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<article id="dri-aido">

  <articleinfo>

    <title>Mood-based Events Resolution Mechanics</title>

    <subtitle>The DRI/AIDO Events Resolution Taxonomy</subtitle>

    <abstract>

      <para>In this article, the author propose a taxonomy of

        resolution mechanics in role-playing game.  The objective of

        this taxonomy is to provide a basis for orienting the choice

        of a resolution system not based on the action being

        simulated, but instead on the mood that the GM want to create.

        For this, the taxonomy will be compare to other existing model

        of events resolution, such as the DKF hierarchy, and especially

        its subelements, which are FatS, FitM and FatE.</para>

    </abstract>

    <keywordset>

      <keyword>resolution mechanics</keyword>

      <keyword>Drama-Kharma-Fortune (DKF) hierarchy</keyword>

      <keyword>Fortune-at-the-Start (FatS)</keyword>

      <keyword>Fortune-in-the-Middle (FitM)</keyword>

      <keyword>Fortune-at-the-End (FatE)</keyword>

      <keyword>DRI resolution taxonomy</keyword>

      <keyword>AIDO events taxonomy</keyword>

      <keyword>role-playing game</keyword>

      <keyword>system design</keyword>

      <keyword>play flow</keyword>

    </keywordset>

    <author>

      <firstname>Fabien</firstname>

      <surname>Niñoles</surname>

    </author>

    <copyright>

      <year>2003</year>

      <holder>Fabien Niñoles</holder>

    </copyright>

    <revhistory>

      <revision>

        <revnumber>0.1cvs :</revnumber>

        <date>2003-01-01</date>

        <revdescription>

          <para>Initial release (incomplete).</para>

        </revdescription>

      </revision>

    </revhistory>

  </articleinfo>

  <section id="intro">

    <title>Introduction</title>

    <para>I try for a long time to create a truely generic

      role-playing system, able to handle a large range of both scale,

      but also genre or atmosphere of role-playing game.  Those goals

      were often considered like a chimera impossible to reach, since

      some playing goals are just complementary to each other, as

      opposed to each other by their very own nature.  Still, I was

      sure that it was possible although the idea were very vague.

      Although some people will put this confidence as a symptom of my

      great stubborness, pointing to the many failures of so-call

      generic role-playing systems in the market to prove it, I think

      I have an asset on my side: I GMing myself for more than 15

      years in the same world with a very high variety of genres and

      settings that I must mixed together for the pleasure of my

      players.  So, if I can do it, why no other people could?

