[Capes] Let's get conflicted!

[TonyLB]

I got the great pleasure of running Capes at TerpCon (thanks Josh!) out at U-MD last weekend.  It was a hoot.

Publishers:  Do not let yourself get trapped into only showing your games to people who already understand indie games and the breakthroughs they've made.  They will be impressed, but they can never be quite as wonderfully surprised as a neophyte.  I saw jaws drop and stay dropped.  People hung around afterwards and said pleasant things like "I never even knew roleplaying could be like this."  And then I got to act all sage and worldly, and point them to the plethora of other systems that they should be looking at.  These are people who have never even heard of Dogs in the Vineyard, or My Life with Master, and who think Sorceror is a White Wolf splat-book.  Great ego-boost.

Several of the players grabbed onto the notion of gaming the system being interchangeable with roleplaying, and would not be deterred from using it to the fullest.  They were like little terriers... you give them a situation where the course that's obvious to the Game model isn't the course that's obvious to the Roleplay model, and they'd clamp down their metaphorical teeth and shake until they found something creative and off-the-wall that did a better job in both models than the obvious.

One particular strategy that I immediately fell in love with was the way they co-opted Conflicts.  And now we finally get to the Actual Play example (all quotes heavily paraphrased, as I didn't note them down on paper at the time).

Dirk was playing Robot Bob, who became a legend in the course of just a few scenes.  He was in an uneasy two-hero team led Smoke, played by Amanda.  So more a "hero-sidekick" deal, really.  

I, as a random trouble-maker, proposed "Goal:  Robot Bob is named team leader."  And they both dutifully claimed it.  But then Amanda had a revelation:  "Honestly?  I think Smoke is in favor of Robot Bob being team leader.  All the arguments that have been made are good ones.  He's the better choice."

So I sat back and nodded, and started thinking.  And before I could recommend anything, Dirk said "Hey, you can't just give Bob the team leader position.  He doesn't need your charity."  And bang!, we were back into conflict mode again.  The question was not whether Bob would be team leader (as I'd thought it would be when I proposed the conflict) but who would be responsible for his taking the position.

We had to break off a second group when the first one got unwieldy (Capes with eight players?  I think not), so Amanda got Smoke in a whole new uneasy partnership, this time with Tyr, who I played.  We got into the exact same situation when I played "Goal:  Repress romantic feelings toward Smoke".  We both claimed, and both of us wanted the feelings to be repressed.  But, of course, both of us wanted it to be our character who did the repressing.

"You're rejecting me?  No, no, no, no, no.  No.  You can't reject me, because I don't have any feelings for you.  It's you who has the poorly hidden infatuation with me.  I'm afraid I just have to reject you though.  It would never work out."


This sort of conflict feels so immediately right that I'm hugely surprised that I haven't encountered it as a tool in roleplaying games from the day I started playing.  There are arguments that happen where nobody cares about what they're arguing about, they only care about being the one to win the argument.  It's not about the subject matter, the subject matter is just an excuse.

Now I've seen people having these arguments... but the meat of the argument is always out-of-character.  Like, they'll argue about whether their paladin gets protection against this or that, but what they're really arguing is whether the GM is letting them play the heroic character they were hoping to.  But I've rarely seen the arguments stay healthy and entirely in-character, with people aware on all sides of what is happening.

Is there something about some roleplaying systems that makes it hard to do such a fight in-character?  Or, conversely, is there something about other roleplaying systems that makes it easy?

[Callan S.]

This sort of conflict feels so immediately right that I'm hugely surprised that I haven't encountered it as a tool in roleplaying games from the day I started playing. There are arguments that happen where nobody cares about what they're arguing about, they only care about being the one to win the argument. It's not about the subject matter, the subject matter is just an excuse.

Now I've seen people having these arguments... but the meat of the argument is always out-of-character. Like, they'll argue about whether their paladin gets protection against this or that, but what they're really arguing is whether the GM is letting them play the heroic character they were hoping to.

Emphasis mine, partly for humour: I think this has been happening on internet forums for quite a long time though.

Anyway, this point reminds me of a scatty thread I started. I was told I was missusing the word narrativism and since I was talking mostly about out of character arguement of rules design/intent, I probably was. But thinking about the in character angle, it all starts to fit into place a lot more as actual in game narrativism. Hmm, must pause to think on this.

[TonyLB]

That's a cool thread, but after perusing it, I don't think it's about exactly what I'm talking about here (though I can certainly see why you were reminded).

