Since this would be a massive threadjack, taking this out of the Questions for Jason Durall thread since we're no longer talking about the game.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882460I am puzzled.

Where did you get this idea that "Conflict is when you do not resolve everything at the single action level" from? It is wrong, and I cannot recall any CR advocate describing conflict resolution in this way.

It does not matter how many rolls you make to determine whether you are using CR or TR. For instance, in Hero Wars (from which Edwards took a lot of his ideas that he later appllied to other games) you describe each single action in detail, exactly like in OD&D combat. You can easily go on for 20+ single exchanges before the scene is over. And that is 100% recognised as Conflict Resolution, not task. No one would call it Task Resolution.

No, strictly speaking, number of rolls does not matter, but the abstraction of multiple rolls each involving one specific task into a single more general roll which determines the overall goal is Conflict Resolution.

In other words, look at the Take 10 or Take 20 rule.  If I'm doing something that there is no real consquence to failure then instead of rolling the die 20 times to determine the outcome of every single task, I can compress that and say I took 20 times and one of those times I hit the number I needed.

Now, I think your argument there is that this is still Task Resolution, because what was determined was a Task, ie. whether or not I opened the lock, not "did I accomplish what I wanted to do by getting through the lock".

However, Task vs. Conflict can get murky, for example the classic description of trying to get to a ship before it sails.  Task Resolution would be determining whether I jumped over those barrels, slid underneath those guys carrying the crates, got around the guards without delaying by fighting them, or overcoming each individual obstacle on my way to the ship, but Conflict Resolution would determine whether I got onto the ship or not.  Because depending on how I resolved those tasks, I might succeed at every single one of them, yet still fail to make the ship on time.

However, why did I want to get on the ship? Every goal is usually just a minor step of a larger one.

So generally, What vs. Why is sometimes used to describe it or focusing on the End as opposed to the Means is sometimes used.

Once you start moving from single Tasks, Attack/Parry, Hit or Miss, to abstracted mechanics then you start blurring the lines.

For example, going back to the 2d20 system, if I am fighting an Elite or a Mighty Foe, then we are dealing with a blow by blow situation Attack, Parry, Hit, Miss, Damage, Breaking Guard, Regaining Guard, etc...  Individual Tasks that I can succeed or fail at multiple times, yet still Win or Lose the overall Conflict.

However, when faced with a Mob, I hope we are concluding that I don't literally make one single swing and cut through 5 people, right?  That would be silly.  So, the goal is to kill all of the mob, and my attack and damage is abstracted to determine how well I did against the entire mob.  Perhaps only killing one or two, perhaps killing all five.

Against 5 Elites, I must win enough individual tasks to kill all 5 before I can win the fight.
Against a 5-man Mob, I can kill them all in a single roll, abstracting all the back and forth.

I call the latter shifting to Conflict Resolution.  

Similarly, the ability to abstract a series of individual tasks of individual characters into a single roll that determines the overall outcome I also interpret as Conflict Resolution as the individual successes or failures are meaningless, only the overall outcome is determined.

You may disagree with my interpretation or feel free to call me an ignorant, uninformed maniac if you prefer.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882464You may disagree with my interpretation or feel free to call me an ignorant, uninformed maniac if you prefer.

Nope. You are simply giving the term a definition that is not the same used by the one who brought the subject on the table (that is, Ron Edwards or someone else at the Forge).

This is perfectly legit, but it is absolutely prone to generating confusion. Exactly in the same way as Ron's usage of the word "Simulationism" to denote "genre emulation" is prone to confusion.

What you describe here I would call "levels of abstraction" rather than task resolution / conflict resolution. I am using your own words, so it sounds plausible.

That said, I agree that "level of abstraction" may be a component of "suspension of disbelief", so I am rather willing to agree with you that the choice for this rule is questionable. The more detail you put in your gritty combat, the more it "feels like Conan" to me. I have used mook rules in 13th Age (and some players gave me a "suspension of disbelief alert" for them), and I am unconvinced whether they are the right way to go for Conan.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882468Nope. You are simply giving the term a definition that is not the same used by the one who brought the subject on the table (that is, Ron Edwards or someone else at the Forge).

So you're saying that all those examples which I think blur the line and move into Conflict Resolution are still Task Resolution.  Fair enough.  Can you give me one concrete example of Conflict as you understand the term, and contrast that with an example of the Task approach?

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882468That said, I agree that "level of abstraction" may be a component of "suspension of disbelief", so I am rather willing to agree with you that the choice for this rule is questionable. The more detail you put in your gritty combat, the more it "feels like Conan" to me. I have used mook rules in 13th Age (and some players gave me a "suspension of disbelief alert" for them), and I am unconvinced whether they are the right way to go for Conan.

