Quote from: CRKrueger;882516D&D does not have any Conflict Resolution Mechanics.  There are no Mechanics that let me affect the Conflict directly or somehow influence other than the addition of a series of individual rolls.

And who said that one has to be able to affect the conflict directly for it to be called CR?

Besides, the typical D&D situation is that one side flees when "low on HP". Doesn't this mean that there is a way of assessing "how the conflict is going" separately from how the exchanges have been rolled. We may have rolled more hits, but that single blow the Tarrasque inflicted to Sir Gawain had us change our minds about the importance of that treasure.

QuoteIn the 2d20 system the addition of mechanics that give me the option of engaging the Conflict directly, and providing that "in the Middle" part of overriding the rolls or otherwise altering the narration makes it completely different from a system that does not give me that option.

This is true. But it is a matter - again - of director's stance vs. actor's stance, not of CR vs. TR.

RMcS--can you link the other thread or quote it so I don't have to hunt for it?

Quote from: CRKrueger;882518Again, you're not talking about mechanics, at all.  According to you, if there is tunnel with a number of doors behind it I have to pick to get to the treasure, and I know the number is 10, then every single roll I do is Conflict Resolution because I know the first one I pick is only part of it

Nope. Because no single roll achieves anything in itself. Only the ten of them do.

Quotewhere if I don't know how many there are, or even if it is the right door, then each one is an isolated task and thus TR.

Exactly. Because each roll determines only whether you open the f*****g door or not, not whether you get the treasure. You cannot even be sure that there is an exit at the end and not a concrete wall with "I f***ed you" written on it. Once the number of doors is known, you have a procedure that tells you how to achieve the goal.

The actual "conflict" is going on in the GM's mind, in fact, while he determines how many doors you need to open. Not in play. Which brings us to the next comment....

Quote from: Arminius;882519Rob, it was mainly important to Forgers who were coming at RP from a very railroady, illusionistic, GM-centric background. For them the distinction between succeeding at a task (I win the joust) and achieving your goal (do I impress the princess? I guess not, because the GM always finds a way to move the plot in the direction planned) was extremely obvious and important.

Ditto. The big problem is that Conflict Resolution forces the GM to lay down the actual odds on the table and "play fairly", in the exact same way he would not add extra HP to a monster already added to a combat.

With task resolution only, the GM is continually in the temptation of adding "just one more roll to pass" to push the story in one direction. Sometimes even subconsciously. He might even not realize he's cheating. That's why forgies hate TR so much: it is the basis for Wod-style railroading.

Of course, a decent GM does not do such things, Task Resolution or not. But having a defined procedure to clear up "when the guy has obtained his goal" is an invaluable tool for simplification. And it has nothing to do with OOC variables and narrative control. Just think of it as "number of doors" that the GM determines beforehand instead of letting you roll and deciding afterward if that roll was enough.

Quote from: estar;882488All 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).

This is only true if we ignore or disallow any ability to make different choices in the midst of a series of actions.

For example: We can create a single roll that combines the cumulative probabilities of a series of rounds where attacks, parries, and damage rolls are made between two combatants A and B to arrive at the same cumulative probability for A to kill or disable B and for B to kill or disable A. We can even add in detail to represent the level of damage that the winner might also take. But in the series of actions there are multiple opportunities for A or B to change tactics by choosing to negotiate, yield, or flee. Since these are, in task resolution, the result of choices made by the players of A or B that have no assigned probability, we cannot calculate those as cumulative probabilities.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882495The 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.

No. The point of combat is to convince the enemy that he can't win before he can convince you of the reverse.

Conflicts don't continue until everyone is dead or disabled. They continue until one side is no longer fighting. And while cessation of combat may occur due to death or disablement of the opposing side, it may also occur due to the opposing side surrendering,fleeing, or to both sides declaring a truce.

QuoteThere 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.

Did I miss some artificial narrowing of combat solely to being about killing or incapacitating opponents?

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882522Besides, the typical D&D situation is that one side flees when "low on HP". Doesn't this mean that there is a way of assessing "how the conflict is going" separately from how the exchanges have been rolled. We may have rolled more hits, but that single blow the Tarrasque inflicted to Sir Gawain had us change our minds about the importance of that treasure.

