Okay–because Fred demanded it!–we’re looking at conflict resolution outside the rigors of a narratively out-of-control imaginary playtest. Got your swimmies on? Your goggles? Your nose-plugs? Let’s dive in.
Ooh, before we do, if you want to check on the earlier game-chatter: The Gamechat Tag.
Goals: Conflict Is King
I had a professor in college, and this professor taught me my craft, such as it is. As regards storytelling, he said lots of awesome things, one of them being: “In life, we avoid conflict. In fiction, we strive for it.”
Conflict is bad-ass. Conflict is the number one reason why a story exists. You cannot have a story without conflict.
“Tom goes to the dildo shop, and buys a dildo shaped like Charles Nelson Reilly, and he really loves it. The End.”
That is not a story. You could argue it’s a plot, meaning, a sequence of events. But no story exists in that sequence.
Because conflict is king, we need story mechanisms that elevate conflict to its rightful place on the throne. Conflict must be sought. The GM and players should have reason by which to spur engaging conflicts, and further, reason to solve those conflicts. The goals and philosophies, then, are as follows:
- Escalation Is Delicious. A conflict is like a question. In conflict lies uncertainty–what will happen, how will this unfold, who is this guy hitting me in the kidneys with a wooden oar? In great fiction, answering a question does not lead only to an answer, but it leads to more questions. And so that is the nature of a conflict: solving one conflict should lead to more conflicts. That is the nature of escalation. Escalation is the machine by which the story tumbles forth, a snowball gaining in girth and momentum.
- Failure Is Not The End. In many video games, failure to solve a conflict–failure to pick a lock, failure to beat the end boss, failure to navigate perfectly–is the end. You die. Or the story dies. Reload, try again. That’s too binary. It happens in roleplaying games, too. You fail to find the right clue. You fail to save the maiden as the orc smashes her head in with an engine block. You fail to take the proper cues. The story ends until you choose properly. Ah, but we are creatures capable of more complex scenarios. I know that I am at least as intelligent as a monkey eating ants off a dirty reed, and so I must harness that super-intelligence to do more complex things with conflict. Conflict should be like the light at the point of refraction: failure doesn’t end the beam of light, it simply breaks it into other beams. Failure means the story moves forward. Failure is great.
- Conflicts Must Offer Reward. If conflict is king and failure is great, everybody should have motivation to create conflicts as well as fail challenges.
- KISS, Keep It Simple, Shithead. The characters are often heroic simpletons. Character builds should then comprise simple mechanisms and procedures. This doesn’t mean the outcome needs to be simple, but it does mean that picking up and playing the game–because, really, just like with stories most games are a series of conflicts–should be simple. I don’t know if we’re smart or savvy enough to go for “elegant,” but simple, we can do.
Okay. With those goals in mind, let’s run across a few scenarios as to how conflict resolution, using traits that the players made up themselves, might play out. Warning: these are spitballed to hell and back, and this process blog is little more than the big whiteboard of my brain. If it doesn’t make total sense, or it devolves into scribbles and sketches of unicorns and flaming guitars and winged penises, you were warned.
The Base Mechanism
At present, here’s how we see the base mechanism for resolving conflicts in the loosest of stools. Er, terms. Terms.
Each character has five traits. These traits are nouns: “Fists,” or “Face,” or “Charisma.” While all characters will technically have a face (though, I’ll concede your character might be a hyperintelligent cloud of methane and thus be faceless), by signaling it on your sheet, it means it is a trait critical to how your hero solves problems.
Each character will likely have five adjectives to pair with those traits. It remains uncertain whether these are gained at the time of identifying your traits, or if they are a motivation to grow your traits. So, “Face” is a noun modified by, say, “Beautiful,” or “Hideous,” or even “Smiling.”
Again, you have a trait, that trait exists because this is how your hero approaches conflicts.
It is also likely that everything else in the game has traits. Equipment a character uses has traits. A door a character is trying to kick down has traits. A villanous Space Blob Cowboy has traits.
Thematically, this works. The setting is a universe composed entirely of stories. Stories are made of words, and the Storyverse is just a visual of all those words put together.
