Quote from: Justin Alexander;891294What you have here are two groups who have the same goal. In a typical conflict resolution system, both groups would make an opposed check using whatever skill best suited the method they were using to locate the documents (which might be the same method and skill for both groups). And the group which succeeded on the check would be the one to find the documents.

That works if the two groups do their rolling at the same time (real time not game time). If the second group can't roll at that time (e.g. if they aren't at a point where it makes sense for them to roll or we don't which skill they are going to select to roll against) then you can't have opposed rolls and thus the first group to roll may find the clue which controls reality for the second group. That or the outcome of the first group's roll to crack the safe has to be put on hold in real time while waiting for the second group to get to an opportunity in real time to use conflict resolution e.g. by searching the villains briefcase, finding a diary in the library, or some other method of clue acquisition.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;891294You appear to be arguing that it's impossible to unlock a door if you are wrong about what you think is on the other side of it.

Or that the intent was to open the door regardless of what might be on the other side or based on an erroneous belief or hope about what was on the other side. But his means, ends conversations are a too much of an Aristotelian dead end for my tastes.

The differences you cite for conflict resolution make sense to me. The PC's motivation isn't a concern for me, the weird ontology of cause and effect is in conflict resolution is.

• Conflict resolution allows a successful roll to find the clue rather than simply opening the safe, i.e. by successfully searching the safe the player in effect causes the clue to be inside the safe (or somewhere else where it will be found during the attempt to crack the safe) rather than (or in addition to) the clue being somewhere else.

• And conflict resolution on an unsuccessful roll to pick the lock on your cell determines that you can't escape by picking the lock (possibly including the guards preventing any escape attempt at all) rather than just failing to pick the lock this time.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;891299What you're saying here looks like English, but I can't make any sense out of it.

He's right though, because both of your statements can be reduced to y+1=x.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;891294What you have here are two groups who have the same goal. In a typical conflict resolution system, both groups would make an opposed check using whatever skill best suited the method they were using to locate the documents (which might be the same method and skill for both groups). And the group which succeeded on the check would be the one to find the documents.

What if both succeed the check roll? Is there then a duplicate set of documents?

Quote from: Justin Alexander;891294I agree with you that modeling every bullet fired by a machine gun as a separate die roll isn't a great mechanic. I'm just not clear why you think that all task resolution mechanics exist at the specific "per bullet" level of abstraction.

That's because I don't think all task resolution mechanics exist at the specific "per bullet" level of abstraction. Nonetheless even in a multi-bullet-roll-mechanism the system may arrive at a point in which damage is rolled. What's the effect of such damage? Is it only to deplete a HP value? In such a case the task is successful, but there is no effect. Your opponent is just as capable as before. Aside from meta-data, the game reality hasn't changed much and there's really no "effect".

It's not only a matter of performing a procedure to resolve the outcome of a task, but also to evaluate the impact such outcome has on the story.

Quote from: Saurondor;891316What if both succeed the check roll? Is there then a duplicate set of documents?

If there are degrees of success, the higher degree of success wins, failing that one could use some sort of best roll, a reroll, or some other method of tie breaker. Unless the item exists in duplicate (like say the password to a computer account) I wouldn't expect to end up with a duplicate pirate's treasure map, golden key, Hope Diamond or whatever.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;891299What you're saying here looks like English, but I can't make any sense out of it.

You noticed that about this thread too?  I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds this entire exercise full of moon-talk and utter crazy.

Quote from: Saurondor;891274If they never "fail" in a mechanical sense, then what's the purpose of the mechanics?

Simple. Not everyone is a god.

We usually don't feel the need to create some clever mechanic that gives a normal human a one-in-a-million chance to randomly trip while walking. A god may know advanced human skills to such a degree, it's as easy as walking.

I use a percentile mechanic. If skill rating exceeds 100, I don't feel the need to map this to some fraction-of-a-fraction of a chance for failure. And in cases where I feel some margin for auto-failure is warranted, it's based more on the situation that makes it warranted rather than the actual skill. For instance, maybe attack rolls cap out at 99% chance for success, magic caps out at 95%. All regardless of actual skill.

I never understood the gamer obsession to pour every possible thing that could affect the outcome or probability into one great stew.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;891294You appear to be arguing that it's impossible to unlock a door if you are wrong about what you think is on the other side of it.

I'm not at all. I've been arguing the exact opposite.

QuoteNone of those things are conflict resolution.

