[Capes] Not Complications -- Events!

[TonyLB]

Last night, discussing a problematic Complication ("Victoria West's Friendship") Eric said something like this:  "Look, by declaring this Complication we've established that West will make a show of her appreciation.  The question we're now deciding is whether it benefits her because she's manipulative or us because we force her to be genuine."

The scene plays out nicely, I go to bed and collapse, and then this morning I wake up with the implications of that method etched on the inside of my skull in letters of fire.  Ouch:

[*]We no longer have Complications, we have Events
[*]They have not happened yet
[*]By creating the Event they are written into the future of the story.
[*]When a Complication used to be "resolved", an Event occurs.
[*]The conflict to control the Event is about what the consequences of the Event will be... not whether the building will collapse, but who will be under it when it does.
[/list:u]This requires a whole new way of thinking to create Events.  But that's because thinking up Complications was broken... and has been for a long time.  I think this is the fix.

[*]So instead of "Great Big Bomb" you have "00:01".  Whoever wins it describes what happens in that moment.
[*]Instead of "Public Opinion" you have "Six o'clock news".  Whoever wins it describes what is reported.
[*]Instead of "Mary Jane Endangered" you have "Mary Jane Falls off Balcony"
[*]Instead of "Clobbering" you have "This isn't over, Spider-man!"
[/list:u]The players are no longer as restricted about what they can do that "makes sense" with what they're rolling.  If they control "Six o'clock news" by beating on the villains repeatedly then it's a blow-by-blow of how they pummelled them.  Yay brutal heroes!  There's much less sense that you can't effect a given Event with a given action or outcome.  Just as with powers and attitudes, reality is nothing but a tool by which players vie for control of the future.

In case you can't tell, I am extremely excited about this.  If anyone wants to bring me back down to earth, feel free... I could probably use a good dose of sanity right now.

[Eric Sedlacek]

Hey, Tony.  Eric here adding my 2 cents.

Not especially inclined to douse you in water over this one.  I think this new interpretation is potentially powerful...certainly way beyond what I was thinking when the initial statement came out of my mouth.

This gives a lot more weight to declaring a Complication/Event.  It demands a certain story path but leaves the exact resolution open.  I like this a lot.

I think that a consequence is that it makes less sense for an Event to be "unresolved".  Frankly, I find unresolved complications somewhat unsatisfying anyway.  I know that the unresolved complication was meant to be something in between "success" and "failure", but I think in practice it produces a stall in the story progression.  An Event, on the other hand, demands progression in one manner another, be it for good, ill, or neither.  

The key is in tweaking the mechanic so you can always resolve.  You either need to make it so someone always "wins" one way or another, or you need to come up with a way to resolve a tie.

By the way, I had stuff bouncing around in my head after the game too, but it was on other game-related topics.  I don't think anything has solidified into something I can yet express, but I will let you know if it does.

One thing is certain.  When this playtest is over, I am going to be itching for you to do a campaign!

Cheers,
Eric

[Doug Ruff]

I am also disinclined to reach for the fire extinguisher.

I confess that I've always found the initial setup of Complications as 'aspects of a situation' rather counter-intuitive, but haven't been able to express this. So I'm glad that you've been able to explain this for me.

However, I would have a slightly different take on this. When the Complication is introduced, this is an event that happens now. When this event resolves, this is what happens next.

To apply this to your examples:

[*] The Great Big Bomb still comes into play as "OMG theres a Great Big Bomb!" Depending on who resolves it, it may finish as "Kaboom!" or as "00:01" (because that's when they always stop in the movies.)
[*] Public Opinion starts as "News Crew Arrives", the winner of the event gets to say what is reported in the 6 O'Clock News Special.
[*] Mary Jane Falls of Balcony is the starting state of the event
[*] If I read your last example correctly, this is a challenge to a duel. However, I don't see this as an event - it's part of the usual Hero-Villain dynamic and will actually be narrated as Frames within one of the other events. In other words, Clobbering isn't an event, it's an
action[/list:u]

Viewed this way, a Complication isn't just an Event. It's an Event(now)-Event(outcome) pair. The conflict is over who controls the outcome.

Now, a question. Does this mean that a scene starts with a single Event, such as (a classic example now) "Bank Robbery in progress?" And that the Heroes, Villains and Editor can all chuck in additional Events to Complicate matters?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Doug's formulation -- here's an Event that you all must react to, the winner of the reactions determines the outcome of that Event -- is appealing. This might help with the long-running problem that exactly what resolving a Complication one way or another means, by simply redefining it away.

