Motivations to Create Conflicts

[Valamir]

As these various threads have progressed its occured to me that that the game may actually demotivate you from creating conflicts that you want to win.  

Consider our favorite villain the evil Doc Otto.  As a player I want Doc Otto to burn down the White House.  The LAST thing I would ever want to do as a player is create a Conflict "Goal:  Burn Down the White House" because as soon as I do that someone can stop me.  I have to waste an action to establish that goal and then spend lots of resources to try and win it.  Why would I go through all that work to burn down the White House, when instead if I don't do that I can burn down the White House simply by narrating it for free?  

Say Fred has a goal for Action Jack of "Enjoy dinner with his girlfriend".  Fine.  I simply get control of the opposite side (Jack not enjoying dinner with his girlfriend) and as part of my narration I simply declare that I burn the White House down and seeing the news report of my depredations ruins Jack's dinner.  Technically, I wouldn't even have to justify it...there wouldn't need to be any causal tie to Jack's dinner at all.  

In any case the White House has been burned down exactly as thoroughly and as permanently (which is to say not permanently at all) as if I had created a Conflict to do it...only it didn't cost me a dime.  Why would I ever WANT to create a Conflict for something I actually want to accomplish when I can accomplish absolutely everything I want (with no debt incurred) simply by circumventing the game mechanics and relying on narration?  Seemingly I wouldn't.


The only time I can't narrate anything I want as Doc Otto is if it would resolve a Conflict that's already in force.  Soooo, the only reason to start a Conflict would seem to be to stop someone else from doing what you don't want them to do.

This relies on the other players somehow guessing that what I want as Doc Otto is to burn down the White House and then they themselves create the Conflict "Goal Burn Down the White House".  Because, somewhat paradoxically, the only way to stop me from burning down the White House is to actually start the Conflict over the White House themselves.

Ok, so now Doc Otto has been thwarted in his plans and must engage in the game mechanics of Conflict and generate debt and struggle to win so I can burn the White House down right?  Nope.  As the player I can simply shrug and say "Ok, I'll burn the Capital Building down instead...whooosh, there it goes...feel free to resolve your White House Conflict any time because as soon as its off the table I'll just go ahead and burn it down too."

Ok, so now the heroes get a little wiser...they create a new Conflict, Goal:  Prevent Doc Otto from burning down any monuments or major structures anywhere in the world.  

Damn...now Otto's REALLY thwarted right...I can't simply shrug and say "ok I'll burn down the Empire State Building" instead. ...Hmmm...but I can say "Ok I use my super transmogrifier nuclear powered ray gun to rip the Empire State Building out of the ground and hurl it into space where it will serve as my new orbital space station"  I can say that because, since it doesn't involve burning anything down it doesn't resolve the open conflict and thus isn't prevented.

Ok, so now the heroes get a little wiser yet.  They create new Conflict "Goal:  Prevent Doc Otto from doing anything to any monuments or structures of any kind that's not permitted by law"

And so on and so on.  Ultimately, this line of reasoning would lead me to conclude that 1) you never want to create a Conflict over something you actually want to do, and 2) you never want to create a Conflict defensively that's defined so specifically that the other player can simply avoid it.

Thus, it seems to me that the only Conflicts worth creating are "Goal:  Prevent Doc Otto from doing anything at anytime, anywhere, for any reason"  Only then am I as a player stopped from simply narrating the automatic unopposed success of yet another in a series of diabolical plots.

Thing is, as soon as I win and am thus able to do stuff again, someone can just throw down another identical Conflict putting another halt to my ability to do anything.  At that point Otto is pretty much permanently out of play.  But that doesn't stop me as a player from continueing to narrate freely "Unknown parties blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.  Police say its a copy cat crime completely unrelated to any of Doc Otto's recent terrorist attacks." (or does it...do the rules at least limit me that much?)


So it seems that the best and most effective way to get what I want as a player, is to completely avoid engaging with the primary game mechanic at all.  As long as I keep dodging conflicts I can do whatever I want.  I'm not limited by the capabilities of my character...I could have a 97 year old man in a coma in hospice care crack the moon in half if I wanted.  I'm not limited by the ability of any other player to thwart me in any lasting fashion.  I don't earn any debt that I need to get rid of, I don't need any story tokens or Inspiration.  I simply do whatever I want whenever I want however I want and simply refuse to engage with the system.  And the kicker is...that near as I can tell...this is 100% permissible by the rules.  

