[Capes] Social resolution mechanics

[Sydney Freedberg]

(1)

Weaknesses/flaws/disadvantages/anti-stats

how about the idea of anti-stats?

Superman has: Weak to Kryptonite -4

Marty McFly has the trope: "Can't Stand To Be Called a Chicken" -2

[Bad guys] can draw on that trope/attitude/power/whatever for dice to their dice pool....Or negative dice to the afflicted person's pool

Cool. What I was trying to say, only better.

(2)
Facts About the Wider World -- how to save this aspect?

To really get at the "world darkens / world grows brighter" aspect of Facts -- which I think all of us liked but none of us ever really had a handle on -- you can make the Complications generated be absolutely ANYTHING.

E.g. the bad guys win a Complication and the Editor can have Lex Luthor act on his new knowledge to trot out the Kryptonite next scene or kidnap Lois Lane know he knows she's important.

Or the Editor can convert the hero's defeat into a B-plot Complication -- "your girlfriend dumps you" -- which is demoralizing/distracting and acts as a Hindrance (standard rules) to everything the hero does until he resolves the Complication; now you can have Peter Parker torn between fighting crime and making his date with M.J. and both things are mechanically represented by Complications in the same scene!

Or even the Editor can create a Complication affecting the whole city and serving as a Hindrance to all the heroes do. It could be as blatant as "crime rates rise," sparking tons of Complications as unrelated robberies occur across the city that the heroes have to deal with (or ignore) on top of fighting the supervillain. Or it could be as subtle as "enveloping sense of futility and despair," which acts as a Hindrance to until some hero stakes on it and someone restores Hope.

EDIT: In other words, don't think of a "scene" as taking place in a single location at a single time. Interconnecting Complications can occur all over the world and possibly even in flashback.

Now everybody stop being so frickin' creative. I really, really have to stop being inspired by you guys and get back to work.

[TonyLB]

I think that what Sydney just said (always bearing in mind the danger of crossposts and of misinterpretation) is that there should be some sequence of events in the mechanic by which Bonus Points off of a resolved Complication could end up (directly or indirectly) buying Control Points on an Issue.

I'm just thinking that things like "Your girlfriend dumps you", "The city is facing an unparalleled crime wave" and "The citizens demand that so-called 'Superhero' Arachnid-Boy be arrested" are the side-effects of Editorial Control in the "Relationship with Girlfriend", "Safety of City" and "Public Reputation" Issues respectively.

Now it's easy to see (in the current mechanic) how a villain could create a new issue with the bonus.  Putting the bonus into new Complications (and then making them Issues by staking on them and not letting them resolve before the end of a scene) is what the bonus is for.

I am initially leery of letting the Bonus points get siphoned directly into ongoing Issues, however.  I think that would be such an attractive option that it would be hard for people to do anything else.  If there were an intermediate mechanism that involved some risk, that would be cool.

Maybe the way you do it is to create a scene that involves the Issue, then introduce a new Complication to that scene with the Bonus, and sacrifice that Complication to the other side while you rack up points in the Issue.

Which would, at least, explain why the personal lives of superheroes are so complicated.

I do have to say that I'm very much liking the sort of Alchemy that this "carry over complications" thing could lend itself to.  I save the innocent hostage with plenty of Control to spare, so I use that bonus to boost my Public Reputation.  When the villain counters with a smear campaign, I let PR slide while I go for Information.  Finding the roots of his smear campaign I parley that bonus into another bonus to finding his base, and then into a bonus on Clobbering, when I ambush him just as his evil scheme is about to be enacted.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Argh, I can't stop myself.

I think that what Sydney just said (always bearing in mind the danger of crossposts and of misinterpretation) is that there should be some sequence of events in the mechanic by which Bonus Points off of a resolved Complication could end up (directly or indirectly) buying Control Points on an Issue. I'm just thinking that things like "Your girlfriend dumps you", "The city is facing an unparalleled crime wave" and "The citizens demand that so-called 'Superhero' Arachnid-Boy be arrested" are the side-effects of Editorial Control in the "Relationship with Girlfriend", "Safety of City" and "Public Reputation" Issues respectively.

Yes, that's lovely.

BUT -- having killed off Facts, let's go one further: Do we really need the Complications / Issue distinction? As I recall, the rules say that when the VP total for a scene is reached, all unresolved Complications end (in favor of whoever's got the most points); you're trying to create an exception for Complications that don't get cut off but instead become Issues.

Well, why shouldn't the default be that Complications don't end until someone ends them? If that building is burning when you fight Captain Gruesome, it's still burning when you've knocked him out -- it doesn't just spontaneously collapse/put itself out because you put enough/too few points into it before the scene hit its VP total. In fact, the current mechanic can lead to a "don't catch the Snitch yet" mechanic (Harry Potter reference), whereby winning the overall scene before key complications are tilting your way may actually be counterproductive -- knocking out Captain Gruesome doesn't allow you to devote your attention to saving the people in the burning building Complication, it causes the burning building Complication to resolve itself, quite possibly against you.