I also like Doug's reduction of "Clobbering" from an Event/Complication in itself to an action which happens in service of other goals. You can have the classic "I, the mighty villain, challenge you worthless heroes!" -- which case the precipitating Event is the challenge, and the outcome Event is somebody being humiliated. Or you could have what happened in the Playtest from last night, where Shell was vigorously clobbering the Red Queen but always in service of the Capture Complication and hardly ever rolling in the Complication of Clobbering qua Clobbering.*

....that the Heroes, Villains and Editor can all chuck in additional Events to Complicate matters?

And I definitely think more player power to throw Events/Complications is in order -- beyond what's already given through Inspirations. It's necessarily both tactically ("uh, gee, all these dice are too high for me to do anything") and dramatically ("gee, my character wouldn't really care that much about any of these Complications as stated, but important things for him/her would really be at stake in this scene).

P.S.: Just had to write "clobbering qua clobbering." Please forgive.

[TonyLB]

I totally agree with downgrading "Clobbering" (and "Bystanders", for that matter) from Complications that must always be present (in order to accurately 'represent' the situation) to means by which to approach control of the various Events looming on the horizon.  It's what seems to naturally happen in play, and I'm certainly not going to argue with what people find fun and comfortable.

Requiring a Starting Event that leads to an Outcome seems (to my mind) a balanced compromise between Events as non-causal narrative destiny and Complications as situation and causality.

I do see the appeal, but giving people broader powers to define narrative destiny appeals to me more.  It's linked to the old adage that if you show a gun in the first act of a play, somebody will be shot in the fifth act.

A player could wait until the Goblin dynamites the balcony before saying "Hey, that means Mary Jane will fall.  We should add a 'Mary Jane Falls off Balcony' Event".  That's a legitimate thing to do.  

But I think it's also legitimate to hear about Mary Jane up on a high balcony and say "We should add a 'Mary Jane Falls off Balcony' Event" well before the Goblin ever arrives, just because having her fall off the balcony would be good clean fun.  After all, why else would you ever put a love interest in a high place, save for them to fall off of it?

Requiring that players start off with an event that causes the outcome is a huge restriction on their creative freedom.  What does it achieve that is worth the loss?

[LordSmerf]

What can i say?  I like it...

Especially Doug's point on Events being binary.  It is sort of like a Kicker: something happens that demands immediate action from someone ("The bank is being robbed!").  At the very same time that you set up something that must be responded to you define exactly what long term effect it will have on the Story.

So you have: Bank Robbery -> Funding Plans of World Domination

Should the Villains win then they simply explain how the robbery relates to their funding.  This can be pretty much anything, as long as it ties in.  So if the Villains just barely escape perhaps this robbery was just a distraction and they had some thugs hijack an armored car accross town.

Should the Heroes win then they get to explain how foiling the robbery (or whatever) effects the Villains' plans.  This could mean that the Villains are amply funded, it just depends on how you want the story to go.

I think that the key here is that the outcome is tied to the setup.  The exact semantics of the whole thing will probably have some profound effects on the flavor of the game.  "Ticking Bomb -> 00:01" produces quite a different feel than "Ticking Bomb -> Detonation".  So, Events, yeah.

Thomas

[Doug Ruff]

I do see the appeal, but giving people broader powers to define narrative destiny appeals to me more.  It's linked to the old adage that if you show a gun in the first act of a play, somebody will be shot in the fifth act.

A player could wait until the Goblin dynamites the balcony before saying "Hey, that means Mary Jane will fall.  We should add a 'Mary Jane Falls off Balcony' Event".  That's a legitimate thing to do.  

But I think it's also legitimate to hear about Mary Jane up on a high balcony and say "We should add a 'Mary Jane Falls off Balcony' Event" well before the Goblin ever arrives, just because having her fall off the balcony would be good clean fun.  After all, why else would you ever put a love interest in a high place, save for them to fall off of it?

That's a very good point. I think this is still achievable if we allow more than one Event at the start of a conflict.

In the example you've given, one of the starting Events is 'Mary Jane is Standing on a Balcony.' If it's agreed at the start of the session that Mary Jane is going to fall off of that balcony, there is a Social Contract thingy in force that someone is going to do something that is going to send her off of the balcony. Probably the Goblin.

(I'm assuming that Spider-Man is already there because of another Event, by the way.)

