[svn] r2030@freebird: fabien | 2005-12-28 22:30:42 -0500
Traduction de la couleur rouge.
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<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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