New rules for BDTP and Harm
Paul T:
I'm reading this thread with some curiosity and interest, especially because hearing the opinions and views of those experienced with this game is always enlightening. Solar System BDTP/extended conflicts have many nuances to them that are not immediately apparent.
To the original post:
I wonder if you and your players might be engaging in extended conflicts too often? The system does make them very significant events, both in terms of handling time and in terms of consequences. Maybe realizing that, and handling most conflicts as simple opposed ability checks, might solve this issue?
I'm not sure I'm sold on your revamped version as presented here, but some of the issues you bring up do resonate with me. In particular, I like the idea of compromises (a larger range of possible outcomes), and intuitively I wonder about the necessity for the players to give up in conflicts. Many players do like to "play things out", looking forward to see what will happen, and I fear they would, as you describe, forget the option to give up and end up suffering heavily from most conflicts. I have to play some more, myself, to figure out how I feel about this, but it is an issue I wonder about.
To Eero:
I am very curious about something you wrote in your post. You spoke several times about the negotiation of outcomes between players in extended conflicts. Particularly here:
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on January 29, 2009, 09:21:28 AM
The way the system is supposed to be used, though, is that Harm is not a conflict tracker - it's a gauge of the character's ability to resist others. A conflict will only be resolved by filling the Harm track if the situation is such that one or both characters are willing to put their entire well-being on the line for victory. The conflict may end at any point without Harm if the players manage to negotiate a different outcome. This is a difficult choice for the player, so I'm not so sure if I like taking it away.
I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about. I don't remember any discussion of negotiation in either text. I'm guessing that there is a process that is kind of lateral to the actual resolution that takes place between the players, and that is what you are describing.
Do you think you could give an Actual Play (or even an imaginary) example of a conflict "ending at any point without Harm by negotiating a different outcome"? I'd really like to see what that looks like at your table.
Thanks!
Paul
oliof:
Little Rules Nitpick: Since changing intents happens in the negotiation phase but only is active when you choose abilities and put the dice to the table, you can opt out of accepting the new intent by conceding to the old one or offering something to your opponent that they can agree to end the conflict for.
Cross posted with Paul: I drafted up an example about the exact thing you wanted, but deleted it.
So I have to rewrite.
In my PBeM TSOY game, we had a conflict between two PCs and a group of SGCs, where the NPCs intended to beat the crap out of the PCs to teach them a lesson or somesuch. We had two rounds of fighting, where very little harm was dished out, but then the whole thing evolved into one of the PCs killing of a couple of nameless secondaries, while the other one ended up in a romantic tussle with one of the PCs – this was where we had a change of intents due to a tie in results, so both sides changed their intent accordingly: The PC wanted to force the SGC to tell all about their employer, while the SGC wanted the PC to be enthralled by the barbaric wildness of the SGC (to end them up in bed). Both parties could agree to that, so there was nothing to run a conflict about anymore.
Without the chance to renege intents, we would have been stuck in the original situation, which would only have been half as interesting.
Eero Tuovinen:
The negotiation in BDTP is implicit and happens by changing your intent. You can often win a BDTP simply by downgrading your own goals to a level where the opponent is willing to accept them.
In our play this sort of thing happens all the time as a contrast between kill vs. capture vs. simple self-defense. If your goal allows the opponent to go, he's much more likely to give up when the conflict swings against him. The opposite holds true as well: if you want to make sure somebody is ruined, hike up your intent to trap him in the conflict.
Corvus69:
thank you all. I have to think about everything you wrote. And I have to play SS more to really get all the system nuances. it's very possible that I simply don't understand the way it's supposed to work.
but now just few remarks:
Quote
You can often win a BDTP simply by downgrading your own goals to a level where the opponent is willing to accept them.
I think this is something most people are not used to. I dont know any other game that works like this. Players have to switch something in their brains to start thinking this way.
Quote
So, if I am fighting you, and you are trying to steal from me. I am harming your vigor and you are harming my instinct. If you take away my ability to use Vigor, it doesn't stop me from trying to steal from you, or even affect me at all.
stealing and fighting are different types of goals, so not allowed in one BDTP. But let's say that the second and third sentence stand, the best tactics wouldnot be making harm, but lowering opponent's disposition.
Quote
The point of this example is, they wouldn't have been able to do this if they were using your system.
not exactly. They would lose the first conflict. And then start a new one (not necessarily BDTP) about driving The Plague out of the city. BDTP is a fun part of game and maybe we want to engage in it more often.
A bit of AP:
PC's were in a military base under attack. Captain of attackers (NPC) had goal to capture the base. The PC's wanted to prevent it. They lost initial check. So they BDTP. The Captain had battle 3. PC's were using their weapons to fight back rank 2. we were using gestalt method.
In a middle of fight they changed their goal to killing the captain, because it made sense in fiction: killed captain means that troops are without a leader and give up.
I as captain could not give up because the stakes were set too high. And it was really hard to convince them to give up the conflict. I was able to make harm almost every round, but only to one PC at the same time. (I chose a tactics to wear them down one by one). The first PC was taken out, second was bruised, but they simply refused to give up, because there was still a chance to win. And they ultimately did win. The taken out character struggled the rest of the session and was irritated and didn’t like the game.
I am sure that this is the way BDTP should not be played but the concept of BDTP can by hard to get.
Even if I will not be using these new rules, I will have to think something about harm shake down a messy penalty dice. I really hate them.
Eero Tuovinen:
To elaborate a bit about the practical issues, it seems to me that your revised system turns individual actions in BDtP into abstracted conflict steps instead of concrete in-fiction tasks. Do I have that right? Your classification of conflicts into fighting and non-fighting seems to hint this way.
In contrast, the original BDTP rules don't classify different types of conflicts simply because the fiction is used in full force to constrain the possible means that are used to achieve the goals. Thus you can have both stealing and fighting tasks in one conflict, but only when it makes sense in the fiction. The first round of the conflict might feature a character sneaking in to steal the king's crown, say, and when he fails the second round turns into violence. As that doesn't go so well for the thief, he tries negotiation on the third round. In each case we're resolving tasks that, when taken together and being consequence-enforced by the rules, ultimately resolve the conflict.
Turning this task-resolution base into an abstract multistep conflict resolution is actually a quite radical change. In the original system characters just basically act freely in BDTP in different ways and we assign mechanical consequence to these actions to force the conflict to resolve in due time. It's just like the D&D combat system, just generalized into handling all sorts of conflicts. In your system the attention seems to be on Disposition, the abstract measure of conflict length.
After reading through the system a second time I have to say that the bit I dislike most is the very reason you made a new system - I actually like the way BDTP forces characters to resolve their differences essentially by breaking each other. I like this same feature in Dust Devils, it's a great source of gravitas. In your system it seems that causing Harm is not actually an attractive option at all - after all, you can easily win the conflict by focusing on the disposition, so why bother? The only reason would be if you didn't actually care about the conflict stakes and just wanted to hurt the other character, but then why not make hurting him your goal in the conflict?
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