I think a simple answer that was missed is: Task resolution resolves tasks. Conflict resolution resolves conflicts. Done.

There was something else but I accidentally threw out my notes. Sorry. I’m sure you’ll live.

Here’s hoping for more shows! And it might not suck to get on some of the people who came up with the terms to come on and explain them. Just sayin’. You’d be the first podcaster to think of that, oddly enough.

Important to note those last 4 words: “When developing Narrativist protagonist.”

Choose the right tools for the game you want to play, is my point.

I derive my definitions mainly from Ron Edwards articles, so those may be outdated. Please correct me if I’m wrong. In this particular case look at “Story Now” http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html :

“”"
A conflict statement is, “I’m trying to kill him,” or, “I’m trying to humiliate him,” whereas a task statement is, “I swing my sword at him.” (It doesn’t matter, by the way, how much in-game time and space are involved; conflict resolution can be “very small” and task resolution can be “very big.” We can discuss this more on-line.) 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.
“”"

I twittered that blog post. Pretty interesting.

Yes, I just coined that term. Feel free to use it.

Might I suggest a ‘donate’ button on the homepage?

simulation is in the seeming, not in the being… wow.

I really like that statement, but I am wary of it going to far… I bounce back and forth between simulationist and story-telling, and can’t take either one for long… so a balance is what I seek, but even when I get that satisfied, I want to bounce back to an extreme, for the other satisfaction.

I like 4th, and 3rd, and S&P(I call it 2.5), and 2nd, and 1st, and basic 2.0, and the 5-boxes… all for different reasons, and I personally would find it horrible if they were not working on a 6th, with a 5th waiting in the wings.

Maybe because I also run games (I have noticed it seems to be a factor) but I support the campaign I am in as a player, and if it is someone else’s spotlight, I tailor my character and my actions to support the identified Major Hero… I learned that from the R.Talsorian Cyberpunk games, how to play a supporting character, and support the Major Hero… point is, a lot of the attempts I see to make… no… force that to happen, or anything else I would do by choice to enhance play, put in the design, can get irritating and turn me off. (or worse set me off )

at heart I am probably a simulationist with delusions of theatrical drama… so that is probably why that statement halts me… kewl as it is.

nice to hear someone who actually has an audience-first view.. yeah, I don’t have to buy it, if you arn’t even going to support it, dur-duh-dur…

Anyway, this Interview had me rapt to attention as much as those first few podcasts, where you were explaining the various plot&persona mechanics.
good stuff… I am hook-line-&-sinkered as I stroll through the garden of Clydes mind.

My groups have been co-ed, and non-limiting, for as long as I have been gaming, and I wouldn’t allow it any other way.

It is possible I have been subconsciously choosing my frinds… thats a thought I havn’t explored… aware of but never thought about it… hmmm…

The system encourages story development in every point placed on the sheet, even to the extreme of allowing the player to define every aspect of every point, as something intrinsic to the background and overall concept, with paragraphs of persona development.

Gameplay with the rules, is still very task resolution, physics based, strategy and tactics, traditional oriented. The supplements encourage storytelling, but offer only basic flag mechanics, for storytelling.

Even in the LARP rules, this pattern apply.

—

I agree, however, that it is a lot about how the group contributes to one style over the other, no matter what system or setting is being used. I have played some incredibly story intensive campaigns using very ‘Traditional’ games.
Loyal Coalition troops, taking humanist high-heroic roles, within their military oriented neo-Nazi fascist perspective, played with more drama and human conflict, and faced with the true terror inherent in being small squishies in such a setting, as opposed to flat out D-B bashing bug-hunt after D-B bashing bug-hunt, can be very amazingly rewarding.
…. if a little philosophically and psychologically sick….

Being railroaded into a campaign where, the Rebels are constantly thrust into Storm trooper raid after Storm trooper raid after alien-bug-hunt, without any time to develop character motivations and goals, or any ability to find one of the ‘untouched’ locations in the galaxy, or ever being able to ‘walk the grey side’, makes for a very disappointing Star wars Saga, even if you have the full Masterbook Drama Rules being in effect.

