Systems That Drive Toward Inner Conflict

[Michael]

I’ve been thinking about this quote:

“The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself”
― William Faulkner

While I think it’s overstated, I do really enjoy narratives that hinge on inner conflict. What I’m wondering is what systems drive toward this kind of play. I have a few initial examples but I’m interested in hearing more.

Burning Wheel Beliefs: The player announces what their character believes and the GM presents situations that challenge those beliefs or puts them into tension. Inner conflict occurs when PCs must choose one belief over another, or when a belief proves untenable after a change in circumstances. Most of the game mechanics and systems are about giving granular detail to the circumstances, but I think the core of play is the drama from conflicting and changing beliefs.

Follow: Players choose a shared quest, something they individually want from the quest, and something they need from another character. Most of the conflict is interpersonal (our reasons for being on the quest don’t line up) but there is also the opportunity for inner conflict. My priority is X, but I also need the approval (or love, or tutelage) of someone whose priority is Y. The inner conflict arises from whether I care more about the relationship or the quest. Similarly, if another player (or circumstance) presents a way that I can fulfill my agenda without the quest (the mercenary finds a quicker way to get rich), I have to decide whether my commitment to the quest has extended beyond my personal agenda.

Of course, I think people bring this into a lot of other systems, often with little support. What I’m thinking about is systems that consistently bring inner conflict to the core of play.

[dunadhaigh]

Captain Obvious: Hearts of Wulin (has a basic move called Inner Conflict)

[Michael_G_Barford]

@dunadhaigh can you tell us more about how the Inner Conflict move has worked for you or what you find interesting about it?

[beepeegee]

Well, Hillfolk / Dramasystem works perfectly well for this.

[neilnjae]

Smallville. It’s wonderful.

Characters are described not by Strength, Dexterity, and skills, but rather by their Drives and Relationships. Drives are things like Justice and Duty, and Relationships are mostly with other PCs; they’re rated by die size. Each Drive and Relationship has a descriptor, a short phrase that says how the character feels about is, such as “Justice serves only the strong” or “Jason is my one true friend.”

It’s a Cortex+ game, so to perform an action you form a dice pool from the Drive and Relationship that’s relevant, plus a couple of other dice from signature items and locations, if applicable; you roll the lot and sum the two highest. The selection of Drive and Relationship means that every action is informed by why you’re doing it and whom you’re doing it for.

This leads to loads of scenery-chewing melodrama, but what about inner conflict?

If you decide to act against a Drive’s or Relationship’s descriptor, you get to add three dice to your dice pool. So if turn against Jason and stand up for justice for the weak, you’ll get to add 3d10 3d8 to your dice pool rather than the 1d10 1d8 you’d get for standing with him.

The cost of going against a descriptor is that you reduce the value of the stat for the rest of the session, have to rewrite the descriptor at session end, and effectively get a bunch of extra XP for your trouble.

What this all means is that you have characters who are constantly going through struggles with their beliefs and relationships, reassessing them, and plunging headlong into situtations where they’re challenged again.

I ran a Smallville game of HBO’s Rome and it worked brilliantly. And then we did Littleton, our very English and understated version of Smallville, which was some of the absolute best gaming of my life.

[Michael]

“I ran a Smallville game of HBO’s Rome and it worked brilliantly.”

From what you describe, that sounds like a great fit! This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

[SabineV5]

Good Society also has Inner Conflict (Duty vs. Desire, Family vs. Love etc). I’ve only been playing one-shots or short arcs, so it never came into play, but I would be really interested in these. Aside from a character’s Desire, they seem to provide another layer to the struggle they’re facing.

[DavidMK]

You beat me to it!

It definitely has a different focus that takes time to get used to it, similar to DramaSystem.

I’m finding the combination of Values + Faction + Roles + Beliefs + Relationships from Cortex Prime work very nicely for my political dramatic action space station game.

[neilnjae]

If anyone’s interested, I dug up the notes I made for the game, including character generation and the PCs we had.

[BeckyA]

I think the dramatic poles mechanic in Hillfolk is amazing for this.

You pick two dramatic poles which are in conflict and use those to drive your character. So if you are familiar with the Reimagined Battlestar Galactica - I use Starbuck as a character who exemplifies this well. She has a strong sense of loyalty to Adama, the Gods and those she cares about… she also has a huge tendency to self destruct. The most interesting scenes come when those two aspects of her personality are in conflict.

I don’t think it is as foregrounded in the system as well as it needs to be (it sits entirely outside the primary token economy) so it is too easy to sideline. But that piece of game tech is something I loved when I ran my Hillfolk campaign and I’d definitely want to pull it out and put it in a system which integrates it more fully.

[Henning]

I’m gonna have to mention King Arthur Pendragon.

Now, I know there’s is points of discussion regarding the role of women and gender in its setting. (And I’m aware of some of these arguments.) But it still was the very first game, that taught me to play a genuinely lazy character. I, as a player, never managed to “feel” the laziness of a PC. (After all it’s not that exhausting, to describe how you’re climbing a mountain.) But when my charactersheet took that control out of my hands, I was confused first, annoyed second and then amazed by the emerging narrative. It’s just amazing if you roll with it.

