Rules-Recommendation: Responsive Conflicts

[TonyLB]

In [Capes] Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal...

I'd be interested in hearing what you think of being able to start Conflicts as a reaction to narration.  That's hardly rewriting Capes, but yet would solve nearly 90% of all of the issues raised.  Such a simple seeming rule...are there other game effects that you can see it might have that aren't beneficial.  Would you dislike playing a game of Capes where that was a rule...if so why.

I think I would, although I haven't tried it, so I certainly try to keep an open mind.  I just don't know how far we can discuss it profitably, however.  We come to this from very different places.

You're talking about that intensely unpleasant, sudden lurching in the stomach when something is proposed for the SIS that you absolutely, positively loathe at an emotional level, and want to efface immediately from your mind and memory, right?

You believe that moment is bad, bad in the moment and bad in its consequences.  You propose rules to relieve it.

I believe that moment is good, unpleasant in the moment but dripping with great potential.  I look at the proposed rules and say "inoffensive, but counter-productive."

[Sydney Freedberg]

I'd be interested in hearing what you think of being able to start Conflicts as a reaction to narration.

I find this idea interesting myself, just as another wrinkle in game tactics, but there's a key question to answer, and I'm not sure how to go about it:

Does starting a reaction Conflict cost resources?

(What resources? Well, starting a Conflict on your turn costs you being able to use an Ability on that turn. Starting a Conflict while someone else is speaking could either cost Story Tokens or your next turn).

Possible problems arise either way you answer this, I think:

1) NO
IF starting a reaction Conflict costs no resources,
THEN it's infinitely cheaper than starting a Conflict on your turn;
THEREFORE you're incentivized to look at everyone else's narration with an eye for things you can call unacceptable, and jump on anything that might allow you to declare a free Conflict,
WHICH encourages people to interrupt each other's narration.

2) YES
IF starting a reaction Conflict costs resources (say, 1 Story Token),
THEN it's a significant expense, and can be self-defeating;
THEREFORE you're incentivized to narrate things the other players can't abide, in the hope of forcing them to spend resources declaring reaction Conflicts to stop you, so they run out of resources to oppose the stuff you really care about,
WHICH encourages people to make their narrations obnoxious.

This idea can probably be made to work, it just will take some careful considerationand playtesting of the game's resource economy -- and the acceptance that it doesn't necessarily eliminate the problem of disruptive narration. Which was Ralph's original point, but not necessarily the only thing such a mechanic would be good for.