Or, how about a Warriors game that devolves into a multi-sided clan war, because everyone is just wanting to throw their cats into a contest arena, and no story ever occurs.

Then there is the Avalon Hill: Swords and Sorcery, being built by an amazingly detail obsessed wargame publisher, that is still a classic RPG that emphasizes Roleplay and Story, sometimes better than later editions of D&D, but somehow never got much support from the community.

—

I find it funny that the ‘Traditionalist’ style is associated with meaning ‘Older’ when the Story Games were on the shelves first, back in the 20′s, some are even older, and these elements were brought into the Wargaming genre by publishers like, SSI, Avalon Hill, and TSR, starting at some point in the 40′s or 50′s, and turned into games as they are known today.
What I think is even kewler, is that published LARP rules can be found, that predate even the Salon Social Roleplaying games of the Victorian era. These earlier games should be counted, as some have some quite extensive ‘rules’ and directed intent to be what the are, and were technically published for a broad ‘customer audience’ distribution.

—

yep, I’m a RPG geek and a total non-conformist gamer, I’ll play just about anything, in just about any style.

If you have a filtering system that’s not just about effort, but about the intensity of time you can put into something (eg learning the ropes when stuff gets changing, finding out which collectives are currently open to doing stuff) then someone will delay his game for 3 years until his kids get a bit older, because he has enough time per day to do a weakly playtest game and little more.

If your filtering system relies on totally different skills from game design, then people can get good at publishing crap, or get bad at publishing good stuff.

All of those can be dealt with, but they have to be actively dealt with (you have to do things for people to change it because their actions are already factored in). An established booth of randoms is one way to do that, but it obviously has it’s own biases too.

Thanks, a lot. You’re right, there were several examples from quite sometime back, but the idea had been lost in practice. Wargaming last century, according to Mr. Wesely didn’t have referees until he, and some other folks unaffilated with him, rediscovered / recreated the idea. Major Wesely details some of the examples in that interview. This interview with Vincent was chronologically after the one with Major Wesely, which is likely why I was spewing, what I was spewing. Normally I don’t run interviews out of order, but Vincent’s interview had the best raw sound quality so it was easiest to get out after Gen Con.

I enjoyed (am still enjoying) this episode very much, so I will, but the 19th century wargame Kriegspiel had referees, so I’m interested to hear the specifics of what he has to say.

That aside, I’m glad I finally listened to your show; keep up the good work!

Listen to the next show. I interview Major Wesely who brought referees to Wargaming. It isn’t actually that much later that it starts turning into proto-roleplaying. It seems the referee was the key to kick that idea off.

Hopefully you have my email from my comments? Maybe you could email me and we could set up a time to talk.

It seems apparent there is a lot of mutual context we relied on in that discussion. That would be my failure. My job was to ferret that out.

Matt isn’t postulating anything more radical than say what happened with Nanuk. Once you turned it over to Steve Jackson, they made changes based on their conception, or understanding, of the audience they were trying to reach. He’s suggesting much the same, but since for creator owned roleplaying games there isn’t a separate development team, or a research fund; He’s suggesting some people, not all people, perhaps give an audience consideration at the design phase. So he’s designing a game to test this principle. If it works, we (Forgie indie designer folks,) can use it. If it doesn’t work we can discuss why we think it didn’t work.

Matt’s not suggesting a great compromise. He’s suggesting what I said above. However in the Forgie indie designer folk community the focus has been on the vision of the designer, and art over… over… pandering… process… I can’t find a good word. Anyway the suggestion of a not tightly theme focused game might be (likely is?) viewed negatively. The thought was Indie games would follow the path Indie comics did, and develop a coffee house, hip audience, of folks who wanted roleplaying to be more than adventure gaming. I.E. tightly focused thematic games about feelings, culture, and icky stuff.

