Motivations to Create Conflicts

[John Harper]

I have free narration in Monopoly. On my turn, I can talk about how my real estate investor brokers a deal for Marvin Gardens in order to leverage it in a play for Boardwalk, reaping millions as a result. He then fakes his own death, collects on the insurance, and retires to Bora Bora.

I don't roll dice or spend fake money or draw cards or move my game pieces, though. So the other players just kind of look at me sideways and go, "ummm.... okay. who's next?" In this case, I'm just amusing myself. I'm not playing the game in a meaningful way.

The same goes for Capes. If you're merrily narrating whatever you want without engaging the system, then you're not really playing the game with the rest of us. You *can* do it, but you can't expect the rest of the table to care very much. You're essentially buying real estate without moving your piece or putting any plastic houses on the board.

The whole *point* of playing Capes is to create conflicts and win Story Tokens, using the color of melodramatic superhero adventures. The game doesn't force you to do *only* this, because free narration is a very useful tool to enhance game play. But fighting for conflicts and story tokens and inspirations are the reason we are playing the game. If you don't buy in at that basic level, you're not playing Capes with the rest of us.

[hyphz]

I have free narration in Monopoly. On my turn, I can talk about how my real estate investor brokers a deal for Marvin Gardens in order to leverage it in a play for Boardwalk, reaping millions as a result. He then fakes his own death, collects on the insurance, and retires to Bora Bora.
I don't roll dice or spend fake money or draw cards or move my game pieces, though. So the other players just kind of look at me sideways and go, "ummm.... okay. who's next?" In this case, I'm just amusing myself. I'm not playing the game in a meaningful way.

Sure, but you also aren't achieving the goal of Monopoly, which is to bankrupt the other players, or to be the only player who doesn't go bankrupt.

If you read the introduction of Capes literally, the goal of Capes is to get to tell your superhero story as opposed to anyone else's - and note, I am saying you have to read this literally.  As has been stated here, you get that perfectly by using free narration.  If none of the other players cares, then by that measure that's actually a good thing because it means you get to tell your story.  In fact, the ultimate strategy for Capes would be to not have any other players involved!

Those of you who are playing Capes must have some other motivation that you're following to play Capes.  It's probably, like Tony has said, a "duh" job motivation but it isn't just to tell your own story above all else.  Is it "to tell your superhero story as opposed to anyone else's, and have the other players pay attention to it?"  Is it "to explore what can happen to your character in a world where they might fail?"  Is it "to achieve goals in ways that are opposed by aspects of the world controlled by other players?"  Is it "to create funky play phenomena that I can post on Actual Play?" ;)

[John Harper]

As long as we're being literal (and we should be) let's not overlook this: "Your character can DO anything, but he cannot ACHIEVE anything [without conflict]."

The utility of the conflict system is apparent (to me, anyway) when that statement is taken to heart.

[Valamir]

"Your character can DO anything, but he cannot ACHIEVE anything [without conflict]."

That quote's been thrown around a few times now.  Unfortuneately "do" and "achieve" are practically synonomous as pretty much any thesaurus will indicate.

As a guiding principle it lacks real impact.  Without extensive guidelines as to what the actual difference between a "do" narration and an "achieve" narration is and without some mechanism for judging when those guidelines are being adhered to it isn't really that helpful.

Further, the fact of the matter is he cannot ACHIEVE anything even with conflict because nothing he does with conflict lasts any longer than anything he does with narration.  The only thing he "achieves" with conflict is potentially to collect some game currency resources.

[TonyLB]

Does anyone have a question?

If everyone's staked out their turf, and is now hunkering down to defend it, then I think it's a good time to close the discussion.

[hyphz]

Does anyone have a question?

I have a question!

What, based on your experience of knowledge, do you think the motivation of the players in your playtest group was?  What do you think their criteria for a) "a good session", and b) "winning", was?

[TonyLB]

Well, I'm passing the question of "What did players other than me want?" to Eric and Sydney, who do keep up with the forum.  That's not everyone from the playtest, but it's some folks.

