe uses Goal for the articulated intention behind character action. Stakes in Trollbabe is a GM technique used to identify the pivotal thing at risk in the entire scenario. Unfortunately, I don't know the actual history of the slippery slope. Ron might be able to identify the key moments in its history. He just pointed it out one day and I said, "Yeah, you're right."

    Jesse
    • CommentAuthorMoreno R.
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 6
    Posted By: Filip LuszczykThat's funny how just after reading this I'm starting to anticipate a flood of stakes-free games in the approaching months, a large number of them sliding down the other slippery slope.


    This is already happening, starting from games begun in 2006-2007 (after the 2006 Gencon, when there was a public talk about this, if I remember well the discussions of the times. There was a big discussion about what Ron called "chesting", that is related to this issue). After that I have seen "explicit stakes" missing from every new game of many prominent designers. Just to name a few games: Spione, 1001 Nights, Poison'd, In a Wicked Age, and I could add others that I THINK don't have stakes, but I am not sure about it (not having played them)
    • CommentAuthorCallan S.
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 7
    Hi Jesse,

    No, that's not what I learnt conflict resolution to be. Conflict resolution is where a player wants a thing to happen, and some other player (might be a GM, might not) has a different outcome in mind.

    There is no special reservation for whether an NPC does something like marrying your sister. It can be resolved by conflict resolution or it can be a reserved for playing out, with whoever plays out the NPC essentially address premise when they decide whether to marry the sister. The game designer or the group decides whether conflict resolution will resolve it, or whether someone plays out the NPC. You choose whether conflict resolution applies or not - there's nothing specifically in conflict resolution that makes it one way or the other.

    Are you drawing from a post of Ron's, that you could link to?
    • CommentAuthorJesse
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008 edited
     # 8
    Callan,

    With all due respect I know that's what you learned Conflict Resolution is. LOTS of people have somehow learned that's what Conflict Resolution is. That's NOT what Conflict Resolution is per Forge Theory.

    Some quotes from Ron:

    http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26095.0

    "In my view, the minute you see the word "stakes" articulated in some kind of pre-roll narration of, specifically, what will happen after the roll, run away, fast and far."

    http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25594

    "Sometimes the group Drifts the rules to add a kind of brainstorming session at this point, making the process more interactive and nuanced, but also essentially leaving play in order to storyboard.
    ...
    I have been especially annoyed, personally, with the co-opting of my term "conflict resolution" to describe it, which is intellectually abominable and has poisoned multiple discussions. All of this has set up a baseline of confusion, which is then manifested through a negative version of the technique, which is to propose "conflict" over competing narrations of what might happen next."

    http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19136.0

    "It happens that I think "Stakes," as currently discussed in a lot of blogs and forums, isn't really as big a deal as a lot of people are making out. In fact, in many cases, I think they are mixing up several distinct things:

    1. Resolution of an at-hand conflict of interest in the current situation
    2. Mechanical effects of a given outcome of the resolution system (score changes, etc)
    3. Larger-scale implications for relationships among other characters, outcomes of other events
    4. Consequences for the next significant real-person choices (new scenes, turn changes, etc)

    Now, there are a lot of games out there in which a more generalized combination of all of them is fundamental to play. My Life with Master is probably the core system which has influenced many of them, including The Mountain Witch, Primetime Adventures, The Shab al-Hiri Roach, With Great Power ..., and others. If you roll to gain Love in My Life with Master, you know (a) that the minion will or will not successfully appeal to his or her Connection character; (b) that the minion does gain a point of Love, but will or will not gain a point of Self-Loathing as well; (c) that the Master or a hostile minion may well turn his or her nefarious attention to the Connection character; and (d) that the scene is effectively over, because this game typically sees one roll per scene.

    However, I think people are confounding combining all of them with conflict resolution by definition, which is, as I see it, a bad case of synecdoche at the Techniques level.

    The Sorcerer resolution rules are only concerned with #1 and #2. This is a big deal. You don't have to announce or account for or otherwise deal with anything about #3-4 prior to the roll.

    ...

    "Furthermore, and this is important for the kinds of actions I just mentioned, there is no final/guaranteed outcome for a given stated Sorcerer action."

    http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=25892

    "For the dice to be involved at all, a character is after something, or "directs himself or herself toward it" if you want to phrase it that way. I found myself wishing, when writing the game, for more forceful words in English besides "volition" and "motion," and unfortunately "motivation," although etymologically perfect, has taken on a passive and internal meaning that is totally not suited. Think of the body launching into action, but not actually having quite yet moved, and you'll have the right idea.