Keith is saying, that we (Forgie indie designer folks) have been focusing on Gen Con for years, but most of us don’t go to PAX, and he believes that we’d benefit more from going there. I’m not sure, but I think he was saying that it isn’t necessarily the tight games that aren’t breaking out well, but that “we’ve” been pushing them at the wrong audience. I tenatively agree with him, but haven’t been to PAX. I’m going to try to get to PAX: East, and from there weigh Gen Con versus PAX: Prime, as the summer convention I want to cover.

You guys made a point of mentioning how old the indie crowd was getting and the fact that all the “kids” are into card games and not rpgs/indie games. I’m just extrapolating that into marketing to teens and early twenty-somethings.

If people are already having success at cons like PAX, who is the “we” Keith is talking about? “We’re [stuck here at Gencon], etc.” Does he mean there should be a Forge-like booth at PAX or what? “We [the less successful indie game designers]” should get a booth at PAX?

It’s that kind of generality that unfortunately permeates this conversation. I listened to the interview twice, and pretty much I get “It would be nice to be able to sell more books, and we’re frustrated that we can’t and we think Marketing is the answer, but we don’t really know quite what to do about it.”

Their point of divergence was Matt was talking about targeting a larger gaming crowd, not teens. To do that I believe he was espousing a more general game design over the specific focused game design that Indie games tend to have. I’m not sure he ever mentioned a great compromise.

Keith was talking about targeting other markets like at PAX. I don’t believe he was saying you needed to design differently, folks have already been having success there, like Burning Wheel. He was talking more about getting to a new market outside of folks who attend Gen Con.

As far as Market data… there’s so many indie designers it would be difficult to be factual. If you were to use booth size and the number of folks not selling games who were a few years ago, I might argue it’s actually a smidge smaller. It certainly doesn’t look like it did a few years ago.

They tend to contradict each other a fair amount or seem to be at odds with the others’ opinions.

I do wonder what sort of solution (couldn’t keep the names straight, so let’s call him) Compromise Design Principles Guy has for reaching a broader and younger audience. In my limited experience, the indie/story games tend toward mature/sophisticated concepts that I just don’t see appealing to teens. Is his Great Compromise mechanical in nature or thematic? Shab Al Hiri Roach is a pretty simple game mechanically, but thematically, it’s right over the head of your average late teen, probably even early twenty-something, and I think that holds true for a majority of indie games.

How is he suggesting Annalise (unsure of spelling) be dumbed down to appeal to a broader audience? (that’s what he’s suggesting but with different words) Is it the game mechanics that don’t appeal or the story setting? Or is he suggesting indie designers forgo the dark/adult/mature/interesting/etc game ideas for themes that appeal to Tony Hawk fans?

I’m not sure I understand, can you expand on that thought?

Don’t forget Ascension.

Would you be willing to talk about this? I could give you a call, and record it and perhaps we can get more brains than mine on it. I’ve been thinking about your comment for weeks, and I’m not sure I’ve got great answers.

I’ve been hammering away at my lack of sound in Ubuntu (which is making Skype unusable). I might have it solved, but if not, let’s do it by phone. Email me.

Paul

Instead the con is geared towards making as much money as possible. I know for the last 3 or 4 years the con has been fun in spite of the GenCon events.

I predict that other cons will rise to prominence in the next few years. DragonCon and PAX, for example.

Innovation perspective? That is nonsense. How do barriers that must be surmounted with blood, sweat and tears halt innovation? The barriers are what create true innovation, because they must be tested as do their creators. They force hard questions, self evaluation, and the leveraging of hubris, all the shit needed to create great, well great anything.

Not sure what you mean by the all ships raised argument.

I can kind of see what you’re saying from a market perspective. What about an innovation perspective? I want more things like Death’s Door, House of Horiku, Primitive, or on the other end of success, Steal Away Jordan, and Kagematsu. I’m not sure barriers help me get that. Do you not hold with the “All ships raised” argument?