Why narrate at all?

[TonyLB]

In [Capes] Takes some getting used to, Ralph wrote:

Tony. What do you perceive the purpose of the narration to be?

[*]To express your personal creative input (i.e. "because you want to"), and
[*]To attempt to sway the later choices of other players.[/list:u]Why is it important to sway the choices of other players?  Because, if you view the game purely as an attempt to win whatever conflicts other people toss at you then you are going to lose, and badly.  Over and over again.  Strange, but true.

The system rewards players who make other players care about Conflicts, win or lose.  There are relatively few mechanical ways to do that.  You mostly do it through narration, and through appreciating the narration of others, so as to understand what their creative priorities are and better target them.

If people are consistently addressing issues that they don't care about... then yeah, you've got a problem.  But it's not a problem that the game system caused.  It would have been with you in any game system.  Capes just makes it screamingly obvious from the moment you start playing.

On the surface, without playing, I have to concur with the notion that omnipotence renders even the most dramatic narrations trivial.

Isn't omnipotent narration the default state for the GM in almost every other RPG ever created?  Do you think GM narrations are all trivial, or is there a difference?

[Vaxalon]

Yes, but he's not in a competitive state with the other players, or rather, if he is, it's considered a pathological state.

[Nicolas Crost]

Well, obviously I am not Tony, but there is one thing, that strikes me about the narration rules in Capes: it is very comic-y!

Someone (was it James or Fred?) over in the other thread mentioned that the narration is inconsequential. That is true (in my eyes) from the rules part. It does not really influence the way the conflict will turn out (ecept see below). But this is so very much like comics are! The hero and the villain clobber it out over pages and pages. Lot of poundings, lots of collateral damage. But nothing of this usually matters very much in the end. So Spiderman might take some heavy beating from Doc Oc but still win in the end. And all the "Spiderman gets thrown through 10 Walls, hit in the face 15 times etc." is forgotten afterwards because he won (the conflict). So Capes brilliantly captures exactly this feature of comics: nothing is decided until it is. Until it is the combattants can basically do anything to each other and their surroundings. And then the other guy always comes back (which is even a rule in Capes).

So the narration is indeed inconsequential. It only (well, if I say only, I mean greatly) influences the way people feel about the conflict (as Tony has already pointed out). Spiderman could just punch Doc Oc in the face and win the conflict. Booooring! So they throw each other around and stuff. Tension rises, Color ensues, people get invested into the outcome. And I think that is the point of the narration rules. Well, it's my take, at least.

[TonyLB]

Fred:  I don't see how competitive vs. not has any bearing on whether the narration is important vs. trivial.  Can you explain what you think the impact is?

[Callan S.]

Narration suffers under incredibly constraining rules so as to  directly appeal to the source that makes narrations the most concrete thing it can ever be.

Credibility.

Those incredibly constraining rules are the judgements of each participant. Harsh stuff. All judgements backed up by system (story points). Even harsher!

Or am I wrong and "A bunch of constricting rules back me up on this statement...there, you have to give me credibility!!!!111!!!" actually works now? And that's how you get cred?

[Vaxalon]

Okay... the difference between a gamemaster's mostly unrestrained narration, and a Capes player's mostly unrestrained narration, is that the gamemaster is not (generally speaking) attempting to use his narration to gain an advantage over the players.

Indeed, a good gamemaster uses it to empower the players, to give structure to the game and present meaningful choices to the players.

A Capes player has no intrinsic responsibility to give structure to the game, and in the competitive environment, has a vested interest in limiting the number of people who are involved in a particular conflict.

Conflicts (generally) have two sides in Capes.  (splitting off a third side is an option, but one that can only be done on my turn, and which has costs that being on the first or second side doesn't entail)  It is to a player's advantage to keep conflicts that he is involved in, limited to just himself and one opponent, or even none at all.  If someone else elbows into the conflict on the side I'm on, they'll either bleed off story tokens if I lose, or threaten to claim-jump if it looks like I'll win.