Requiring that players start off with an event that causes the outcome is a huge restriction on their creative freedom.  What does it achieve that is worth the loss?

The Event causes an outcome, the result of the Conflict determines who gets the creative freedom to describe which outcome results.

It's the 'Mary Jane' example that will cause a specific outcome - except in this case, the participants are agreeing to sacrifice some of their freedom in the pusuit of Greater Fun, and that's just fine.

[TonyLB]

Actually, I wasn't worried about how the known outcome restricts freedom.  I was worried about how needing a cause to explain it restricts the freedom to frame interesting outcomes.

But I think we're somewhat in agreement on that point (from the other things you wrote).

As for creating more than one Event, I definitely think that there needs to be freedom to create a lot of Events, both by the Editor and the players.

I'm tempted to say that player or Editor can forego a turn on one of their characters to create either a new Event (at 1/1) or a new Inspiration (at level 1).  Then Events would not be replaced as they resolve, so that scenes can transition from non-conflict to conflict and back.

[TonyLB]

Made up an Example of Play, which includes rules I've been discussing here as well as rules that I haven't discussed much with anyone (particularly Tension Thresholds, which come up in the latter half of the example).

It was a bit of a rocky one... had some wierd dice action, and some inter-player conflict (very odd to have emerge in solo-playtest... I feel a little schizophrenic) but overall I think I like how it turned out.

In any event, I think it was a very nice showcase for how Events work.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Okay, NOW I understand Events. They're terrifyingly brilliant. And they totally fit the genre.

I'd also note that at this point, victory point totals seem to be totally superseded as a way of ending a scene.

Also you should consider becoming a comic book writer.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Also (too late to Edit original post) pre-determined Events of unknown significance complete (or at least further) Capes's move from simulating real-world physical logic (sim) to simulating story logic (narr). As Tony himself said, there's the Chekhov principle: There's a gun on stage in Act One, you know it's going to go off by Act Three, you just don't know how.

I'm sure quantum physics and the observer effect fit in here somehow, but I don't see how yet. Or maybe I'm going mad.

[Doug Ruff]

In quantum physics, you create reality by observing it.

In Capes, you create reality by deserving it. Go figure.

And that was a great example of play. I can see now how the 'something will happen' nature of Events works out in play.

I'm assuming the other mechanics will be discussed in a new thread?

EDIT: Corrected my quantum spelling.

[LordSmerf]

Well, we managed to wrap up our little IRC play test of Capes last night.  Tony will put it up in Actual play when he gets some free time.

We went ahead and used Events instead of Complications, we did not use Tension Threshholds, and no one attempted to raise their Inspirations.

Anyway, on to my thoughts.  There is a significant difference between Events and Complications in play.  Everyone knows up front what it means to win or lose with Events (as opposed to Complications where it could be quite nebulous).  Over all i believe that Events are much better for pacing than Complications were, and they provide a lote more focus for the narrative.  So... Yeah, Events are a positive move from where i stand.

Thomas

[efindel]

Anyway, on to my thoughts.  There is a significant difference between Events and Complications in play.  Everyone knows up front what it means to win or lose with Events (as opposed to Complications where it could be quite nebulous).  Over all i believe that Events are much better for pacing than Complications were, and they provide a lot more focus for the narrative.  So... Yeah, Events are a positive move from where i stand.

I think Events are a positive move... but I'm not sure that I agree that "everyone knows up front what it means to win or lose with Events".  

For example, in the playtest the other night, Tony at one point said something to me like, "You realize that we're going to get to be face-to-face with Specter no matter what, right?"  Well... I have to admit that I hadn't realized that.  The Event we were trying to resolve was "face-to-face with Specter", and the other events on the table were "Unmasked", "Guillotine crashes down", and "Zip bleeds".  None of the other three necessarily required us to come face-to-face with Specter -- even if Specter was unmasked, it could be done by Kate instead of us, or done on video.  So I thought that whether we'd get to come face-to-face with him was genuinely at issue.

Maybe there should be some sort of statement of this kind of thing -- a way to say "regardless of who wins this event, X will happen."

[LordSmerf]

That is it exactly.  The point of events is that that event will happen, it is just a qestion of how it happens.  So if the Event is "Zip bleeds" then Zip will bleed, no matter who wins, it is just a matter of how.  Which is why the "Unmasked" Event was so nebulously stated, we knew that someone would be Unmasked, but we were fighting over exactly who and how.

Thomas