      Except, if from words to practice there is a big step, the step

      backward is often as harder!</para>

    <para>Looking back at other role-playing systems, and on my many

      tries to adapt each of them to different settings, I find out

      that the same settings elements (like magic, combat, health,

      etc.) but with very different mechanics depending on the mood

      they want to create.  Also, in most role-playing game creators

      forums, if you ask people what is the most important thing in

      creating a role-playing game, it's the mood, or the flavour of

      your role-playing game.  Not the system or the setting, but the

      mood, the genre.  Too often, mood and settings where mix

      together, but is it true?  In this case, shouldn't we stop to

      create mechanics based on specific settings and instead, goes

      directly to the mood, the real thing that make all the

      difference between an interesting role-playing game experience

      and a boring one?</para>

    <para>This paper is a first attempt to elaborate on what such a

      role-playing game must contain.  In fact, it goes a little more

      farther than this, as well as a little bit narrower.  We will

      study a single aspect of role-playing game, tough an important

      one, which is the events resolution system, but we will study it

      in depth, questionning even the way GM treat this aspect of

      role-playing game, but keeping our focus on how the mechanics of

      events resolution can be used to create a specific mood.</para>

  </section>

  <section id="whatisit">

    <title>What is events resolution?</title>

    <para>What's events resolution?  Ask in the role-playing community

      and you'll end up with a lot of answer which more or less

      resumed to something like <quote>It's when you're rolling

      dice.</quote>.  Well, this may be exact for some rpg but clearly

      not for all of them and especially this is a little bit short to

      define what's a major component of all role-playing games.  For

      the purpose of this article, I want to use a little more broad

      definition, which will be develop a little more later but we can

      be first state as:</para>

    <blockquote>

      <para>The process by which the players decide on the follow-up

      of the current role-playing situation.</para>

    </blockquote>

    <para>This definition is quite broad.  In fact, a whole

      role-playing game session can be resume with it: a situation is

      described, some options are offered and players decide, in

      accordance with their common judgements, rules, and/or some

      randomization mechanism, what will happen next.  This new

      situation can then create another resolution events, forming a

      long chain of events, or, sometime, the resolution itself

      include it's own chain of more specific events.  For example,

      the initial situation can be that the players families where all

      kill in a monstruous carnage.  Players decide to investigate and

      get some justice for their family.  The possible outcome is that

      either the players get their revenge or not.  Which one will be

      chosen call for a whole chain of events that make an adventure

      by itself, including a lot of different resolutions.</para>

    <para>Some people will disagree with this very broad approach, too

      generic to correctly representing a role-playing game session

      with its non-linearity, multiple subplots and surprised events

      coming into play.  On the contrary, I find it important to

      concentrate on such details.  Too many role-playing session have

      seen its players lost their first goal and often, concentrating

      back to the primary goal of the game help GM and even players to

      focus back on the game and add some coherence to the whole

      story.  We will see also how this can help GM resolved events in

      a more meaningful way by opening their usual methods of

      resolution for typical situations.</para>

    <section id="previousworks">

      <title>Previous works on event resolution</title>

      <para>Although I doesn't pretend to make a complete presentation

        of every studies on events resolution, I should at least

        mention the work of others that influence a lot this

        taxonomy.</para>

      <para>First of all, the most popular model for events resolution

        is clearly Johnathan Tweet's Drama-Kharma-Fortune (or

        <abbrev>DKF</abbrev>) hierarchy.  First publish into Everway

        RPG, the work was taken back by Ron Edwards which make it an

        important part of his role-playing game theory.  The DKF

        hierarchy is mostly concern with the resolution mechanics

        itself, defining the choice of resolution mechanics as a

        hierarchy where more and more control at give from the players

        to the rules and some randomizers like dice.  So, the

        principle of the hierarchy is to emphasis on players control

        instead of rules, an approach I will also try to

        follow.</para>

      <para>Children of the DKF, the Fortune-at-the-Start (or

        <abbrev>FatS</abbrev>), Fortune-in-the-Middle (or

        <abbrev>FitM</abbrev>) and Fortune-at-the-End (or

        <abbrev>FatE</abbrev>), is another taxonomy of resolution

        mechanics that try to study more specifically how Fortune

        resolution can be used to favorised players control over rules

        or fortune control.  It is slightly different of the DKF

        itself, but kept mostly the same point of view, that I will

        try to include in this taxonomy.</para>

      <para>Finally, I want to include the excellent work of Hunter

        Logan in the Impossible Dream column of RPG.net.

        Specifically, M. Logan talk about Play Flow, in a very similar

        although more detailed approach as I used to describe events

        resolution, as well as Balance of Power, which explain how the

        Play Flow can influence the balance between players, GM and

        rules.  I will compare the work of M. Logan with my own work

        in a later section.  M. Logan also get back the three ladders

        of the DKF hierarchy but used it in a more

        <emphasis>dissecting</emphasis> way to describe resolution

        mechanics.  He has however the good taste to used a different

        naming so that we not confused his definitions with those of

        misters Tweet and Edwards, calling his Three Means Chance,

        Ability and Intent.  Currently only used to describe different

        resolutioons mechanics, by the time of this writing, we still

        don't know how M. Logan want to use it in correlation with his

        Play Flow and Balance of Power.</para>

      <para>Another interesting reading is <ulink

        url="http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/collists/ruleslaw.html">The