(Side tactics note: It has struck me that if a scene isn't interesting to me, I can create side conflicts that noone else is interested in, roll up one side, and generate inspirations in the 3-5 range for myself while everyone else has their conflicts)

For this reason, it is to my advantage to use my narration competitively, to elbow other characters away from conflicts that I have my eye on, whether to win or to lose.  If I am going to win it, I want to be alone in that victory so that I can narrate the resolution and gain the inspirations.  If I am going to lose it, I want to be alone in losing it so that I can get the story tokens.

[Valamir]

In [Capes] Takes some getting used to, Ralph wrote:

Tony. What do you perceive the purpose of the narration to be?

[*]To express your personal creative input (i.e. "because you want to"), and
[*]To attempt to sway the later choices of other players.[/list:u]Why is it important to sway the choices of other players?  Because, if you view the game purely as an attempt to win whatever conflicts other people toss at you then you are going to lose, and badly.  Over and over again.  Strange, but true.

Super.  So given that as a goal, we can then analyse whether or not the rules as written currently actually assist players in doing that, serve no function other than to get out of the way, or actually impede players from doing that.  Since I don't have any actual play experience I'll try to keep to making general observations and inquiries to those who do.

Expressing creative input seems to me to have 2 facets.  First is the raw ability to express it.  Second is the much more important ability to have it recognized, accepted, and appreciated by the other players.  Clearly the rules currently handle facet one in spades.  You can't get a much higher ability to express creative input than the nearly omnipotent ability to narrate anything.

Where does the game facilitate the second facet?  From my perspective one measures recognition / acceptance / appreciation partly from social cues but also largely from the eagerness with with the other players adopt that input and incorporate it into their own narration.  The way this gets accomplished is for the narrating player to use their authority to narrate in a way that the other players will enjoy.

In a traditional GMed game, the GM is the gatekeeper for the group's enjoyment.  If a player's narration is "out of bounds" the GM has the authority to rein it in.  In a game like Universalis the potential for Challenge, Complication, or even Fines keep players voluntarily within bounds because they know the game has mechanisms to herd them back.  The nice feature of Uni (I think) is that players are free to push the envelope of acceptance to discover where the other players will be motivated to set those boundaries.

However, in Capes there are no boundaries and no one empowered to set any.  The only thing a player can do (seemingly) is to simply override the other players narration by changing everything back.   Since player A didn't take player B's wishes into account when narrating the event, player B sees no need to take player A's wishes into account when reversing it.  Some players, like Jame's in the other thread, might feel an obligation to "play right" and not do this, but this just leaves such players at the mercy of those who don't.

There are many ways to set boundaries.  Some are negatively reinforced "no I veto that".  Some are positively reinforced "Wow I really liked that, here's a bonus".  Some are negotiated "Hey, instead of that how about this other thing." "Ok, but only if something something as well" "cool, lets do that then".

In the absence of such, I expect the most likely result from a mixed group of players is anarchy.  Perhaps Capes would benefit from a positive reinforcing mechanism like Fan Mail from PTA or Gift Dice from TSOY.


Or perhaps various situational modifiers can be treated like temporary abilities that can be called on for future conflicts.  For instance the narration "Throw the Hulk in the East River" might automatically create the temporary attribute of "Under Water in East River" for the Hulk.  The Hulk can then use that attribute like any other to roll up or down a conflict (putting out a fire with a big tidal wave of water or something like that).

This ties in with your second bullet of swaying the other players with the narration.  By setting them up with attributes they like, they'll be more likely to be led in the direction you want to guide them.  If you want the Hulk in the river for a reason...tempt the player with a bonus attribute.  A creative player can think of many ways to use being in the river in a suitably comic book heroic fashion...and will thus have some motivation to stay there (at least until the attribte is used).  The attribute then becomes a voluntarily accepted fence keeping the player where you put them.  Without it, being in the river or out means nothing...so there's nothing to suggest a player would stay there.