What I'm talking about is this:[list=a][*]The players aren't having an argument a'tall.  They're both playing in the clear, cooperating and competing to have fun and raise caine.
[*]The characters are having an explicit argument that doesn't matter: trivial, unimportant, silly.
[*]The characters are having an implicit, unstated argument that matters quite a bit, and using the explicit argument as a mask to hide it from each other and themselves.
[*]The players know both levels of these arguments, and their interconnection, and are using them as tools.[/list:o]You seem to be talking about making implicit conflict between players more explicit, yes?  Or were you talking about something more relevant, and I didn't grok it?

[Piers]

Tony,

That's really interesting.  I love the creativity that these sorts of negotiations make.  I'm wondering whether you want to add a mechanical step to these negotiations, though, in order to make them run more smoothly.

Right now, Capes has a set-up where you state the conflicit and whether it is a Goal or an Event.  But what about situations, like these, where no-one wants to claim the 'Goal fails' side?  They all just want to claim the 'Goal suceeds' so they can explain how.  In this case, it's not really a Goal, but actually an Event.

Would it be functionally simpler to have a step in which you poll the table about a given conflict: if no-one objects, then it is automatically an Event, otherwise it becomes a Goal?  

I know this would change some coll things that Events and Goals do, but would it make it easier for people to think things through?  Thoughts?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Additional play example of the mirror-image of the situation Tony described, from our Wednesday night game:

Tony's protagonist character, Zak the Naive Jungle Boy, is single-handedly trying to rescue his sister from the evil reptile-men. Eric (the third player) and I are piling on him with a lizard priest, hideously obese egg-guarding females, and an invention of my own I'm particularly proud of which can only be described as a "dragon/robot/hottie."

One of the several Conflicts at stake is, as I recall the wording, something like "Zak admits defeat."

And then I introduce my protagonist character, Colonel/Doctor Kettridge (played by Laurence Fishburne), who has been steadfastly paternal, and paternalistic, trying to keep Zak out of trouble. I narrate how he leaps out of a time portal 20 feet above the floor, dart gun in hand, and starts taking out bad guys right and left.

Tony thinks he's finally getting some help here.

I roll up the bad guy side of "Zak admits defeat."

Tony yelps, "What?!?" (Not an exact quote).

I say, "If I win this, Zak admits defeat because he couldn't have gotten out of this mess without Kettridge's help."

And the horrific slaughter continues. That scene ends after I use Kettridge's abilities to roll up the bad guy side of a conflict on "Capture Kettridge," narrating how he rushes back into the fray to rescue the already-captured Zak.

This is a particularly neat feature of Capes, which I suppose in technical terms is "facilitating Author stance," but which I personally think of as "allowing bank shots": often, aiming at one thing is in fact the best way to hit a completely different target.

[Callan S.]

Heya Tony,

I think it's me who isn't groking. My other thread was about the conflict being at player level, not character level. But this perspective advances that idea better, in my mind. Permit me a few questions to see if I'm anywhere close.

We got into the exact same situation when I played "Goal: Repress romantic feelings toward Smoke". We both claimed, and both of us wanted the feelings to be repressed. But, of course, both of us wanted it to be our character who did the repressing.

"You're rejecting me? No, no, no, no, no. No. You can't reject me, because I don't have any feelings for you. It's you who has the poorly hidden infatuation with me. I'm afraid I just have to reject you though. It would never work out."

This sort of conflict feels so immediately right that I'm hugely surprised that I haven't encountered it as a tool in roleplaying games from the day I started playing. There are arguments that happen where nobody cares about what they're arguing about, they only care about being the one to win the argument.

I'm looking at this as a thematic statement. That they would want to argue about who's in denial and who's doing the rejecting, really says something about their characters. I see that in B and C of your examples, while the players use that as demonstrated in A and D.

But then you bring in this:

Now I've seen people having these arguments... but the meat of the argument is always out-of-character. Like, they'll argue about whether their paladin gets protection against this or that, but what they're really arguing is whether the GM is letting them play the heroic character they were hoping to.

And this spins me. I'd just thought that an argument like this would always be meta game. I'd never thought it could actually be an in character statement of premise "My paladin is so true to his cause he deserves protection from this!" is a thematic statement, I realise in shock! The need for protection has driven this statement out of him...that he see's himself as heroic and true. This is saying a lot about the character and his perspective of himself!

Now I'm assuming all this so far but...oh dear; I'd mostly written that other thread with Rifts primarily in mind. This is just a side point, no need to get into it deeply but: Oh god, is Rifts inadvertent narrativism? I certainly agree with an old post by Clinton where he says rifts is gamism done wrong, wrong, wrong. I'd considered it gamism done so badly it really only supports flimsy simulationism and in practice is simply drifted roughly over to gamism by enthusiastic young players (who are just used to gamism, so that's how they play this new RPG thing they've come across).