Blah, blah, blah, and you go on to make points that have been refuted no fewer than 3 times in this thread including the very post you're responding to. CR comes down to 3 basic points in these sorts of discussions. All of them have been debunked into oblivion. Just because I debunk point #1, followed by #2, followed by number three doesn't mean you get to refute point #3 by re-arguing one and two.

You don't exactly have what's known as a valid argument.

Quote from: Lunamancer;891348Simple. Not everyone is a god.

We usually don't feel the need to create some clever mechanic that gives a normal human a one-in-a-million chance to randomly trip while walking. A god may know advanced human skills to such a degree, it's as easy as walking.

I use a percentile mechanic. If skill rating exceeds 100, I don't feel the need to map this to some fraction-of-a-fraction of a chance for failure. And in cases where I feel some margin for auto-failure is warranted, it's based more on the situation that makes it warranted rather than the actual skill. For instance, maybe attack rolls cap out at 99% chance for success, magic caps out at 95%. All regardless of actual skill.

I never understood the gamer obsession to pour every possible thing that could affect the outcome or probability into one great stew.

Well I don't see it so much as figuring out if my character is a god or not or if there's a 0.0001% chance of failure by rolling d100 three times. It's more along the lines of what do I do with that 99% of the roll that tells me nothing more than the obvious: "I hit".

If I'm going to spend two minutes, or five or ten minutes figuring out a roll I want to get a bit more out of it than success/failure or yes/no. Specially if I know that success will occur 95% or 99% of the time. A die roll tells me more the more uncertain the outcome is. If I have a 50%/50% chance of success then I'll know more from rolling the dice than if I have a 95% chance of success. In the former I'm uncertain of what will happen next in the later I'm quite certain, the die roll in the later case is not telling me much I don't already know.

A die roll is more efficient in providing information the more uncertain the outcome is. Namely the less one result overshadows another. For example, in the classic d20 roll with critical a 1 is critical failure, there's a point in between with success/failure and 20 is critical hit. If your character requires a 19 or better to hit then the range between 2 and 18 that indicates failure overshadows all other outcomes. There's a 5% chance of a critical failure, a 5% chance of a hit, a 5% chance of a critical hit and an 85% chance of failure. Now what happens if the odds of critical failure and critical hit increase as a function of the success roll. For example if critical failure is required roll - 8 and critical hit is required roll + 1 with 1 and 20 always being critical failure and hit respectively? Looking back at the example now the character gets a critical fail on an 11 or worse, fails from 12 to 18, hits on a 19 and critically hits on a 20. On the other hand a character that requires a 4 or better to hit critically fails on a 1 hits on a 4 to 12 and critically hits on a 13 to 20. In these two later examples no outcome occurs more than 50% of the time. I'm more interested in the outcome because I'm less certain of what it will be.

I can't say I agree with your assessment there.

In hindsight, probabilities collapse. Once the coin is tossed, it's not 50% heads AND 50% tails. It's either 100% heads OR 100% tails. I think I mentioned in the other thread that gamers obsess too much on probability when they should be looking at effect. We could make a bet, flipping a coin, heads I win a dollar, tails I lose a dollar. Or we could roll d100. If it comes up 100, I win $99 otherwise I lose $1. The collapse of the latter probability tells me a lot more about the state of my checking account. The former, I already knew with a great deal of precision--give or take a dollar.


This is pretty significant. The deities I'm creating not only have 99%+ chance to hit, but the damage they deal is 100 times what a starting fighter (about 60% hit probability) can do. It's kind of a similar situation with the two types of bets.

But here's where you have to take the leap from isolated hypothetical to where it might matter in actual play. If I'm the defender and I can think of a way to substantially reduce the probability of being hit--say, something similar to the AD&D mirror image spell. By creating a mirror image of myself, whatever my opponent rolls, they are 50% likely of that attack being directed at my mirror image. Against the guy with 60/40 chance, it flips to 30/70. It's a decent swing, but in terms of difference from that 50/50 line, not super significant. Against the deity, however? That's bringing nigh-certainty down to 50% against a much more significant attack.


These are the sorts of challenges the deities would face in actual play. Because they are so potent, in the face of false information (like an illusory target), the difference in effect is massive. A duel between starting fighters in the system I'm using involves a lot of luck of the dice and depleting hit points. A duel between gods in the same system? More like a game of chess. You're looking at surviving one hit at most, and the attack virtually always hits. You either find an angle, or your entire fate rests on the initiative die, which will be about 50/50.

