Since arriving at UW almost four years ago, I’ve been involved in student politics. I’ve not talked about it here as most of it is rather prosaic and, for those not at UW, largely irrelevant. Every now and then, though, something comes up which might be of wider interest..

In early May, GPSS, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, ran its second Science and Policy Summit, an event for academics, policy-makers, and the general public that looks at the interactions between scientific research and policy development. This year, we ran two panels, one on the impact of bioinformatics on preventive medicine, and the other on the role of science in public political discussion, focusing on the US Presidential debates. As well as the panels, we also ran a series of short talks, inspired by the TED model.

There were about 10 talks, 10 minutes each, delivered by a mix of graduate students, post-docs, and faculty, and of a very high quality. Here’s a few topics to whet your interest:

• Couch safety, various failed attempts at regulation, and the fate of your cat
• The ups and downs of developing tourism as a means of restoring communities and ecosystems in SE Asia
• A passionate argument for the necessity of cosmology research
• The woeful state of healthcare in the US (not health funding, but healthcare itself), including some rather damning statistics and factoids, presented as humorously as possible

We recorded all of the talks, and they’ve now been posted to YouTube. They’re all rather interesting, and worth at least a look, even if the film quality isn’t all I’d hoped when I filmed them.

Spacey fun at the symphony last night, with Legeti’s Atmosphères and Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, both used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Holst’s Planets.

Atmospheres was subtle, relaxing, and almost entirely without melody – a piece for meditating to, if stark and slightly scary. I really needed that, as Thursday was just one of those days – at one point, I’d even been the target of a precision bombing run by a passing bird. Two things about this piece. Firstly, most recordings don’t do it justice, because it’s all about orchestral color, and that often just doesn’t come through. Secondly, it’s very quiet in places, which offers a great opportunity to really appreciate the inability of some people to simply sit still and be silent.

The opening of “Also Sprach ..”, unsurprisingly, did its best to shake my innards to jelly with awesome – the sheer weight of the music is that much more spectacular when you’re up close with full orchestra and pipe organ. Like most, I wasn’t too familiar with the rest of the piece, but I’m now inspired to fix that.

Sadly, no Blue Danube.

The Planets, being one of my favorite pieces, were up for more criticism than the rest. They played it alongside a sequence of photos and reconstructions from various space probes, many of which were awesome. Unfortunately, while most of the performance was serviceable, there were a number of missed notes in the lead brass portions in several movements. I also think the conductor stuck too rigidly to the meter in places, and as a result, certain sections came off a little mechanical and slightly too fast. That said, my reference performance was conducted by Karajan, and he’s famous for interpreting the meter and tone of a piece in his own way.

Saw a cool presentation today about an implant-based therapy for epilepsy at the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering by Jaideep Mavoori of NeuroVista, a company here in Seattle.

The idea is that if someone is warned of an imminent seizure in advance, say 20 minutes out, they can remove themselves from unsafe or embarrassing situations, take other precautions (lying down, perhaps), or take fast acting drugs that might stop it from happening. This is a big deal, as it helps the 30% or so of those suffering from the disease for whom conventional drug treatment doesn’t work. It may also allow some of those receiving drugs to come off them, reduce their dose, or shift to less effective drugs with fewer side effects. It might also help reduce the number of deaths from epilepsy-related accidents – 50,000 annually in the US, apparently.

The technology’s actually fairly simple. There’s three main parts, none of which appears to be particularly magical.

• an array of electrodes implanted on the surface of the brain, beneath the skull, but outside the dura mater, and thus not in contact with or penetrating the brain itself
• a set of signal processing and machine learning algorithms that classify brain patterns into risk levels based on training data previously collected from that individual and from the public in general
• A mobile device or phone app that warns the patient of periods of increased risk

It’s in trials at the moment in Australia, and is apparently performing well, with no known associated adverse events.

Apparently, this all started out with Jaideep’s PhD research into the sensorimotor function of moths – he basically designed chips and implants small enough to put in a moth, then studied the different nerve signals associated with its wings as it flew. They also did trials of the epilepsy detection technology on dogs, as they also suffer from epilepsy. Unfortunately, I was unable to find copies of the cute pictures he showed in the talk.

If you’re interested in hearing more, there’s a 5 minute video article from ABC News in Australia talking about it. It’s formatted a bit weird, so you might need to download it and switch to the second audio track in VLC.

Edit: Apparently the electrodes are implanted beneath the dura mater, but outside the arachnoid mater. So, between the second and third membranes that encase the brain.