The problem as I see it isn't that I'm being a dickhead in these examples.  The problem is that the game doesn't give me any motivation whatsoever to choose a Conflict over Narration.  IF things that happen with Conflicts are given a measure of Permanence (the Goal in Goal out idea) THEN I would have a motivation to choose a Conflict.  Because THEN when I burn down the White House it stays burnt down.  Its burnt down for real.  The difference between Conflict and Narration then would be the same as the difference between Facts and Color in Uni.  The reason you spend game resources on a fact is because facts are lasting and can be used to provide permanence while color is transitory and can be freely ignored.  But as long as Conflicts are every bit as transitory as narration...there's no reason to ever pick a Conflict.  Conflicts don't get me anything that narration doesn't but they cost alot of resources to win and open up the possibility of loss.  Yes, yes, I know Conflicts give me lots of stuff that I can't get with narration...thing is ALL of that stuff is only useful to me if I'm engaging in Conflicts.  If I'm avoiding Conflicts I don't need any of it and can still accomplish everything I could with a Conflict.

Similarly if Conflicts can be created in reaction to other's narration than my ability to dodge conflict is completely removed.  I say "I'm burning down the Capital Building" instead...boom, a conflict...I say "I'm throwing the Empire State Building into orbit"...boom, a conflict.  Shit...now I can't do anything without winning a Conflict.  Now in order to win a conflict I'll actually have to engage in the system the way it was designed and start worrying about Story Tokens and Debt and Inspiration and the like.  That sounds like a GOOD thing to build into the game.

Further, there's now no reason to do the rather silly defensive Conflicts that ultimately would result in the "Doc Otto can do nothing" Goal, because now defensive Conflicts can be created as needed and tailored to the particular narration in question.  

Tony's friend can't pull a fast one and start slaughtering humans with his lizard men by first launching a misleading "capture the humans" Goal.  Tony could just create a conflict for that.  But none of the "cool, wow, I hadn't thought of that" factor is lost because Tony could just decide NOT to create a Conflict out of it.  Or to create a Conflict that doesn't try hard to win.  Point being that if it really IS a cool idea you can let it go...but if it's drek you can respond to it.  Now you have the choice and IMO choice is good.

So this idea wouldn't cut any of the current creativity or ability to add zany new ideas into the SIS...it just means that before you introduce the zany idea you'll have to want it badly enough to win it in a Conflict.  It means that you'll want to create ideas that other people like and will help you win.  And it means that you'll not want to create ideas that everybody else hates and will unite to stomp you on.

All of those are things that Tony has said he wants (and suggests that the game encourages currently).  But I'm skeptical that the game does actually encourage those things because it seems to me that currently the best way to play is to not actually use the game rules and do everything you want free form.


Thoughts...is that analysis way off base?

[TonyLB]

The analysis is exactly right.  If your goal, as a player, is to narrate something then you narrate it.

[jburneko]

Tony, I want you to consider your answer to this question very very carefully:

What if my goal, as a palyer, is: To achieve everything in the SIS I percieve my (spotlight) character wanting to achieve?

Jesse

[TonyLB]

That'll take you about ten seconds.  If it makes you happy, that's great.

What was I supposed to be considering very, very carefully, by the way?

[Grover]

I'm not up on all the stances, so I'm probably about to misuse some terminology, but it seems to me that the problem we're seeing here is that players are over-identifying with 'their' characters (Actor Stance? Maybe Pawn Stance?).  In other words, if Doc Otto were deciding how you should play the game then he would want you to describe his villianous acts in free narration, to avoid any possibility of losing.  If you're playing entirely from Doc Otto's perspective then, you should use free narration like that.  

I think Capes requires that you play in Director Stance, and decide that Doc Ottos villiany should be a significant part of the story, and therefore deserves a Conflict of it's own.  If everyone is playing in Director stance, the only issue that you're going to run into in free narration is where one player doesn't think a fact is significant, and another player does.  This is unlikely to come up very frequently, and when it does come up, it's pretty easy for a player to either informally negotiate a change in the narraction (Which I've seen done when we played Capes) or to create a conflict on their turn to indicate that they feel that event is important.

Steve

[Chris Goodwin]

I'm not up on all the stances, so I'm probably about to misuse some terminology, but it seems to me that the problem we're seeing here is that players are over-identifying with 'their' characters (Actor Stance? Maybe Pawn Stance?).  In other words, if Doc Otto were deciding how you should play the game then he would want you to describe his villianous acts in free narration, to avoid any possibility of losing.  If you're playing entirely from Doc Otto's perspective then, you should use free narration like that.  