Quote from: Bren;891307That works if the two groups do their rolling at the same time (real time not game time). If the second group can't roll at that time (e.g. if they aren't at a point where it makes sense for them to roll or we don't which skill they are going to select to roll against) then you can't have opposed rolls and thus the first group to roll may find the clue which controls reality for the second group.

Sure. And, to take another example, if Group 1 slays a dragon in February then Group 2 won't be able to slay it in March (unless its brought back from the dead first).

Saying that you can't go around killing dragons because somebody might hypothetically want to kill them later (even though they don't want to kill them right now) doesn't really make any sense.

QuoteOr that the intent was to open the door regardless of what might be on the other side or based on an erroneous belief or hope about what was on the other side.

Sure. As I mentioned many, many pages ago if you set your goal to match the mechanical outcome in a task resolution system the distinction between task resolution and conflict resolution vanishes.

QuoteThe differences you cite for conflict resolution make sense to me. The PC's motivation isn't a concern for me, the weird ontology of cause and effect is in conflict resolution is.

They bug me, too. I don't actually use conflict resolution very often in RPGs.

I do find them useful for social interactions, because the cause-and-effect problems don't seem to come up: You want to make the character you're talking to do X, Y, or Z; and you can define whether you're going to beat it out of them, seduce them, bribe them, or whatever. I can setup the parameters of what's required (whether that's one successful check or several; or, in other systems, X number of successes) without trying to figure out whether, for this particular character, intimidating them once and then offering them a deal in a bad cop/good cop routine is sufficient.

I've also been doing a thing with the Infinity system where, due to the way the mechanics work, you can prepare for a heist or whatever by making a number of checks and build up a pool of Momentum that you can then spend on the job. (This ends up being kind of a weird hybrid, because the ultimate resolution is still task-based.)

Quote from: Saurondor;891316What if both succeed the check roll?

That's not how opposed checks work in any RPG that I'm aware of.

Quote from: Saurondor;891321Nonetheless even in a multi-bullet-roll-mechanism the system may arrive at a point in which damage is rolled. What's the effect of such damage? Is it only to deplete a HP value? In such a case the task is successful, but there is no effect. Your opponent is just as capable as before.

Okay, so we're supposing a task-based mechanic in which the only thing an attack can do is deplete HP and HP loss doesn't affect your opponent's capability.

And then you're waving your hand and saying there's some sort of "effect resolution" that happens because you appear to have added a task-based mechanic for suppressive fire. It's the waving of your hand which I'm still asking you to explain.

Quote from: Lunamancer;891350Blah, blah, blah, and you go on to make points that have been refuted no fewer than 3 times in this thread including the very post you're responding to. CR comes down to 3 basic points in these sorts of discussions. All of them have been debunked into oblivion. Just because I debunk point #1, followed by #2, followed by number three doesn't mean you get to refute point #3 by re-arguing one and two.

Oddly enough, asserting three strawmen, vigorously babbling about nonsensical "blood circulation" metaphors, and then being offended when people point out that they're strawmen doesn't actually "debunk" anything.

Quote

Quote

QuoteBut what the fuck does it even mean for an action to be successful or not, save for judging by whether its results were in line with the intent?

You appear to be arguing that it's impossible to unlock a door if you are wrong about what you think is on the other side of it.

I'm not at all. I've been arguing the exact opposite.

Intent: I want to unlock this door so that I can shoot Don Carlo on the other side!

Reality: Don Carlo isn't on the other side of the door.

Now, according to you, it's impossible to be successful at unlocking the door unless Don Carlo is on the other side of it. That's a thing that you said. I quoted you saying it. But I've also quoted you saying that you were, in fact, arguing the exact opposite of that.

Explain yourself.

Quote from: Lunamancer;891380I can't say I agree with your assessment there.

In hindsight, probabilities collapse. Once the coin is tossed, it's not 50% heads AND 50% tails. It's either 100% heads OR 100% tails. I think I mentioned in the other thread that gamers obsess too much on probability when they should be looking at effect. We could make a bet, flipping a coin, heads I win a dollar, tails I lose a dollar. Or we could roll d100. If it comes up 100, I win $99 otherwise I lose $1. The collapse of the latter probability tells me a lot more about the state of my checking account. The former, I already knew with a great deal of precision--give or take a dollar.


This is pretty significant. The deities I'm creating not only have 99%+ chance to hit, but the damage they deal is 100 times what a starting fighter (about 60% hit probability) can do. It's kind of a similar situation with the two types of bets.

