Dec 01 2009
Three Problem-Solving Question Sequences
While many people would argue otherwise, I consider problem-solving a vital skill for anyone involved in roleplaying games or in story-writing. After all, it gets the players out of sticky situations, helps the GM predict what the players are going to pull and how to work around it (or make sure her situations aren’t too sticky for the players, particularly if she’s sandbox-prone), and allows a writer to show the intelligence of her smarter characters and avoid deus ex machina by finding a reasonable explanation for just about anything. Whether people realize it or not, they’re having to use a bit of it unless all their solutions are being handed to them on a silver platter, and some people (myself included) will tend to avoid games in which it never becomes necessary. I find that even if you don’t plan on cultivating the skill, it’s good to know the general patterns that these sorts of strategies fall into; there are three common ones that I tend to see, each of which has its own advantages, disadvantages, and game-relevant issues.
The first problem-solving question sequence is “What do I have, and how can I use it?” This question is all about the resources available: taking them and parlaying them into something different. In gaming, I most often find it being used by reactive players; they’re not sure what they want, but they’ll come up with things they could do with what they have while they wait for you to give them a goal and a few things they have that might accomplish that goal. In a game where people’s resources aren’t clearly delineated, though, it’s easy for users of this sequence to get stuck trying to figure out what they have.
The second is “What do I want, and what do I have that can help me get it?” This sequence, a favorite of mine, is all about the objective; once that’s known, it tries to find ways the existing resources could be used to achieve that goal. Sometimes the solutions are intuitive, like “to open the can of pears with the tab missing, use fork to create hole in lid and pry it out; when fork fails on prying, use knife instead.” Other times, they’re a little more out there, like creating a rescue plan for someone trapped in another world using a cult of personality and a gift for dream-magic. This sort of thinking is useful for a GM, as it allows her to reverse-engineer the question to figure out what her players would be likeliest to use; on a player, it can be downright dangerous, as the most unlikely items and powers end up creating a solution where a solution may not even have been intended (and if the GM’s brain breaks, the backlash might cause the failure of even a decently feasible plan). Most of the proactive players I know tend to favor this sort of question—the question isn’t so much which strategy they use as how quickly they run through it.
The third is “What could solve this problem, and how can I get it?” Put out a fire with water, defeat the evil artifact with its good opposite number, give the guard dog drugged meat, you get the idea. The good news is that usually, this creates things that make sense as solutions, rather than “If I do x and z with object a, then do y, this should work…” The bad news is that this sort of process isn’t quite as concerned with how, and is less likely to come up with the non-obvious solutions. You might end up with a complication loop that feeds back to the original problem, like in the folk-song “There’s a Hole in the Bucket, Dear Liza”, where every fix suggested is met with a complication (straw too long, knife too dull, stone too dry), until finally it gets back to something that requires a bucket and the song comes full circle. Or—particularly frustrating if you’re a GM and this is being proposed by a player—the solution requires one or more circumstances that seem increasingly implausible or they don’t know how to get to a certain point and expect it to be filled in by someone else, like one of those plans were “….” leads to “profit!” On the other hand, it’s a useful jumping off point for a GM trying to give solutions to her players: what could solve this problem, and how can she arrange for them to get it?
Understanding problem solving strategies doesn’t just allow people to predict others’ actions or get themselves out of trouble. It’s also good for characterization; even two smart characters can be set apart by the paths they take to get to their solutions and the kinds of solutions they end up with.
