Interfere vs. custom Parley in intra-party conflict
Something weird came up in our Planets Collide session tonight that I wanted to comment on.
At one point, they narrate that they make camp on the beach. The Bard has two relics he got from Death’s domain, so he stays awake longer than everyone else to make sure no one messes with them.
He puts one on, and goes to sleep after everyone else.
When the others wake up, he’s sleeping still, so I tell them they have a chance to try to get his stuff. They don’t act decisively, and he wakes up before anyone takes anything. (I’m not picking on this player. In the fiction, the Bard betrayed the party once, and they do not trust him with this power.)
But the Bard is suspicious, and he and the Barbarian get into a verbal clash. During the argument, the Druid takes one of the relics that was left in the sand.
The Bard’s player wants to roll to spot this, and the Druid’s player asserts she’s being sneaky.
We all instinctively go to the dice, and it seems like Interfere is being triggered, so we try it out with the Bard “interfering” with the Druid holding out. He get’s a 7–9.
That’s when it breaks down. “✴On a 7–9, they still get a modifier, but you also expose yourself to danger, retribution, or cost”. They read it to me several times, because they all have the Basic Moves in front of them and I don’t, but none of us can resolve this into a plausible fictional scenario.
I mentally turn it around and think “maybe the Druid is interfering…” but then it dawns on me. The Bard isn’t Defying any Danger by looking—and the Druid isn’t Defying any Danger by holding out. I say we made a mistake, this isn’t Interfere. The Druid just has the item, and the Bard didn’t see it.
Right after that, another situation cropped up that seemed like a trigger for a move. The Bard accused the Barbarian of taking his thing, and he demanded to have it back! He pressed the Barbarian by threatening to drag her to Hell, which is a possibility. This seemed like a possible trigger for the revised Parley move by Jeremy Strandberg. (Except, in hindsight, even the revised Parley move only triggers for NPCs.)
https://plus.google.com/+JeremyStrandberg/posts/gUbwzudRooB
The Bard rolled a 10+, and the Barbarian picked 1 requirement, as per the move: She wanted the other relic in exchange.
He refused to give it up, though; and out of character, the player knew she didn’t have it.
Anyway, the contrast was stark between these two resolutions. Even though both were triggered by haphazard thinking, the Parley resolution felt more authentic and meaningful, and it didn’t strip anyone of their agency.
I recognize that this version of Parley could still cause problems if used to resolve an intra-party conflict—what if the Bard gave in to the Barbarian’s request? She couldn’t give him what he wanted. But my gut tells me there’s something robust and flexible there to work with.
This might be the first time Interfere came up in this campaign, and we’re 17 sessions in. Interfere triggered again later in the session, and the second time it handled a lot better. But hitting the snag with it makes me think it’s more of a meta-move, that relegates it to a more abstract, and thus less accessible layer of the game.
What I mean is, the trigger for Aid & Interfere seems clear at first brush: “When you help or hinder someone…” But in actual play, it requires more abstract considerations to trigger: “When you help or hinder someone who is rolling to resolve their own move, which must be identified and triggered already. “
Encumbrance already acknowledges this in the move: “When you make a move while carrying weight you may be encumbered.” In other words, the trigger is not really a trigger.
I don’t have a solution, I’m just reflecting on a bit of actual play and considering how we might do better next time.
For the first scenario I agree that interfere was not appropriate. The Bard could not take an action to interfere with what the Druid was doing. I think a straight Defy Danger roll for the Druid to grab the item would have made sense. If anything, the Barbarian could have aided the Druid by distracting the Bard.
For the Bard pressing the Barbarian, I would have just let them role play it out. Unless someone has a specific move or spell on their sheet that forces another PC to do something, I wouldn’t remove player agency by going to the dice.
I’ve got all sorts of problems with both Aid and Interfere. I don’t like RAW bonds, so I don’t like them being a modifier to a basic move. I don’t like the fact that the net gain from the move is a mechanical modifier, one which you can easily tell whether it had any effect or not (and with Aid, it only effects the outcome 1 in 4 times). And I don’t like the fact that the 7-9 result seems to imply that there won’t be risk or cost on a 10+, regardless of the fiction surrounding your attempt to Aid or Interfere.
