Possible complication options

[Bankuei]

Here's a bunch of ideas and possibilities, play with, alter as you will.

Alternate Complication/Bonus Pot rules

These rules are not set in stone, just some random thoughts that might congeal into something useful for you guys.

Challenge only
Any coins spent go into a bonus pot for each player.  This pot cannot be used by the player, but can be used to reward any other player who entertains them.  Players who spend more, end up with a big pot.  The idea is that the biggest spenders will be the ones with the biggest interest in the story at hand, and will reward what they find entertaining more often.  This will cause the most popular/entertaining players to end up with the most coins.  This skips the voting process out of the current rules, and doesn't require a complication to replenish.

Swipe pot
Any coins spent go into a bonus pot for each player.  This pot cannot be used by the player, but can be used by any other player who wants to make a complication on his or her turn.  Big spenders will face bigger complications.  Anything spent from this swipe pot, or against it, will become a bonus pot to be awarded as per the current rules.

Fate & Tide style
Normal spending goes into a bonus pot that goes to the next winner of a challenge(this encourages people to challenge).  Challenges are bid in secret.  Winner and loser exchange bids to keep.  The difference between the two is the amount of coin the winner can use for narrating the outcome.  Big spenders find themselves short after a very short time.

Challenge only #2
All coins spent go to the bank.  Whenever anyone runs out of coin, everybody gets a reward of <Initial coins>

[Valamir]

Excellent.  I'll note some of my initial thoughts to stir up discussion.  Thanks for the suggestions.

Challenge only
Any coins spent go into a bonus pot for each player.  This pot cannot be used by the player, but can be used to reward any other player who entertains them.  Players who spend more, end up with a big pot.  The idea is that the biggest spenders will be the ones with the biggest interest in the story at hand, and will reward what they find entertaining more often.  This will cause the most popular/entertaining players to end up with the most coins.  This skips the voting process out of the current rules, and doesn&#8217;t require a complication to replenish.

I really like the self contained nature of this and elimination of the Bank as an outside funding source.  

An area of concern would be the motivation for payment.  

1) It would be possible for a couple of players to comandeer the story by gifting coins freely back and forth (essentially making everything free for them) while gradually starving out everyone else.

2) A likely outcome when Coins start to run low is a universal "prisoner exchange" where cross swaps of Coins are made just to get money back into circulation.

If either of these were to manifest themselves, the game would be essentially broken.  Costs would become meaningless (players, at least some of them, would essentially have infinite Coins) and the economy would end.

Anyone think of a way to keep the concept but prevent this from happening?

Swipe pot
Any coins spent go into a bonus pot for each player.  This pot cannot be used by the player, but can be used by any other player who wants to make a complication on his or her turn.  Big spenders will face bigger complications.  Anything spent from this swipe pot, or against it, will become a bonus pot to be awarded as per the current rules.

This sounds almost exactly like how the Complication Pot works now, only there would be a seperate pot per player rather than just 1 big one.  That has some interesting side effects.  It would make for a good optional rule regardless.

Fate & Tide style
Normal spending goes into a bonus pot that goes to the next winner of a challenge(this encourages people to challenge).  Challenges are bid in secret.  Winner and loser exchange bids to keep.  The difference between the two is the amount of coin the winner can use for narrating the outcome.  Big spenders find themselves short after a very short time.

Not sure I follow.  Say 12 Coins have accumulated in a Bonus Pot.  
You say "The astonaughts land on the moon and find it is, in fact, made of cheese"
I say "Thats silly, I'm challenging you".
I secretly bid 4 Coins, you secretly bid 1 Coin.

What happens?

[Bankuei]

Regarding the initial problems contest only, I'll have to think about it.

Not sure I follow. Say 12 Coins have accumulated in a Bonus Pot.
You say "The astonaughts land on the moon and find it is, in fact, made of cheese"
I say "Thats silly, I'm challenging you".
I secretly bid 4 Coins, you secretly bid 1 Coin.

You bid 4, I bid 1.  You win.  You get the 12 coins for later use.  As far as the immediate exchange- the 4 you bid goes to me.  The 1 I bid goes to you.  Your got 13 coins, but lost 4.  You get 3(4-1) story power to use in describing the "outcome", in this case, traits/facts about the moon.    The advantage here is that people will probably bid high on important things, and then the coins stay in circulation.  If you choose to narrate furthre from that point, say spending another 8 coins, whoever wins it next will get those coins.  The only problem here is the "win back" scenario, although since you have to pay out to beat me, I either get more coins back, or else I win the pot.  There in lies the gamble.

Any ideas or permutations would be welcome.

Chris

[Valamir]

Intriguing.  Is this mechanic in use in Fate & Tides...is there a link available to that?

An area of concern I'd have with it (note "concern" used specifically to mean something less than "problem") again is one of motivation.

If the bonus pot gets large enough, isn't a player motivated to challenge anything just to try an win it.  Further, isn't a player motivated to actually do silly things on purpose just to incite a challenge that they might win?

This kind of thinking is the reason why Complications use the somewhat convoluted Complication Pot and Bonus Pot structure.  The Bonus Pot and the voting mechanism are there to dis-incent Complications originated by raw greed.  Its a final human check and balance to make sure the game mechanic isn't rewarded frivolous activity.

[Bankuei]

Isn't that what levies were for?  To check the frivolous stupid stuff people might pull in abusing the challenge mechanic?

Fate and Tide is in the Indie game design section.  I'll see if I can dig it up later tonight.

Chris

[Mike Holmes]

Complications are pretty carefully balanced in a number of different ways. This is what leads to some of the complexity of the rules. Here are the points we'd like to keep if at all possible:

1. There should be an incentive to do complications as opposed to just resolving by spending coins straight. We've noted that it may be unnecessary to provide a cash incentive of some sort as players might do so out of sheer curmudgeonlyness. But still, if one can be provided, it will hopefully motivate even the most co-operative players.

Incentives we have looked at include: Story Power or Coins from the result of the complicaion being higher than the number of coins invested, Complication pot, Bonus Pot, others.


2. An incentive to participate in a complication by other players should exist. This to prevent "unopposed" complications from occuring much if at all. Chris seems to not need this sort of thing, but for others it's been noted that setting up your own adversity and resolving it at will can be boring. This and the fact that a clash of interests makes for creativity (IMO) are the reasons for complicaions as a whole.

Incentives we have looked at include: Usually a gamble against the Originator for the extra Coins generated, bonus pots, others.


3. An incentive to either create new traits or involve extant traits in the complication should exist.

The "leverage" one gets from such traits seems to suffice. But there could be other methods.


4. To prevent players from creating frivolous complications soley for gain or from particiapting in bad form, there should be a human check that can penalize offending players. All incentives must not outweigh this potential penalty (to prevent players from wanting to do nothing but create complications, just for the potential gain).

So far we've looked at: Bonus pots distributed by vote, Challenge for bad complications


5. If at all possible, the mechanics should create a pacing such that the incentive to create a complication grows over time such that complications are not the only form of activity taken (I have played sessions like this).

This is the idea behind the complication pot.

6. The reward for "winning" a complication must be such that there is an incentive to achieve it, but not so much that a player is willing to just outbid his opponent for fear of the check in mechanic 4. This is in part to prevent poachers who may want to profit without really competing.

Right now we have a 1.5 to .5 distribution winner/loser for each pair of coins we put in.


That seems pretty complete, but there may be more principles involved that I missed. I wanted to list these so that people can see what sorts of criteria the method has to achieve. I guess what were looking for is a simpler system that accomplishes most or all of these things in some workable manner.

Mike