The system rewards players who make other players care about Conflicts, win or lose.  There are relatively few mechanical ways to do that.  You mostly do it through narration, and through appreciating the narration of others, so as to understand what their creative priorities are and better target them.

Admirable, but I'm not certain the system accomplishes that.  See most folks have their own images in their head.  And the first reaction of most folks when someone narrates something different that violates that image is to reject it.  With a little reflection, however, they can come to appreciate it and realize its an even better image than the one they had.  In Uni, for example, I can (through the Challenge mechanic) reject your image...but it costs me.  I then have to take the time to evaluate exactly how badly I want to reject your image...or...if on reflection...I can actually incorporate your image into mine and still get what I want without having to spend any resources.  Capes currently doesn't require that reflection period.  It costs nothing to reject your image and replace with mine, and nothing for you to reject mine and replace with yours.  There's no cost (other than the deteriorating quality of game causality) to encourage me to accept what you say no matter how prettily you say it.

I speculate that the majority of times that you'll find people accepting others narration is not because they learn to appreciate it...but because they simply don't care enough to reject it.  So the only stuff that sticks becomes the stuff nobody cares enough about to bother changing back while the important stuff gets the Twilight Zone treatment.

If people are consistently addressing issues that they don't care about... then yeah, you've got a problem.  But it's not a problem that the game system caused.  It would have been with you in any game system.  Capes just makes it screamingly obvious from the moment you start playing.

I'm not sure that's accurate.  It doesn't require a tremendously dysfunctional group to wind up in the situation.  If the group is a total bunch of goobers...then sure...no system will help.  But if the group is a perfectly normal collection of people who will occassionally disagree and need something to lean on to help them arbitrate then just about every system helps with that.  Having a GM arbitrate may very well be a crutch.  Perhaps even an antiquated solution that is no longer required...but it worked.  I fear with Capes that you've removed the crutch without replacing it with anything else.  Uni (which I keep bringing up only through obvious familiarity) removed the crutch of the GM too...but it replaced it with several other support mechanisms.  You've taken a key support away and not given an alternative...so yes...to that extent it is a problem the game system caused.  

On the surface, without playing, I have to concur with the notion that omnipotence renders even the most dramatic narrations trivial.

Isn't omnipotent narration the default state for the GM in almost every other RPG ever created?  Do you think GM narrations are all trivial, or is there a difference?[/quote]

The difference I would see (and which others have already noted) is that ideally the GM is a "referee".  His sole reward for play is to acknowledged as a "Great GM" by his players.  The rules will often also provide guidelines and text that outline recommended limits to the GMs power which the GM will typically abide by.  If the Fireball is said to have a 30 foot radius...most GMs won't arbitrarily announce that this one only has a 10 foot radius so the magic user missed half of the orcs.  Capes has no rules for anything other than the mechanism to win and claim conflicts.  The rest is up to player imagination...but imagination without contraint.

[TonyLB]

Perhaps Capes would benefit from a positive reinforcing mechanism like Fan Mail from PTA or Gift Dice from TSOY.

In addition to Story Tokens, you mean?

Isn't omnipotent narration the default state for the GM in almost every other RPG ever created?  Do you think GM narrations are all trivial, or is there a difference?

The difference I would see (and which others have already noted) is that ideally the GM is a "referee".  His sole reward for play is to acknowledged as a "Great GM" by his players.  The rules will often also provide guidelines and text that outline recommended limits to the GMs power which the GM will typically abide by.  If the Fireball is said to have a 30 foot radius...most GMs won't arbitrarily announce that this one only has a 10 foot radius so the magic user missed half of the orcs.

If I read this correctly, this is all about motivation.  Adherence to the recommended limits is just a tool to secure your goal ("Great GM" status).

Yes, you could make a Fireball distribute party favors instead of damage, but it would in no way benefit your goal in the game, so you don't.  Problem solved.  Is that what you're saying?

