I prefer cooperative storytelling /combined/ with simulated conflict.
I don't /want/ to know the outcome of that battle before I set foot in it, or the outcome of my action before I try. For me, it has to do with failure - as you say, "the fun isn't in the winning, it's in the path to get there."
Unfortunately, my experience over the last... (holycrap, it's been...) 16 years is really that pure negotiation always breaks down. People don't like to fail, and very rarely will give permission for their characters to do so. On the other hand, they WILL fail, and fail fairly gracefully, if that element of chance built into the system doesn't quite fall their way, this time around.
I love negotiation first. Let's sort out what the situation's going to be, how we get into this mess - let's talk about consequences. It is, however, boring to win all the time - characters always and inevetably develop more from failure than they ever do from success. A conflict resolution metric that allows for a chance of failure for both sides is, oddly, pretty darned equitable over two players wrangling over loss.
Case in point - I was in a scene on Amber where a consequence was called for... and the character on the losing side of that consequence just... abjectly refused to take one. He was still Captain Awesome, utterly untouchable, posing amazing prowess on the field of battle /despite the fact that he lost/. In the end, someone else took that consequence for him... but it wasn't really theirs to take.
Consent works until it doesn't - at which point you need some sort of metric whereby players can fail when there is question over whether they will or not. In this, RTA has about the right balance, I think. The case above was isolated, and not my experience overall - in fact, it was a cheesing of the system as opposed to the intent of it. In RTA, you negotiate as far as you'd like, and when there is question in the outcome, you can test and see who gets to come out on top this time, in a fairly impartial manner.
I don't /want/ to know the outcome of that battle before I set foot in it, or the outcome of my action before I try. For me, it has to do with failure - as you say, "the fun isn't in the winning, it's in the path to get there."
Unfortunately, my experience over the last... (holycrap, it's been...) 16 years is really that pure negotiation always breaks down. People don't like to fail, and very rarely will give permission for their characters to do so. On the other hand, they WILL fail, and fail fairly gracefully, if that element of chance built into the system doesn't quite fall their way, this time around.
I love negotiation first. Let's sort out what the situation's going to be, how we get into this mess - let's talk about consequences. It is, however, boring to win all the time - characters always and inevetably develop more from failure than they ever do from success. A conflict resolution metric that allows for a chance of failure for both sides is, oddly, pretty darned equitable over two players wrangling over loss.
Case in point - I was in a scene on Amber where a consequence was called for... and the character on the losing side of that consequence just... abjectly refused to take one. He was still Captain Awesome, utterly untouchable, posing amazing prowess on the field of battle /despite the fact that he lost/. In the end, someone else took that consequence for him... but it wasn't really theirs to take.
Consent works until it doesn't - at which point you need some sort of metric whereby players can fail when there is question over whether they will or not. In this, RTA has about the right balance, I think. The case above was isolated, and not my experience overall - in fact, it was a cheesing of the system as opposed to the intent of it. In RTA, you negotiate as far as you'd like, and when there is question in the outcome, you can test and see who gets to come out on top this time, in a fairly impartial manner.
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