I'd thought ill defined powers like telekinesis (one of dozens of ill defined powers) provoked simulationism because they encouraged you to think 'how does this damn thing work? Lets explore that!'. But I'd never thought of them provoking something like "I'm (playing) a mind melter, I've devoted my life to practicing these powers and developing them. I deserve X to happen!". Now that I think of it, actual play experienced by me has often had the statement "I'm an X, so I'll state Y is my characters focus, thus I should get Z".

These aren't sexy cool addresses of premise. But explicitly saying what your characters truly focused on, for an in game reward...smells like nar spirit! Oh hell! That might explain why there are hundreds of character classes with little mechanical difference between them...it's not about having a congruent character generation system, it's about providing lots and lots of inspiration for making some thematic statements about the characters life focus.

[TonyLB]

Wow... no, that's much cooler than what I was saying.

I wasn't saying "I've seen this sort of argument happening before in other roleplaying games, and it's narrativism at it's finest."  I was saying "I've seen this sort of argument happening before in other roleplaying games, and that's not what I'm talking about, because there it was horribly dysfunctional."

It was meant to head off misunderstanding, and seems to have wholly backfired in that regard.  But it's taken things to interesting territory, so I'm not objecting.

So you're proposing that in Rifts people are playing a narrativist game, exploring the theme (roughly) "What does my character deserve for having lived as they have?" and addressing the question largely through non-explicit rules of social manipulation and expression?

Hrm....  I'm intrigued.

[Callan S.]

Ah, oops. I had wondered if you actually meant something like that post where you talked about the 'lizard men killing people' being changed to 'lizard men hurting' without any horrible social stuff to do so. My mistake. I just saw them doing a 'no, I'm rejecting you!' thing (much like a 'You didn't dump me, I dumped you!' arguement). The presence of it seemed to be a statement of character (indeed I still think it is, even now you've clarified that you brought it up for other reasons). So that's why I read this into the heroic palladin arguement as well. I've heard it oft said and also felt myself the justification "But I'm a hero!" for how something should work. It did always bleed into the meta game, but now I look at the core of it, I'm seeing the urge to make a thematic statement.

If we were doing it in TROS, I'd be pursuing my chosen SA and getting dice for it because of my PC's devotion shown to it. In Rifts I'm pursuing my chosen character class and demanding special effects (from vaguely defined powers), because I'm stating how devoted to this lifestyle my character is (or even just saying that "I'm a hero" and expecting results from that, which sort of works that way in TROS as well).

I think I'm going to have to try (ie, avoid sneaking up on mode) and play test this next time I run Rifts.

[Callan S.]

Oh, I forgot to say it and it is important to note:

So you're proposing that in Rifts people are playing a narrativist game, exploring the theme (roughly) "What does my character deserve for having lived as they have?" and addressing the question largely through non-explicit rules of social manipulation and expression?

Yes, almost exactly that. I think alot of people are trying to play pure gamist in it (like myself). But that is like trying to play pure gamist in TROS (with no SA use). So people in practice generally aren't playing a narativist game of it, but would have far more systematically supported fun if they did. So I'm not proposing most people actually are playing it with a narrativist CA. But the rest of your statement is exactly what I'm talking about in how to play in a way that fits the game books as presented (nice wording!). Indeed, coins are dropping all over the place now I think about each book. It's amazing!

As an actual play account; my two friends who I run a rifts game for, keep saying they need a warrior to round out the party (one is a cyber doc and one a operator...not warrior types). The thing is, I know a warrior would be statistically almost identical to them...there is no point in terms of statistics. One of them has run lots of Rifts himself and should be able to see this himself and the other guy could probably guess it too. BUT there is a point in someone being able to say "I am a warrior, so I'd be able to use X power/skill to do Y...I've trained for years on this!". You just can't say that if your not a warrior...it's like your character class is your spiritual attribute here and they are saying someone should have warrior as their SA. Which makes sense systematically!

[TonyLB]

Okay, I suspect that topic would benefit from a new Actual Play thread then, drawing on some of that Rifts experience to cast the issue into sharp relief.  Now that you've got it clear in your head, we can both see that it's not what I was talking about, right?

[Callan S.]

Yes, so I'll leave of with my comment that the 'No, I'm rejecting you!' is a statement of character, as well as something that can turn into petty meta game quibbling. Perhaps going nasty like that because people hate their address of premise being bypassed rather than recognised for what it is. But why not here? They were trying to clarify the conflict, right? But that ended up being an address of premise rather than just system handling.

[TonyLB]

The primary goal of the players was to have a heated conflict.  So when it became clear that they couldn't easily get on opposite sides of the most obvious conflict, they immediately cast about for what sort of conflict they could get on opposite sides of.