    ...

    "Since dice in Sorcerer cannot solve future conflicts, only the one in action, the losing character's next action is still decided by the player, not forced to do what the winning character said."

    You kind of have to piece everything together from these threads. I pulled out a few choice quotes pointing in the direction of my main point but I suggest reading all the threads in full.

    Jesse
    •  
      CommentAuthornoclue
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008 edited
     # 9
    Jesse, "Does he [decide to] marry my sister?" seems like perfectly good stakes for a DitV game.

    Edit: "Does he marry my sister?" won't work because the characters in the conflict can't resolve stakes about a marriage occuring sometime later in the fiction. The sister might be shot dead in the next scene, making the stakes irrelevant. But "Does he fall in love with my sister and desire her hand in marriage?" is resolvable (at least for that moment).
    • CommentAuthorcydmab
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 10
    Polaris I guess it also all the way down the slope? It's not about conflict resolution? but distributed authority.

    "I put a glamour on my sister that makes you marry her."

    I guess you have to anchor it in a character action. At least at the start of the conflict. But after a conflict statement:

    "But only if you marry my sister."

    is valid, as is

    "But only if you gain aspect, fate: fated to marry my sister."

    I guess what puzzles me is isn't EVERYTHING about authority, in the end? Who gets to impose something onto the shared imagined space? Where the answer might be in some cases "no-one." But then, isn't this really a discussion about pacing? Or scope? As Callan says, the sister marriage could be handled at a slow, step-by-step pace, or it can be resolved in one fell swoop. And that seems like a continuum. What does "in-the-moment" mean? Nanosecond by nanosecond? "I want you, in the next instant, to feel attracted to my sister. I don't care what you feel 2 instants from now, but right now for a nanosecond be attracted! Roll!" Second by second? 6 second rounds? "Be attracted to her for a combat round!" Minutes? hours? "Be attracted to her for the rest of the day!" years? "Marry her and love her for the rest of your life!"
    • CommentAuthorJesse
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 11
    Posted By: noclueJesse, "Does he [decide to] marry my sister?" seems like perfectly good stakes for a DitV game.


    "Convince him that marrying my sister is a good idea" or even "Get him to agree to marry my sister" is a good stake for Dogs in the Vineyard. It says nothing about whether he will ACTUALLY marry your sister. A lot of times this is a really trivial distinction and "Does he [decide to] marry my sister?" is a fine and functional substitute.

    But that's a FAR cry from "he does in fact, in the fiction, marry my sister." A lot can still happen between that decision and the actual point of marrying.

    Jesse
    •  
      CommentAuthornoclue
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008 edited
     # 12
    Posted By: Jesse
    Posted By: noclueJesse, "Does he [decide to] marry my sister?" seems like perfectly good stakes for a DitV game.


    "Convince him that marrying my sister is a good idea" or even "Get him to agree to marry my sister" is a good stake for Dogs in the Vineyard. It says nothing about whether he will ACTUALLY marry your sister. A lot of times this is a really trivial distinction and "Does he [decide to] marry my sister?" is a fine and functional substitute.

    But that's a FAR cry from "he does in fact, in the fiction, marry my sister." A lot can still happen between that decision and the actual point of marrying.

    Jesse
    I agree. We cross-posted. See my edit above.

    Posted By: cydmabPolaris I guess it also all the way down the slope? It's not about conflict resolution? but distributed authority.
    Yes. Polaris isn't about stakes, its about narrative control. The stakes are always the same. "Does what I just said stay in the fiction?"

    Edit: In Polaris, you can definitely put the actual marriage on the table.
    •  
      CommentAuthornoclue
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 13
    Posted By: cydmabI guess what puzzles me is isn't EVERYTHING about authority, in the end? Who gets to impose something onto the shared imagined space?
    Yes. But "how" is also important. In DitV you don't gain the authority to bind the group to a wedding that will occur in the fiction at some future point in the narrative by winning the stakes of a conflict. That event needs to be narrated in a scene frame and/or roleplayed at the table.
    • CommentAuthorJohn Kirk
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 14
    Posted By: fnord3125So... most of this strikes me as very excellent food for thought... but... apparently I'm still having trouble with definitions, because I tripped over this:
    Posted By: JesseJust because the rules resolve these individual actions doesn’t mean it’s suddenly Task Resolution.