Me, personally, I wanted maximum screen-time (particularly when I was playing Jenny Swift... she's vain that way... it's not me at all, I tell you!)  I didn't really care whether I was doing the description or some other player was, so long as Jenny was front and center in the spotlight.  In fact, it was better if other players were describing Jenny, because then I knew I had their full attention, not just narrating to a tolerant but bored audience.  I started Conflicts like nobody's business, so that players who cared about those Conflicts had to be telling the ongoing "Story of Jenny."

I don't think that's anything like the only motivation a player can bring to the game (and it's not the only motivation I bring these days) but that's what I was doing back in playtest days.

[hyphz]

Me, personally, I wanted maximum screen-time (particularly when I was playing Jenny Swift... she's vain that way... it's not me at all, I tell you!)  I didn't really care whether I was doing the description or some other player was, so long as Jenny was front and center in the spotlight.  In fact, it was better if other players were describing Jenny, because then I knew I had their full attention, not just narrating to a tolerant but bored audience.  I started Conflicts like nobody's business, so that players who cared about those Conflicts had to be telling the ongoing "Story of Jenny."

Ok.  So rather than going in with a particular story (in the sense of a sequence of events) that you wanted to tell, your motivation was to try to get the group to focus on your particular character - even if, in doing so, they may have disrupted a plan that you had for her (by unexpectedly beating you in a Conflict, for example)?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Well, I'm passing the question of "What did players other than me want?" to Eric and Sydney....

In the early playtest, when Tony was changing the rules every session and we still had a GM, I was introducing conflicts primarily to achieve stuff my character would want -- pretty standard RPG stuff.

Towards the end of the playtest, I realized I could introduce Conflicts that would raise issues I as a player wanted raised, even if I didn't know (or care) how they came down. My favorite of these, while playing the shell-shocked mute homeless traumatized ferrokinetic Shell, was "Event: Shell chooses a side": I didn't even have her in the scene as a character, game-mechanically, I just let other people roll that conflict up and down as they fought to convince her -- tidily playing up my character's struggle to connect and trust.

And using the current rules, I've consider myself successful ("winning," having a "good session") when I introduce stuff the other players are engaged by -- whether that engagement is expressed by them fighting me really hard and losing and going "oh, man!", or by them fighting me really hard and winning (mmm, Story Tokenelicious!), or by them appropriating the ideas and even characters I introduced and turning them to their own evil purposes in the next scene.

[hyphz]

Another question:

Have you ever had any occasion when a player has been put off from taking part in a Confict because players on the "other side" have lots of Story Tokens or Inspirations available?

[TonyLB]

Not that I can recall.  I target people who have a lot of resources.  The most efficient way for them to capitalize on either Story Tokens or Inspirations is by staking Debt and splitting the dice (so that the "increase more than one die" effect of either resource comes into play on a single conflict).  Those are exactly the conflicts I want to be on the losing side of.

[Doug Ruff]

Well, I'm passing the question of "What did players other than me want?" to Eric and Sydney, who do keep up with the forum.  That's not everyone from the playtest, but it's some folks.

Oh, I'm keeping up too - I just don't post as much as other folks.

I did one playtest session with Tony, over IRC.

I wanted kung fu, and Tony let me have it. My criteria for a good session was to have fun and create a good story, and I got that too.

"Winning" is trickier. I wanted to win certain conflicts (particularly one involving humiliation between a hero I was playing - we were sharing characters - and a villain character played by Tony), but "winning the game" wasn't an issue. The main competitive urge was channelled into a desire to create good dialogue and plot.

All of which leads me to put forward yet another theory about Capes: ideal play is like a "jam session" - the real competition is creative.

[Sydney Freedberg]

ideal play is like a "jam session" - the real competition is creative.

Agreed 100%. The reward you're looking for is the other players saying, "Damn!"

[EDIT: Maybe "damn that's cool" or  maybe"damn you just hammered me, I gotta give you props for that" or even "damn you just went down so hard"]