[Misery Bubblegum] Delayed Gratification

[TonyLB]

So, Past versions of the system have had a lot of... y'know... stuff attached to them.  Time to get back to core principles.  Thankfully, GenCon gave me plenty to think about in terms of core principles.

Misery Bubblegum is a game in which players take on the role of a character in the classically teenage state of being wide open to influence, having no idea of their eventual identity, and being driven to change as a person.  Yes, I want it to be a good system for running High School... but there are plenty of novels and other settings where older characters are plunged into that state.  For instance, Nine Princes in Amber is my archetypal "transplanted high-school drama."

I want to make sure that I strongly support my Pep Squad style of play, and make the transmission of that excitement as explicit and rewarded as possible.  So much of this discussion (at least on my end) will be phrased in terms of letting people get each other excited.

One thing that I notice strongly in con games of Capes is that people get excited about conflicts that don't exist yet.  They write up Goals and show them around the table, saying "At the right moment, I'm going to play this!" and everyone gets all stoked, and leans the narration in that direction.  That deserves to be formalized:  In this game you will create future conflicts in the Situation (need a less academic name... anyone?) and then people will work to either confront, evade or postpone those conflicts.  Each time a conflict is postponed, people have the opportunity to put Simmer dice on it, which is a visual indication of "While we're not addressing this yet, the fact that we referred to it, again, means that when it does get addressed it's going to be that much more of a big deal for my character."

The gang gets their memory blatted in a spell gone wrong.  Wesley thinks he's a young watcher, and insists that they're being tested, stuck in a hotel, with a vampire set to kill them.  Angel discovers (essentially the next scene) that he is a vampire.  Immediately there is a conflict "Do the others kill Angel?" or something along those lines, hovering over everyone.  Angel works his ass off in many minor asides, postponing this conflict.  "No, nope, no vampires here!"  When it eventually comes out, to nobody's surprise, the person who's been most invested in avoiding it gets complete control over how the conflict plays out (i.e. Angel whoops ass).  Only Connor, whose "Connor and Angel beat the crap out of each other" conflict has been simmering for, like, forever has the power to get in there and engage Angel on his own level.

So there are two types of mechanical dice-offs between players:  (1) Actually resolving conflicts (once they're "on") and (2) Deciding whether a given conflict comes to a head now, or is postponed until later, or (for conflicts that aren't evoking interest) avoided completely.

My question is:  What's the rational Gamble that prompts a player to defer a conflict that interests them?  What gets more than one person interested in question #2, above?

I'm pretty sure that successfully deferring the conflict should give players more dice to control that conflict when it eventually resolves.  But what about failing to provoke the conflict?  Does that also give dice?  If so, aren't the dice always going to balance out, rendering them essentially meaningless?  I'm very big on rewarding people to lose (I think it makes for a healthier dynamic).  But is there an appropriate reward for losing in this instance?

[JohnG]

Perhaps an interesting way to do it would be the loss of dice when people avoid the conflict too many times.  After all, if you avoid something for too long, it does have a tendency to be much worse than it would be otherwise.  Maybe there's a random number of times something can be put off before it gets worse?  Then there's an advantage to deferring, but it can also make things much worse, creating a bit more of a gamble.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Or maybe deferring things simply makes them more likely to blow up when they can't be avoided any longer? The thought is to make avoidance a gamble: maybe this'll never come up again, or maybe it'll come up again when I'm in a stronger position, but maybe it'll come back and bite me at the worst possible time.

[TonyLB]

Both of those suggestions seem to be addressing "Why wouldn't you defer a conflict forever?"  Which is a good and important thing to address, as people who can defer conflict forever can bore themselves quite effectively.

My experience from Capes is that some people latch onto the power to pursue conflicts like a vampire bat in a blood-bank.  So I'm looking for suggestions that also address "Why would anyone willingly defer a conflict that they could resolve now?"

For instance, say you had a set pool of dice (say, twelve to start) and attributes that let you spend like... four... on a given conflict.  But you can also invest those dice (reducing your pool) in Simmer, which gets added to what you can spend straight out of the pool.  So you could roll five, or six, or ten... if you could get that much Simmer going.

But each time you defer things, other people also have the chance to dump in some Simmer.  So (especially if it is harder to go from Simmer-4 to Simmer-5 than it is to go from Simmer-0 to Simmer-1) if you let things go too long your relative advantage dwindles to nothing.  But maybe if the reward (win or lose) is proportionate to the amount of dice the winners roll then there's an incentive to take that chance for a while, maintaining some relative advantage while making it an overall more rewarding conflict for everyone.

Urggh... I feel like I'm just woolgathering here.  Does that clarification (that I'm looking for a balance between "defer" and "resolve" as pursuable goals) help?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Latch a mechanical advantage to resolving a goal. Let's say this is dice you get to use for something cool. You get N dice to a new goal at start (your screen presence score, say), and can add more. Specifically, when you delay a conflict, you get to add more. However: whenever you delay the conflict, you have to roll the bonus dice on the goal against the amount of dice you're adding through the delay (or some other dice; could be simply a skill roll, as the more skilled character has more chance to avoid the conflict). Win, and you defer succesfully. Lose, and the conflict implied by the goal turns into a Disaster. Disaster is a conflict you have to resolve now, immediately. Something pushes the situation, and you have to get the goal now or never. The disaster can also cause a forfeit on those bonus dice, if you want.