Here's the thing, though.  If you're narrating stuff to avoid the possibility of losing, then you're also avoiding the possibility of winning.  

Doc Otto's player could just as easily narrate "I win!"  Groovy.  Doc Otto just won.  Now what?

[Grover]

I think - when you see free narration crop up like that, it's either going to be disfunctional play (someone deliberately hurting the play experience of the other players), overidentification with character (someone feeling obligated to use the tools in the system to pursue modifications to the SIS that their character would prefer (I've been guilty of this)), or a misunderstanding (when players disagree about the signifigance of a putative event).

I don't think anyone really cares about the first possibility.  I think that it might be helpful if the game had more text to warn players against the second possibility, but I don't feel that new rules are required to deal with it.  There are 2 ways to deal with the third problem, either within the games mechanisms or outside them.

So.  Examples:
Disfunctional play -
 A player uses free narration to describe how Doc Otto destroys the earth.    He would clearly be aware that he was disrupting the play experiences of the other players, and chose to do it anyway.  I don't think there's anything which can be done about this situation.
Character Driven play -
 A player uses free narration to describe how Doc Otto destroys the White House (because destroying the White House is a goal of Doc Otto's).  I think this does break the game a bit, and people should be encouraged not to do it.  I think people can adjust to avoiding this in play, and if they persist in it, then you're falling back into disfunctional play.
Misunderstandings -
 A player uses free narration to describe how Doc Otto destroys the White House (in order to establish what an evil villian Doc Otto is).  This is only a problem if one of the other players feels that the destruction of the White House is too significant of an event to pass by in free narration.  For example, perhaps they feel that Captain Patriotism would be sure to defend the White House.  There are 2 ways to deal with this:
   - They can negotiate an alternative event to demonstrate how evil Doc Otto is, like maybe he destroys the Sears Tower instead of the White House.  
   - They can explicitly create the event as a conflict.  This isn't always appropriate - the topic of the conflict might not be present in the current scene.  But if the Whitehouse were already present in the scene then it might be an appropriate conflict to create.

Now in describing how I would resolve these issues, it's mostly been with reference to negotiation between players, which is not explicitly outlined as a part of play in the rules.  However, in all my actual play experiences, I've seen that type of negotiation taking place.  I believe that negotiation like that is in the spirit of the rules (Tony?), but perhaps it could be more explicitly mentioned.

Perhaps what is causing all this controversy is that the rules explicitly state that whoever is narrating has total control, and people have taken that to mean that they shouldn't accept any external suggestions.  If no external suggestions can be put forth or accepted, then you will definitely run into problems (Doc Otto destroys the White House, and Captain Patriotism has to just deal with being ineffective).  On the other hand, I don't see that we need any arbitration rules more complicated than 'be willing to listen to other players suggestions, and modify your narration so that it satisfies everybody'.  I don't think this needs to be phrased as a requirement that narration must satisfy(it seems to me that would bog down the game).  I don't see that there is an appropriate in game mechanism to deal with this, as it shouldn't be an area of competition between players (players should be cooperating to produce a story that makes everyone happy - there definitely shouldn't be a reward for claiming to be unhappy other than having your concerns addressed, and there shouldn't be a reward for making other players unhappy either, even by accident).

The ideal outcome I see happening between Doc Otto and Captain Patriotism is (like Tony has been saying) a mutual recognition of agendas by both players.  Doc Otto should be shown to be an established supervillian, and Captain Patriotism should be shown to be a skilled and effective defender of America.  These are by no means incompatible agendas.  Perhaps Doc Otto destroyed the White House before Captain America started defending America.  Perhaps he did it while Captain America was fighting against a more significant threat, or imprisoned by his enemies.  Perhaps he raised havoc in Europe, and has only recently arrived in America.  Note that all these outcomes require a modification to the original narration, and there isn't a mechanism in the rules to allow that.  While it is possible to retrofit some of them in later narration, it is a bit ackward.  A question for Tony - did you intend that some negotiation would take place in a situation like this, or do you expect that players won't attempt to modify narration in progress?

Steve

[Sydney Freedberg]

The LAST thing I would ever want to do as a player is create a Conflict "Goal:  Burn Down the White House" because as soon as I do that someone can stop me.  I have to waste an action to establish that goal and then spend lots of resources to try and win it.  Why would I go through all that work to burn down the White House, when instead if I don't do that I can burn down the White House simply by narrating it for free?