At least we now have included fleeing rather than assuming all fights are to the death (or disablement). But neither the number of hits rolled nor the amount of damage taken or inflicted matters in and of itself. What matters is how hits rolled and damage inflicted affects the belief of the combatant that they can win. (Survival is usually, but not always part of winning for a combatant.) Two players faced with the exact same situation (of hits rolled, damage inflicted, hit points remaining, etc.) may draw different conclusions. One may decide to her chance to win is still acceptable and will continue to fight while another may decide his chance to win is unacceptably low and will choose to run, negotiate, or surrender.

Too high a level of abstraction removes the ability for a combatant to choose to do something other than fight to the death based on how the combat has gone so far.

BTW, Krueger, if the GM says "If you succeed on 20 lock-pocking rolls, then you accomplish goal X" then that is absolutely an example of mechanical Conflict Resolution.

The bit about the plans being in the safe or not--and AsenG's question of the princess's personality--are also emblematic of Forger concerns due to past illusionistic habits trained by various GMing handbooks (and I'm guessing, heavily reinforced in the White Wolf heyday) as well as a belief that the game world always runs on pure improv with no facts that are established in secret before being revealed. Again the idea that the GM might know in advance that the plans are or are not in the safe isn't on the radar, so the only options are "GM decides == TR == illusionism" and "dice determine who decides == CR == player agency". It leaves out the possibility that you can have can have conflict resolution through a combination of preexisting game-state plus resolution of a task--but obviously you can. It just doesn't compute when people are obsessed with narrative control.

Quote from: Arminius;882531BTW, Krueger, if the GM says "If you succeed on 20 lock-pocking rolls, then you accomplish goal X" then that is absolutely an example of mechanical Conflict Resolution.

The bit about the plans being in the safe or not--and AsenG's question of the princess's personality--are also emblematic of Forger concerns due to past illusionistic habits trained by various GMing handbooks (and I'm guessing, heavily reinforced in the White Wolf heyday) as well as a belief that the game world always runs on pure improv with no facts that are established in secret before being revealed. Again the idea that the GM might know in advance that the plans are or are not in the safe isn't on the radar, so the only options are "GM decides == TR == illusionism" and "dice determine who decides == CR == player agency". It leaves out the possibility that you can have can have conflict resolution through a combination of preexisting game-state plus resolution of a task--but obviously you can. It just doesn't compute when people are obsessed with narrative control.

But when we're talking about mechanics, Eliot, not processes, telling me that in some cases this mechanic could be used by the GM as a task, in other cases, a conflict, tells me nothing about the mechanic or it's design as opposed to a mechanic specifically designed to be used purposefully to achieve Conflict Resolution.

If the GM tells me there's 10 doors or tells me I don't know how many doors, how I engage with the system and how I go about my process, does not change at all in the slightest.  I still pick X doors, in order, only I do not know the value of X.  You call it TR, you call it CR, you call it FYMR, it doesn't matter.  My character does the exact same thing, thinking the exact same thing.  I do not go OOC.

If the mechanics of the game were specifically designed to give me the ability to avoid simply relying on the individual tasks and let me address the Conflict directly, and even overturn or change the results of the tasks, through narrative authority, than that is a Conflict Resolution Mechanic.  I do go OOC, I have to, in order to engage the mechanic.

I think everyone agrees that Fortune, Doom, and Momentum are Meta Conflict Resolution Mechanics.

Quote from: Bren;882529Since these are, in task resolution, the result of choices made by the players of A or B that have no assigned probability, we cannot calculate those as cumulative probabilities.

What the problem? That what happens you introduce an abstraction. That is the consequence of going that route.

If you care about being able to change tactics, strategy, or technique midway then you need to drop your mechanics to the level of abstraction that accommodates the distinctions you care about.

If you find the details of a particular mechanics to be tedious or asking "Why I am bothering with these details" then would be better off with something at a higher level of abstraction.

Eventually if you raise the level of abstraction high enough, the conflict itself could be resolved with a single set of mechanics.

Also to make it even more confusing there can be varying levels of abstraction bundled into the same mechanics. For example maybe your I win combat roll is very simplistic, but your damage from combat resolution is complex.