Capes has no rules for anything other than the mechanism to win and claim conflicts.  The rest is up to player imagination...but imagination without contraint.

And now I'm confused again.  Capes provides people motivation to tailor their narration in ways that are interesting and engaging to the other players.  Which I think is what you're describing as the only real formative influence on GM narration as well.  So why is further constraint necessary in this case, but not in the case of the GM?

And what does any of this have to do with whether the narration is important or trivial?  How does narration become more trivial based on the motivation of the person narrating it?

[Valamir]

Perhaps Capes would benefit from a positive reinforcing mechanism like Fan Mail from PTA or Gift Dice from TSOY.

In addition to Story Tokens, you mean?

Again, hard to comment conclusively without actual play, but if I understand the rules right, Story Tokens 1) aren't rewarded until after a goal resolves, 2) only if debt was staked by the winner, and 3) only to opposition.  I don't know how frequently goals resolve without debt having been staked in practice, so I can't speak to #2.  But for #1...generally rewards are most effective when they are granted in close proximity to the event that earned them and for #3 sometimes the person you want to reward would be on your own "side".  Also, something I'm not clear on...if there is only 1 player who opposed you do they automatically get all of the story tokens...even if the awarding player thought the job they did opposing was poor?

All of which is to say that I'm a bit fuzzy on how effective a positive reinforcing tool Story Tokens are in practice.

If I read this correctly, this is all about motivation.  Adherence to the recommended limits is just a tool to secure your goal ("Great GM" status).
Yes, you could make a Fireball distribute party favors instead of damage, but it would in no way benefit your goal in the game, so you don't.  Problem solved.  Is that what you're saying?

But it does benefit your goal in the game.  You've set the players up in competition with each other.  So my goal as a player is to win...to beat you.  You've created an RPG that has alot of board game like elements...but board games are built around constraints.  In Chess I can move my bishop anywhere I want EXCEPT that 1) it has to be diagonally, 2) I can't pass through any other pieces, 3) I have to stop when I enter a space with an opponent's piece, and 4) that opponents piece is eliminated and my turn is over.  So freedom...PLUS...contraints.  That's what enables competition to function.

Just like Chess wouldn't be worth playing if on the first turn I could pick up my rook and knock over your king and declare myself the winner...so omnipotent narration without contraint winds up being trivial.

In a way you've designed Capes with a built in meta level premise.  "Given absolutely power as a player what would you do with it".  I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who once said "if you want to judge a man's character, give him a little bit of power and see what he does with it".  

So in that sense, Capes is a great social experiment.  I can see a room full of players being given omnipotent narration power while men in white coats observe them from behind mirrors to see which of them, like James, exercise restraint, which go into crazy chaos mode, and which pretend to play it straight and then pull out the abusive narration tricks at strategically effective times.  Great commentary on the nature of man...but is that the best way to design a game?

Capes has no rules for anything other than the mechanism to win and claim conflicts.  The rest is up to player imagination...but imagination without contraint.

And now I'm confused again.  Capes provides people motivation to tailor their narration in ways that are interesting and engaging to the other players.

Ok...what ways?  How does the game reward me for making my narration interesting?  How does it punish me if I don't?  


I'm not sure you can successfully have a game where you expect players to be "out for blood" AND expect them to rely on Bill and Ted's advice to "be excellent to each other" to guide their choices.  Out for blood means out for blood.  Expecting them to just play nice with each and not narrate stupid stuff seems pretty incompatible to me.  

Which I think is what you're describing as the only real formative influence on GM narration as well.  So why is further constraint necessary in this case, but not in the case of the GM?

I'm not sure I follow you Tony.  It IS required in the case of the GM.  I thought that was clear in my examples.  There's a reason why rules give limits for how much damage a Fireball does.  There's a reason why rules give explanations of the standards the GM should use when adjucating results.  One could easily argue that all RPG rules are nothing BUT additional contraints on what the GM can say.  No GM in the history of traditional roleplaying has ever had the sort of omnipotent ability to narrate that you've given players in Capes...ever.  The rule book has always served the role of "court of appeals" for players to turn to if the GM's narration gets too squirrely.  In Uni the Challenge and Complication mechanics serve as teh "court of appeals".  What serves as the court of appeals in Capes?