Because what you get for nothing does nothing for you. If you establish a Conflict over burning downing the White House, you earn Inspirations and unload excess Debt if you win, and you earn Story Tokens if you lose. It's not as hard-and-fast as Facts in Universalis, but it's a real effect.

Conversely, doing stuff in narration strips it of significance -- both story-significance, because you just said it without a chance for buy-in or challenge from other players, and game-significance, because you get no Inspirations/Tokens.

Now, for some stories, "no significance, just color" is precisely what burning down the White House should be. There was a DC-area Forge meet-up a while back (don't think actual play was posted) where Tony, in free narration while setting the scene, mentioned Washington, DC was in flaming ruins at the feet of his supervillain. And, just as it would be in a movie or comic, that was just a little bit of color: "Oh, okay, that's the kind of scene this is, that's the kind of character it is."

But if Tony has wanted the destruction of D.C. to mean something significant for the story, and to have the game mechanical bonuses to back it up, he would have had to make it a Conflict.

[Valamir]

Because what you get for nothing does nothing for you. If you establish a Conflict over burning downing the White House, you earn Inspirations and unload excess Debt if you win, and you earn Story Tokens if you lose. It's not as hard-and-fast as Facts in Universalis, but it's a real effect.

Ok.  Lets look at that in more detail.  Doing it as a conflict lets me unload excess debt and get Inspiration so that's why I'd want to do it as a conflict.

But so what...If I avoid engaging in Conflicts (you have no ability to force me into one) I never earn any debt and so never need to unload any...so that doesn't help.

Inspiration will help me win conflicts...big deal, I never enter any so what do I need that for.  

Again...what does Conflict offer me.

What about if you start a Conflict..."Throw Dr. Otto in prison"...ahaaa...since I never did anything to earn Inspiration and Story Tokens and the like I'm in trouble...I'll have difficulty beating you in that Complication.

But so what...I don't even try.  You win the Conflict you send me to prison.  Ok...on my next turn I narrate walking out of prison waving to the guard and going about my business.

What can you achieve with a Conflict that has any importance to me.  If everythinag about a Conflict is transitory you can create all the "get Dr. Otto" Conflicts you want...they don't actually mean anything because you can actually enforce any of it.  I simply undo whatever you did and get on with my evil villain agenda.

I don't need to win a Conflict to accomplish what I want, and I don't need to win a Conflict to stop you.  Therefor I don't ever need to actually participate in a Conflict at all.  

Think back on what the Conflicts you've engaged in.  What did you actually accomplish through those Conflicts that could never have been accomplished without them.  Forget Inspiration, forget Debt...those things are only of value if I need to engage in a Conflict.  My claim/speculation is that I never will actually need to engage in a Conflict at all to accomplish the changes to the SIS I want.  Tell me what actual change to the SIS I can do with a Conflict that I can't do with narration.  What things in the game can absolutely only be done through Conflict...If there aren't any...than might that not be a problem...a game system that never needs to actually get used...

Conversely, doing stuff in narration strips it of significance -- both story-significance, because you just said it without a chance for buy-in or challenge from other players,

I don't understand.  What do you mean by Story-signficance.  If the outcomes of a Conflict are no more enforceable on future changes to the SIS than the outcomes of narration are...then they have no more story significance.

Are you suggesting that if I do it the hard way than other players will voluntarily give it meaning and take it into an account in their future play even though they don't have to and I can't force them to (because honestly that's all that seems to be going on in the actual play posts)

But if I do it the easy way than other players will just ignore it and move on and pretend it never happened.  So in order to earn their "buy-in" I have to go through all of the motions of a conflict but in the end I'm guarenteed nothing and they might choose to ignore it anyway...?  Because if you are, that sounds really...shaky to me.

[Tymen]

But it's boring, that's why you should buy in. Not because it matters to you, but so it matters to everybody else. If you continue to narrate your own story, blithely ignoring conflicts and narrating everything you want to happen, People will either ignore you and do things more interesting for them within the game or the game will disintigrate and where's the fun in that. Isn't the idea of any game at its heart, supposed to be shared fun? Where is the shared fun in what you are doing above?

[Valamir]

But that's exactly the point Tymen.  The game relies completely on the social contract for players to be motivated to engage the system, because there is no motivation to engage the system otherwise.  Tony may well be right and that that's a desireable design feature.  I myself have yet to see the point in it because it would be so easy to add a simple rule that would eliminate this from even being an issue.  And I don't yet understand the choice not to include such a rule (note: I worded that very carefully on purpose).

