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*Manu <http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=223>*

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*The 4 steps of action (for Ron)

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« * on:* October 18, 2001, 11:55:00 AM »

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Hey again,

you mention these four steps in any action: Intention, Initiation,

Completion and Effect; could you again provide some examples of what you

were thinking about? Thank you - great essay by the way :smile:

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Manu

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« *Reply #1 on:* October 19, 2001, 08:52:00 AM »

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Hey Manu,

Whoo doggies ... can I ask a favor and sort of belay this one for a

while? What with Scenes and Tasks and Gamism and Audience and all that,

it's pretty thick at the moment.

This topic is a BIIIG deal and I think we can probably move it to the

Design forum. How about in a couple days?

Best,

Ron

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« *Reply #2 on:* October 23, 2001, 08:44:00 AM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Manu,

I'm finally ready to address the issues in this post, but believe me,

it's a biggie. I hope we get somewhere ?

Let's consider an event that is established through role-playing as

"happened" in the game-world. I look back over last night's game, and I

can say, "Sebastian killed the ogre."

Now you and I know that Sam (the player) and the rest of the people he

played with had to do SOMETHING to establish that. Dice and whatnot may

have been involved, but ultimately, it was social and verbal. Sam had to

propose something and through whatever mechanism, everyone else came to

agree with it and how it came to pass.

The topic at hand is not the DFK mechanisms involved (not initially

anyway), but rather the communication among the role-players (GM,

players alike) to establish the event. I am talking about whatever Sam

and anyone else SAID during that process.

OK, during play, here we are, and Sam is playing Sebastian, and there's

the big evil ogre. Sam says, "I attack him!"

What the hell did Sam just establish in the imaginative game-world?

Depending on the game system and/or the group, it could have been any of

the following.

Intention: Sam has announced Sebastian's intention, but in the

game-world, Sebastian has not yet moved or done anything. That must wait

upon some other step of the process.

Initiation: Sebastian has officially moved into action; his sword is

raised, he is moving and grimacing and so on.

Completion: Sebastian has completed his sword stroke; the action, for

all purposes, is finished.

Effect: Sebastian's sword-stroke has produced its consequences and we

have established just what has happened to the ogre and to Sebastian.

In actual role-playing, I have seen EVERY one of these categories as an

interpretation of Sam's statement.

For a role-playing situation to be functional at the most basic level,

the group as a whole must know and agree upon which one it is. I think

that most of us are aware how jarring, disruptive, and plain Not Fun it

is, when people at the role-playing table are disagreeing about which of

the four categories is being established by an announced action.

"But I said it!" is the issue. What, in fact, did you say? Intent,

Initiation, Completion, or Effect?

Game designs vary in the extent to which they either ESTABLISH or ASSUME

the status of Sam's announcement in regard to the four categories.

By far and away, the most common solution is to break down the

game-world causality into linear form.

1) Establish order of actions among all participants. Each character may

now be considered "frozen" in the beginning of the sequence.

2) Resolve the action of the first participant in terms of (a)

unfreezing, such that the action may now be announced in full by the

player; (b) motions of the character from initiation through completion

through result.

3) Continue through all characters.

Please note that this paradigm exists with or without Fortune playing a

role. In Champions, step 1 is fixed by Speed and Dexterity, whereas in

other games each round requires a new Initiative determination (e.g.

roll). In still others, the order is purely metagame in terms of "go

around to the left" or something like that. For purposes of the present

topic, this distinction does not matter.

Several tweaks of this paradigm exist. They include:

- "Saved" actions - explicitly permitting characters to reserve their

actions past the point of order, to use as an "interrupt" prior to

another, subsequent character's action.

- Formalizing and fixing the announcements of actions prior to step two.

E.g. in Sun & Storm, the characters' actions are announced in order of

slowest-to-fastest between steps 1 and 2, and then resolved in order of

fastest-to-slowest in step 2 as normal.

- Assigning point-costs to actions such that one may manage a resource

to distribute one's moments of action through the round (example: Shot

Costs in Feng Shui).

I suggest that this approach to the problem is functional, but it does

have its limitations. For instance, the "saved" modification tends to

result in everyone announcing "I save" and then playing

multiple-interrupts on each other during each person's action. Or, some

people dislike the "freeze" effect generated in the imagination.

However, this paradigm is not the only one. Another is essentially

"laissez-faire" for actions, in which everyone is expected to agree

about the order informally, which in practice usually means the GM may

rearrange who is going first and what happens when, for each series of

actions in a group situation. The Window operates in this fashion,

assuming that everyone's good faith is more reliable than a step-by-step

method. In practice, this usually gives so much power to the GM that he

or she may as well be writing the entire scene (especially insofar as

many climactic scenes rely very heavily on the timing and sequence of

actions).