        Travel of Mendes Pinto</ulink> by Sergio Mascarenhas.  This

        amateur role-playing game is not only excellent but a very

        good reading for all the notes and explanation that the author

        give on his design.  The section 4 about action is especially

        relevant here, since the author elaborate his own theory about

        game action resolution, which consist in a context, a goal, a

        performance and an outcome.  I will also try to respond to the

        elements appearing there and to the excellent ideas that

        populate the game.</para>

      <para>This resume quite briefly what I consider as the most

        important elements of actual Role Playing theories about

        resolution mechanics.  This is by far a complete survey since

        such survey is very hard to done (must libraries doesn't keep

        a good set of role-playing theories books, or even magazine,

        and also, must of the litterature on the subject was done in

        either commercial rpg, special editors magazines, and other

        difficult to consult elements).  I will be please to heard

        about different approach to events resolutions, especially

        those that break with the current tendancy to consider events

        resolution strictly in terms of rules mechanics.</para>

    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="DRI">

    <title>DRI Events Resolution Taxonomy</title>

    <para>What the DRI stand for?  DRI stands for Definition,

      Resolution and Interpretation, the three steps involved in every

      event resolutions mechanics.  The view of DRI on event

      resolution makes it very near the definition of play flow, as

      specify by Hunter Logan in his RPG.net's column <quote>The

      Impossible Dream</quote>, and as such can be considered the

      central element of any RPG, whatever freeform or rules-light it

      can be.  However, although this taxonomy take good notice of

      some narrative aspect of RPG, it doesn't explore as in depth it

      could have.  Doing so, it neglected an important part of RPG,

      part which can play a great role to the immersion of the player.

      However, the interest of the method are more into the

      interactive elements of narration, as well as of the decision

      process in RPG, a very different topic.  So, to avoid to mix

      thing too much and having a too broad and often useless tool,

      the taxonomy accept to be less general than other method and

      keep focus on its primary goal: offering a good understanding of

      the resolution mechanics of RPG, so that the designer as well as

      the game master can choose the best fit for the system or the

      situation at hand.</para>

    <para>So, DRI is a mean to classify the process of events

      resolution in RPG.  The taxonomy identify three important part

      in events resolution: the Definition of the events, the

      effective Resolution and finally the Interpretation of the

      results.  Each of them happen in order, and different games or

      play style will put a different emphasis on different steps,

      putting more or less details in one, taking more time in another

      or according more or less power to the players, the GM or the

      rules in another part.  We will see how all those aspects affect

      the role-playing experience in a <link

      linkend="DRIFortune">later section</link>, but let just

      consider the definitions currently:</para>

    <variablelist id="dridefinitions">

      <varlistentry id="definitiondef">

        <term>Definition</term>

        <listitem>

          <para>Each events can be defined using a set of parameters.

            Some parameters are mundane, or in game, such as the event

            description, who's involved and in which manners, what's

            the possible outcomes and what are the odds for each of

            them, and which parameters can influence them, like

            difficulties, materials or skills.  But another important

            aspect are more on the narrative, or meta-game, level: How

            important is the event to the story? Are they any outcome

            that is necessary for a good continuation?  Are they any

            outcome that is unwanted?  And what are the general

            purpose of the event for the game?  Which atmosphere such

            events must create?  Those narrative elements are often

            more important than the mundane ones.</para>

        </listitem>

      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry id="resolutiondef">

        <term>Resolution</term>

        <listitem>

          <para>The next step is to determine the resolution mechanics

            used to resolved the event.  There is many way to

            determine the final issue of an event.  The taxonomy here

            doesn't aim to describe them in details but instead try to

            precise which caracteristics such mechanics should have to

            handle the event just describe previously.</para>

        </listitem>

      </varlistentry>

      <varlistentry id="interpretationdef">

        <term>Interpretation</term>

        <listitem>

          <para>Finally, the resolution mechanics give just the choice

            of an outcome, but this in fact let to the players, again

            both GM and role-players, some liberties of

            interpretation.  The interpretation can contain two parts:

            the effective performance (what happen) and the outcome

            (the result).  This last one doesn't need to be choose

            from the possible outcome determine in the first step and

            can even be completely different.  Don't hesitate to

            create new situations from it, it will just add to the

            story.  Also, as for the <link

            linkend="resolutiondef">resolution</link>, the goal of

            this article is not to describe them but instead to make

            them in relation with the two previous elements.</para>

        </listitem>

      </varlistentry>

    </variablelist>

    <section id="DRIFortune">

      <para>The control on the game events can be seen accross two

        dimensions: who have it and for which part they have it.  The

        current RPG theory currently have two models for it: The

        Fortune model, describe through the <acronym>FatE</acronym>,

        <acronym>FatS</acronym> and <acronym>FitM</acronym> acronyms,

        which is related to when the players control the game, and the

        Balance of Power (<acronym>BoP</acronym>), which is more

        concern about balance between the players, the GM, and the

        rules.</para>

      <para>DRI provide a model based on the Fortune one, and so is

        more concern about the when then the whom.  Although I

        consider this issue very important, is just that the current

        model doesn't add anything very useful to it.  We can all see

        who are in control at which moment, but it's less clear how

        the exact balance is affected.  I let's this to the BoP

        model.</para>

      <para>The original Fortune model include three different models:

        FatE, FatS and FitM.  FatE, which stand for

        Fortune-at-the-End, is the most popular one: players describe

        what they try to achieve and roll the dice (or enable any

        resolution mechanics asked by the rules) and see if they

        succeed.  This model is the one where the players have the

        less control on their character's destiny, since although they

        can decide what they do, they can't do anything to oriented the

        game after a bad roll, leading to PC die, etc.</para>

      <para>Fortune-at-the-Start try to give more power on the players

        about the issue of an action.  The player roll the dice first,

        and seeing the result, decide what to do.  This is most often

        used for initiative rolls, although some games try to use it

        for their resolution system, for example by letting the

        players draw cards and choosing their actions based on the

        cards in hand.  FatS let you more control on the issues, and

        so on the story.  FatS allow you to avoid most bad situation

        without need to fudging the dice, although it gives players

        less freedom on what their characters can do.</para>

      <para>Fortune-in-the-Middle, you guess, is a mix between both

        the precedent.  The players choose their actions, call the

        resolution mechanics and, based on the results, describe their

        actions.  This is the model which give the more narrative

        control on the events by the players.</para>

      <para>In DRI terminology, the three model can be describe using

        camel-cased variations of DRI.  The use of uppercase signal

        players' control for this part of the events resolution, where

        a lower case letter signal rules control.  So, FatE will be

        Dri, FatS drI, and FitM will be DrI.  One will remark that the

        three models don't contain an uppercase R.  It's may be seen

        obvious, giving this, that the reason for this it's, as long

        you are using fortune, calling to the resolution mechanics is

        always giving the control to the rule.  Elsewhere, the game is

        no more contain Fortune element and so, can be better describe

        using either the Drama or Kharma mechanics. Well, I choose to

        say no to this hypothesis.  Player cans have the control here

        too.  Usually, players or GM let the rules describe which

        resolution mechanics used for a specific action: used this

        dice roll under this statistic for combat, or roll this

        statistic that number of time until you succeed thrice or

        more.  A R system will offer you to choose the mechanic based

        on what you want the action to look like, not what's more

        appropriate.  Used open roll for cinematic action, used

        extended roll to put more thrill, used simple roll on

        unimportant issues.  Briefly, based your mechanic on narrative

        factors, instead of descriptive ones, since what you really

        want it's a good story and good atmosphere, nor an objective

        description of events.  Although this look like a very

        narrative statements, credible simulations can still be

        achieve by such system.  Currently, RPG used only one or two

        universal mechanics for most of their events resolutions.

        Simulation is often reach more through fine-tuned parameters,

        detailed tables or statistics or other related parameter, not

        through the specific resolution mechanics.  Also, most

        resolution mechanics can be easily modified to give the same

        probabilities but with a different overall feeling.  Since

        only the probabilities are essential for good simulation, this

        part is untouched and so can mood-based simulation system is a

        possible dream.</para>

    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="definition">

    <title>Defining Events</title>

    <para role="todo">Explain how to define elements.</para>

    <section id="narrative">

      <title>Narrative Elements</title>

      <para role="todo">

        Must find how to determine narrative elements

      </para>

    </section>

    <section id="mundane">

      <title>Mundane Elements</title>

      <para role="todo">

        Actors

        Issues

        Decisions

        Outcomes

      </para>

    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="resolution">

    <title>Resolution</title>

    <para role="todo">

      Example on how to use the resolution mechanics.

    </para>

    <section id="DKF">

      <title>The DKF Resolution Model</title>

      <para role="todo">How the DKF is related to all of this.

        Including what's DKF and how it complement the taxonomy.</para>

    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="interpretation">

    <title>Interpretation</title>

    <para role="todo">Frankly, I don't know.</para>

  </section>

  <section id="history">

    <title>History of the ABC/DKF model.</title>

    <para role="todo">Historic of the taxonomy.</para>

  </section>

  <section id="ack">

    <title>Acknowledgements</title>

      <para role="todo">Acknowledge Mason, HighlandGreen and Pat

        "Sleeper", as well as Ron Oswald and the author of Everway.</para>

  </section>

</article>

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