Task resolution answers the question: "Do I succeed at this thing?"

Conflict resolution answers the question: "Do I get what I want?"

Quote from: Piestrio;666300Task resolution answers the question: "Do I succeed at this thing?"

Conflict resolution answers the question: "Do I get what I want?"

Well said.

Quote from: Brad;666298My post was meant to be entirely sarcastic...

Ah, didnt catch that. My bad as the vernacular goes.

Quote, Pendragon's Passions fit the bill, and quite honestly, do it better than any stupidass story/indie game.

I agree.

Quote from: Piestrio;666300Task resolution answers the question: "Do I succeed at this thing?"

Conflict resolution answers the question: "Do I get what I want?"

what would be the benefit of addressing the second one with a system though?

Quote from: Piestrio;666300Task resolution answers the question: "Do I succeed at this thing?"

Conflict resolution answers the question: "Do I get what I want?"

This isn't very clear - since "what I want" could well be "to succeed at this thing".  

In practice, some systems - like Dogs in the Vineyard or Mouse Guard - explicitly have a mechanic of setting stakes based on character intent.  However, a lot of games that don't have this are still called "conflict resolution".

Quote from: jhkim;666583This isn't very clear - since "what I want" could well be "to succeed at this thing".  

correct.

Quote from: TristramEvans;666574what would be the benefit of addressing the second one with a system though?

You can add in authorial narration, usually as negotiated stakes. "If I win, this happens, I'm willing to risk this if I fail."  There's never a "you fail" or "you miss", a "nothing happens" result according to some.  Either you succeed, and shit you want happens, or you fail, and other shit happens.  The story always proceeds, everything is building on narrative choices of a player or of the GM.

That's why some people say Dungeon World "pops" or seems more vibrant and active, it's conflict resolution with set stakes, so no negotiation, which makes it less Storygamey.  Silva is right there, modern conflict resolution is definitely a new thing, even though failure or success possibly being with consequences is not (d6 SW).

Quote from: CRKrueger;666589You can add in authorial narration, usually as negotiated stakes. "If I win, this happens, I'm willing to risk this if I fail."  There's never a "you fail" or "you miss", a "nothing happens" result according to some.  Either you succeed, and shit you want happens, or you fail, and other shit happens.  The story always proceeds, everything is building on narrative choices of a player or of the GM.

Sounds just like every other RPG, except the player is determining what happens if the character fails? So its an added metagame element that basically removes the GMs responsibility for narrating inteerresting results of rolls?

Quote from: TristramEvans;666592Sounds just like every other RPG, except the player is determining what happens if the character fails? So its an added metagame element that basically removes the GMs responsibility for narrating inteerresting results of rolls?

Not always.

Task resolution:

"I want to sneak into the castle and steal the jewels"

"Okay, roll stealth, then climb to hop the wall, then we might fight with a guard if you fail. Then roll lockpicking" etc... Obviously played out and probably a lot more fun and involved than a sting of rolls.

Conflict Resolution:

"I want to sneak into the castle and steal the jewels"

"Okay, roll your thing, if you succeed you end up with the jewels. If you fail you are caught and thrown in jail"



Personally I think the problem with the latter is that it doesn't allow for that kind of organic development of consequences and situations.

Quote from: TristramEvans;666592Sounds just like every other RPG, except the player is determining what happens if the character fails? So its an added metagame element that basically removes the GMs responsibility for narrating inteerresting results of rolls?

Here's the lengthy description of conflict resolution from the wiki version of the RPG Design Patterns pdf...
http://rpg-design-patterns.speedykitty.com/doku.php/pattern:negotiated_contest

Key section is probably this, viewing a conflict as being player-vs-player (with the GM being one player) rather than character-vs.-world:

QuoteSo, boiled down it its essence, role-playing is a negotiation process whereby players construct an imaginary worldwhere cool things happen. When one person suggestsan idea that he thinks has a high cool-factor but another player thinks some other idea is better, a conflict arises. The Negotiated Contest design pattern allows players to negotiate a collection of possibilities that are acceptable to all involved and then determine through some mechanical means which possibility is actually incorporated into the game world

I'm not sure about which non-negotiated contests can also be flagged as 'conflict resolution'. Potentially if you have stakes for success or failure that are rule-determined but still metagame?

