Fact mechanic for Capes

[Grover]

One thing that people have perceived as a weakness in Capes is that there is no mechanism to establish a fact in the game.  I don't see this as a huge weakness, but some additional expressiveness added to the system might be nice, and I just had an interesting idea for the mechanic, so I thought I'd toss it out.

It's very simple.  When a conflict resolves, instead of taking an inspiration, a player may choose to establish a fact with the same rating as the inspiration.  Any player may use an action to roll up a die with a fact (limited by the level of the fact and the current value of the die).  Any player may use any fact, but a particular fact may only be used once per scene.

Does this seem like a reasonable mechanic?

Steve

[Larry L.]

Hi Steve!

So, how's this different from the Goal-In, Goal-Out rule that Fred proposed some time back?

[TonyLB]

Why would you want to give one player a permanent advantage over other players?

[Vaxalon]

Tony, you seem to be assuming that any given fact will always be an advantage for a given player.  Since characters can shift from one player to another, and since a given fact could be used by any player, then I don't see how a fact could become a permanent advantage for one player.

[TonyLB]

It's a creative advantage for that player, whoever ends up using it.  It makes it more likely that other people will fall into line with his creative vision, as expressed in that fact.

[Shreyas Sampat]

It sounds like a reasonable mechanic to me.

[Grover]

One thing I forgot to mention was that facts can be removed the same way they're established.  It's not intended to be a dominating mechanic, just a way for players to describe the world in mechanical terms.

Steve

[Doug Ruff]

Hi,

There isn't a mechanism to introduce "Facts" into the game because it's not needed. Capes allows you to make stuff up all the time. I know this isn't a feature for everyone, but it is an essential part of the game.

I can see Facts breaking down in play as either:

- one player establishes a Fact, other players like it and use it too. It becomes an established part of the story, until someone gets bored with it and offs it. Nothing wrong with this.
- one player establishes a Fact, the other players don't like it. The player who introduced it keeps using it, which pisses off the other players so they team up to off it quickly. Much less happy with this. I also think it underlines Tony's "creative advantage" criticism.

But, basically, Facts provide an unfair advantage. Not to a player, but to a story element. And the Capes ruleset is designed to specifically encourage the story elements which other players are interested in too. There's a sort of "story Darwinism" going on, powered by the Story Token currency. Facts look innocuous, but I suspect that they break that system.

Yes, other players can negate the Fact by spending their own Inspirations if they don't like it. But ths requires players to actively negate each other's story contributions, and I think that's a bad thing. The current system allows players to shape the story through positive feedback only.

[Vaxalon]

I think the fact mechanics that Grover and I have introduced have been designed to counteract the positive feedback loop of progressively larger and larger events being done and undone without any mechanism for bringing it under control.

[TonyLB]

That particular positive feedback loop is a new one on me.  Do you think it's written into the rules?  Or is it just an effect of players progressively realizing that they're empowered, and therefore addressing larger things for the sheer fun of being able to do so?  Or something else?

[Vaxalon]

In the game we played in IRC, I think it was a kind of frustrated one-upsmanship. 

When one of us would have something we valued but were unable to defend knocked down, we'd knock down something even bigger that the other person was unable to defend.   We stopped playing when we realized the whole thing was getting pathological and not-fun.

[TonyLB]

So... you're talking about knocking these things down in conflicts?  Or in free narration?

[Vaxalon]

Free narration.  We've been over this point before... basically, because conflicts are SO expensive, you can only afford to have a few (or even just one) in any given scene.  Everything else is undefendable. 

[TonyLB]

Ohhhh... so this is the same misguided argument from you that I've spent hundreds of posts to refute before.  Gotcha.

Everyone but Fred:  These rules modifications were off the mark the last time he proposed them.  Fred/Vaxalon himself was off the mark in various ways that have been pointed out over and over again.  The rules-mods and Fred are still off the mark, for all the same reasons.  Uzzah explained very concisely where the disconnect is in A lightbulb moment.  There's nothing new to see here. 

If anyone else wants to tilt at the Fred windmill, split off a thread and have at it.  Myself, I'm no longer interested in providing him with a sparring partner.

EDIT:  For what it's worth, I think Grover's suggestions are a whole differen rule-modification from Fred's.  They certainly haven't been refuted in anything like the same level of detail.

[Larry L.]

EDIT: For what it's worth, I think Grover's suggestions are a whole differen rule-modification from Fred's. They certainly haven't been refuted in anything like the same level of detail.

Cool! I just really, really wanted to make sure we weren't kicking that horse again.

So Steve, they're mechanically like Inspirations, except you keep them after you use them?