And what does any of this have to do with whether the narration is important or trivial?  How does narration become more trivial based on the motivation of the person narrating it?

My character is a 98 pound weakling.  I narrate picking up the Hulk, spinning him around on my hand and tossing him into the sun.  The Hulk's player narrates him jumping off of the sun, landing on my head back on Earth and driving me down through the planet so I come up in China.

Those are pretty amazing feats of super powered badosity...except that the fact that alls I had to do to accomplish it was say it and it happened, and all the other player had to do was say something else...niether of us had to work for it.  Neither had to demonstrate our creative mastery by achieveing our goals within a set of constraints.  

Its basic psychology.  If I have to work for it, I appreciate getting it more.  Simply saying anything I want isn't work...there's nothing to appreciate.  Its trivial.

[hyphz]

I'm personally a bit worried by the claim that free narration making other players care about conflicts is vital to the game.  If that really is the case, isn't there the risk that the game will become solved, with whichever player is the best persuader winning all the conflicts every time?

The problem, I think, is that the conflicts in Capes aren't necessarily meant for resolving actual conflicts between players!  This is because by even starting one you're actually doing the other players a favour - by giving them a chance to get involved and use the rule system - as opposed to just free-narrating whatever controversial thing you wanted to do, in which case nobody could have stopped you.  

The exception is if you throw a Goal on another player as an attack, but that slows down both of you which might not be worth it.  After all, if you create the Goal of "destroying the villains' underground base", then you will take several turns to play it out, in which time the other heroes have destroyed the villain's space station, moon base, oil rig and submarine because they - not using conflicts - only took one turn per destruction.

(And yes, the villains can rebuild those bases instantly but, as far as I can tell, they can do the same with the Goal-destroyed underground base.  As soon as the Goal is resolved and the card is off the table they can free-narrate the base right back again.)

Looking at it from subtractive theory, Capes doesn't subtract anything from the game experience unless the players want it to, which means it's "DWYL-or-maybe-not".  Since the objective is to cut the sucky bits out of DWYL, how it plays is going to depend on how well the players identify what needs to be subtracted..

[Vaxalon]

...if I understand the rules right, Story Tokens 1) aren't rewarded until after a goal resolves, 2) only if debt was staked by the winner, and 3) only to opposition.  I don't know how frequently goals resolve without debt having been staked in practice, so I can't speak to #2.  But for #1...generally rewards are most effective when they are granted in close proximity to the event that earned them and for #3 sometimes the person you want to reward would be on your own "side".  Also, something I'm not clear on...if there is only 1 player who opposed you do they automatically get all of the story tokens...even if the awarding player thought the job they did opposing was poor?

I believe you understand the rules correctly here.

[Vaxalon]

...the villains can rebuild those bases instantly but, as far as I can tell, they can do the same with the Goal-destroyed underground base.  As soon as the Goal is resolved and the card is off the table they can free-narrate the base right back again.

You are correct on this.

In the online game I'm setting up, I'm proposing a house rule:

"What a goal creates, only a goal can destroy, and vice versa."

[TonyLB]

All of which is to say that I'm a bit fuzzy on how effective a positive reinforcing tool Story Tokens are in practice.

Yeah, you are.  But let's take this one item at a time, okay?  Grant me, for the moment, that Story Tokens work exactly as I've said they do:

[*]You only get them by providing adversity to other players, expressed by contesting a Conflict
[*]You only get them when the other players care about that adversity, find it interesting and find it challenging
[*]You only get them when you let the other players get what they care about in-game (in short, when your character loses)
[*]You want them, always[/list:u]If you grant all those things (which I'm prepared to explain, but later) I hope that you will see that, taken together, they address the issues you've been raising about constraint and freedom.