Quote from: Piestrio;666593Not always.

Task resolution:

"I want to sneak into the castle and steal the jewels"

"Okay, roll stealth, then climb to hop the wall, then we might fight with a guard if you fail. Then roll lockpicking" etc... Obviously played out and probably a lot more fun and involved than a sting of rolls.

Conflict Resolution:

"I want to sneak into the castle and steal the jewels"

"Okay, roll your thing, if you succeed you end up with the jewels. If you fail you are caught and thrown in jail"



Personally I think the problem with the latter is that it doesn't allow for that kind of organic development of consequences and situations.

Nah, you can do that in conflict resolution too. 'Resolve everything in one roll' stakes like the example you described would make for a pretty shitty game in my opinion, I don't do it like that at all. I'd probably do something like a stealth/infiltration roll to see if the PC can get in without raising the alarm, with failure meaning guards turn up and maybe there's a fight or a chase. Success means the PC gets to the vault itself, and then has to do another roll to get through the door, again with failure meaning that guards come or something else bad happens (his lockpicks break? a silent alarm is raised? he takes too long and there are now more guards in the courtyard because they're changing shifts?). Probably another roll after that to see if the PC can exfiltrate successfully or whether he is pursued through the woods by the King's hounds, or the guards got a solid enough look at his face to send bounty hunters after him afterwards.

The difference between CR and TR is really just about making the stakes of the roll clear and interesting. So you don't get stuff like 'you fail... nothing happens' and if the player succeeds he gets to achieve his stated goals as negotiated with the GM (so no 'If I win I get Excalibur, 3000000 gold pieces, and a pony!' bullshit).

Quote from: Piestrio;666300Task resolution answers the question: "Do I succeed at this thing?"

Conflict resolution answers the question: "Do I get what I want?"

Quite.

Quote from: TristramEvans;666574what would be the benefit of addressing the second one with a system though?

I really have no idea.

Quote from: TristramEvans;666574what would be the benefit of addressing the second one with a system though?

When you resolve situations in bigger time scales, it makes the game move faster and with less rolls, focusing more on the fiction instead of math, and even feeding the fiction depending on the implementation of the concept (With the added flexibility of allowing you to reduce the time scale back to something near task-resolution if needed)

But, as with everything, it may be useful or not depending on personal preferences, themes/premises and situations.

Quote from: RPGPundit;662827There's been very little truly significant innovation in regular RPGs after the old-school period.

True. Once you hit "ability + skill vs. die roll", at least 95% of RPGs very rapidly lock into that mechanical design. (And most of the others only vary by dropping either ability scores or dropping skills.) The only open question at that point remained what sort of die roll you were using.

Then, once you've added dice pools in the mid '80s, you've also basically covered all the die mechanics. From that point forward, RPGs are completely dominated by variations on a theme with the occasional gimmick thrown in.

Character creation has a bit more experimentation and variation, but it still tends to boil down to designers selecting one of a small set of mechanical structures that all basically existed by 1986.

Once recent innovation I've seen popping up in a handful of systems, however, is "interrupted resolution": In the traditional approach, you declare your action and then roll the dice; the dice determine the ultimate outcome of the action. In an interrupted resolution, you declare your action, roll the dice, and the outcome of that first resolution puts you about half way to your goal and tells you how you're doing. Then you can make another choice and finish resolving the action.

Oh, and I'll toss in an honorable mention for Technoir: "Verb - negative adjectives = dice rolled to determine if you can apply an adjective" is superficially similar to "ability + skill", but the structure of choosing what effect your character is trying to achieve (through the adjective they're pushing) is a sufficiently novel approach to roleplaying that I'd qualify it as something that can't be replicated in older games.