So, my alternatives are available in the sheet below.
I think I’m your Druid vs Bard scenario, I think it’d probably just be the Druid defying danger, the danger being that the Bard notices.
Now, if the Bard really wanted to roll something to spot the Druid stealing the artifact, I think that’s fit with Interfering by “knowing they would do this” (WIS).
On a 7-9 to Interfere, the Druid has to choose: do it but minus 2, or relent and not do it. Say the Druid relents. But the Bard is now off balance, exposed, or vulnerable. “Barbarian, the Bard like spins and stares at the Druid, who’s all like whistling innocently and totally not going for the artifact in the sand, but you notice the Bard is wearing the other artifact, that damn liar, and he’s not paying attention to you at all. What do you do?”
drive.google.com – Moves Sheet.pdf – Google Drive
Those moves do look compelling, thanks Jeremy Strandberg!
This article about Sorcerer RPG came back to me last night: bloodthornpress.com – Sorcerer Unbound: Social Conflict
What I like about that method is that it immediately determines who has the upper hand in a social conflict, without eroding player (or NPC) agency, and that “upper hand” snowballs into any conflict later in the fiction that builds on it.
Your Interfere move presents the same choice in a different way. I like it. Take -2 or relent. I wonder if a similar idea could be rolled into Parley: “They can choose to do what you say, or you take +1 forward against them”.
Hmmm, now I wonder if there’s a good way to write a move that triggers when an NPC presses or entices a player’s character to do something they don’t want to. Maybe you wouldn’t even need to have a roll: If they do it, they take +1 forward with the NPC. And if they refuse, they take -2 forward with the NPC?
Nope. That would give random schmucks too much mechanical leverage over the adventurers. “Simple Simon accosts you on the road demands that you give him all the magical treasure you just found.”
Without something like the contest of Wills in Sorcerer, or what DW core calls “leverage”, it’s not really feasible.
I’m thinking we hit one of the edges of Dungeon World play—a kind of conflict that Dungeon World wasn’t meant for?
On the other hand, it can’t be unheard of to have classic dungeon adventure parties argue about who gets the loot, and for those arguments to escalate. It happened in my Tunnels & Trolls games more than once!
As for bonds, I liked them from the start. But in my current campaign, there have been a bunch that didn’t feel very impactful to the fiction, and not very memorable when they were resolved.
When I saw this comment on Reddit last week, it became clear why.
reddit.com – How to resolve player feeling they’re not getting enough EXP? • r/DungeonWorld
After reading that, I also found this helpful:
https://www.burningwheel.com/wiki/images/Ab_Beliefs.pdf
For last night’s session, we checked all our bonds before starting out to make sure they had at least 2 parts: a belief about the other character, and a call to action.
I told them the call to action might be something they “must do” or something they expect or demand from the other character. Or it might be a boundary that cannot be crossed: “I will never”, or “they must not”.
Several of the bonds in play were already pretty strong, but they re-wrote a few on the spot. I think it had a big impact on this session.
With bonds like that, rolling +bond still feels meaningful to me.
Maybe that’s why this was such a “soap opera” session, with so much emphasis on inner conflict and conflict between the characters.
Yeah, I get how bonds are supposed to work. But in play, I haven’t ever felt the juice to be worth the squeeze.
The starting bonds in the playbooks are lacking in the “call to action” part, which makes them tough to resolve, and when players in my games have resolved bonds, more often than not they’ve just left the bonds resolved and never got around to writing new ones. It’s not quick enough or intuitive enough, and doesn’t drive enough of play (even with bog-standard Aid/Interfere) for it to feel necessary to them.
We’ve dropped them entirely in my Stonetop game, and instead of “resolving bonds” during end of session, we simply have this:
“Give an example of how your opinion of or relationship with another character (PC or NPC) has changed. If everyone agrees, mark XP.”
It works great! It gives us a little 5-10 minute pause at the end of each session to highlight how relationships have changed. It’s felt super natural and everyone really enjoys it. Whereas the “resolving bonds” stuff always felt like a chore and/or a failure (because the bonds didn’t resolve).
Oh, also: super cool that you used this version of Parley! I’ve vaguely thought it work okay with PC vs. PC, but it’s cool to hear that it did.