Quote from: Bren;882529Conflicts don't continue until everyone is dead or disabled.

So you known I am talking about conflict I talking about anything a player desires for his character but has to overcome a challenge to achieve. That includes combat, crafting, exploring, diplomacy, bargaining, etc, etc.

Note also I feel you can have different levels of abstractions for different stuff. Combat resolution is very abstract but social interactions have detailed mechanics, etc.

Hell, I'll even stipulate that picking 10 if you know it's 10 is CR, but to be honest, I can see the technical argument that knowing the number of doors beforehand can technically affect goal, but that's a damn fine hair, even for me.  Kudos to RMS, it's not often I get out-technical'd. :hatsoff:

Because in the end, AsenRG was right, that the thread's point was to explain what sticks in my craw, and RMS is right, it's the meta-aspect.

Most of the time, when I experience meta-point economies, their purpose is to provide for CR and narrative control, so most of the time, a CR mechanic means an OOC narrative one.  But, that doesn't have to be the case, even though, like I said, it mostly is, IMO.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882535If the mechanics of the game were specifically designed to give me the ability to avoid simply relying on the individual tasks and let me address the Conflict directly, and even overturn or change the results of the tasks, through narrative authority, than that is a Conflict Resolution Mechanic.  I do go OOC, I have to, in order to engage the mechanic.

It is not a conflict resolution mechanics. It is a narrative authority attribution mechanics. Do not conflate the two.

If the mechanics say "The GM says how many doors you have to open to escape, and then you roll for each", the narrative authority is still 100% on the GM. You have no means to bypass a roll because of the fact that the GM has determined that they will be 10.

If you have "bennies" to spend on the rolls, then that is a sort of narrative authority mechanics. But they are two completely different and unrelated components of the mechanics. The presence of one does not imply the other. They are usually found together only because they both appeal to the same kind of author.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882490Right, 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.

Let me come at this from a another angle. Conflicts don't need mechanics to handle. In fact they shouldn't have mechanics because for the most part such mechanics would be so abstract to obliterate differences in the approaches to resolving a conflict.  Differences that have important secondary consequences.

Sometimes the consequences of how you resolve a conflict is as interesting as resolving the conflict itself.

Then again not everything that could result in a conflict in a RPG campaign needs a detailed resolution. A simple mechanic is satisfying enough to deal with it. In the end it is a judgment call based on the situation.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882502Estar's question has been addressed in another thread (where I chose not to post to avoid the usual load of polemics related to these subjects). Please re-read that thread about "do we really need a conflict resolution mechanics" for the answers.

There is thing called links that you can use if you are going to cop out on a direct answer.

Quote from: RosenMcStern;882539It is not a conflict resolution mechanics. It is a narrative authority attribution mechanics. Do not conflate the two.

If the mechanics say "The GM says how many doors you have to open to escape, and then you roll for each", the narrative authority is still 100% on the GM. You have no means to bypass a roll because of the fact that the GM has determined that they will be 10.

If you have "bennies" to spend on the rolls, then that is a sort of narrative authority mechanics. But they are two completely different and unrelated components of the mechanics. The presence of one does not imply the other. They are usually found together only because they both appeal to the same kind of author.

So if it lets me affect the Conflict and succeed through narrative authority, it's not a Conflict Resolution Mechanic AND a Narrative Control mechanic, but only Narrative Control.

I can't find it right now. It was on this forum, named "Do we actually need Conflict Resolution?" or something similar.

Kind of hard because we need three terms to do an exact search.

Quote from: CRKrueger;882543So if it lets me affect the Conflict and succeed through narrative authority, it's not a Conflict Resolution Mechanic AND a Narrative Control mechanic, but only Narrative Control.

It's both. If there is a Conflict and it lets you address it through Narrative Control, then it must be a Conflict Resolution Mechanics, too. If it was not, it would not let you affect the outcome of the conflict, just the outcome of a single task.

Example: I am climbing a cliff. The GM calls for a Climb roll. I fail. I spend a Bennie to force the roll to a success. I succeed. The GM says my progress brought me to a ledge that I cannot pass unless I can fly.

The mechanics is task-resolution and narrative control. Had it been Conflict Resolution, I would not have wasted my bennie.

The GM, on the other hand, is an asshole.