    You're saying that just because the rules resolve tasks... doesn't... make... it... Task Resolution? that is... Task Resolution != task resolution?

    if that is what you're saying, i guess on some level this should have been obvious to me. that the Capital Letters made a big difference. because it's clear that Task Resolution is still used, frequently, to resolve conflicts. and obviously at some point in there Conflict Resolution has to also resolve tasks... but... i dunno. maybe i need to go to bed. this is muddling my brain right now.


    ...

    Posted By: Callan S.Hi Jesse,
    No, that's not what I learnt conflict resolution to be. Conflict resolution is where a player wants a thing to happen, and some other player (might be a GM, might not) has a different outcome in mind.


    These posts are perfect examples of why I think the terms "Conflict Resolution" and "Task Resolution" are almost useless. They might have, at one time, had a clear meaning long ago. But, these days, there are so many different definitions you pretty much have to know the person you are conversing with to comprehend their meaning.

    That's why I prefer the terms "Negotiated Contest" and "Generalized Contest" to distinguish between what I consider to be the two primary forms of resolution. A Negotiated Contest is one where the stakes are determined after a conflict has been introduced into a play session. A Generalized Contest is one where the stakes are determined beforehand (either in the game rules or by house rules). This distinction is simple, unambiguous, and adequate to explain the difference between the resolution types.
    • CommentAuthorkomradebob
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 15
    "That's why I prefer the terms "Negotiated Contest" and "Generalized Contest" to distinguish between what I consider to be the two primary forms of resolution. A Negotiated Contest is one where the stakes are determined after a conflict has been introduced into a play session. A Generalized Contest is one where the stakes are determined beforehand (either in the game rules or by house rules). This distinction is simple, unambiguous, and adequate to explain the difference between the resolution types. "

    Maybe a bit ambiguous, since I don't think I follow you completely.

    Can you give me an example of a Generalized Contest's stakes?
    Would that be " If my character hits, they do d6 damage"?
    • CommentAuthorJohn Kirk
    • CommentTimeMay 22nd 2008
     # 16
    Posted By: komradebobCan you give me an example of a Generalized Contest's stakes? Would that be " If my character hits, they do d6 damage"?


    Any pre-defined rule that states: "A dagger delivers d6 damage when it hits" is an example of a Generalized Contest. If, on the other hand, your character gets into a fight, and then you negotiate with your GM something like: "Ok, if I hit with my dagger this time, I do d6 damage. But, if I miss, then my opponent gets the upper hand.", then that is an example of a Negotiated Contest. The difference isn't what the stakes are set to, in anyone's intent, or at what scale the contest resolves (i.e. a single swing of a dagger or the victory of an entire war). Rather, it is simply when the negotiation for the stakes transpired. Did it happen before the fight started or after? Usually, Generalized Contest stakes are negotiated very far in advance of a conflict. If the stakes were set by the game rules (i.e. daggers do d6 damage), then the negotiation occurred at the point when everyone playing the game agreed to follow this set of rules rather than some other rule set. So, the negotiation may have actually transpired months or years prior to your character even setting off on his current adventure, not to mention before you decided to have him swing his dagger in the current battle. On the other hand, the stakes of a Negotiated Contest aren't determined until after you know you are in a fight.

    Because of this, the stakes of Negotiated Contests are much more flexible and able to adapt to any situation. Their drawback is that they take longer to resolve on a roll-by-roll basis since you have to actually perform the negotiation step.
    • CommentAuthorCallan S.
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008
     # 17
    Hi Jesse,

    I've read through the posts you sampled from and some of the surrounding.

    Do you have anything to say about my suggestion? That your blending two things together as if they were one? Taking a sample from Seth

    This connects with the whole "goal" thing, because I want goals to be set in this vein. So, a good goal is "the investigator wants to get into the house past the security guard to talk to Beth", because it's about the investigator's agenda for the conflict. A bad goal is "If I win, Beth incriminates herself", because it's about the player's agenda for the conflict.

    I can almost hear the brakes screeching here. So it's okay to get past a security guard, but screeeeech, we can't tell Beth what to do! I'm watching where it's plain old 'one player wants something, another player wants another outcome' ramming headlong into 'I want to decide how that character addresses premise!!'. AND trying to say they are both the same thing, when it's two seperate car wrecks tangled into each other.

    From Ron,
    So, it's perfectly OK to announce "I cow him with my fierce gaze," or even, "I convince him to stop exploiting the factory workers," as a Sorcerer action, but there's no need to

    Furthermore, and this is important for the kinds of actions I just mentioned, there is no final/guaranteed outcome for a given stated Sorcerer action. In the factory-workers example, the targeted character may lose ... and yet continue to exploit the workers, just operating with an inflicted penalty based on the dice-defeat he just suffered. That is just the same as announcing "I kill him!" in a fight scene, but hey, the dice, even on a successful roll, don't kill the guy, so he doesn't die.

