There are two main ways of ensuring this "iconic part of any plot".Awe and despair in front of an open empty safe has been seen so many time in movie and fantasy that we should consider this event as an iconic part of any plot.
Here's one:
To elaborate: the GM exercises their authority over content to declare that the safe is empty. When the players succeed in their declaration I open the safe - which might be in virtue of a successful roll, or might be because the GM just says "OK" - the GM announces the safe is empty.
Here's another:
To elaborate, by reference to the first grey bubble and the green "situation resolves":
In the first scene, the PCs shake down an informant. An appropriate check is made, which succeeds and thereby resolves the immediate conflict: the players establish that the dirt is in the safe. (There are a variety of systems that can apply here: Classic Traveller-style Streetwise; Marvel Heroic RP resource creation; Apocalypse World-style Go Aggro or Seduce/Manipulate; 4e skill challenge; etc.)
In the second scene, the PCs break into the safe. An appropriate check is made, which fails and thereby resolves the immediate conflict: the players open the safe but find it empty - the documents have been moved! (This is what Apocalypse World would call a hard move. It is feasible in a variety of systems.)
Now the situation pertaining to the dirt in the safe is resolved. It's been moved - the players will have to have their PC try a different way, or else will have to start again from scratch to try and find the dirt.
Notice how the approach modelled in this second diagram doesn't permit the "iconic part of any plot" to occur if the players succeed on their check to have their PCs open the safe. Which is Vincent Baker's point in his contrast between conflict resolution and task resolution.
This claim is just wrong. Campbell has explained why:I feel folk pretty comprehensively mistake what I'm saying. I appreciate what Baker is saying. What I'm attempting to get at is something like this - () is magic circle of play. [] is game text. G is game system. P is principles. I is correlation of resolution with player intention.
([GPI])
([G]PI)
Harper's right-hand diagram is adduced toward a conclusion about the second arrangement; i.e. that resolution is correlated with player intention only if the game text includes system and principles.
Substituting "Harper" for "Baker" in Campbell's statement doesn't change its truth.Baker is not talking about game texts at all. He's speaking to binding social agreements when he talks about system. Whether you write it down or not is immaterial.
What those two are saying has nothing to do with what is in game texts. It has nothing to do with what is written down. It is about the actual techniques, processes, expectations etc that operate at the table.
In the example of the safe, if the players are not able to exercise content authority at some point, in some fashion, then the resolution of the situation - of the "conflict" - depends on the GM making a decision that will resolve it. That is what is represented by the purple GM fiat component in the diagram. There are various points at which the GM's decision might be made (eg in advance, as part of preparing a map and key; or in the moment, by making a decision about what the PCs find in the safe). But it has to happen at some point.
This is the privileged authorship that Baker refers to.
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Yes there is! To quote the bit where you deny Campbell's point: "Harper's right-hand diagram is adduced toward a conclusion about the second arrangement; i.e. that resolution is correlated with player intention only if the game text includes system and principles." That's a denial of the fact that Harper and Baker are not talking about texts. They are talking about the ways actual people actually do stuff.Yes, all good. No denial of that in what I am saying.
I think this understates the point.It would be poor form (if not cheating) on the GM’s part for them to have a player test for a conflict and win, then negate their win with false information or an empty safe. It’s the equivalent of killing the PCs (“rocks fall”) after they win a combat encounter. In both cases, they won, but the GM negated that and took away their victory.
A chess player who knocks over the board when they are losing is not cheating, and is not making a move in chess. They are just wrecking.
Suppose instead of knocking over the board, they just shift the square their king is in, so as to improve their position. That would be cheating if they first distract the other player ("Look, what's that over there!") and then hope the player won't notice what they've done. Though it's pretty crude cheating, unless the other player is very inexperienced and hence can't remember the position of the pieces on the board after just a few seconds of looking away.
Done flagrantly in front of the other player, it's not cheating. It's wrecking or in some contexts perhaps pleading or supplication or asking for a do-over. However exactly we describe it, it's not a move in the game of chess.
Turning from chess to RPGing: If an exercise of content authority by a player has established that certain documents ("the dirt") are contained in a certain safe, and then the GM subsequently purports to narrate that the safe is empty of documents, the GM is not cheating, nor making a move in the game. They are wrecking, or pleading, or supplicating. They are asking everyone to agree to a change in the shared fiction not on the basis of any process of play but just because the GM wants the fiction to be different.
It's a type of pathology in the analysis of RPGing that some people seem to look at that sort of behaviour from GMs differently from how they would look at it in the context of chess.
We can unpack the purple GM fiat step in the right-hand diagram in various ways (say, running ToH compared to running Dead Gods).I am not saying that Harper's diagrams are incorrect. I am saying that supposing all RPG is captured by just two diagrams is incorrect.
But no one in this thread seems to be advocating a classic dungeoncrawling approach to play; the closest I've seen is @Manbearcat's articulation of classic D&D hexcrawling.