This way you have intensive to let it simmer a while, because that way you get to increase the eventual reward. But every time you delay it becomes likelier that you're forced to resolve. Pretty basic Sorcerer application. The way to make it work is to make that reward important enough. Actually, make resolving conflict immediately meaningless for resource management (that is, start the bonus dice at 0). That way the only reason to resolve immediately is if you care so much about the goal in question that you don't mind being left without mechanical reward.

[LordSmerf]

[...snip...]But maybe if the reward (win or lose) is proportionate to the amount of dice the winners roll then there's an incentive to take that chance for a while, maintaining some relative advantage while making it an overall more rewarding conflict for everyone.[...snip...]

[LordSmerf]

Doh.  I meant to actually comment.

Tony, I think you're onto something here, but there are a couple of problems that I see (yeah, not solutions, I'm real helpful that way).

First, what specifically are you goint to be providing as a reward?  Chances are that if the cost to up simmer is non-linear (it's harder to go from 5 to 6 than 1 to 2) then the reward will also have to be non-linear on at least the same progression, possibly at an even greater rate (if that makes sense).

Second, what about resolving conflicts right now?  The risk of rewarding delayed gratification is losing immediate gratification altogether.  I don't really have any insights here, just a sort of "Whoa, this could get ugly..."

Thomas

[JohnG]

the only thing I can think of, other than less dice due to lack of preperation of course, that would inspire ME to put off my own conflict til later are the following.

1: The person who resolves their conflict first or absolute last could suffer some form of penalty.

or

2: If the game is a win/lose type of game, the player who resolves first or last loses, even if they succeed in their conflict.

Otherwise I'm having trouble imagining other ways to inspire people to not go first and not go last.  Course that could just be my own lack of brain fuel since I'm in the middle of a project heh.

[TonyLB]

Right... what's deferring's function in strategy (other than "I like the idea of deferring")?

How about this:  The longer you defer a goal, the more your character has at stake on it.  Your character is vulnerable, if it ever comes to resolution.  Similarly, you as a player have more mechanical resources to win or lose.  Deferring Goal A doesn't gain you any advantage on eventual resolution of Goal A, but the tension of a deferred Goal A can gain you momentary advantage on resolving current Goal B.

It's Dave and Maddie syndrome... oh, I hope people here aren't too young to remember Moonlighting.  That would make me feel obsolete.  Anyway, the notion appears throughout adventure fiction:  partners are better at solving crimes (or slapping nazis, or whatever) because they aren't facing the simmering romantic tension between them.

It also appears a lot in romance, you just have to look more at the growing (but hypothetical) stakes relative to the short-term benefit of the tension.  "Yeah, I might be attracted to her, but we're such good friends, and I don't want to ruin that."  Defer the Love goal five times and that evolves into "I love her with all my heart, I love everything about her, but I'm utterly terrified that if I tell her that then I'm going to lose everything, love, friendship, the works.  I can settle for being just friends, rather than make myself vulnerable like that."

Yeah... vulnerability.  That's what's at stake.  I want to see players deferring conflicts because it's easier and safer than making their characters vulnerable... and then see that deferring cause them to be even more vulnerable and even less in control later.  And then I want to reward players for resolving conflicts where they are vulnerable (for good or for ill).

[LordSmerf]

Tony, I think you've got something here.  Let me toss this into the pot:

Since deferment doesn't provide you a direct advantage, but we still want to incentivize it, how about...  Limite resources that come back over time (per session?).  That way you have (say) three conflicts come up: Love the partner, Solve the mystery, Pay the rent.  You only have the resources to deal with one of the decisively, or two of them with an advantage, or all three with a slight disadvantage.  You can decide to defer the whole Love issue and have a good chance of taking care of the Rent problem and the Mystery at the same time.  Or you could try to put off your landlord for a bit, suppress dealing with your tangled emotions, and have a near guarantee to take that Mystery down.

This, if you can find a good way to do it, might be a great way to engender that "Yeah, I'd love to take care of that, but I don't have time." feeling.

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Heh... and that also gives the GM a clear role:  Keep throwing high-urgency, low-priority problems at the players.

Like in Buffy, where some of the best interpersonal scenes play out when they're deferring a fight with the vampires, only just barely fighting them while they talk about their feelings.  Because the vampires have high urgency ("I'm undead!  I've got fangs!  Deal with me now!") but low priority ("By dealing with me you will achieve... well, nothing really lasting, to be honest.  But... fangs!")

There's very little so satisfying as being able to say to the Big Bad "Be with you in a second, I have to talk to my boyfriend about our relationship."

You don't even need to make it resources that replenish over time:  Just say that you can initiate several conflicts at once, but you have only one dice pool to deal with all of your conflicts.  You have to invest dice temporarily in order to fight on the Conflicts.  Then, when you've addressed all of the conflicts that got initiated in that scene, you get your dice pool back for the next scene.

Credit where credit is due:  I believe you invented this idea, Thomas, back in Capes development.  It didn't fit there, but I think it fits here.

So, in a given scene, do you try to address both the Mystery and your Love, and maybe lose both?  What if the GM fights you on trying to defer your Rent, and wins?  Then the Rent is on the table, for good or for ill... ignore it and it will sting you.  Does that change your decision about whether to defer talk of Love?