Linked Conflicts?

[TonyLB]

By the way, what was Alan Moore's explanation?

In all seriousness, go read it.  It's so cool that I wouldn't feel right spoiling it.

[Sindyr]

By the way, what was Alan Moore's explanation?

In all seriousness, go read it.  It's so cool that I wouldn't feel right spoiling it.

OK, then (since I don't know much about Swamp Thing) - what was the question that needed explanation? Where he came from and what he was?

[Hans]

There is something about the example that Tony posted that is not directly relevant to Sindyr's question, but seems so important I that I just have to point it out.

The main reason that the players in that game had such an incredible epiphany and such satisfaction, I am sure, about its resolution, was that they had been PAYING ATTENTION.  Even if something had happened weeks ago in real time, they all were keeping what had gone on before in their minds, so that when this moment came up, suddenly a coherent story self-organized from the chaos because they were carrying these previous "story facts" in their minds. 

Capes is not a game, I think, where anyone can afford to sit back and just let stuff happen; for it to be effective everyone has to be committed to listening to what other people are saying and remembering it.  In other games you can afford to assume the GM will remember it, but not Capes...you ARE the GM.

Sorry to hijack your thread, Sindyr.  But, now that I think about it, it does tie back to the linked conflicts...a lot of the resolutions people have suggest tie back to paying attention to what people actually said (as oppossed to what you, or they, THINK they said) and finding the gaps.

[Sindyr]

Sorry to hijack your thread, Sindyr.  But, now that I think about it, it does tie back to the linked conflicts...a lot of the resolutions people have suggest tie back to paying attention to what people actually said (as oppossed to what you, or they, THINK they said) and finding the gaps.

It's all good. :)

[Hans]

Narrative paradoxes caused by goals are not the problem you might think.  A legitimate paradox might be theoretically possible, but I've never seen one in play.  I have had to scratch my head for a minute to come up with a narration that fits the goal landscape, but there has always been an answer. In fact, some of the most interesting stories come from nonintuitive combinations of goal resolutions. 

In your comment Eric, I think your comment about "fitting the goal landscape" is crucial, and I am going to differ somewhat from what others have said.  

We have two goals on the table, 1 and 2.  Goal 1 resolves.  There are two players, me and you.  You are the resolver of goal 1.  You narrate some stuff.  As I listen to you, I cannot conceive a way to narrate Goal 2, you seem to have made it impossible.  Now, whose problem is that, mine or yours?  Some have been arguing here, if I am reading this correctly, that this is my problem.

I disagree.  The Not Yet rule, to my mind, makes it clear that it is the YOUR problem, not mine.  I can invoke the Not Yet rule as I choose, and require from you, at a minimum, some explanation of how you think the other goal could resolved.  If you can't think of anything either, then you have to change your narration.  It is your job, as the narrator of Goal 1, to make sure you leave "space" for goal 2.

Frankly, the whole "resolution order does not have to go with chronological order" is not particularly satisfactory to me as an answer to a Not Yet.  I having a hard time figuring out when that excuse couldn't be used against Not Yet, and hence it seems that it guts the Not Yet rule.  If your only answer to me when I Not Yet you is "well, you can always do a flashback", I'm liable to say "sorry, not quite good enough, leave me some more space."  

Now I can choose not to invoke the Not Yet rule.  I might see a way to use your narration to resolve Goal 2 immediately.  I might not see a way yet, but relish the challenge of figuring one out.  I might even like the idea of a flashback as the way to narrate Goal 2.  But if I can't Not Yet in the above situation, when could I?  

I agree that there will never be a circumstance where the resolution of a conflict will prevent the resolution of another conflict.  There is always some way to narrate out of the spot and "fit the goal landscape".  The narrator is still going to get the inspriations and the loser will still get their story tokens.  It is more a question of whose job it is to "scratch their heads".  I believe the Not Yet rule at least implies that it is the current narrator's job, not some potential future narrator's, to do the scratching.

