If not, call me. Or email me and I’ll call you.

Cause the net sucks for explaining this. Like, a lot.

Each of these has the initiating player do something which they presumably have a right to do, and then both of them follow up with a responding action.

When I get to this point, I usually think that I’m overthinking it, and the push/pull distinction is like the difference between a lob and a toss.

I’ll reread C&P tonight, see if it makes things clearer.

I think its also worth noting that a lot of “one scene/one conflict/one roll” type resolution methods (PTA, Nine Worlds) can get pretty short circuted by lots of pull. Its like if you listen to the Nine Worlds Skype game first session (seriously worth it if you haven’t) — what would have happened if when Matt said, “They come and arrest you and take you to jail” Fred had said, “Sure, and then can they torture me?” And Matt had said, “Sure, and then can they give you a scar?” and Fred had said, “Sure!” They haven’t yet gotten to the conflict, because they’ve succesfully pulled through it rather than coming to a logger heads where one has to push through to get their way over the other.

Otoh, things that mix task and conflict resolution (Dogs, FLFS, Agora) seem to work much better for keeping the ability to pull and still use the resolution methods. Something like the bribery systems of Galactic or Christian’s court game make pulling the prime feature of the game (you can never say, “I have the right to tell you to do this” you can only say, “Can I bribe you to do this?”). Crime and Punishment is all pull first half, followed by lots of push second half.

Actually, it is very possible to “set it up and finish it” in the “this scene or this moment” context, and that is the context we are talking about. Especially, and you must remeber this, this was the last scene in the game. There is no “next scene” or “later.” What we say right now is the end. So what we’re talking about is if Mo gets to say how her own character ends, or if she gives it to me to say how her character ends.

We are also not talking about “blow by blow.” There is no “and then you swing, and then he swings, and then you dodge, and then he dodges.” We are talking about the total interaction as a unit — a gambit, one extended sequence designed to do something. (Especially at this point as we were playing Exalted with pretty much single opposed roll conflict resolution — more like Nine Worlds or Primetime Adventures than the traditional task resolution of Exalted. So if Mo had engaged in a push, I would have called for a contest, and if she had won she would actually have had narration rights and could narrate the end however she wanted.)

So with that in mind, yes of course everything is contextualized by the things that enter the fiction. But there is a difference in the way things enter the fiction between, “I have this right, now react to this thing that I have just forced into the fiction” and “I am doing something to get you to put something into the fiction to complete the sequence I have just started.”

As it was there was no question about if he could hit her or not, or if she could use a charm, or if he could resist her seduction. Mo did not say, “I have set this thing up, I am rolling to gain narration rights, and I will say how it ends if I win.” She said, “I have set this thing up, now tell me how it ends.”

It’s that level — that Mo gave up narrative control and passed it over to me — that is the key thing you seem to be missing. I didn’t take it from her with charms, she set it up, and then said “no, I don’t need to fight over it. Anything you do at this point is all good.”

Though I have a feeling this won’t help. Maybe if you could see a game design based on it? Such as… oh.. .Crime and Punishment? Look at that text and how that game plays and think, how does the first half support pull, how does the second half support push. Maybe that will give you some insight.

Or maybe not. Maybe because of the way you approach the sequence of events that go into making up a game, which is different than the way Mo does, the difference just really isn’t useful to you.

All we ever do in roleplaying is throw stuff out there so that other people can react to it. Sometimes We always do this with an agenda behind it, and you and I both know that manipulating the other players at the table or over the internet to react in a certain way is a relatively simple thing to do. I don’t see any division that makes one instance a “push” and another instance a “pull.”

How about the counter-example. What if Mo had set up everything the same, put down her weapons and stuff, and then said “Now I am using my Charisma+Performance, and I got 15 successes, so he finds me so beautiful that he can’t hurt me and instead puts down his sword.” That’d be a push. If Mo had set it up so she got to define the result after the moment of question, the moment where it goes from freeplay to conflict then it would be a push.

As it was she set up a gambit where she got me to give the input to what happened after the moment of quesiton. She set it up, I finished it. If she had set up a gambit that had given her the application of input after the moment of question it it would have been a push. She sets it up, she finishes it.

Grar.

Look at the magic picture. Unfocus your eyes. See the three-dimensional image? I can see it. Can you see it?

So, I suppose you could see everything from her starting her narration to the moment where she actually kneels down as one “unit” with that unit being one Pull. Because in the end the purpouse of the whole thing was to put me in a place where I could give her input, but no matter what input I gave her it would be alright with her. Thus the reason Chris says, “type of input” instead of saying “any old input.”

So are Push and Pull completely extra-fictional player-to-player interactions, then? Mo points to her disarming herself as part of the Pull, but that disarming is not part of the Pull itself?