QOTW#15 How do your players resolve conflict?

[Onix]

How do your players resolve (in game) conflict?

I had this thought that it would be interesting to list the various ways of resolving conflicts in game. I think players tend to default to the most mechanically obvious solution, skull bashing when they don't know what to do. I wonder if they were given a guide to a different approach, would they follow it? See my answer for a basic idea of what I mean.

Violence - Stick them with something pointy until they get out of the way
Sneaking - They never knew you were there, or they never knew why you were there until we got what we wanted
Confusion - Cause confusion and grab the goods while they're heads are still spinning
Charming - Make them love you and then take advantage of them

What ways have you seen? What ways do you see most often? My players usually go from top to bottom of my list. I wonder what effect it would have if you gave the players a list like this, had them choose one for their character and asked them to stick to that resolution method.

[Evil Scientist]

In my experience, players tend to stick to their tried and favoured methods. E.g. in one of the last Shadowrun games I played in, we solved at least three situations by applying a nice dose of Mind Probing (or something. A mind reading spell) (sometimes frying the subject's mind in the process). We also relied heavily on one of the players vast drone army. Which can lead to laziness, if the DM doesn't thwart it. "It worked with the last encounter? Well, these guys have just the antidote against it. Come up with something else".

[Evil Scientist]

There is always the universal PLAN B: blow the advance payment on Harley Davidsons and ride off into the sunset. Always finish on a classy note!

Jokes aside (ehm... not that it was a joke!), you could add something like "I know a guy". Some players like to use their character backgrounds extensively. It's not simply about utilizing those "contact points" you spent at chargen - it's more about making up some little story on the go: "my character was at medical school, so he might have heard about DOCTOR KEETON's wild experiments!"; "my character goes to the same dingy bar every night so surely he saw that dead hooker before", etc. As a GM I'm a sucker for such stories and usually give way to the player's wishes and grant them some useful (or useful-looking) info bits.

[vulpinoid]

Avoidance - run away and hope someone else deals with it (or pay them to)
Investigation - find out the reason for the issue and deal with the cause rather than the symptoms

[Wannabe writer]

A fair few of my groups in the past resolved to handle things in this area with the nuke it from orbit approach. Violence was always a solution and face it many games followed that premise. I think I found it changed when we went for easy to understand characters and became involved in the theme of the game, the most successful of these was bubble gum crisis. If your players are committed to characters and the games theme they often find in theme solutions, just make them available.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

My players tend to use violence, but I admit that is my fault. Most games I run are in inherently violent settings (cyberpunk, military SF, Survival Horror) where combat is to be expected. Even when they try subterfuge, something tends to go South on them (My NPCs are a bit smarter than ones in vidogames...). I tend to think of each session like a summer blockbuster movie - there must be at least one tense fight or interesting set-piece to wow an audience.

That said, knowing what will happen, the PCs tend to make detailed plans or use other means to give themselves an advantage. Some NPCs can be reasoned with, and most enemies are willing to run away if things go badly.

[Evil Scientist]

[madunkieg]

My players are a bit like Onix's, in that there is definitely a pattern, but the pattern is very different. This is my recent group, not the groups I've played with over the past years.

negotiation: not necessarily winning, but trying to come to some sort of compromise
bait and switch: making a good offer, then undermining the offer
limited violence: bashing heads to make their point
unlimited violence: bashing heads until their opponents are dead

What I find interesting is that all of these are attempts to win conflicts. I believe it would sometimes be more interesting to lose a conflict intentionally and deal with the consequences. This approach is even supported by some rules systems and supported with the director stance within Edwards' essays on game theory.

Another, more nebulous, outcome would be to have a conflict where there were no obvious winners or losers, just consequences. D&D does this whenever a conflict doesn't involve the rules, but I'm trying to think of a game that does it within the rules (maybe Polaris?).