If the only thing stopping me from playing in a manner that the rules clearly encourage is "because it wouldn't be fun for the other players" then how does that mesh with the earlier statements that the only way to play Capes properly is to be "out for blood".  "Out for Blood" means to me that I'm going fight claw and scratch to get what I want and Tony's indicated in several places that that's how the game is designed...for players to fight claw and scratch to get what the want.

Well if the game designer is telling me to fight for what I want and game is telling me that the most effective way of getting what I want is to avoid using the Conflict system...then...isn't that actually playing correctly.

[Tymen]

When I say it's boring, I mean it's just as boring for you as for the other players.

Do you have any sense of accomplishment as a player whatsoever, when you just narrate what happens and don't engage in conflict? Why do you need rules to tell you that doing the above-mentioned is not actually playing the game?

Because, you are side-stepping the system and basically freeform story-telling to yourself, because no one else will be paying much attention to you. As far as I can tell, the fun stuff lies in the engaging of the system and partaking in the give and take of it. To be "Out for Blood", means you need to be ready to shed some, your own or others. In the play you describe, you don't even engage with the other players. You can't win, if you don't play and from your description you're not playing the game.

How can that be at all satisfying to you as a player?

[Sydney Freedberg]

If you narrate all your character's achievements in the Shared Imagined Space outside the conflict system, okay, that's a little dull, but doable; I've done it myself when I just wanted to establish something.

But then if things in the SIS you care about are put at risk by Conflicts that other people initiate, and you say, "I don't care, I'll just narrate it back the way I like later" -- well, wait a sec, paradox: If you care so profoundly about what your character does in the SIS, why aren't you bothered by a Conflict that changes the SIS in ways your character wouldn't like? Sure, you can get your bad guy out of prison at any time, but in the imagined reality of the game, you can't erase the fact that he was thrown in prison at one point.

Surely that bothers you? Surely you'd want to fight to prevent that from having happened?

No? Okay, then this just isn't the game for you. Capes only works if players enjoy a certain kind of conflict, just as wrestling only works if the participants grapple. If you dislike the contact, then there's no point, and you would probably enjoy a different game more.

N.B.: Vincent Baker's trifecta is helpful here: You've got the "cues" (dice, conflict cards, inspiration cards, debt tokes and story tokens); the Shared Imagined Space; and the actual human beings playing the game; all of which interact. The connection between cues and SIS in Capes is significantly different from even most other Indie games, but nevertheless at some point the cues -- the game mechanics embodied in external reality -- do affect the shared imagined space. And if you don't care about the SIS, you've stopped playing an RPG.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Oh yeah, and this:

...the game designer is telling me to fight for what I want and game is telling me that the most effective way of getting what I want is to avoid using the Conflict system...

"Fight for what you want."

In this phrase -- and this is where we hit the gas and roar off into the wild heart of Gamist country -- there are two elements, not one, listed in reverse order of importance:

2) "what you want"
1) FIGHT

What you want is to fight.

You fight in large measure for the sake of fighting, like lion cubs tussling, or friends playing football in their back yard, or people in the Forge Birthday Forum comparing each other's mommas to different aspects of the Big Model.

"What you want"? That's in large measure a pretext, a thing for fighting about. (Tony wrote up a neat example of this from demo play).

And yeah, you can create a cool collaborative story in the process. But that's not the engine that makes Capes work, any more than the fact that capitalism can create prosperity for all is the engine driving individual capitalists (hint: it's greed).

If you put the "what you want" above "fight" -- if you care first and foremost about what happens in the Shared Imagined Space for its own sake, and seek to achieve things in the SIS without fighting if that's the most reliable way to achieve them -- if "the most effective way of getting what I want is to avoid using the Conflict system" -- then, no, this game is not for you. Mismatched Creative Agendas. Sorry. You probably want to spend most of your roleplaying time on another system.

But you're always welcome to drop by the Capes Fight Club whenever your inner Gamist tells you it's clobberin' time.

[TonyLB]

Sydney's got the right of it.  I would quibble that it's not about CA.  Gamism is a CA.  Competition is a technique which can support multiple CAs, depending on usage and system.

That's a minor quibble, though:  His main point is exactly right.  You cannot fight for something that you get without competition.  You can get narration of most anything (outside of Conflicts) without competition.  

That's your incentive for making a Conflict:  Not to have the right to narrate something, but to win the right to narrate it.