I was completely unaware of this, but apparently cases of academic misconduct, as evidenced by the retraction of papers from journals and other publication venues, have been on the rise.

According to the article, retractions from journals in the PubMed database have increased by a factor of 60 over ten years, from 3 in 2000 to 180 in 2009. That’s insane!

What’s going on, then? I suspect one or more of the following:

• Worsening of the academic rat-race – the ever-increasing focus on publishing metrics in academia pressures researchers to publish, ideally in high-impact journals. Some may be willing to make up data in order to do so.
• The rush to compete – Given the prestige attached to publishing first and the role of this prestige in securing grant funding, researchers may be taking shortcuts, overlooking shortcomings in their study designs, or failing to spend enough time verifying their results and data.
• Commercial involvement – I can’t cite numbers, but my impression is that commercial research funding has increased over the last decade or so, particularly in high-stakes fields such as pharmaceuticals. Commercial funding is associated with bias and poor research practice.
• Increased detection – It seems likely that today’s increased reliance on information technologies and shared repositories of data and publications would make it easier to detect fraudulent papers. Similarly, since communication is much easier today than it was even 10 years ago, it may be easier for editors to unearth patterns of fraudulent work.

One caveat: this result derives from PubMed, which primarily includes medical and pharmaceutical research, as well as some auxiliary technology and basic science. Does this pattern of misconduct apply in other fields, or is it particular to medicine?

Improved review processes are necessary, but it’s not clear how quickly change will come. Problems with peer review have been acknowledged for more than 20 years, with a report from 1990 showing that only 8% of members of the Scientific Research Society considered it effective as is. Despite this, in most venues, peer review functions the same way it always has.

There may be some movement, however. CHI, for example, includes the alt.chi track in which research is reviewed in a public forum before selection by a jury, which seems to offer a good compromise between open and free criticism, and peer-driven moderation. There’s also a special conference coming up entitled “Evaluating Research and Peer Review – Problems and Possible Solutions” – it was the Call for Papers for this that got me writing this post.

From my perspective, an ideal research review system would at least:

• Expose all research data and methodology to unlimited, non-anonymous, public, scrutiny. Special rules might be employed to protect commercially sensitive material, but there needs to be a balance.
• Allow meta-moderation. That is, allow the critique of critiques. To do this, reviewers need to have persistent identities, and signifiers such as the credentials and review history of each user need to be available.
• Integrate review work into the research contribution of academics. As it is, peer review work is primarily voluntary, and the level of commitment of reviewers is thus presumably highly variable.

What else should a review system incorporate? How could such a system fail? Why might it not be adopted?

Update 2012-05-09: It’s not clear whether the aforementioned study relied on the same set of journals each year, or whether they used the full PubMed database each year. It’s probable that the PubMed mix has changed over the decade; for example, the NIH’s public access policy requiring publicly funded research be placed into PubMed was trialed in 2005, and made mandatory in 2008.

I spent Saturday at the HCI for Peace workshop representing the Voices from the Rwandan Tribunal project. It was fairly informal, with only 10 participants, which made it easy for everyone to participate in the discussion. Several participants presented projects they’ve worked on, including:

• Lahiru Jayatilaka, a Sri Lankan PhD student from Stanford, who presented his work on improving land mine detection systems by tracking the detector tip and allowing the operator to mark detection points that are then displayed back along with the detector’s path, making it easier to determine the shape of an object detected. In trials with the US Army, he also found that his tool significantly aided in training by making it easier for trainers to see the patterns used by students. He’s looking for funding and collaborators to help him bring the tool to maturity so he can start to spread it to NGOs working in land mine detection and removal around the world.
• Janak Bhimani, a TV director and producer pursuing a PhD at the Keio Media Design lab, who presented a documentary he produced collaboratively with a small group of online volunteers about the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake last year in Japan, called “Lenses + Landscapes“. Based on his experience with it, he’s become interested in tools for greater online collaboration in documentary making and, particular, in documentaries that evolve over time; what he calls the ‘growing documentary’.
• John Thomas, a CHI veteran from IBM research, who presented his work on building a library of patterns for socio-technical systems that can avoid, deescalate, or assist in the resolution of conflicts. These focused more on a personal level than a societal one, but the general ideas run true to larger scales, and furthermore, large conflicts often emerge from small disagreements. He ran through several examples; here are a couple that struck me:
  • Who speaks for Wolf? – Based on a Native American story, this pattern suggests that in any decision making activity where one or more stake-holders are absent, it is important to identify that fact, and determine whether someone else at the meeting is able to speak with sufficient authority and knowledge on behalf of that stake-holder. By doing this, misunderstandings and conflicts can be avoided.
  • The Rule of Six – Whenever one is forced to make an assumption or interpretation because of limited or biased knowledge, one should attempt to come up with at least 5 other possible explanations before accepting the first (and probably easiest) one. This is particularly true with regards negative assumptions, and is basically a method for giving the benefit of the doubt.
• Evangelos Kapros, a Greek PhD student at the University of Dublin’s Trinity College, who presented and discussed challenges in information visualization and data management with regards understanding flows of immigration and other critical demographic processes that sometimes lead to conflict.