    Here it crashes again, and relying on a reference to a dice roll that doesn't resolve anything (a single attack), to explain resolution.

    Before we had getting past the guard Vs convincing Beth. There's no example here of, say, setting fire to the factory. But if there were, would a passed roll see the factory decide if it's on fire? Of course not, it'd be on fire. And that's assuming anyone cared about you setting it on fire to begin with - then it's on fire without a second thought. But the brains of Beth and the factory owner are different? Can you see that your giving a break to NPC's/PC's that your not going to give to an inanimate objects? That break is really a second, seperate process? It's not at all the same process you'd use to set the factory on fire.

    * I try and make an object do something. Someone opposes me. We roll. I pass, it happens my way. The object gets no choice.
    * I try and force a character to do something. Someone opposes me. I win...someone who plays out the character gets to choose if he follows it, or suffers a bit of a penalty.

    I think you have pretty much said the same thing as Ron, as much as it could be. But, just talking with you, if I wanted to test if there are two seperate processes at work and not just one, what metric should I use to test that? How should I measure it? Or is it just how it feels to someone and how it feels is what it is? If so, sorry for the long post, I'll crash out. :)
    • CommentAuthorMatt Snyder
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008 edited
     # 18
    Jesse, I think you're not quite representing "Conflict Resolution" as the Forge explored it and more so representing a specifical application of Conflict Resolution as seen in Sorcerer and IAWA.

    The problem surrounding stakes wasn't that out people were constrained by some outcomes. It was that doing so in the way that became popular-ish wasn't really Fortune-in-the-Middle. It was a binary. "If I win this roll, this happens, if not then what you said already happens." No no no! That's a binary, and it's Fortune-at-the-End. We're just rolling to decide shit we already decided. Ta da! Bleah.

    The kind of conflict resolution you're talking about rocks. It's how Sorcerer works. I believe (but am less certain, not having played) that it's how IAWA works. However, it is not the only kind of highly functional, Narrativist conflict resolution.

    It is not, for example, how Dust Devils works. I have it on very specific, direct communication with Ron that Dust Devils (and Nine Worlds, which is similar) is indeed Conflict Resolution that does not suffer the "stakes" problem. Simultaneously, it is emphatically not Sorcerer's process for resolution.

    To explain how this kind works, the "goal" is indeed set before Fortune happens. It becomes a thing that "must" happen. But, all kinds of other shit can happen, too. And, failure can cause it to happen. But it happens; it's required. This differs very significantly from Sorcerer.

    To use your phrasing "outcome right-of-way games" are possible and functional. But, there were many people playing it and desiging it in ways that didn't work very well. So, the whole stakes thing is still a problem. But, you're cutting off a bunch of good stuff from the Sorcerer love-fest!
  19.  # 19
    I agree with Sny-Dar. What Jesse describes as "procedures to determine situational authority" are probably what I prefer the most. I can see why it doesn't work in IAWA, but it doesn't mean it's a problematic style of play.
    • CommentAuthorJesse
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008 edited
     # 20
    Just to address what the two Matts said: I have a way of getting passionate about things and over stating myself. Sure, what Ron calls Storyboarding and I'm calling outcome-right-of-way can be functional but they are not the DEFINITION of Conflict Resolution which is where IAWA is screwing so many people up (which is my main thrust). Outcome-right-of-way can ALSO resolve conflicts within the fiction in a functional manner. One of the things I personally don't enjoy about such systems is that they can be used to resolve things that AREN"T in-fiction conflicts. Such that you and I can deploy the system to decide whether the attacking creature is really a zombie or a vampire or whether the asteroid will hit the earth or the moon. I don't personally enjoy that but I have no doubt that it works for some people.

    Edited Note: The reason I don't like such systems is because it can be used as a way to actually DODGE in-fiction conflicts. I narrate something to put pressure on a player's character and they then deploy the system such to simply eliminate or reduce the pressure without their character actually having to address it within the fiction.