Now, obviously something like a burning building doesn't go on forever -- perhaps a new Wonder could be making an existing Complication "self-escalating" so it gets worse and worse by itself unless further interfered with (or better and better, if the heroes spend points in, say, having the fire department arrive). But a lot of Complications -- the Love Interest one, for example -- can go on perpetually, across multiple sessions of play even, and can either be Aids or Hindrances depending on who's got Control (she loves me, she loves me not...).

[TonyLB]

Huh... Adding Complications in flashback.

I just caught that.  My brain is aching a little as I contemplate it, but I've got a smile on my face.

Just imagine the sequence:

[*]Present Day - 1:  Hero goes into a bank robbery, batters some thugs.  Villain gets away with a young girl as a hostage.[*]Ten years ago - 1:  Hero is assuring a mother that he will return her son to her, safe and sound.  But then he can't find any leads.  The issue is unresolved.  It lingers.[*]Present Day - 2:  The hero has a -1 penalty (from his "Boy Hostage Ten Years Ago" complication!) as he tries to track down the villain.[*]Present Day - 3: Despite the penalty, he manages to rescue the girl.  This gives him a carryover bonus.[*]Ten years ago - 2:  Using the bonus from the present day, the hero starts with control on an information complication.  He finds a stool pigeon and makes him sing.  He translates that into a clobbering advantage on the hostage-takers and finally rescues the boy hostage.[/list:u]The unresolved nature of the past story (at that point in the telling) is a hindrance to the hero in the present day, even though the past story would clearly have been resolved by the present day.  And the hero is able to resolve the story in the past only because of their success in the present.

Causality in story-telling time, not in Imagined World time... and Sydney's telling us to stop being creative!

[Sydney Freedberg]

Crosspost frenzy!

Adding Complications in flashback.I just caught that.  My brain is aching a little as I contemplate it, but I've got a smile on my face.....Causality in story-telling time, not in Imagined World time... and Sydney's telling us to stop being creative!

I just toss out one little thing, without even thinking about it, just to push people on definining a "scene" -- and you come up with this frickin' brilliant thing.

[TonyLB]

Now, obviously something like a burning building doesn't go on forever

Strange as it sounds, that's not obvious to me in the context of this genre.

The bomb always stops a bare second away from total destruction.  The building explodes just as the last bystanders are cleared.  These things happen because the crises are waiting for explicit player actions in order to be resolved.  The world isn't a self-running clockwork, it is just a tool through which the heroes and villains express themselves.


Now... not ending Complications.  I'm feeling "Yes" and "No" on this at the same time.

First, the "Yes":  The system of carryover is, essentially, doing this anyway, so that's exactly the way I should describe it.  If your villain has 25 Control in Clobbering, and the heroes only have 15 then you'll get 15 points of VP and a ten point bonus for a complication next scene.  Functionally, that's no different from saying "You reduce both Control scores in the Clobbering Complication by 15, and the villain can play it again next turn for its remaining ten points of control".  But, of course, your way of describing it is infinitely clearer.

Now the "No":  The Complication doesn't have to remain the same Complication.  A 10-point advantage in Clobbering can turn into a 10 point advantage in "Impossibly Fiendish Death-trap" in the flicker of a scene change.  The hero gets knocked out, and they wake up dangling over a pool of nuclear laser sharks.


Okay, so... the thing is... the thing is this... at some point you should be faced with the hard choice "Do I save the building full of innocent victims, or do I knock out Captain Gruesome?"  Knocking out Captain Gruesome should not be the obvious first step to saving the innocent bystanders.

Let me think though.  Assume that any unresolved Complication will just carry over (i.e. there are no Issues, it's all Complications that carry over).

So if Captain Gruesome is losing, badly... he should hit the "Resolve" button on the Burning Building he controls!  You've got to stop pummelling him long enough to control that complication.

But... hrm... the hero controlling that complication does not end the scene (even if it would be worth enough VPs to hit the target), because it hasn't been resolved.  Now if there were a rule that you can instantly resolve any complication you're currently losing... heh... okay, that would be useful.  Then you could force them to take control of the Building, then force them to eat the Victory Points of that victory and end the scene without having resolved the Clobbering Complication... "We'll meet another day, Captain Righteous!  ANOTHER DAY!"

[TonyLB]

What this system is very quickly going to need is a Wonder that folds two Complications into one.

[statisticaltomfoolery]

What this system is very quickly going to need is a Wonder that folds two Complications into one.

Why?