Also in attendance were Juan Pablo Hourcade, an Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa and organizer of the event; Lisa Nathan, an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, co-PI on the Rwandan project, and a former student at UW; Daniela Busse, from Samsung Research; Daisy Yoo, a student and colleague of mine at UW also working on the Rwandan project, and Kelsey Huebner, an undergraduate assisting Juan-Pablo with running the workshop. Neema Moraveji, director of the Calming Technology Lab at Stanford, was not present, but gave a short presentation on his work in ‘calming technology’ via Skype.

As well as individual project presentations, we also discussed the place of HCI in peace-making, peace-keeping, and harmony. A number of points and questions were salient:

• The complexity of the term ‘peace’ is challenging, and requires much thought. We seemed to be conceptualizing peace as more than just the absence of war, but as a general promotion of peacefulness, including the avoidance of conflict, the promotion of harmony and calmness in life, and efforts to restore peace and order after events such as natural disasters.
• The term peace may be over-broad to the point of being meaningless – by attempting to create a movement of HCI for Peace, are we mirroring the beauty queen who naively says she wants to bring about World Peace with her reign?
• What should the research agenda of ‘HCI for Peace’ look like? Suggested approaches included creating tools like Ushahidi that aid others in peace-seeking efforts, working in the field to create new technical solutions that directly foster peace, and observing and understanding the use of technology by others in working for peace.
• Who are logical ‘allies’ in this work – what other academics and disciplines should we look to for collaboration?

In the time available, it was impossible to come to any detailed consensus on these issues, and it was generally agreed that further thought and development would be necessary. Interactions magazine has offered us a spot as the cover article in an issue later this year, and we’re hoping that this will give us an opportunity to address these concerns in more depth.

All up, a fascinating and rewarding way to spend a day. Not to mention an excellent lunch and tasty pizza and conversation at the end of the day!

Took a break to play Jonas Kyratzes’ recent short game “The Fabulous Screech“.

Play on Kongregate!

It was very sweet, and characteristically humorous, but sad. Without wanting to spoil it for anyone, let me just say that anyone who owns a cat will be able to relate to the main character, the eponymous Fabulous Screech, a cat who runs a circus featuring trained humans. Who knew they could talk!

It won’t take more than 20 minutes to play, and though it’s point-and-click, it, like Jonas’ other Lands of Dream games, is the sort where clicking inspires curiosity, not frustration, as almost every visible feature in every scene is clickable, and every clickable feature is visible.

Anyway, go play it. And click on everything. God’s bookshelf is particularly interesting – I was not surprised to learn he’s a Carl Sagan fan, and it was moving to see how all the other gods sent him birthday cards like that – there might be a culture war here on Earth, but it’s nice that all the various deities can be above all that.

PS – for those who read my last post on patronage, Jonas operates under another variety of patronage that you might find interesting – for a small fee, he and his wife, Verena, create pages of an encyclopedia detailing the Lands of Dream, dedicated to and based on guidance from the contributor. I gave a while back, and got in return the World Mushroom, an entry that captures some of things I treasure rather excellently. For a little more, he’ll even frame and send you the original.

I’m feeling pretty jazzed at the moment about patronage as a funding model for creative endeavours.

It’s a pretty simple idea: instead of today’s dominant practice, where creative works are funded and owned by someone expecting to make money back from advertising or sales through a limited distribution channel, under patronage, creators fund their work by appealing directly to potential fans, asking them to put up funds in advance in return for various rewards and input into the work. Historically, patronage was widespread, and meant that artists, musicians, and philosophers gathered in the courts of sympathetic nobles to seek funding, lending their creativity to the glory of kings and emperors. In return, nobles gained prestige as patrons of the arts as well as substantial influence over the works created.