I have observed the laissez-faire method to founder on many occasions,

due to confusions between the four categories. When Sam says, "I attack

him," Sam and the GM and everyone else can be quite at odds about

whether Sebastian is actually in motion or not. A subsequent

announcement may influence Sam to say, "Um, actually I don't," or

conversely, "But I'm already attacking him!" or anything in between. On

the other hand, I am assured by many people that they prefer this

method, and I can only assume that the group in question has informally

worked out a standard for which category is being applied for a given

announced action. I suspect that in these groups that Balance of Power

heavily favors the GM.

Finally, Zero introduced an novel solution - announced actions are ONLY

Intent, and finalized as Initiation only at the end of a "free

discussion" about them. The order of the actions are established

simultaneously with the resolution of the actions (it's the same roll).

Results of the actions are all then established in order. Sorcerer's

group-resolution mechanic imitates that of Zero with minor differences.

Another solution is found in Extreme Vengeance, in which order is fixed

but adjustable due to metagame resources, and Hero Wars follows this lead.

There are lots of other solutions or models as well, but none so

consistently established across many games as the first two. If I'm

leaving out your favorite, please don't have a cow about it; this post

is long enough already.

If anyone would like to add insight to this breakdown, or to disagree

with it entirely, or otherwise to give me some feedback about it, I'm

very interested. It's a really big deal and - in my opinion - even more

fundamental than DFK. The four categories obviously are integrated in

many ways with conflict vs. task resolution, and I'd like to work out

some of those relationships as well.

Best,

Ron

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« *Reply #3 on:* October 23, 2001, 11:19:00 AM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think IICE is brilliant, and its a game mechanic I'm working on this

week for my own game.  I want players to be able to state their

character's Intent, and if the action seems possible but not absolutely

assured, for them to pause long enough for a very quick fortune-based

check.  

Regardless of the outcome of the check (success, failure, or

catastrophe), I want players to proceed to the Initation without stating

a new Intent, even if they know the action is going to fail and to

role-play through to the Completion using a Director's stance to provide

the elements that explain specifically why the action was successful or

a failure.  The Effect will be announced by the next player to pick up

the narrative, as an introduction to their own Intent.  

What I'm stumbling over right now is the best mechanism for determining

order of actions.  My design goal is to minimalize disruptions to

Narrative play, so that the story flows with as few meta-game

interruptions as possible.  The standard linear form of resolution (what

Ron posted as step 1-3) required enormous quantities of meta-game

interruption.  I'm not saying this is bad, or bad for every game, but

its something I'm trying to avoid without running smack into the

organizational and coherency issues of freeform.

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« *Reply #4 on:* October 23, 2001, 11:42:00 AM »

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Actually, Laurel, I suggest that you're struggling with an impossible

design goal here:

"My design goal is to minimalize disruptions to Narrative play, so that

the story flows with as few meta-game interruptions as possible."

Narrativism relies on a very strong metagame presence, and I've found

that, counter-intuitively, it HELPS the story flow by acknowledging it.

I think the key issue, though, is "disruption" rather than metagame vs.

in-game. The traditional/common method, for instance, LOOKS as if it's

very logical, but if people change their actions at the last second, you

have a whole renegotiatory process going on with every character at

every action. It's that kind of disruption that I think CAN be avoided.

Best,

Ron

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« *Reply #5 on:* October 23, 2001, 04:19:00 PM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warning: system plug ahead.

This simplifies very well, kudos to you Mr. Edwards.

Quote

Ron Edwards wrote:

The topic at hand is...the communication among the role-players to

establish the event...could have been any of the following.

Intention: ...the game-world...has not yet moved or done anything. That

must wait upon some other step of the process.

Initiation: ...moved into action...

Completion: ...the action...is finished.

Effect: ...has...established just what has happened...

Very well conceived!  (Just one small quibble, since I would include

what happens between the initiation and completion of an action - the

act itself ? in with the second group, I might call it Action, as it

?caught in the act.?)

Quote

In actual role-playing, I have seen EVERY one of these categories as an

interpretation of Sam's statement.

For a role-playing situation to be functional at the most basic level,

the group as a whole must know and agree upon which one it is. I think

that most of us are aware how jarring, disruptive, and plain Not Fun it

is, when people at the role-playing table are disagreeing about which of

the four categories is being established by an announced action.

You have that right.  We felt so too when creating Scattershot; in fact

we felt that our mechanics had to first act as a communal language, thus

such concepts had to be explicitly delineated in the text.

Quote

By far and away, the most common solution is to break down the

game-world causality into linear form.

1) Establish order of actions among all participants. Each character may

now be considered "frozen" in the beginning of the sequence.

2) Resolve the action of the first participant in terms of (a)

unfreezing, such that the action may now be announced in full by the

player; (b) motions of the character from initiation through completion

through result.

3) Continue through all characters.

