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+<article>
+ <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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