As for the bard not being able to meat the barbarian’s requirement, that’s totally legit by my book! The barbarian has made their demand. If the bard can’t meet it, the bard doesn’t get what they want.
Now, depending on the circumstances, I think the GM and/or the bard’s player might call shenanigans on the barbarian’s demand. Like, I dunno, if the bard wanted the barbarian to leave the bard alone and go back to bed and the barbarian was like “Not unless you give 10,000 coin right now!” I’d press the barbarian’s player to answer a little more honestly. But from what you’ve described, asking for the bard to turn over the 2nd artifact was totally in character and strategically brilliant.
Jeremy Strandberg:
> As for the bard not being able to meat the barbarian’s requirement, that’s totally legit by my book! The barbarian has made their demand. If the bard can’t meet it, the bard doesn’t get what they want.
I think I need to clarify: The Bard was able to meet the Barbarian’s requirement. It was the Barbarian who wouldn’t be able to keep up her end if the requirement was met. Everyone at the table knew that, but in the fiction, the Bard didn’t. That was the part that might have caused trouble.
Bard: “Give me the abacus you took from me or I’ll drag you to hell.”
GM: “Sounds like Parley. Roll+CHA.”
Bard: “I got a 10.”
GM: “Barbarian, you either have to do what he wants, or choose a requirement from the list.”
Barbarian (picking the 1st option): “You give me that crown and I’ll give you the abacus back.”
Bard: “No way.”
Suppose the Bard says yes instead, and gives her the crown. Then the Bard has met her requirement, but the Barbarian still won’t give him the abacus. Because she doesn’t have it, and she doesn’t know who has it.
As written, the revised Parley move doesn’t make provision for this outcome. I see that AW’s Seduce or Manipulate move would give the Bard some leverage here in the form of a carrot/stick. I don’t know AW well enough to translate “erase one of their stat highlights”. Would it be like -1 ongoing to a stat?
Oh! Yeah, that’s tough. The Parley move was pressing the PC to do something that they couldn’t do. Ugh…
I’ll have to roll that around a little… my gut says that the move probably needs to have a “reality check” element, like H&S does. You can’t press or entice a peasant to fly, after all. Doesn’t matter how convincing you are if they don’t have wings.
But then… clearly the barbarian intended to bargain in bad faith. So maybe he’d first Defy Danger with CHA to maintain the charade that the had the abacus? And if he did, then the bard could trigger Parley, as he believed the barbarian they could deliver on it.
It really only works if both the players are in on it, and keen on letting the dice make the decisions for them.
Hmm.
The bad faith element only came into focus after the Bard rolled, and the Barbarian picked an option. But I think you hit the issue on the head:
> “If I ordered a general to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not obey me, that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my fault.”
I think it was my fault for saying it sounds like Parley when there was no amount of pressure or enticement that could make the Barbarian do what the Bard wanted.
Now the other situation—where the Druid took the Bard’s relic and the Bard wanted to spot it—in hindsight, I think it ought to have gone like this:
Druid: “I take the abacus while he is distracted.”
GM: “That would be Defying Danger, the danger being the Bard notices you.” (after Robert Finamore) “What do you do?”
Druid: “I want to act fast. I got a 10.”
Bard: “Hey! I want to spot this!”
GM: “You can study the situation closely, but time won’t stop for you. If you do that, the Barbarian could do what she wants.”
Bard: “I do it anyway.”
Druid: “I’m hiding it though.”
GM: “Okay, Bard you’re Discerning Realities. And Druid you’re Interfering. Druid, roll+bond.” (Supposing we use the core Aid and Interfere move.)
Druid: “I got an 8. You have to roll at –2, Bard! What is the danger, retribution, or cost?”
GM: “I don’t know. I hope this example is over. Maybe we can use the Stonetop version of Interfere instead.”
All the players: “But our bonds are meaningful—that’s what this whole session has been about. Can we roll+bond instead?”
GM: “Okay, Stonetop version, only rolling+bond.” 😉
—Given the circumstances, we could even say that the Bard was Discerning Realities, the Druid was Interfering, and the Barbarian was Aiding the Druid!