Incentive Systems and Wanting to Lose

[John Kirk]

Side note: Since we're talking a lot about player choice here, we must avoid situations where a player will be forced to make a certain choice.
For example by awarding exclusively one kind of ressource for success and another for defeat. If both ressources are necessary, the player will have to make the other choice to continue play.

I have to disagree with this, I'm afraid.  I think that giving players a real choice over whether to win or lose means that the rewards for both winning and losing have to satisfy one of the following criteria:

1) The rewards must be exactly equal for both winning and losing.

2) The rewards for winning and losing are of a different nature, both of which are needed at various points in game play.

3) The "reward" for winning is something that is desirable sometimes but undesirable at others.

Note that (1) strikes me as being rather boring.  The player has no incentive to pick winning over losing (or visa-versa) at any time.  He therefore always has a real choice, but all conflicts' outcomes are essentially guaranteed to be neutral.  Such a system seems to me like it wouldn't drive a story forward very well.  Also, unless the rewards for losing and winning are of exactly the same type, option 1 could be difficult to attain in practice.

If rewards for winning and losing are of the same type, but are unequal, then the player will always have an incentive to take one option over the other.  He therefore doesn't have a real choice.  After all, why would anyone rationally seek the lesser reward over the greater one?  If winning is rewarded more than losing, then the loser is essentially being given a "consolation prize".

Note that criteria 2 and 3 don't really give players the option of always winning or always losing.  They do, however, give players the option of deciding when to seek a win and when to seek a loss.

[Callan S.]

Okay... so, continuing this logic:  If I want to create a game situation that tells me whether the respect of your ally is worth more or less than 450 XP to you, as a player, Game C provides it, yes?

Yes, its clearly a nar mechanic. If I had one side of the choice weighted considerably more, I'd stamp on nar choice because it'd be stupid to do one option (not that the player couldn't do nar, but he'd be fighting against the system to do so. Option C supports him rather than resists him).

I give you a choice, you make it based on your personal (and subjective) standards and then we know.  Maybe you think the contemptuous ally is neat, so you gladly take it, plus the extra 450 XP.  Maybe you value the support you can get from an ally, and think it's worth more than 450 XP, so you win.  Maybe you value the ally, but not 450 XP worth, so you reluctantly lose.

Yes. And notice how in each of the choices, I'm choosing something that is a win for me? Every time I'm choosing to win, just like in D&D. I'm not choosing to lose...even when I'm choosing that my PC loses.

I agree with you that the mechanics of optimizing your resources are largely identical between Capes and D&D.  Offer people the chance to earn a meta-game resource and they will try to do so.

But in concentrating on that you seem to be ignoring how having a Marginal Benefit of Defeat lets you use the system to negotiate in ways that are not available when you have a Marginal Cost of Defeat.  It's not mechanically different, but the social interactions it engenders are nothing alike.  Does that make more sense of what we've been saying?

I am ignoring those marginal benefits and costs. Because your evaluating them from the wrong level. Gamism is about me winning. Nar is about me deciding what is winning. But you keep pitching it in terms of the characters defeat, when both nar and gamism are clearly about what the player is doing, not the PC. In neither case is the player choosing defeat for himself.

Excuse the over emphasis. But the title of the thread is about choosing to lose. It's a bit like the conflicting ideas in 'the impossible thing before breakfast'. Not exactly the same, but in that the PC can't choose anything because he doesn't exist, and the player isn't choosing to lose. So the statement doesn't stand up.

Were both working from the same idea, but that idea doesn't work because 'players are choosing to lose'. Players will never choose to loose.  The may make the wrong choice by accident, but wont choose to do so on purpose. If at first they appear to have done so on purpose, it's a nar statement on their part. And they win by making such a statement (which is cool!)

[TonyLB]

I am ignoring those benefits. Because your evaluating them from the wrong level. Gamism is about me winning. Nar is about me deciding what is winning. But you keep pitching it in terms of the characters defeat, when both nar and gamism are clearly about what the player is doing. In neither case is the player choosing defeat for himself.

So you're saying that we should recognize that there's a difference between character-defeat and player-defeat, yes?

I agree.  Shall we move on to discuss the ways in which rewarding character-defeat can open up negotiations about the objective value of subjective SIS elements?

[Callan S.]

I am ignoring those benefits. Because your evaluating them from the wrong level. Gamism is about me winning. Nar is about me deciding what is winning. But you keep pitching it in terms of the characters defeat, when both nar and gamism are clearly about what the player is doing. In neither case is the player choosing defeat for himself.

So you're saying that we should recognize that there's a difference between character-defeat and player-defeat, yes?

I'm saying it's vital, yes.

I agree.  Shall we move on to discuss the ways in which rewarding character-defeat can open up negotiations about the objective value of subjective SIS elements?

Yes and no. I'll start where I left off originally.

I think were simply talking about how different CA would use the 'loose to win' technique, here.

