The Problem of Conflict

This thread is dedicated to professor Etular, the author of definitive work on the Theory of Roleplay and CEO of “RP Concepts Unlimited”

Scope: this thread is about high-stakes conflict between player-characters, it covers political intrigue, cops-vs-robbers, lighties-vs-cultists but does not include a citizen being upset about the beer price in the local tavern.

Point: I look at conflict and what can go wrong. My intention is to understand why drama happens, and what can be done to avoid it. Post your ideas or expand on/contradict my ideas.

1. Chosen Conflict, Unavoidable Conflict, Forced Conflict

Let’s first look on how one gets into conflict. Easiest way to do it is to explicitly choose that you want conflict. For instance, you are a bandit and decide to attack another character for his belongings or a cultist attacking a priest to drive home a warning to the Church or a zealous paladin charging a Death Knight. You chose to have conflict, for conflict’s own sake.

Another way is to be put in a position where conflict is unavoidable, for instance you area a paladin walking the street and you see three cultists sacrificing an orphan. You cannot walk away from that without breaking character. Or you are a guild of Lighties, and somebody informs you that cultists are doing a Bad Thing right now in the Dark Forest of Gloom.

Last way is being forced into conflict. This happens when somebody else chose conflict and decided to target you.

2. Reasons for Conflict

First of all one can choose conflict or put himself in unavoidable conflict situation because they think that conflict is simply fun. This had to be mentioned, but let’s not talk about it further.

a) Group Affiliation. Very common cause for conflict. You belong to group (or guild) A, and your group is hostile to group B. Having this conflict adds to group identity. For instance, guard guilds are defined by being hostile to lawbreakers.
b) Character. Another common cause. Identity of your character is contingent on being hostile to certain groups. A crazy scientist is hostile towards just about everybody and will attack any lonely traveler to take him for experiments.

Now let’s turn to the most subtle and the most problematic reason for conflict:

c) Meta-RP Ideal. You, as player, believe that Stormwind should be free of Death Knights and all DKs in Stormwind are somehow violating or at least straining the Lore. Your character moves out to enforce your OOC ideal.

3. Price of Conflict

Now I can get to the point of the whole thread, and discuss what goes wrong and what causes drama.

1. Forced Conflict Drama
Very common source of drama is for a character to be forced into conflict. You may be walking a street, looking for a friendly chat…and bam! You are attacked by a bandit. This can happen to Bad Guys too. You planned to have a casual, relaxed demon-summoning in the Woods of Gloom only to be attacked by paladins. To avoid this, I would recommend the players to at least put in their TRP/MRP that they do NOT want to be randomly attacked and for attackers to, whenever possible, whisper the intended target. For guilds, I suggest putting down some clear rules of conflict with other guilds. “We do not want to be randomly attacked in the Wood of Gloom without arrangement.”

2. Unavoidable Conflict Drama
Sometimes unavoidable conflict has an impure motive. This happens when player enters conflict not because he thinks that it is fun, but when he as player feels that he must. A common example is character A being abducted, and his friends feeling that they must free him. The problem is that these players enter conflict BECAUSE they want A freed, not because they enjoy the conflict-RP that follows. This means that if A is not freed, they will feel that they have lost and they will be grumpy (since their enjoyment hinges on freeing A instead of simply having a good conflict). In worst cases, Unavoidable Conflict is also undesirable. Your awesome Paladin Order wants to have a peaceful theological discussion, but one of your members is reported abducted by cultists. Now you have to break character, or cancel the event and go save him. No wonder you are pissed.

Here I have no advise, only thing I can recommend is that you recognize when you are in a situation where you feel that you HAD to join conflict because you must, instead of because you want to. Be aware of the fact, and when anger inevitably comes should you fail to achieve the goal, you will know where it comes from. So when enemy escapes with the abductees and you feel like dramamongering about enemy being OP….it is more likely that you are just angry about losing, but it is more socially acceptable to rage about OPness instead of loss.

3. Meta-RP Drama
ABSOLUTELY THE WORST. You join conflict to enforce an OOC ideal, which means that you will always lose if target of conflict doesn’t share the ideal. Most common form is Good Guys to fight Bad Guys because the OOCly believe that ‘people must face consequences’. The biggest problem with this is that you end up in a cycle of perpetual defeat, you will up the game and your target will up the game as well. Then you are likely to resort to OOC dealing to solve it, which will make it worse. There is no way to force your ideal on another. For instance if you feel that murderers must face death sentence, but the murderer doesn’t agree - he will always escape your detention. You will make detention better; he will escape through OP means.

I think the only thing to do here is to stop. If your motive for conflict is enforcement of Meta-RP Ideal….just stop. Drop it. Leave. Find something else to do. If you roll a guard because you feel on OOC level that criminals must be punished, just reroll another character. Only roll a guard if you enjoy cop-vs-robbers RP and want to do it.

4. Last Tips

I think it is important to be aware of your motives for conflict at all times, and in advance. Especially unavoidable conflict can cause trouble down the road. When you create a character or create/join a guild you must know what unavoidable conflict waits down the road, and whether you want it. Are you ready to rush into Gloomy Wood to save a friend, and will you do it because you OOCly must or because you enjoy it? If you don’t enjoy it, don’t create a character who values friendship enough to risk his life rescuing a friend. Are you ready to drop everything and anything to go bash some cultists? If not, then don’t join guilds that must do that.


TL:DR For conflict to be free of drama, it must be freely chosen by the player for the right reason of having fun, not because he MUST participate in the conflict and especially not for reasons of enforcing an OOC Meta-RP ideal.

Melnerag wrote: TL:DR For conflict to be free of drama, it must be freely chosen by the player for the right reason of having fun, not because he MUST participate in the conflict and especially not for reasons of enforcing an OOC Meta-RP ideal.

Hear ye, hear ye!

A very coherent argument and some very very good points. Lots of (unpleasant, unenjoyable) conflict, drama and meta springs from people dragging their ooc ideas and imposing them poorly onto their characters. It's always obvious and it's never fun, and it's one of several reasons I'm taking a break.
When people rp purely to manipulate and control the setting to match what they think it 'should' be ooc, it becomes no fun for any involved.

If someone walked by the Shady Lady, on their own, wished to avoid conflict and had a thing in their TRP to say so but was loud, throwing money about etc. I'd whisper them and say "you can avoid conflict, but you'll also be avoiding rp with me from now on." I can't tolerate someone who'd ruin the immersion for me because they're too scared of their character getting a black eye and a few lost coins. There needs to be more cooperation on both sides, but to simply avoid conflict sounds to me like more of a drama issue than to play things out.

As for the meta issue, I don't think there will be many who disagree.

So like, all I could think of when I read this topic was "omg is Etular back?!"