Specifically:  Yes, any narration that has no bearing on either (a) earning Story Tokens or (b) winning a Conflict is trivial.  Worse, it's counter-productive.  It bleeds interest away from what you're doing, and lets other people swoop in and take the Story Tokens you would otherwise have earned.  Then you're marginalized (as well you should be!) until you figure out how to attract the interest of the other players again.

It is no different from a GM describing the tribal customs of goblins, when all the players want to do is to kill them as quickly as possible.  It has no bearing on your goal of convincing the other players you're a "Great GM."  Indeed, it will work directly against that goal.  So you don't do it.  Why would you?

Similarly, why would you decide that your 98 pound weakling can throw the Hulk into the sun?  Well, here are a few good reasons:

[*]You have a story you want to tell about why that is possible
[*]There is a conflict it has bearing on ("Goal:  Prove Hulk Stronger than little man!"), in which case of course constraints abound
[*]You hope that this will make some other player or players more interested in adversity that you are providing them, so as to earn you Story Tokens[/list:u]That last one is tricky, but essential.  Probably half the decisions I make about narration are motivated by that factor.  Worthy of an example.

Kid Virtue has introduced "Goal:  Decide who is team leader."

Intergalactic is an all-powerful member of the team.  His player wants to make Kid Virtue care more about the conflict he's introduced.  So he throws the Hulk into the sun.  This is (mechanically) on the "Goal:  Hulk more powerful than Intergalactic" Conflict.  But it also shows exactly the kind of leader that Intergalactic would be (i.e. a heartless, amoral, destructive one).  So it's having indirect effects on the "Team Leader" conflict as well.

If Kid Virtue's player was considering making an argument along the lines of "Leadership shouldn't be about just power, but about how you use that power," he is now much more likely to go with that argument.  The conflict is now more interesting, both to him and to Intergalactic's player.

The narration has helped to draw the battle-lines clearly and compellingly.  That directly serves the goals of Intergalactic's player, and also makes for a good story.

Set aside your speculation about how the system might work for a moment.  This is how the system does work, in every single one of the dozens of sessions I've played.  Do you see how the Story Token reward mechanic informs and shapes all of that, without need for additional constraints?

[Valamir]

All of which is to say that I'm a bit fuzzy on how effective a positive reinforcing tool Story Tokens are in practice.

Yeah, you are.  But let's take this one item at a time, okay?  Grant me, for the moment, that Story Tokens work exactly as I've said they do:

[*]You only get them by providing adversity to other players, expressed by contesting a Conflict
[*]You only get them when the other players care about that adversity, find it interesting and find it challenging
[*]You only get them when you let the other players get what they care about in-game (in short, when your character loses)
[*]You want them, always[/list:u]If you grant all those things (which I'm prepared to explain, but later) I hope that you will see that, taken together, they address the issues you've been raising about constraint and freedom.

Well, lets talk about that a bit.  It seems like you're assuming alot.  For instance:

1) you're assuming that someone else has declared a goal that they absolutely want to win.  This is much different from a goal where the player who created it might not have a vested interest in either outcome but just wants to "see what happens".

2) They have to want to win it because they have to be willing to stake debt on it.  Staking debt helps them win it by allowing them to split dice, and once staked its essential that the win in order to avoid backlash.  So you have to have either a goal where the player REALLY wants to win and is using Debt strategically to help them do that, or one where they're just trying to get rid of debt and now are motivated to want to win.  Either way, no debt means no story tokens, means your reinforcing mechanism is completely absent from that goal.

3) There has to be more than one party opposing the goal.  If I'm the only one opposing it, than I get the story tokens regardless of how interesting my involvement was (or am I wrong on that?).  So again...the motivating factor is lessoned.