To access a trait, one must spend that trait. A trait can be used to solve a conflict (”I kick down the door with my Oversized Feet”) or create a new conflict (”I kick in the Porn Miner’s face to start a riot down here in the Porn Mines”).
Once a trait is spent (”the trait goes dark”), the player must wait for it to come back naturally, or spend a chit (a sweet, sweet, nebulously defined chit) to bring it back.
If we assume that a character’s “health” in this game is his viability within the story, that means a character’s lifeline to the narrative is found in the number of traits and chits he possesses. Lose all of them, and a character’s place in the story is threatened (this is like dying, but is more a personally existential threat and is one that can be solved by coming up with interesting story and new conflicts).
If all elements of the game setting possess traits, it’s possible then to assume that all elements have a “health” trait equal to traits.
By spending at trait and committing to an action using that trait, a character has the chance to remove the trait of an obstacle or opponent.
Spending the Oversized Feet on a kick means that the door’s Complex Lock is taken away, and the door splinters in.
That’s the base mechanism in an ever-growing nutshell. Multiple variables are worth considering, of course. These variables may be exclusive to one another or used in tandem. Remember: this is the whiteboard. This is the “talking through it” part of the process.
Variable #1: The Verb, The Verb, The Verb Is The Word
If traits are nouns + adjectives, then Rob Donoghue put forth the idea that verbs are the actions. If chits can have stuff written on them, we now have a mechanism for random, non-authorial control. At the beginning of the session, the players and the GM put into a cup or hat a Specified Number of verb-chits. Any time a player gains a chit she pulls from the cup, and whenever she spends a chit she puts it back into the bag (or must replace it with a new verb).
It’s like Verb Scrabble. You have three chits in front of you: eat, run, punch. You must find a way to make your extant traits (i.e. noun-adjective combos) rock that verb to solve the conflict.
My Smiling Face eats his gun, or, more esoterically, My Smiling Face eats the shit he’s spouting in an effort to convince him that I’m on board with his harebrained plan.
My Oversized Feet allow me to run headlong into the rampaging troll, knocking him over. Or, My Smiling Face runs its mouth in a marathon of happy babble, thus stunning them with my nonsensical rambles.
What’s Awesome: By building little sentences, you’re building stories; Verb Scrabble is a neat idea; Random chance exists in this way, with players becoming the vehicles for that random chance; It covers that Balderdash angle we like; We also like abstraction and silliness.
What’s Not So Awesome: The choice if nouns is to show how a hero handles conflict, but by then forcing verbs, it removes that element–why would the character choose to handle conflicts with randomly challenging verbs?; Really silly-ass verbs could gum up the game, taking it into the neighborhood of Too Silly.
Variable #2: Roll Dem Bones
If we want a more traditional approach toward random chance, dice are always a winner winner chicken dinner. It’s likely then we’d need to assign numbers to traits, which could be a case of, “You have ten points to spend between your five traits,” or, “Order your traits from Strongest to Weakest, i.e. from 5 to 1, and these are your traits.”
Then, a rolling mechanism must be put in play: Roll a d10, if you roll under your trait, you do that thing you just said.
My hero possesses Unflinching Optimism at five, and my hero wants to use it to convince the Space Blob Cowboy that he’s wasting his true potential and he can do so much with his life besides White Slavery and Porn Mining. I roll the die, I get a 4, which means I rolled under my trait, huzzah. I succeed, and remove one of the Blob’s traits.
What’s Awesome: Hey, who doesn’t know and love dice?; Gives us easy mechanical resolution, non-complex, and firmly random.
What’s Not So Awesome: Me, I’m tired of dice, though yes, that might just be me; By giving the traits a numerical representation and a gradation, we’re taking off the table the idea that heroes are all Level 20 Bad Asses, and suddenly we have an issue where the Gunslinging Chimp hero can’t properly fire a gun half the damn time; Heroes in myth and story aren’t necessarily better at one thing than they are another–nobody ever says, “Jeez, that Cuchulainn is much better at Battle Frenzy than he is at Chariot Riding, but it’s not nearly as awesome as his Gettin’ With the Ladies.”
Variable #3: They Hate Us For Our Freedom
Democracy rules. Assuming that this is a game where collaborative story-building is important (and even equal to the roleplaying), it’s not unreasonable to have people be able to vote up or down on whether or not a player appropriately describes an action using one of his existing traits.