This is too true amongst traditional games.  And as you point out leads

to many confusing situations.  I originally found that ?initiative

rolls? seemed to be a mechanism to collapse many ?intangibles? about

what can or cannot affect who makes the first (nigh?) successful attack

in a combat.  To that I said, "Why skip the role-playing?"

What eventually resulted (mostly because I was lazy in my analysis of

the many varied systems out there) was stripping out such mechanics

entirely.  As a game of Scattershot proceeds, when anyone does anything

that raises the tension level to a degree that, in all fairness, more

detail is needed to parse out, ?rounds? begin.  And they begin with that

participant?s character.  It need not be anything traditionally thought

of as melee (owing largely to my feeling that violent aggression need

not always come to blows), just anything that creates the narrative

atmosphere the [i]can[/] result in a fight.

I take a page from so many gunslinger movies where, to me, the battle

begins with an insult, tossed drink, or silent response (with the

villain seemingly tempting the hero to ?make the first move?).  Not only

did all ?statements? in Scattershot?s combat need to be ?initiations,?

all statements had to be, certainly because any of them could shift play

into combat-turn-sequencing.  (Heck, ?regular? play is described as

loosely following this sequencing anyway; combat?s need for impartiality

simply makes it more structured.)

Quote

- Formalizing and fixing the announcements of actions prior to step two.

E.g. in Sun & Storm, the characters' actions are announced in order of

slowest-to-fastest between steps 1 and 2, and then resolved in order of

fastest-to-slowest in step 2 as normal.

As an aside, for all my bad experiences with role-playing gaming, this

is the style whose author I most wish to go back in time and strangle in

their crib.

Quote

On the subject of 'saved actions:?

I suggest that this approach to the problem is functional, but it does

have its limitations. For instance, the "saved" modification tends to

result in everyone announcing "I save" and then playing

multiple-interrupts on each other during each person's action. Or, some

people dislike the "freeze" effect generated in the imagination.

I saw that too.  In Scattershot, saved actions must have explicit

?activation? conditions and are lost when play comes back to the player.

 Likewise, combined with actions that do not weigh upon a character?s

combat, Scattershot combat can take on an air of that tense circling I

am fond of in cinema.

For Scattershot we decided to scrap all the complexity of turn ordering

mechanics in favor of a clear and simple ?counter-clockwise around the

table? system.  To make up for things reflected by those rules, we took

note from the game theory premise it seemed to be founded on: ?they who

attack first, have the advantage.?  This might be important where

decisive blows can be easily had, but since this was not the case, we

let the above, ?whoever initiated goes first? rule determine combat (in

playtest, we found that this gives the desired level of cinema to our

system).

The effect this had was to place more focus on the role-playing aspect

of the game.  In tense scenes it could really be important who

?initiated? as we see it in cinema.  As testing wore on, it became

evident that not only did parsing everything out this way strengthen the

?communal language? effect of the system, but also it streamlined the

play itself unobtrusively.

The other thing we added to de-emphasize the ?who attacks first...?

effect was to institute a running ?who has the advantage? mechanic.  You

know, the ?Robin Hood is higher on the stairs, but the Sheriff, who is

better with the blade, can still press his attack upward? kind of stuff.

 Together this allowed us to abandon a lot of the complexity of more

mechanical systems without sacrificing combat?s value in the narrative.

 (As a student of game theory, I appreciate the interplay between chosen

actions and their effect on ?advantage,? making tactics a two-leveled

process.)

Quote

It's a really big deal and - in my opinion - even more fundamental than

DFK. The four categories obviously are integrated in many ways with

conflict vs. task resolution

I think this is another one of those, ?without focus, a game dies on

this ground? issues and heartily agree.  I, for one, am curious whether

anyone else made this sort of thing more explicit in their games.

I believe this kind of communal unspoken agreement stuff underpins a

great deal of role-playing gaming yet receives almost no discussion.

Fang Langford

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------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fang Langford is formerly the creator of the Scattershot Role-Playing

Game System.  This project has been permanently suspended.  If you have

any questions regarding the implementation of it or anything else, he

can be reached at ripjack@mad.scientist.com

<mailto:ripjack@mad.scientist.com>

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« *Reply #6 on:* October 23, 2001, 08:28:00 PM »

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fang,

Quotin' you for emphasis:

"I believe this kind of communal unspoken agreement stuff underpins a

great deal of role-playing gaming yet receives almost no discussion."

Exactly. I've been chafing for over two years to get to this level of

discussion, yet until now have been tripped up by the continual need to

clarify GNS. With any luck, that stage is over.

Best,

Ron

P.S. Editing this personal note in: I didn't find the Sun & Storm

(backwards-announce, forwards-resolve) anything as aggravating as the

perpetually saved action. Or worse, the play-tactic that shifted

announcements up and down the Intent/ Initiation/ Completion/ Result

spectrum as the player or GM saw fit, from action to action.

[ This Message was edited by: Ron Edwards on 2001-10-24 10:01 ]

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