I know a few people think I’m a little “out there” when I start talking or writing about roleplaying theory and concepts (see “no need for backgrounds” for example). Well I found something that I think is a little “out there”! I came cross the phrase “Conflict Resolution” on the Fudge mailing list.
To be honest, Conflict Resolution is not the best wording for it. Apparently “Scene Resolution” has been thrown around as well. Not any better. Personally I don’t see the big deal with “Conflict Resolution” because, I think, in a sense most good GM’s use conflict resolution. Still I think it’s worth talking about a little.
Most RPG systems are task based (or “Task Resolution”). To achieve a goal you do A, B, C, etc. and roll for each one. However, even if you roll a success you can fail. For example, you break into a house, find a secret safe, crack the safe… yet the safe doesn’t contain the information you were after. Even though you succeeded (rolled well) at breaking in undetected, finding the safe and opening it, you still failed. This of course is under the GM’s control. He let you fail, even when you succeeded. a good GM’s know how to use this to make a good adventure.
So what’s Conflict Resolution then? Well in my safe-breaking example, the player was trying to get information. That was his goal. If we use Conflict Resolution, the player would state that his intent i.e. get the information. The how isn’t that important initially. The player and GM would then agree on the “stakes” of the conflict. If the player wins, they get the information, if they fail, he doesn’t or he gets into some form of trouble. They roll but in this case if the player’s roll is good, they get the information. The GM cannot say “the information was not in the safe”. The player wins, they get the information and now it’s up to the GM and player to describe what happened. Perhaps the player find some torn up pieces of paper in the bin while in the house that led him to safety deposit box, etc. you get the idea.
My first reaction to this was that it was just scale, putting tasks, A, B and C into one roll. Fudge’s Story Elements do this already by diving “tasks” into dramatic or narrative elements. So a fight could be done in a single roll if it’s not that important to the narrative, for example. But no, this is not CR (Conflict Resolution). In CR it’s about intent. What do you want your character to achieve? Combat and combat systems are terrible examples because we’ve all been preconditioned to think about combat as win = kill all the bad guys/survive. It’s actually built into the system.
CR works more on a player level than a character level. The player decides what he wants to achieve, what is his characters intent. In TR (Task Resolution), we make character decisions from moment to moment. What would my character do now? Even if you know your character’s intent, you decide action by action how to achieve it and you may never achieve it. With TR you can roll well and fail. With CR, you get what you want if you win. The GM cannot prevent you from achieving that aim.
It’s akin to asking the players “why do you want to do that?” until you get their goal. It also pulls some of the power away from the GM, if the player succeeds, they succeed and the GM can’t go back on it. There is haggling of course between GM and player about what the stakes should be, if the player requires all the information (i.e. stuff their character wouldn’t know) and even after the roll, what actually happened. The player could even describe what happens. The GM can also determine the degree of success. So in the case of “getting the information”, if you do only okay you get it but the bad guys know you have it. If you do brilliantly, you get the information undetected, for example.
It’s odd that when I started designing COG I kinda developed the same idea as Conflict Resolution, but to resolve a completely different issue, which is that of what the character knows how to do, but not the player. For example playing or roleplaying a “riddle contest” in game; your character would know riddles and solutions to them that you yourself would not. If a player answers the riddle, did the character succeed?
Part of me also reacted to the idea of summing up entire actions in one roll. With CR you could pull together a whole adventure in a single roll! But that’s not necessarily how it works. You can build a sequence of rolls depending on the conflict at hand, for example FATE using “wounds” to model what it calls “dynamic tasks”. You keep doing “damage” to each other until one wins.
It is an interesting idea, but until I actually experience it in play I can’t make up my mind about it. It could be great, but I don’t think it’s something every gamer is going to go for. What do people think?
Comments (2)
Dear sirs,
The article was very informative.
What is the answer to this riddle? Where are you? Hints: Where are you not…what works for you will work for me…close your eyes. I am terrible at riddles it is for a conflict resolution class. please e-mail answer by Sunday evening. Thank you Ivy Bleecher
What? I am totally not understanding what your asking. Your riddle is “Where are you”?? And this post has nothing to do with “conflict resolution class” but to do with roleplaying games!
If it wasn’t for the fact that there are no links in your post, I was very tempted to mark it as spam as it certainly seems some bizzare mash-up of the original idea.