I think it's a good idea to look at why were focusing on character defeat. Not that it's a bad idea, but it's a thematic choice as a designer to make. It's not just going to open up new opportunities, it'll steer play in that direction. I mean, by making something clearly a bad idea to do, nar play wont happen there. Where you even up the options via the system, nar play will begin to gravitate toward that area.

Just playing a bit of devils advocate in case part of the idea was that defeat should always be evened up so it becomes part of the nar experience.

On actually supporting the balancing out of the defeat issue, I think it comes at you from two angles. One is mechanical balance...that's kind of easy to handle (relatively). The other is user percieved balance. For example, if your nar choice involves suffering brain damage from one choice. Players might just hate the idea of being a 'durr brain', if you'll excuse my un PCness in depicting the responce. They'll hate it so much they'll never go for that choice.

Now, is that them making a thematic statement? Or isn't it? If we assume 99% of the rest of the population would make the same choice...what's interesting about that choice at all? It's like a gamist going grabbing the bag with 101 GP in it before the bag with 100 GP...it's not an interesting choice because it's so clear cut.

I did say they'd never go for the option...that's not true. Raise the stakes high enough on the other side and at some point it will become an almost equally viable option and they'll have to make some nar choice. As the game designer you wont really know when that point will come...so I guess you'd need to empower the game group (who is more likely to know), with some stakes increasing mechanic so they can keep pushing till nar happens (Though if they push too much on one side, it wont be nar).

Anyway, that's enough for now.

PS: I'm terrible. My printer is out of ink and I just don't absorb text when sitting up (cept for forum text...wierd). So I haven't read the capes preview yet to see if something like this is in there.

[TonyLB]

I think I'm pretty much in agreement there.

The one caveat I'll put in is that Narrativist choices don't have to be difficult to be Narr.  A lot of time in Narr games I hear people say "Wow... the moment that question came up I knew what the answer had to be... but before it had been asked I hadn't even thought about it."

I think your "not anything where 99% of the population would choose the same way" criteria is better than the "difficult choice" thing.  That seems to correlate well with the much more slippery (and less profitable) notion I have that the choices should convey a "message".

EDIT:  Better yet, perhaps, is the notion that the player should be answering the question in play.  That can't happen if the answer is already known.

[Christoph Boeckle]

(...)
1) The rewards must be exactly equal for both winning and losing.

2) The rewards for winning and losing are of a different nature, both of which are needed at various points in game play.

3) The "reward" for winning is something that is desirable sometimes but undesirable at others.

Note that (1) strikes me as being rather boring.  (...)

If rewards for winning and losing are of the same type, but are unequal, then the player will always have an incentive to take one option over the other. (...)

Note that criteria 2 and 3 don't really give players the option of always winning or always losing.  They do, however, give players the option of deciding when to seek a win and when to seek a loss.

[abridged for comfort of reading]

We agree on the paragraphs I shortened in the quote, so I'll pass to the the last paragraph.

What I was trying to say in my last post is that if you gain Story tokens exclusively from loosing and XP uniquely from winning, there will arise a situation where you will definetly choose one of both options in order to attain a certain goal.
For example: I need a Story token for some reason. I don't have any in your pool. What will I do? I'll loose my next confrontation (of whatever nature relevant to the game) just to get that story token, perhaps disregarding other considerations (and that's hardly giving the me the option of when to seek a loss).
In this way, the mechanics have become too incentive and defeat the orignal purpose of allowing a variety of choices in the interest of the story by awarding the player in both situations, by just awarding the player for using the mechanics.

Maybe this is a very rare situation, and nothing to worry about, but in theory this is something to think about when designing such a game.
There could be a reasonable counter to this by giving some kind of mixed reward (e.g. 2  ST and 1 XP for a loss, and vice versa for a win) and I'm sure other mechancis can help avoid these situations.

[Callan S.]

I think I'm pretty much in agreement there.

The one caveat I'll put in is that Narrativist choices don't have to be difficult to be Narr.  A lot of time in Narr games I hear people say "Wow... the moment that question came up I knew what the answer had to be... but before it had been asked I hadn't even thought about it."

I think your "not anything where 99% of the population would choose the same way" criteria is better than the "difficult choice" thing.  That seems to correlate well with the much more slippery (and less profitable) notion I have that the choices should convey a "message".

EDIT:  Better yet, perhaps, is the notion that the player should be answering the question in play.  That can't happen if the answer is already known.

I think your right, but I think it does need to be problematic...for the rest of the players. I mean, if everyone at the table would answer the same question the same way, it's like that 99% of people choosing the same thing...it's boring and probably gamism.

So it does need to be problematic...even if it's not for the answerer and even if it's just one other player at the table who's jaw is dropping.

I think answering in play is almost a requirement. Actually I do think there are messages being passed on, but they are very much a raw reflection of the player rather than a neatly edited transcript of their beliefs. When the 'birthing' of the answer is in play, you will see this raw message in all it's glory. Answer out of play and you will only see a neat transcript brought into play, which although it can be far neater, it pales in comparison. Well, IMO...I'm mostly estimating since I don't get to do nar very often.