[Matthew Glover]

A blast from the past to follow up what Hans said:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14383.0

Vaxalon says:

How do you deal with it, if Doctor Bizarro strangles the Ebony Englishman to death, but you still have "The Ebony Englishman freezes Doctor Bizarro in a block of ice." on the table?

TonyLB says:

Before I offer suggestions, I'll say that rules-wise the way I handle it is by passing the buck to the player of Doctor Bizarro.  By the "Not Yet" rule, he can't narrate anything that would resolve the outstanding conflict (in this case "Ebony Englishman freezes Doctor Bizarro") one way or another.  Yet, he's got to resolve the conflict.  Which is totally his problem.

But I have never found it particularly hard to work around these things in practice.  Ebony's been strangled to death, but you still want him freezing things?  Okay, options:

  * He's had his trachea shattered, and has been dealt a mortal blow, but has a few moments (as many as he needs) for revenge.
  * Killing him releases his powers in surges from his corpse, so Doc Bizarro needs to get clear fast or he'll be frozen by his enemy post-humously.
  * Ebony did something before he died (super-cooling some water mains, perhaps?) which still effects play after his demise.
  * A clone.  That having been said:  Can the rule system create situations that call upon you to be particularly, sometimes even fiendishly, inventive?  Ohhhh yeah.

   

[Hans]

Vaxalon says:

How do you deal with it, if Doctor Bizarro strangles the Ebony Englishman to death, but you still have "The Ebony Englishman freezes Doctor Bizarro in a block of ice." on the table?

Thats at least three times roughly the same question has shown up on the forums.  That tells me a) it is a very important question and b) I need to read the back threads more assiduoulsy before posting questions. :)

[Eric Sedlacek]

We have two goals on the table, 1 and 2.  Goal 1 resolves.  There are two players, me and you.  You are the resolver of goal 1.  You narrate some stuff.  As I listen to you, I cannot conceive a way to narrate Goal 2, you seem to have made it impossible.  Now, whose problem is that, mine or yours?  Some have been arguing here, if I am reading this correctly, that this is my problem.

I disagree.  The Not Yet rule, to my mind, makes it clear that it is the YOUR problem, not mine.  I can invoke the Not Yet rule as I choose, and require from you, at a minimum, some explanation of how you think the other goal could resolved.  If you can't think of anything either, then you have to change your narration.  It is your job, as the narrator of Goal 1, to make sure you leave "space" for goal 2.

To quote directly from the rules, "No player may narrate how the Conflict turns out in the story until they have successfully Resolved the conflict in the rules.  This is called the 'Not Yet' Rule." 

Not Yet only prevents you from de facto resolving an existing conflict through narration before it is resolved mechanically.  It does nothing else.  It doesn't prevent narration that makes your later goal resolution awkward, creatively challenging, uncomfortable, lame, or otherwise not what you would have liked it to be.  It doesn't give you "space" of any variety or quantity beyond the fact that the goal is not yet resolved.

That said, Not Yet does have some subjectivity.  Some people will think it applies in situations when other people do not.  My preference is for the most conservative interpretation possible.  Challenging narration in the face of existing previous narration yields some of the best play in Capes.  I don't want to water than down even one drop.

[Hans]

To quote directly from the rules, "No player may narrate how the Conflict turns out in the story until they have successfully Resolved the conflict in the rules.  This is called the 'Not Yet' Rule." 

[snip]

That said, Not Yet does have some subjectivity.  Some people will think it applies in situations when other people do not.  My preference is for the most conservative interpretation possible.  Challenging narration in the face of existing previous narration yields some of the best play in Capes.  I don't want to water than down even one drop.

I guess I still disagree with your strict interpretation of the Not Yet rule.  I guess If feel that if I narrate something that makes Goal 2 incredibly difficult if not impossible by narrating Goal 1, then I am effectively narrating "how [goal 2] turns out in the story" without having "successfully Resolved [goal 2] in the rules."  In practice, though, I have never actually felt like I needed to do this, and I think it is unlikely that I ever will with any frequency.