Well as I mentioned, there's a time and place.  You want to win a bar brawl with 5 random sailors in a bar, ok, a Mob of Minions might be appropriate, especially if you're trying to do something like flip a table so they all fall or dodge around them as opposed to dropping all 5 with a single Haymaker.

Out on the frontier, against the Picts, the famed Forest Devils of legend, the oldest and bitterest foe of the Cimmerians, maybe not so much.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882472So you're saying that all those examples which I think blur the line and move into Conflict Resolution are still Task Resolution.

Nope. I think they are already part of a broader instance of Conflict Resolution, whether or not the level of abstraction of how the single exchange is resolved is high or low.

The big problem is that the same resolution method can be used as

a) an action outside combat (Task Resolution)

b) one exchange in combat (Conflict Resolution)

This is much more evident in D100 games than in D&D, which did not use "skill challenges" outside combat until 3ed.

For instance, take combat in RuneQuest 1-3 and combat in RuneQuest 6. In RQ2/3, a melee attack is an abstraction of more than one blow (you can only attack one enemy once per 12 seconds in melee, so it is clear that this is an abstraction). RQ6 allows you to swing more than once per 6-second round, so the correspondence between a die roll and an actual, individual swing is stricter. Yet I would not say that RQ2/3 is more "conflict" resolution than RQ6 - it just uses a higher level of abstraction

The core rule in both cases is "once one combatant is down to negative HP equal to the starting HP in a vital location, the fight is over". And this is a conflict resolution rule: it tells you when you are declared dead, irrespective of the number of rolls per round - which varies among the editions of the game.

Both editions use the same mechanics used for out-of-combat TR as the "building block" for the CR they use in combat. The difference is in level of abstraction, not in what mechanics they use.

Why does this distinction even matter?

It is a spectrum depending on how detailed the mechanics are for a given situation.

A chase could be resolved by a single die roll with a few modifiers.

or not down to the level where there is a detailed map with miniatures and the action is played out second by second.

As which point on the spectrum works better depends entirely on out-of-game consideration as to how the group plays and what going on in the campaign.

Hell to confuse the situation, the referee may make a single roll on time and opt for a detailed resolution the next.

There is no limit to how far thing can be abstract. I could even see a case for an RPG involving the players being deities for things like whole wars and lives being resolved by one or two dice rolls.

I think it is enough to know that you could break it down to the level of 1 second round where every action has a mechanic. And you can opt for a more abstract mechanics that encompasses more.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882464You may disagree with my interpretation or feel free to call me an ignorant, uninformed maniac if you prefer.

I disagree, for the same reason as RMS does:).
Oh, and your dislike for anything narrative isn't quite maniacal, yet;).

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882468Nope. You are simply giving the term a definition that is not the same used by the one who brought the subject on the table (that is, Ron Edwards or someone else at the Forge).

This is perfectly legit, but it is absolutely prone to generating confusion. Exactly in the same way as Ron's usage of the word "Simulationism" to denote "genre emulation" is prone to confusion.

Yeah, this, I've always assumed genre emulation to fit under narrativism:D!


Now, as an example of task vs. conflict resolution.

"I want to win the archery tournament in order to impress the princess and gain her heart", the player says, in both games.
The rolls differ, though.

In a RQ6/Mythras game, or a Traveller: Mercator game, I tell you to roll your skill opposed by the skill of the other archers.
If you win, I decide whether the princess is the kind to be impressed.
If she is, you get your critical range (RQ6) as a bonus to your Seduction skill, or your level of success bonus as a chained task (MgT1e/2e) as an DM adjustment to your relevant skill to impress the princess.
If she is the kind to be repulsed, you get to talk to her, but you get your skill bonus as a penalty.
If she's the kind that goes "yeah, men do this, let them play", you get nothing, although as a winner, you might get to talk to her - which at least allows you a roll;).

As you can see, this kind of stuff means you need to find out whether your approach wouldn't backfire.

In conflict resolution, if I agree she's the kind to be impressed, I might tell you to roll your Archery skill, or your Impress skill with a bonus from high Archery.
If you win, we decide whether you won the tournament, but we know the princess is impressed. Maybe you won, or at least got in the top 10, and later could talk to her while she was giving you your prize personally!
But maybe you didn't win - maybe your string snapped and cut your hand! Then, as a lady-in-waiting is taking care of your hand (she knows full well that the princess likes archery, and is trying to curry favour), the door opens and the princess comes to check on you, feeling sorry for your misfortune, and kinda guilty because the tournament has been organised to please her...
We can just negotiate on that account (or I can decide, being the heavy-handed Referee). I can impose the last option, because it wasn't your goal to win the tournament - the conflict was "do I impress the princess", not "do I win"!

But what if I think that she's not that kind of princess? Well, assuming a Conflict Resolution game with no scene editing (or assuming I don't want to allow you scene editing), I just tell you so. "You can roll to win the tournament, but it's not going to serve this goal. If you want it just for the prestige that might be useful in other circumstances, roll Archery, not your roll and skill, and remind me when you want to use it. Now, how are you gonna impress that princess you've set your sights on:p?"