    Jesse
    •  
      CommentAuthorPaul B
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008
     # 21
    A few thoughts, issues that continue to bug/haunt/intrigue me about how many players talk about nu-skool games (but not necessarily how the nu-skool games are written or intended to be played):

    * I totally get why CR/TR is so muddled; there are a zillion ways to criss-cross the concepts of conflict and task. Does "the conflict" refer to scope? Does "the conflict" refer to the central theme of any given scene? Does "the conflict" refer to opposing desires between two players? Two characters? Hell, I can even see a strong argument for "the conflict" referring to a moment of interesting tension. I'm not talking about Forge-approved definitional wars here; I'm talking about bog-standard English.

    * IMO, and this is only opinion, based on a whole lot of observation, the muddledness of CR/TR leads to too much telling, and not enough showing, in story-gaming. I've noticed in Actual Play there's often a very strong rush to the end of the conflict when there's a CR system in place: Let's skip over all this other bullshit and decide who wins. CR's going nowhere as long as the mechanical focus continues to be on the R, and not the C.

    * I'm totally surprised that "intent resolution" as a concept has never caught on. "Intent" is linguistically and conceptually more specific than "conflict," and indeed can exist entirely outside many (normal English) interpretations of the word "conflict." I also totally acknowledge that "intent" is still not perfect; you'd have to draw a philosophical line in the sand and assume that all intents are player intents. Once a participant has unambiguously stated his intent, it doesn't have to matter if that intent is incompatible with another participant's intent. And there are all kinds of approaches to the resolution side: you can achieve your intent via the literal skills your character has in service to that intent (the BW method), or you can achieve your intent via your character's thematic relationship to that intent (the Dust Devils method). A million possibilities present themselves.

    p.
    •  
      CommentAuthorjenskot
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008 edited
     # 22
    If anyone has any confusion regarding In A Wicked Age, check out this awesome thread. Edit: link works now and also make sure to read the whole thread as more and more is clarified as the thread grows. Rock!

    I'm not sure if stakes are what specifically confuse people's preconceptions of IAWA. IAWA doesn't resolve stakes but it also doesn't explicitly resolve tasks.

    The winner of initiative gets to act. The loser gets to say what happened. The winner of the round (which can be different than the winner of initiative) gets the advantage. But that doesn't determine if their action succeeded or failed. The fiction changes round to round. But not necessarily in the way you want! It works well for the specific genre it's riffing on.
    •  
      CommentAuthorfnord3125
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008
     # 23
    That link doesn't work... :(
    •  
      CommentAuthorjenskot
    • CommentTimeMay 23rd 2008
     # 24
    Sorry about that. Fixed!
    •  
      CommentAuthorJosh Roby
    • CommentTimeMay 27th 2008
     # 25
    I'm getting really tired of people trying to claim some type of ownership of the term "conflict resolution" and making claims as if they coined it, invented it, and have the sole authority over what it means. Until I see a game that can actually claim to be the first instance of the term published, there is no definition of CR. "Conflict Resolution" is a category, not a procedure, and many different systems of many different procedures and intents, will fall into the category. It is a descriptive term for organizing what games are already out there. It is not a prescriptive term describing how any given game should be played.

    Pragmatically, if you're writing a game right now -- just don't use the term conflict resolution. 75% of your readers will think you mean something other than what you actually mean. You should also probably avoid "stakes" as well, not just because the Grand Poobah has said that stakes are bad (in itself a mangled derivation of what anyone actually said), or because stakes are way unpopular because of what the Grand Poobah said, but because the moment you say stakes, your readers are going to think it works like Dust Devils or PTA or Dogs... and not in a reliable manner, but leaning towards whichever one they have the most experience with. It's a formula for reading comprehension disaster.

    This is what Vincent did with IAWA. IAWA is not conflict resolution. The IAWA text does not call it conflict resolution. Any argument applying a definition of conflict resolution to IAWA, which does not have conflict resolution, is going to bomb. IAWA has "Dice, actions, and consequences," or as Vincent has later said, "I should have called them action sequences." Let IAWA's system be itself without shoehorning it into your understanding of how other games work.

    Arguing over what Conflict Resolution is or isn't is pointless and useless for actual play. Articulating what a specific game does is way useful. Let's do the latter.
  26.  # 26
    Word up, Josh.

    Also, I love Jesse's posts in this thread.

    Can't we all be brothers?
    •  
      CommentAuthorJosh Roby
    • CommentTimeMay 27th 2008
     # 27
    Only if we're in a band.

    I call dibs on bass.
  28.  # 28
    I think Conflict Resolution is a useful term, especially for actual play, but I guess Josh is right regarding looking at what individual games actually do with it - like Jesse does in his first posts in this thread.

    Trollbabe calls it conflict resolution. So does Burning Empires.

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