I use my hero’s Bone-Cracking Fists to… gently caress the secretary’s silken hair in an effort to seduce her.
Bzzt, table votes it down, doesn’t make sense. In this way, the table is also voting to see failure–maybe the player must now describe the consequences of failure, or maybe a die is rolled and another player is called upon to describe the failure, instead.
Or, I use my hero’s Bone-Cracking Fists to punch over that potted plant. I roar in rage and say something about how my dog just died and it made me angry, and I use my rage to gain sympathy.
Thumbs-up, the table votes that as interesting, and the game progresses.
What’s Awesome: Once more, Balderdash rears its head, in the way that players are effectively trying to convince others of the awesomeness of that story path; a democratic Whisper-Down-The-Lane is intriguing.
What’s Not So Awesome: Favoritism at the table is easier felt and more easily made real; are we punishing those who aren’t natural storytellers? (though, Balderdash punishes in the same way, as it’s the conceit of the game)
Variable #4: Nega-Traits!
Ever since Rifts’ “Nega-Psychic,” I like to put “Nega” in front of words as a prefix. I apologize.
This is an idea that continues to gain traction with us: the idea that the consequence of a failed action resolves the conflict in a way that applies negative traits over a character’s positive traits.
I throw a Bone-Cracking Fist and miss, and the Space Blob Cowboy injects me with a syringe full of bubbling green goo. Now, my Fists are replaced with the Trait: “Drug-Addled Confusion.” I can’t throw my fists because I’m too dizzy.
This idea hasn’t been properly refined, yet, but it’s interesting. You might be able to spend chits to remove negative traits. You might not be able to reclaim positive traits until the negative has been removed. You might have to somehow use the negative trait in a positive way to remove it (I use my Drug-Addled Confusion to drunkenly stagger into the enemy, knocking him over a bar stool, taking me with him). Certain attacks might be able to apply negative traits to others as opposed to, or in addition to, removing their traits. A nega-trait might not be an entirely new trait, but might instead be an adjective that replaces one of your existing ones (Bone-Cracking Fists became Clumsy Fists).
What’s Awesome: Adds a new layer of complexity, but remains simple; further carries the “narrative gameplay” ball forward; it ensures that traits aren’t purely binary (on/off), but can be adjusted and replaced and affected; possessing a negative trait still counts as a lifeline to the story, which is appropriate–characters have negative traits (alcoholism, anger, adultery) that are significant to the story, and this brings the possibility of Personal Conflicts to the fore in a new way for us.
What’s Not Awesome: I won’t lie, I don’t find anything un-awesome about this, yet.
Variable #5: Choose Your Own Failed Venture
This one is simple: a player can choose to deliberately fail an action, and gain something for it (chits, likely). The player may gain more chits by putting the failure in the hands of the GM or another player. Or, maybe it’s a way of regaining a spent trait without spending chits to do so.
The fight is on, and I take a shot with my Unerring Aim, except, I’m cocky as shit and I actually fire a laser round through the porthole window above the bar–and, since the outside is the empty vacuum of space, I now have vented the room’s oxygen out into the dark big nothing.
What’s Awesome: Yay! Rewarding failure!; Yay, conflict leads to more story!
What’s Not Awesome: Does this purely become a story-gaming exercise at this point, moving too far away from a roleplaying game?
Conclusions
Conclusion: it’s too early to be thinking about this shit, and my skull now feels like it’s being scoured from the inside by an army of chewing weevils.
Another conclusion: I only chipped away at the possible variables, here. A lot more exist, but this is already a certifiable Wall of Text, so I’ll just going to tap out and go drink some tea.
Oh, P.S.!
I think we’re going to take the Shadowstories serial fiction (y’know, the thing that forms the basis for this game talk) and up the schedule a little bit. You’ll hear more about it next week, I’m sure, but I think our new schedule will look something like this:
- Monday: Bonus Materials
- Tuesday: A great wide open gulf of not-a-whole-fucking-lot
- Wednesday: New chapter (evens)
- Thursday: Process Talk (game chatter will fall under this)
- Friday: New chapter (odds)
That’s the thought so far. It is, like all things, subject to change.
Peace out, Wordmonkeys.