But here's where you have to take the leap from isolated hypothetical to where it might matter in actual play. If I'm the defender and I can think of a way to substantially reduce the probability of being hit--say, something similar to the AD&D mirror image spell. By creating a mirror image of myself, whatever my opponent rolls, they are 50% likely of that attack being directed at my mirror image. Against the guy with 60/40 chance, it flips to 30/70. It's a decent swing, but in terms of difference from that 50/50 line, not super significant. Against the deity, however? That's bringing nigh-certainty down to 50% against a much more significant attack.


These are the sorts of challenges the deities would face in actual play. Because they are so potent, in the face of false information (like an illusory target), the difference in effect is massive. A duel between starting fighters in the system I'm using involves a lot of luck of the dice and depleting hit points. A duel between gods in the same system? More like a game of chess. You're looking at surviving one hit at most, and the attack virtually always hits. You either find an angle, or your entire fate rests on the initiative die, which will be about 50/50.

Ok. Let me take the bet example. Let's say you have two dollar bills, one fake and one real. If you lose (which happens 99% of the time) your opponent gets to pick a dollar from you. There's a 50-50 chance the fake dollar is taken and you lose nothing really. On which question does the loss of a dollar hang on most? Will you lose the bet? Will your opponent pick the fake bill?

In my game's case I took a bit different approach. Characters have almost no hit points and getting hit means almost certain death or incapacitating effects. Weapon damage rules are not very complex or detailed when compared to other games. This is because weapon damage is not very important in the minute to minute resolution of combat.

Quote from: Saurondor;891429Ok. Let me take the bet example. Let's say you have two dollar bills, one fake and one real. If you lose (which happens 99% of the time) your opponent gets to pick a dollar from you. There's a 50-50 chance the fake dollar is taken and you lose nothing really. On which question does the loss of a dollar hang on most? Will you lose the bet? Will your opponent pick the fake bill?

Well, this started with us talking about information, right? Well, what's the other guy's perception? How does his knowledge state change?

Assuming he'll eventually find out the bill is fake (when he goes to spend it), which bet has him more likely to discover I've got fake bills? If his odds of winning were only 50%, his odds of discovering the fake bill, thereby gaining information, are only 25%. He must first win the bet, then be unfortunate enough to choose the fake bill. Whereas if his odds of winning the bet are 99%? Well, now his odds of discovering the fake bill are nearly 50%.

My point is, when you use a more complete hypothetical that more closely represents actual play, your point about information does a 180.

QuoteIn my game's case I took a bit different approach. Characters have almost no hit points and getting hit means almost certain death or incapacitating effects. Weapon damage rules are not very complex or detailed when compared to other games. This is because weapon damage is not very important in the minute to minute resolution of combat.

In the system I'm using, at the higher levels of play--doesn't even have to be at the God level, this starts to happen at the upper end of mortal play--it pretty much is one or two hit to kill. Not only are hits nigh-certain. Damage from a hit doesn't vary in any significant way at that level. The game just focuses more on choice than dice at higher levels of play. Even at lower levels of play, the impact of choice tends to be roughly double the impact compared to D&D, in terms of the degree to which situational modifiers affect chance for success.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;891402Oddly enough, asserting three strawmen, vigorously babbling about nonsensical "blood circulation" metaphors, and then being offended when people point out that they're strawmen doesn't actually "debunk" anything.

Screaming "strawman" does not mean the argument actually was a strawman. If a person with a valid argument encounters a strawman argument, they generally are able to point out specific points that show the strawman argument doesn't apply. When a person is on a losing side of the argument, that's when they're likely just to blurt out random fallacy names. That's pretty much what you're doing.

QuoteIntent: I want to unlock this door so that I can shoot Don Carlo on the other side!

Reality: Don Carlo isn't on the other side of the door.

Now, according to you, it's impossible to be successful at unlocking the door unless Don Carlo is on the other side of it. That's a thing that you said.

I didn't say anything that even remotely resembles that.

QuoteI quoted you saying it. But I've also quoted you saying that you were, in fact, arguing the exact opposite of that.

You haven't.

QuoteExplain yourself.

Simple. You're a liar.

The reason that I, at least, associate Conflict Resolution as something different from Task Resolution is because games and mechanics are specifically designed with this distinction in mind.  Here's an explanation from Vince Baker that starts with the safe, moves on to longer conflicts and poses the combat question:

Spoiler

Quote from: Vince BakerConflict Resolution vs. Task Resolution

In task resolution, what's at stake is the task itself. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you crack the safe?

In conflict resolution, what's at stake is why you're doing the task. "I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!" What's at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?

Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting the dirt? That's how you tell whether it's task resolution or conflict resolution.

Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You can succeed but lose, fail but win.