4) What happens when an ally of the player provides token opposition and then the player decides to award the ally all of the Story Tokens for game strategy reasons.  I provided the opposition, I provided good opposition.  I worked my ass off to give you a great interesting fight.  But you go ahead and award the Story Tokens to your friend who did only the minimum necessary to qualify for them, and he does the same for you.  

This probably won't "break" the game because the Story Tokens are themselves an interesting effective game resource like Supply Centers in Diplomacy to be conquered and captured by fair means or foul.  But it would appear to lesson their suitability as a reward / motivating factor.  In fact several of your examples in previous threads seem to imply that swooping in with superior tactical play to swipe a bunch of Story Tokens out from under someone elses nose is a laudable game strategy.  I agree that it seems like a lot of fun...but it definitely changes your ability to think of them like a reward earned for appreciated play.  They seem to become a reward earned for tactically smart play.



[Intergalactic example]

That's a great example of how a player self motivated to create sensible logical conflict (like yourself) would proceed.  Its examples like that that make ME really excited about Capes.  The problem (potential for problem) is there is nothing (I can see) that motivates players to play in a sensible logical manner like you just did in the example.

Lets twist around your example a bit.  Lets not have Intergalactic be an "all powerful" hero whose abilities everyone understands to be on par with the Hulk (so that descriptions of the battling each other appear sensible).  Lets replace Intergalactic with Little Stevie the 12 year old non super powered paper boy.

I'm playing Little Stevie and I'm feeling kind of punchy.  So I create a goal "Prove Little Stevie is stronger than the Hulk".  Now this is the point where most super hero games would simply veto it.  It would be impossible for Little Stevie to ever best the Hulk in a feat of strength period.  But Capes doesn't have such contraints.  So I activate my "Really Thick Glasses" attribute to roll up Little Stevie's side of the Conflict. I succeed with a 5 and narrate 12 year old Stevie hurling the Hulk into the Sun.

"Really Thick Glasses"?  What the hell does eyewear have to do with throwing the Hulk into the sun?  Who knows...I don't need to care because I don't need to justify the attribute I use.  Its up to the winner of the conflict to retro fit any attribute I care to use.  Wait till you see what I narrate when I activate Little Stevie's 10-speed bike.  Of course it can travel light speed.  Alls I have to do is make my d6 roll and narrate whatever I want.  Then when you win the conflict you're stuck coming up with some explanation for it.  I also have a toad in my pocket and I've memorized all of the stats for all of the players on my little league team (according to attributes on my home made "Paper Boy" Click and Lock.  Who knew that reciting those stats backwards would open a tear in the space time continuum...but I can narrate that because there's absolutely nothing in Capes requiring my narration to be even moderately reasonable.

Neither side has any debt assigned, so there are no Story Tokens at stake.  I couldn't care whether I win or lose this conflict because Little Stevie was just some throw away character I created to screw with the Hulk, and there's absolutely nothing another player can do to stop me except waste Story Tokens to veto...since I can say outrageous things for free and you can only stop me with a Token...that's a losing exchange right there.  In fact, the "out for blood" aspect of the game is pretty much motivating me to INTENTIONALLY try to draw a veto so I gain story power on a relative number of Tokens basis.


No other RPG comes to mind where a player can do this AND get away with it with impunity.  In any traditional game the GM would simply say "No that's stupid Ralph, it doesn't happen, you lose your turn for being a dick.  Tony what are you doing".  In Universalis the other players would collectively say the same thing, and with Challenge and Fines conspire to keep me dirt poor and ineffective until I agreed to play nice.  

Other than suck it up and take it and plot some way of reversing all of my sillyness on your turn...how does Capes handle this.  What rules are in place that can be called upon to prevent this behavior?  What rules are in place to reward me for not engaging in this behavior?  

In another game simply relying on the players to be mature and play nice with each other might work.  But once you inject the game with board game sensibilities that arguement goes out the window.  All is fair in a board game (unless specifically prohibited by the rules)

Intergalactic is an all-powerful member of the team.  His player wants to make Kid Virtue care more about the conflict he's introduced.  So he throws the Hulk into the sun.  This is (mechanically) on the "Goal:  Hulk more powerful than Intergalactic" Conflict.  But it also shows exactly the kind of leader that Intergalactic would be (i.e. a heartless, amoral, destructive one).  So it's having indirect effects on the "Team Leader" conflict as well.