Does that clear the matter;)?

Quote from: estar;882479It is a spectrum depending on how detailed the mechanics are for a given situation.

Yes, but "how detailed" it is, doesn't tell us anything about whether it's conflict or task resolution. You can make any task resolution as detailed or not as you wish, and proceed similarly with conflict resolution.
Here's an example for the ORC-Classic system, which is pretty solidly based on Task Resolution, no narrative mechanics of any sort.
http://www.vajraenterprises.com/new/?p=362

Quote from: AsenRG;882481We can just negotiate on that account (or I can decide, being the heavy-handed Referee). I can impose the last option, because it wasn't your goal to win the tournament - the conflict was "do I impress the princess", not "do I win"!

Good example AsenRG. And also a good example of why good conflict resolution mechanics do not use only one roll/step to determine the outcome. You might very well miss your main attempt and then succeed through a secondary route. This, of course, is better depicted with a second "step" in the resolution process, no matter how many rolls are required for each step.

Hmm, I am going by what Ron Edwards described.  Basically what you're saying is that combining the individual tasks, round by round, of fighting, in the very end is Conflict Resolution because it all leads to one goal, namely, winning the Conflict.

Ron himself says "For Narrativist play, the key is to focus on conflicts rather than tasks." and "I submit that trying to resolve conflicts by hoping that the accumulated successful tasks will turn out to be about what you want, is an unreliable and unsatisfying way to role-play when developing Narrativist protagonism."  In other words, Conflict Resolution Mechanics should NOT just be the accumulation of a series of tasks that grant the desired end to the Conflict.

Here's more Ron for you:
Fortune-at-the-End: all variables, descriptions, and in-game actions are known, accounted for, and fixed before the Fortune system is brought into action. It acts as a "closer" of whatever deal was struck that called for resolution. A "miss" in such a system indicates, literally, a miss. The announced blow was attempted, which is to say, it was also perceived to have had a chance to hit by the character, was aimed, and was put into motion. It just didn't connect at the last micro-second.

Fortune-in-the-Middle: the Fortune system is brought in partway through figuring out "what happens," to the extent that specific actions may be left completely unknown until after we see how they worked out. Let's say a character with a sword attacks some guy with a spear. The point is to announce the character's basic approach and intent, and then to roll. A missed roll in this situation tells us the goal failed. Now the group is open to discussing just how it happened from the beginning of the action being initiated. Usually, instead of the typical description that you "swing and miss," because the "swing" was assumed to be in action before the dice could be rolled at all, the narration now can be anything from "the guy holds you off from striking range with the spearpoint" to "your swing is dead-on but you slip a bit." Or it could be a plain vanilla miss because the guy's better than you. The point is that the narration of what happens "reaches back" to the initation of the action, not just the action's final micro-second.

A combat system where you can Succeed with Complications, or you can fail in the roll, yet still have a mechanic that can guarantee success, (like Momentum or Doom) is classic Fortune in the Middle.  Likewise, when you take a single roll to take out 5 guys, we know that you did not just literally cut through 5 guys with one swing, so therefore the resolution requires narration to determine exactly what occurred.

If you use no Narrative metapoints, and fight an Elite, it's basic Fortune at the End.  I swing, he parries, I hit or miss.  That's it, the roll is the sole determiner of what happened.

When you add in metapoints or add in additional abstractions that allow for Fortune in the Middle, that (according to Ron) is a much better way to achieve Conflict Resolution.

In the end, Task vs. Conflict can sometimes be Shrodinger's Mechanic.  If I am opening a safe looking for a mob guy's ledger, what happens when I open the safe?  

Well if the ledger was in there, then I achieved the goal, I got the ledger, therefore it must have been Conflict Resolution.
If it wasn't in there, then I didn't achieve the goal, therefore it was simple Task Resolution.

Since sometimes both Task or Conflict could be resolved with a single roll, and therefore be the same thing, focusing on the mechanic itself is key.

Most games that are simple physics engine are pure Task Resolution.  Do I find the ledger.  Well the GM knows where the ledger is, so 4 options.
1. If it is in the Safe, and I open the Safe, I get the ledger.  I succeed at the Task and Succeed at the Conflict.
2. If it is in the Safe, and I don't open the Safe, I don't get the ledger.  I fail at the Task and fail at the Conflict.
3. If it is not in the Safe, and I open the Safe. I succeed at the Task, but the Conflict is unknown (I need to look elsewhere).
4. If it is not in the Safe, and I don't open it, I fail at the Task and could fail at the Conflict if I assume the ledger is in there and I give up because I can't open it.