In conventional rpgs, success=winning and failure=losing only provided the GM constantly maintains that relationship - by (eg) making the safe contain the relevant piece of information after you've cracked it. It's possible and common for a GM to break the relationship instead, turning a string of successes into a loss, or a failure at a key moment into a win anyway.

Let's assume that we haven't yet established what's in the safe.

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Success!
"You crack the safe, but there's no dirt in there, just a bunch of in-order papers."

"I crack the safe!" "Why?" "Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!"
It's task resolution. Roll: Failure!
"The safe's too tough, but as you're turning away from it, you see a piece of paper in the wastebasket..."

(Those examples show how, using task resolution, the GM can break success=winning, failure=losing.)

That's, if you ask me, the big problem with task resolution: whether you succeed or fail, the GM's the one who actually resolves the conflict. The dice don't, the rules don't; you're depending on the GM's mood and your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are supposed to even out.

Task resolution, in short, puts the GM in a position of priviledged authorship. Task resolution will undermine your collaboration.

Whether you roll for each flash of the blade or only for the whole fight is a whole nother issue: scale, not task vs. conflict. This is sometimes confusing for people; you say "conflict resolution" and they think you mean "resolve the whole scene with one roll." No, actually you can conflict-resolve a single blow, or task-resolve the whole fight in one roll:

"I slash at his face, like ha!" "Why?" "To force him off-balance!"
Conflict Resolution: do you force him off-balance?
Roll: Loss!
"He ducks side to side, like fwip fwip! He keeps his feet and grins."

"I fight him!" "Why?" "To get past him to the ship before it sails!"
Task Resolution: do you win the fight (that is, do you fight him successfully)?
Roll: Success!
"You beat him! You disarm him and kick his butt!"
(Unresolved, left up to the GM: do you get to the ship before it sails?)

(Those examples show small-scale conflict resolution vs. large-scale task resolution.)

Something I haven't examined: in a conventional rpg, does task resolution + consequence mechanics = conflict resolution? "Roll to hit" is task resolution, but is "Roll to hit, roll damage" conflict resolution?

The parts I highlighted, show the thinking behind the point of mechanics specifically designed for conflict resolution: shared collaboration over a story being told.

The problem with Task Resolution as some see it is that it can be boring and relies totally on GM authority.  The infamous "35 stealth rolls to get through a castle" are an example, as is the infamous "keep rerolling to open the door".

For a lot of people, these aren't really a problem, just a problem with a bad GM.  A good GM knows how to balance skill rolls. A good GM knows that time is a consequence, and makes sure the world reacts appropriately.  For others, this isn't good enough, because a bad GM must be corrected for with mechanics.

An entire game system, Gumshoe, was created to give players mechanics to resolve the overall conflict of finding clues without having to go through the actual individual tasks to find them.  This idea is real, is influencing design and mechanics that are making it to systems played on a lot of tables.

When you start to parse the difference between Task and Conflict in any game there is, you get bogged down in theory, because it depends on how you are viewing the game, which is why not defining certain things (like some players have a pathological reluctance to do) always ends up with a big forum clusterfuck.

If you're seeing Roleplaying as Playing a Role, ie. immersing yourself in character and trying to think as that character, etc...  then task and conflict do not matter.  Every Conflict is just a series of one or more Tasks and every small goal is part of a larger one.  When you see Roleplaying as simulating life of your character, and the mechanics are Rules as Physics, there is no difference.

If you are seeing Roleplaying as creating a story, and you are part authoring that story by Roleplaying your character, then Task vs. Conflict matters, because as a participant in the creation of a narrative, you need OOC mechanical tools to resolve the Conflict, finish the scene in a satisfying way, move to the next Beat in the Sequence, etc.  You're partly responsible for Pacing, and you need mechanics to allow you to affect that.

It's a fundamentally different way of handling What Happens based on a fundamentally different way of looking at the process of roleplaying.

That's why for me at least, Conflict Resolution has always been tied to games that feature Narrative Control mechanics, because usually those mechanics are specifically designed to provide players the means to resolve Conflicts in some fashion other than by simply making the proper series of Task-based skill rolls.

So for me, "Is OD&D combat Task or Conflict" is missing the point in a White Room, "How Many Angels Dancing on the Head of a Pin" kind of way.  Task vs. Conflict only matters when you approach Roleplaying from a narrative paradigm.

Or for Lunamancer, when you're one person "the character" the difference between Respiration and Circulation doesn't matter. because you never have one without the other.  When you're two people "author and character", then you can.