Today’s patronage models are a little different, in that they rely on a much more broader base of patrons. Instead of seeking out extremely wealthy individuals to fund entire works, creators can appeal to a worldwide audience through the internet, collecting many small contributions directly from the people who care most about their work. This is a good thing for creators and patrons alike:

• Patrons are more likely to receive satisfying entertainment, as their preferences factor directly into the creator’s decision making process.
• Creators have a guaranteed audience of fans in the form of their patrons. Since creators often labor under artistic motivations, this can mean a lot – it’s easier to feel confident in one’s creations if you know that others like the general idea. In other words, it’s easier to take risks.
• There is greater opportunity for ‘pure’ creative vision as middlemen who muddy the waters by pandering to advertisers and the lowest common denominator are eliminated.
• Creators are encouraged to think about their works upfront, and their ideas are subject to initial scrutiny that can validate and refine them. There’s less chance of groupthink, and a more articulate design process.
• Niche genres can thrive, particularly if they’re willing to start out small and run lean. Projects that address many fewer fans can be funded.
• The public domain is richer. Since funding is provided up front by patrons, there’s less reason for creators not to put their work in the public domain, enriching us all. In particular, it makes it easier for non-fans to try out things they wouldn’t normally buy, potentially converting them into fans.

It might be that patronage isn’t the best funding model for all creative works, but here’s a few examples where it’s been successful:

• Kickstarter is a thriving internet example. Through it, I’ve contributed to open source recordings of classical music, RPG-themed short films, and comics. Their model allows creators to make proposals through video and written presentations, to offer rewards for patrons at different levels, and to selectively fund projects based on whether a sufficient amount is raised. Projects range from a few hundred dollars to several million, and support from computer games to music, crafts to special events, and gadgets to fine art.
• Most modern orchestras run on a hybrid patronage / ticket fee model. The Seattle Symphony, for example, runs an annual budget of $24m on about half ticket sales, half patronage. Patrons get additional benefits such as social events, access to musicians, and lectures, as well as a certain level of prestige (much as noble patrons once did).
• Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design project does tabletop RPG design on a patronage model, allowing patrons to participate in the design process, democratizing not only the funding, but also the creativity itself.

There are many more – these are just the few I’ve paid close attention to.

As traditional publishing industries that rely on firmly controlled distribution of hard-copy works continue to erode, it’ll be very interesting to see how patronage evolves. The fact that big box book stores are dying doesn’t mean people don’t want to read, and the collapse of newspapers has little to do with the public’s interest in the news. It’s just that the old business models are increasingly being undermined. I don’t foresee corporate creative endeavours going away, but I do expect them to become less dominant in the long term, and patronage seems a likely means of that happening.

Questions for comments:

• If patronage comes to dominate creative endeavour, what negative implications might there be?
• Are there any creative domains in which patronage won’t work?
• Is it possible to fund really big projects (AAA game titles, movies, cathedrals) with patronage?

While driving back from Akaroa this evening, I got to thinking about enjoyment and time, probably as a result of the flow that navigating windy roads always brings. It seems to me that you can think of enjoyable or otherwise positive experiences as existing in four possible temporal spaces:

• Before – Looking forward to something is often as enjoyable as doing it. In some cases, experiences seem positive in the future, but negative once they’re done, or while you’re doing them – fish and chips, for example, never tastes quite as good as it seemed when I was paying for it. Similarly, one can be disappointed, perhaps by a bad movie or a corked bottle of wine.
• During – What we normally mean when we say something is enjoyable. That we are happy or content while doing it. Flow fits in here.
• Immediately after – A positive feeling immediately after completing a task. For me, exercise is a good example – I feel like crap while I’m doing it, but great afterwards. Similarly, writing a paper or doing the dishes.
• Far later – Nostalgia, remembering through rose-tinted glasses. Holidays always seem better in retrospect, particularly if you were covered in mosquito bites and sunburn at the time. For me, a trip to Fiji in 1997 fits well here, as I got food poisoning shortly after arrival and spent the whole trip being ill, yet I still have vivid and fond memories of the place we stayed.

Two short observations, then:

• It’s not necessary that an activity result in positive experiences in each of these four time periods, and in fact, few do. That’s OK, and is maybe good to remember when immersed in a time period that some activity doesn’t perform well in.
• Innately, we seem to greatly privilege the during time period. It’s good to enjoy oneself while doing something, but during is often much shorter than after. I certainly find thinking about how I’ll feel after I’ve done something to be a great motivator.