[Nickwedig]

In the new 3rd edition of Over the Edge, every character has a question mark trait. That’s a freeform attribute marked with a question mark after it. So you might be a Prophetic? Spirit Medium or a Fearless? Professional Boxer. The question mark trait is something your character wants to be or thinks of themselves as. But that self-image is unreliable, and putting the question mark on the trait highlights that uncertainty. It flags the trait to the GM and other players as something you want to be challenged on. So they give you opportunities for your Honest? PC to be honest with them, or to lie to them, and either result is interesting. (Rob Donoghue talks some more about it here.)

[MXH]

Great topic! I love that Faulkner quote, even though I’m usually at war with only statements.

He very much seems to be coming from a novelists’ perspective. A dramatic writer would more likely highlight interpersonal conflict as most important. To the extent that you have inner conflict in dramatic literature, it absolutely must be demonstrated through action. A story like The Sound and the Fury would never work on stage or screen, because it takes place so substantially in the characters heads - great venue for inner conflict.

Great plays and movies have inner conflict of course, but it’s much less central, and tends to express itself in other ways - namely through interpersonal conflict and growth. Nora in A Doll’s House grows substantially, but we never have access to the raw inner conflict. We see plenty of conflict between her and Helmer, and we see her grow as a result.

RPGs seem to sit way more easily on the dramatic/interpersonal end of the scale, and that’s what we tend to see emphasized across the spectrum. RPGs do provide room for internal monologue, and that to me would seem the most obvious way to get at inner conflict – though that doesn’t on its doesn’t necessarily point players in that direction. A strong premise can help there. I’ve got Midnight in the Oasis in mind as an example here.

I do feel the natural tendency in RPGs points towards dramatic conflict, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all.

[Nickwedig]

Another method of illustrating inner conflict is to externalize it somehow. You have games like Everyone is John, where multiple people play a single character, or times where a GM or another player play temptation for a character (the Shadow in Wraith, demons in Sorcerer, the GM in a learning conflict in Dogs in the Vineyard, etc.)

I had a Game Chef game a long time back, where each PC was controlled by two players, who were different aspects of their personality and had different desires, and would switch back and forth. It was really fun to play and illustrated inner conflict in a different, interesting way.

[DavidMK]

Thank you for sharing!

[Michael]

Great plays and movies have inner conflict of course, but it’s much less central, and tends to express itself in other ways - namely through interpersonal conflict and growth.

Great observations. I think that the systems cited above mostly focus interpersonal conflict, but add a layer of depth with characters that have conflicting drives or desires.

I’m thinking of a tentative way to organize systems based on their support for meaningful inner conflict.

Conflict within a character is entirely internalized, with multiple players representing different aspects of the same character’s inner life:

• The Mind of Margaret
• Bluebeard’s Bride
• Initiations in Dogs in the Vineyard

Inner conflict is symbolized externally as an outside force controlled by another player:

• Demons in Sorcerer
• Demons in Dogs in the Vineyard

Inner conflict is a layer of interpersonal conflict, where character drives are explicit and incompatible, but are only made visible through interactions with other characters:

• Burning Wheel (Beliefs)
• Follow (Wants)
• Downfall (Rebellion and Anchor)
• Hillfolk (Drama Scenes and Dramatic Poles)?
• Smallville?
• Good Society?
• Trophy?

[Michael]

I guess the fourth category here is: the GM presents incompatible goals or moral dilemmas to the players and the players act out their inner conflict totally freeform. I think this is one that happens across a wide range of systems. Without support from the system, the success of this play-style seems totally reliant on aligned expectations between players and the GM.

[Mikel_Matthews]

I was also going to say Smallville.

One of the great things Smallville does is basically turn a power gamer into a drama creating machine. Knowingly choose Values and Relationship labels that you know will change and you have a character going through some deep changes.

I got to do a bit with a West Wing/House of Cards hack that did the 7 Deadly Sins and 7 Virtues as a sliding scale for Values.

[shane]

I think monologs are a great way to externalize an inner conflict. I think you could even go a step further with using a diary or journal of sorts. Whether that is an actual physical action you as a player perform is obviously a specific design choice. That said I recently played in a highly drifted version of Good Society where one character instead of writing letters during the letter writing phase wrote in their journal. It worked quite well, especially with the vibe of their specific character.

[BeckyA]

I think a better way of externalizing inner conflict is to have your character ask another character for advice, or otherwise vent to them about it. When we see inner conflict played out in TV and other media it is usually because one character has a conversation discussing that conflict.

I’m a fan of this for two reasons - it is much more interesting to the table if everyone can see the inner conflict and it is doubly more interesting if another player can get involved even as a shoulder to cry on or a sounding board.

I am biased though as I’m always encouraging my players to have conversations like that.