Any kind of mechanic that lets me adjust the reality of whether or not the ledger is in the safe, or something that abstracts the search process so it doesn't matter if it is in the safe, or hidden in the bookshelf is a textbook Fortune at the Middle Conflict Resolution Mechanic.

It doesn't matter what Task I choose to accomplish in 2d20, I can spend Momentum or Fortune to alter the results of that Task roll to win the Conflict.

Quote from: AsenRG;882482Yes, but "how detailed" it is, doesn't tell us anything about whether it's conflict or task resolution. You can make any task resolution as detailed or not as you wish, and proceed similarly with conflict resolution.
Here's an example for the ORC-Classic system, which is pretty solidly based on Task Resolution, no narrative mechanics of any sort.
http://www.vajraenterprises.com/new/?p=362

Why is the distinction between conflict resolution and task resolution important?

All conflicts are resolved by doing something (or not doing something as the case may be). So logic demands if a conflict can be resolved by a series of actions each with detailed mechanics that it can be also resolved abstract mechanic that encapsulates all those actions into a single simple mechanics (perhaps a single dice roll).

So my point stands, it is a spectrum with no clear distinction that the exact mechanics employed is matter of personal taste.

I will add some point if you make the mechanic abstract enough then it also resolves the conflict in one fell swoop as well as the actions at the same time.

Quote from: estar;882488I will add some point if you make the mechanic abstract enough then it also resolves the conflict in one fell swoop as well as the actions at the same time.

Right, which is why my argument that abstracting Mob fights by cutting down several with a single roll that represents a series of tasks without actually resolving a series of tasks is in reality Conflict Resolution.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882486Hmm, I am going by what Ron Edwards described.  Basically what you're saying is that combining the individual tasks, round by round, of fighting, in the very end is Conflict Resolution because it all leads to one goal, namely, winning the Conflict.

Ron himself says "For Narrativist play, the key is to focus on conflicts rather than tasks." and "I submit that trying to resolve conflicts by hoping that the accumulated successful tasks will turn out to be about what you want, is an unreliable and unsatisfying way to role-play when developing Narrativist protagonism."  In other words, Conflict Resolution Mechanics should NOT just be the accumulation of a series of tasks that grant the desired end to the Conflict.

Here's more Ron for you:

You forgot to specify the date. Each of Ron's statement has an implicit "best before" clause He probably has changed his mind since he wrote that stuff.

The point is that in all combat mechanics the core mechanics is not "how to win a single exchange" but "how to win the battle" (e.g. how to disable all opponents). In D&D, this implies eliminating all of their HP.

This alone makes this "conflict resolution". The number of rolls, and the fact that the rolls are of the same kind you use outside combat for achieving "actions" that are not conflicts, does not matter. Nor is it always true, as in the unlikely event that all combatants are magicians, no one will make any attack rolls: it will all be saving throws and damage rolls.

There is no "attempt to achieve conflict resolution through a sequence of tasks". The mechanics is "you win by elimiinating all of your foe's HP". How you do this (swords, spells or napalm grenades) is secondary.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882484Good example AsenRG. And also a good example of why good conflict resolution mechanics do not use only one roll/step to determine the outcome. You might very well miss your main attempt and then succeed through a secondary route. This, of course, is better depicted with a second "step" in the resolution process, no matter how many rolls are required for each step.

Thank you, though I actually remembered it from TBP:).

I wouldn't say you need many rolls in all cases, BTW. Personally, I like the ORC approach of more rolls for more important stuff with higher stakes, as shown in the above link;).

BOO!!! BOOOOO!!!!!

Someone answer Estar!!!!! /pounds his table

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882495There is no "attempt to achieve conflict resolution through a sequence of tasks". The mechanics is "you win by elimiinating all of your foe's HP". How you do this (swords, spells or napalm grenades) is secondary.

Actually it is exactly a series of tasks and those tasks matter, because I can win by Turning him to stone, charming him, putting him to sleep, lopping an arm off with a Sword of Sharpness, or in some forms of D&D defeating through a failed morale roll.

If anything is a series of tasks that you hope add up to a desired result, it's D&D combat with it's upteen individual hit and damage rolls that eventually add up to winning, but even then what does killing one foe get you if you are facing a group of five?

There are ten doors I have to get through to enter the vault.  If the system doesn't give me any other way to accomplish that goal other than picking those 10 locks one at a time, then that is a Task Resolution system.  The system speaks nothing to the Conflict, the system speaks to the Tasks.  If the Tasks end up solving the Conflict, then they do, or don't.

If the system gives me ways of resolving the Conflict outside of picking those 10 locks one at a time, then it is a Conflict Resolution system because it lets me deal with the Conflict directly, outside of the individual Tasks resolved.

Forget D&D combat, what I just posted is why 2d20 is a Conflict Resolution system.  The game gives me many ways to ignore the tasks and deal with the Conflict directly through the spending of metapoints.