Played in Big Gaming Week 2011 this week, a gathering of friends now scattered around the world as part of the NZ diaspora, drawn home for Christmas and New Years. We’re in our eighth or so year now. In addition to the normal LAN, board, and RP games, we added a few things to line-up, including a big group brunch, a wine tasting (with games, of course), and Artemis, a 6 player starship bridge simulator. I had hoped to try a 24-hour game design activity of some kind, but it didn’t happened.

The wine tasting, though, worked out well. It grew from our inability to secure transportation for a Waipara trip, and ended up as a day long tasting in Tony’s living room.

All up, we had 14 bottles, of which 11 were tasted by all, one (a rosè) was consumed by Naomi and Steph during the whites tasting, with a little help from myself, another was corked, and the dessert wine got left too late. Hamish, now a professional wine blogger (thanks to the spectacular largess of Naomi & Tony), blogged tasting notes for reds and whites. I struggled throughout the day to put notes into CellarTracker, but the backwardness of the UI got in the way, and I eventually gave up to play Borderlands with Paula. Later, though, I discovered the beta-version of CellarTracker, whose interface is much improved, and put my notes together into what they call a ‘tasting story’, being basically a collection of notes structured into a write-up. Worked out quite well.

That CellarTracker is finally doing something about its user interface is really great news – it’s always been the most comprehensive wine tracking service out there, and being built and maintained by a committed wine-enthusiast who just wants to make a living building a tool that he loves, it’s likely to remain that way rather than settling into being ‘good-enough’ like many commercial systems end up doing once the user base and revenue streams are solid. I can now happily recommend it to others, provided you’re using the beta interface; if you’re not, expect to be frustrated.

Anyway, much great wine was consumed; my picks were the Taylor’s Shiraz 2009 and the 3 Stones Pinot Noir, with honorable mentions for the 2011 Saints gewürztraminer, and the 2009 Two Tracks chardonnay (though only if you like them oaky and buttery). Shall have to buy a few more of these for posterity, I think..

The topic of in-character (IC) conflict has come up a little recently in my Dragonlance campaign. I’ve not really thought about it a lot in the past; it’s always been there, of course, but I’ve never dealt with it directly before. So far, in this game, it’s not been a definitively negative experience as it’s engendered a lot of character growth that’s been really interesting for me as GM, and hopefully for my players. That said, there have been a couple of times where it’s ended up slowing things down significantly, to the annoyance of some. Sometimes, too, it seems to bring rise to a vague undertone of personal conflict that I’m not terribly happy with.

Most recently, we had argument between characters over how to treat a pair of captured draconian prisoners, with questions arising over interrogation, torture, execution, and so on. The eventual decision was to execute one of the prisoners behind one character’s back as it was deemed to know too much while letting the other one go in return for information. I’ve never been satisfied with glossing over the moral implications of this sort of thing in play, but while the character interactions and eventual outcome were quite interesting, the whole affair took a long time. After discussing it at the end of the session, it became clear that we need a better way of handling this sort of situation, which got me thinking..

Firstly, I don’t believe that IC conflict is an inherently bad thing, merely something that requires careful handling during play. For it to be a good thing, however, I think the following have to be true:

• It can’t be about something trivial. Petty bickering rarely results in interesting role-playing. It doesn’t help players define and explore their characters, it rarely has a meaningful impact on the story, it tends to get repetitive, and it tends to breed actual discord between players. If petty bickering makes sense between characters, it should be handled out of character (OOC) at a broad abstract level. If Devla’s player summarizes it by saying ‘Devla’s not happy with Forden; she snipes at him for a while about random things he did throughout the day, then leaves in a huff’, Forden’s player can contribute positively, perhaps adding that “Forden gets confused and defensive, but manages to put his foot in his mouth, offending her further”. This sort of conflict can often be fun – it’s like being the writers of a dramatic comedy and has the potential to be interesting, even funny, for everyone; it also allows narrative tension to exist, and it’s nice and short.
• It can’t take too long. IC conflict focuses attention on the characters involved to the exclusion of others, and while that’s true for almost all in-game actions, IC conflict can become drawn out, excluding others for an extended period. That’s not healthy for the game, not to mention not being fair to the excluded players. If IC conflict dominates attention for more than a few minutes, it needs to be cut off and resolved somehow, perhaps using narrative gaming techniques.
• It cannot be a proxy for conflict between players. If characters A and B are arguing because their players have a disagreement, there’s a much greater risk of things becoming unpleasant. IC conflict distances players from one another, making it easier for people to say things to each other in-character that they’d never say in-person – Landras might say ‘Shut up, Devla!’, but Landras’ player would never say that to Devla’s. Similarly, in-person disagreements tend to require understanding, respect and compromise, whereas in-character ones can be resolved with much less emotional involvement. If the two are mixed, however, we have a conflict where players need to actually communicate with each other as people, but in which it’s OK to be mean. Generally, if the in-player conflict isn’t game relevant, it needs to be resolved outside play, which might mean taking a break, or maybe that certain issues should be flagged as out of bounds during play. If it is game-relevant, it’s probably best resolved OOC without any in-character discussion to muddy things.
• It has to serve a purpose that can’t resolved better some other way. Two types of situation come to mind: the conflict might be a necessary part of the plot element or someone’s character arc – in Devla’s case, her character arc is (currently) all about self-realization and adolescence; she’s growing up and distancing herself from Forden, her mentor, and realizing she doesn’t idolize him like she once did. Conflict between them is thus natural, and key to that arc. Another situation is where the conflict allows players to explore issues that would be glossed over otherwise. Yesterday’s interrogation scene, for example, held within it all sorts of questions of morality and justice, offering lots of opportunities for character growth and player introspection. Neither purpose would have been served by completely glossing over the conflict. On the other hand, we would have done better to resolve more of the conflict OOC.
• It can’t get in the way of play. IC conflict needs to be subordinate to progressing the game as a whole – while it might be interesting to plumb the depths of a character’s psyche, it can’t be at the cost of moving the game forward. This is particularly an issue when conflict arises as a result of some decision the party needs to make.
• It can’t be personal. This is two sided. Everyone needs to be careful to avoid giving offense to another player – it’s OK to offend characters, but not players. Similarly, everyone needs to be careful not to take offense that’s not intended – it’s OK for one’s character to be offended, but that doesn’t mean one has to take things personally. Of course, this is all well and good at a theoretical level, but the reality is that we’re all bound up emotionally in our characters – they’re more than just agents we control; they’re extensions of ourselves, with all the emotional connotations that implies. Everyone coming into a gaming group needs to accept that it’s a somewhat emotional experience, and IC conflict is a strong example of that. Similarly, everyone needs to recognize that people react to things differently, and at the end of the day, none of us want to hurt each other. All I’m saying, really, is that we should all strive to play with compassion and empathy, because, just as in normal life, offense is easy to give, no matter one’s intentions.

IC conflict normally seems to occur in first-person role-playing. It makes sense that it would originate there, but it seems that resolution often requires that it be pulled up to third-person play, with players collaborating to decide on an interesting and meaningful outcome, then doing any necessary role-playing to bring it about. This avoids the necessity of people saying nasty things to each other that their characters might say to each other, affording a layer of abstraction that protects everyone from any potential offense. It also allows players to discuss the pros and cons of different resolutions – it turns conflict into opportunities for collaboration. To that end, then, it seems that techniques from collaborative story-games could be employed at the meta-game level to deal with these sorts of situations.

In my Dragonlance game, the party has just slain Onyx, bringing the first module “Dragons of Despair” to a conclusion. Since several of my players are heading away on various trips over the next couple of months, we’re putting the campaign on hold until October. This gives us the opportunity to try out a few story-games and select some mechanics that we like. We’ll probably follow a template something like this example, which is inspired by matrix games:

Any time a player thinks that there is IC conflict in need of resolution, they can call for it to be resolved out of character. The GM determines what questions or actions are at issue in the conflict; that is, what will be decided as a result of resolving it. One at a time, each conflict participant states their desired conclusion followed by any arguments they have in its favour, presented as short statements. If they wish, non-participants may also present arguments and conclusions. If there is an obvious compromise, it may be accepted by consensus. Otherwise, the GM assesses each argument and uses some mechanic to determine the actual result, which must be limited to the original conflict issues.

I’m certain there are more elegant or interesting mechanics out there that we could try – the Smallville RPG, for example, has a really interesting system for handling IC conflict (which is at the root of that game). I’m certain there’s many others, but I’m not well read enough to know where to look – suggestions?

In the end, conflict is an inevitable part of role-playing games, and one of the essential skills in being a good role-player or GM is handling it in a way that moves the game forward and creates fun for everybody. Since role-playing is an inherently collaborative activity, though, and since collaboration is somewhat antithetical to conflict, intentional IC conflict is, I think, one of the most challenging aspects of role-playing – handled badly, it can literally destroy a gaming group. Handled well, however, it can bring a great deal of depth to a game as characters become more independent and human, and situations become more diverse and meaningful.