[Sydney Freedberg]

The Complication doesn't have to remain the same Complication.  A 10-point advantage in Clobbering can turn into a 10 point advantage in "Impossibly Fiendish Death-trap" in the flicker of a scene change.  The hero gets knocked out, and they wake up dangling over a pool of nuclear laser sharks.... What this system is very quickly going to need is a Wonder that folds two Complications into one.

Yes. It also needs a Wonder that says "Change Nature of Complication," e.g. from Clobbering to Death Trap and back.

[TonyLB]

Hrm... maybe statistictomfoolery is right, though, actually... maybe it's not needed.

I was thinking that the proliferation of complications was going to make things hard on record-keeping.  But people should still be resolving them left and right.  And if by chance you do have lots of little victories (i.e. a dozen 1 or 2 point carryover complications) those shouldn't translate into a single large advantage, they should stay a lot of little (and therefore vulnerable) complications.

My mistake.  No folding needed.

Now on Sydney's recommendation... should changing the nature of the complication be handled by Wonder, or should that be part of Resolving the complication?  

i.e. if you Resolve the "Clobbering - 25/15" complication (beating the hero into unconsciousness) then you farm 15 VPs and you have a remaining "??? - 10/0" Complication that you get to put a name onto, whether it be "Clobbering" or "Deathtrap" or "Public Humiliation".

[statisticaltomfoolery]

I think that as long as you have either index cards or someone dedicated to tracking complications, it'll be fine.

Hmm. I think the farming out and keeping complications around is a bit inelegant, and also doesn't really handle that sometimes you learn things which don't take effect immediately.

I think you almost want to treat it like an item: I clobbered the bank robbers, and got the location of the secret hideout.

If you're using index cards, you just write "Location of the Secret Hideout +4" onto the card  and then the winner takes it for later use. If you're just using pencil and paper, then the player can write "Location of the Secret Hideout +4" on their character sheet, and check it off when used.

That might have neat effects where you'd slowly buildup on your sheet a list of all the things you've done in the world.

By the way, this is long down the road, but a character sheet (which might have to be two pages), which lists the wonder effects (with a few words for explanation) would be snazzy. Then again, I'm always a fan of the "Character Sheet which has all the relevant rules on it" school of design.

[LordSmerf]

First, Down with Facts!  I approve of the call for their elimination.

Second, i strongly support a difference between Complications and Issues.  Heroes are always stretched too thin, that is one of the things that makes them so compelling.  You must decide: save those people or stop Captain Gruesome.  If you stop the Captain then those people will be unsaved.  Can you think of many (i am sure there must be at least a few, but there can not be too many) instances where the Hero beats the villain up before moving on to rescue the hostages?  In most cases the Hero must devote his first energy to the hostages and only afterwards is he able to confront the villain directly.  Example from Spider Man 1, there will be spoilers: The Green Goblin attacks during the parade/party thing...  Spidey goes after him and they fight for a bit.  Then a Complication arises: "MJ in danger."  Spidey stops beating up on the Goblin in order to save her, he does not finish with the Goblin and then save her.  The compelling thing is that he has to make that choice, he can not have his cake and eat it too.

If you do seperate Complications (which resolve at the end of a scene) from Issues (which resolve only when some resolves them) then winning a combat scene can give you a bonus that applies only to Issues.  Mainly because i am hesitant to give players a chance to win a Scene and plow a 15 or 20 point bonus into the next scene and win that next scene with no chance of defeat gaining another bonus, etc...

Truthfully i am not really convinced that a bonus for winning a scene is necessay, or even that it is a good idea.  I do not know if it is a bad one, i am just a little leary of it.

Oh, i was thinking about Advancement (the LetCol section mentions that "it is coming") and i came up with a pretty basic system.  LetCol voting (and perhaps some other means) gives you Advancement Points, one for each vote.  You can do the following with these points:

1. Spend 1 point to rearrange the order of you Powers or Attitudes or Tropes however you wish.  This is used to reflect a shift in focus for your character.
2. Spend a number of points equal to your highest value Power or Attitude or Trope in order to add a new Power, Trope, or Attitude to you list.  The new ability has a value of 1 and all of your old abilities of that type are increased by 1.
3. Spend advancement points towards control of an Issue at some exchange rate (i am thinking 1 for 1, or perhaps 1 Advancement for 2 Control).

That is a lot of stuff, but i want to again state that i think that eliminating Facts makes things a lot smoother.

EDIT: Quardruple crosspost take two!
EDIT: If you are dead set on carrying a bonus over from Complication to Complication i definately like the last suggestion by Statisticaltomfoolery.  By simple writing down somewhere that you have "Know location of Villain's Hideout +3" you can apply that +3 (and i would say you must use all or none of it, not splitting it up) if knowledge of that hideout is useful...  Perhaps even use it for Dice instead of for Control...