If Kid Virtue's player was considering making an argument along the lines of "Leadership shouldn't be about just power, but about how you use that power," he is now much more likely to go with that argument.  The conflict is now more interesting, both to him and to Intergalactic's player.

The narration has helped to draw the battle-lines clearly and compellingly.  That directly serves the goals of Intergalactic's player, and also makes for a good story.

I actually disagree with your conclusion.  Its a great example.  But the narration didn't do squat to help draw the battle lines.   Kid Virtue's player is no more motivated to not support Intergalactic than he was before.  It plays out that way in the transcript because that's the context you chose to present it in.  But in actual play when the playe of Kid is deciding which side of the conflict to roll for or against...nothing in Intergalactics action has any bearing on which is the best choice from a tactical perspective.



By comparison, let me suggest two simple rules that change that:
1) Any use of an attribute to roll a die up or down is subject to the acceptance of the other players by majority vote based on how well the acting player can justify its appropriateness.
2) Any narration can create a temporary situational attribute that can be used to roll a conflict up or down subject to group approval as above.

NOW watch what happens.  Intergalactic's player throws the Hulk into the Sun and creates the temporary attribute "Intergalactic Demonstrates his amoral qualities".  Then Kid Virtue may well be motivated to call upon that attribute to roll for his "Decide Group Leader" Goal.  His motivation is that its an attribute that won't be blocked and whose use doesn't generate debt.  Its a freebie, so why not use it.  And do to the need to justify its use, it would have to be used in a way that the other players find consistant with the Kid being confronted by Intergalactic's amorality.

On the other hand if the Temporary Attribute was "Intergalactic demonstrates his superior fighting prowess" the justification takes on a different tone all together.

But now, the two events are tied together mechanically.

That's a throw away example, I'm not suggesting you go with those rules, but I'm trying to illustrate the difference between having the narration have both contraints (peer approval) and reinforcement (freebie attribute to use) vs. open narration with no mechanical impact.

Set aside your speculation about how the system might work for a moment.  This is how the system does work, in every single one of the dozens of sessions I've played.  Do you see how the Story Token reward mechanic informs and shapes all of that, without need for additional constraints?

I understand completely that this is how the system has worked for YOU.  You know exactly how its supposed to work and are voluntarily keeping yourself within bounds.  But I submitt that you may be experiencing a key reason why outside playtest is even more important than internal.  Vax and James's experience (on the surface) seem far more likely to represent what actual play will look like much of the time for the average gamer than your play experience because you know the game far better than anyone, have a vested interest in displaying it in its best light, and may be too close to the project to see this as a problem.


On the other hand, it might not be a problem at all.  Maybe Vax's play experiences are, in fact, the aberration and yours much more typical of how new gamers would act.  I don't know, that's why I tried to frame the discussion as questions rather than criticisms.  So the last questions I'll leave you with for this post are:

"why not have some contraints"  What does the game gain from having narration be completely open and boundaryless that it would lose from having limitations on what can be narrated...and why is that more valuable.  and secondly...

"from a business stand point where perception is often as important as reality, is that benefit worth having to have this discussion, or is this something that perhaps would be an example of where discretion is the better part of valor and make a concession to gamer expectation" [that's not a trick question, BTW, I have no predetermined answer I think would be right for you in asking]

[TonyLB]

Let me see if I'm correctly interpreting your points:[list=a][*]Story Tokens don't reinforce quality play, because there is nothing in the system that provides a meaningful landscape of subjective choices, and
[*]Narration doesn't provide a meaningful landscape of subjective choices, because there is nothing in the system that reinforces quality play[/list:o]Is that about where you stand?  Have I missed something?