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

Can't... stop... posting....

I know Thomas has actually playtested this game and I haven't, but I'm still going to take it upon myself to disagree with both his points.

[hubris]

i strongly support a difference between Complications and Issues.....Mainly because i am hesitant to give players a chance to win a Scene and plow a 15 or 20 point bonus into the next scene and win that next scene with no chance of defeat gaining another bonus, etc.

If you're worried about a snowball effect (i.e. runaway positive feedback), you can still treat everything as Complications (i.e. no separate "Issues" category) and simply set the gearing on the mechanics that only a fraction of your success in Complication A carries over into Complication B: e.g. I win in A by 15 points, I get 15/3 = +3 to apply to B. Perhaps the cost per +1 bonus could be geared to the "scale" of the Complication somehow, e.g. beating Doctor Fang, DDS by 15 points might give you a whopping 15/2 = +7 to the "saving the kitten in the tree" Complication but only 15/10 = +1 to the "bringing about world peace complication."

But then again, what's wrong with runaway positive feedback? After all, these are comic books: things are supposed to escalate crazily. Thomas's primary objection is balance, but remember that both sides will probably walk away from any given bout of conflict with some Complications they won and some they lost -- in fact, the whole idea of the system is to encourage the heroes to sacrifice some Complications to win others. That way, both sides will tned to have wildly escalating power curves, which simulates the ramp-up effects of your typical action-adventure rather nicely.

In sum, I think "Issues" vs. "Complications" is an artificial and inelegant distinction, forced on us by the assumption "games are played in discrete scenes which end." If we think instead of a massive series of Complications -- some simultaneous, some overlapping, some sequential; some brief, some lasting, some unending -- this distinction falls away. Occam's Razor.

[one brief baby-diapering break later]

Oh, i was thinking about Advancement (the LetCol section mentions that "it is coming")...

Okay, as long as I'm swing Occam's Razor about like Sweeney Todd:

We decided we didn't need a separate Fact system. Why do we need a separate Advancement system?!?

Characters in comics and films don't spend points to advance. They develop through laying out backstory (often in flashback) and through rising to adversity. So make another use for victory in a Complication be increasing the power of your character (presumably, at a very high cost; this should much more expensive than getting a bonus on the next Complication). This can be justified in-game either as "my character could do this all along, it just became relevant now" or "I've ascended to a new level of power" or "back when I worked for Agency 99, I did a mission in Mozambique, so of course I speak Portugese." Doesn't matter. The mechanical effect should be that victory (and even certain kinds of defeat) generate the option to advance your character by adding new or increasing existing Powers, Tropes, Attitudes, and Whatever the Fourth Thing is We Might Need.

[/hubris]

[TonyLB]

I like the notion of people handing around 3x5" cards with a series of complications, all crossed out except for the most recent.  If you've got a card that reads like this:

[*]Security System[*]Arrest Warrant[*]Public Opinion[*]Villains Plans[*]Clobbering[/list:u]... that encapsulates a nice little thread of narrative there.  So the more I think about it, the more I like the idea that you're transforming past Complications into future ones, somehow.

But I think Thomas and Statistical have nicely pegged down two extremes on how this could be treated by the players:  They could sit around with their bonusses, using them to construct story by making transitions only when thematically useful and necessary.  Or they can go for the optimal strategic solution, without regard for themes and coherence.

I'd like to make it so that the mechanics of the system bring those two extremes of intent into alignment.  That way people do both at the same time.

Tonight I've got nothing.  But hopefully I'll sleep on it and get a lot more ideas come morning.

[TonyLB]

And on Sydney's comments:

Stories don't need to have distinct scenes that begin and end.  But it's really quite useful to an Editor and Players when they do.  

The benefit of closing up shop on a scene, resolving a whole bunch of complications, and moving on to the next scene is that it gives people a sense of closure.  "That was then, this is now".  

In the absence of that sort of closure my experience is that players will drag their heels, slowing a game to a standstill because they fear the loss of control that comes with the passage of time.  It's easier just to have objective constraints that keep everyone moving forward.  Players work well within objective constraints, even ones that tell them that terrible things happen in the game world.

For example:  The burning building was last scene.  You didn't win it.  The scene ended.  It's over.  Therefore you do not get to set a scene in the burning building.  You can set one in the smoking ruins, or in the overfilled burn ward of the local hospital, or perched on a gargoyle high over the city where your hero went to privately confront their failure.  But you can't turn back the hands of time, and (what's more important) you as player don't have to spend all your energy trying to.



Now, for what it's worth, I think that this sort of "Don't catch the snitch yet" philosophy mixes well with my earlier notion that a scene's Victory Target should grow slightly higher every time somebody Stakes Debt on a Complication.