I think there is usually so much interesting stuff going on in a game of Capes anyway that using your action to cunningingly craft a goal you think blocks another is probably a waste of time.   Really all you are doing is throwing down a gauntlet to the other players to imaginatively come up with a way around it and do what they wanted to do anyway.  You action is better used to try to affect the original conflict, OR, play a distracting conflict (that is, a conflict that doesn't attempt to block the other conflict, but instead is SO much more interesting than the first one).  Preventative conflicts are much better are preventing specific narration (Villain escapes), rather than messing with other existing conflicts.

[TonyLB]

There's a powerful social force stopping people from calling "Not Yet" when things are merely difficult.  Let's say Fiona is working on "Goal:  Super-bitch kills everyone on the planet" and Heidi is working on "Goal:  Major Mom has a pleasant afternoon with her children."

First, let's properly spike the wording of Heidi's goal, to make it explicit.  This is a passionate game.  It's not just "Have a pleasant afternoon."  It's "Major Mom has a pleasant afternoon with her children, at any cost!"

So, Fiona resolves her goal.  Everyone on the planet (including Super-bitch!) is dead.  Dead, dead, deadie-dead-dead.  It's a boneyard.

Now Heidi looks at that and thinks the following sequence of things:

• "Man, it's hard to see a way to succeed at my goal, given the whole mass extinction thing."
• "And Fiona ... she can see that.  I mean ... it's obvious.  She can't have missed it."
• "Fiona doesn't want to get caught out having screwed up.  She's got some way of narrating this already in mind."
• "And if I complain, she's going to just sigh and roll her eyes and say 'Well if Major Mom is going to let a little thing like being dead stop her from spending quality time with her kids then she's not the mother I thought she was.'  I know that's what she'd do.  She's probably hoping that I'll call Not Yet."
• "And then she's going to narrate some spectacular thing about zombie picnics, and totally make me look like a feeb for having complained."
• "SCREW THAT!  I'm gonna figure out a way to narrate this that's twice as good as her way could ever be!"

Make sense?  It's a social dynamic that pushes people to call 'Not Yet' only when they think that someone has (in their excitement) actually overlooked something and would be happy to be reminded.  That almost never happens when the goals are directly running against each other, because folks have had a long time to contemplate the interactions.  It's more common when you've got something like "Goal:  Iron Brain says a kind word to Junior" and someone is just running their mouth in dialogue.

[Hans]

There's a powerful social force stopping people from calling "Not Yet" when things are merely difficult.  Let's say Fiona is working on "Goal:  Super-bitch kills everyone on the planet" and Heidi is working on "Goal:  Major Mom has a pleasant afternoon with her children."

All of this makes perfect sense, and I agree with it.  Now that you have said it, I realize it is the previously nebulous reason behind my comment in my previous post that I thought it "unlikely that I ever will [Not Yet] with frequency."  You have made it explicit.  Thanks.

[Sindyr]

There's a powerful social force stopping people from calling "Not Yet" when things are merely difficult.  Let's say Fiona is working on "Goal:  Super-bitch kills everyone on the planet" and Heidi is working on "Goal:  Major Mom has a pleasant afternoon with her children."

To throw my $.05 in (adjusted for inflation):

Tony, please do not take offense and become reactive, but I find your solution artificial, and unrealistic - that is, I can never imagine *any* gamer I have known, should we find ourselves in Capes and in that position, going down the fanciful path you illustrated.

I think there should be a better solution.  A way out *other* than trying to find some bizarre way to shoehorn to obviously contradictory goals together.  Maybe "Not Yet", maybe something else.

However, let me explicitly state that neither you nor any other poster is under any obligation to provide one, or even agree that one is needed. 

But *I* feel that one is, and I will be looking for one.  Should any one else agree that a better solution is needed, feel free to respond with what you think it could be.  Should no one agree that a better solution is needed, I will continue this on my own.  ;)

[Matthew Glover]

Tony, please do not take offense and become reactive, but I find your solution artificial, and unrealistic - that is, I can never imagine *any* gamer I have known, should we find ourselves in Capes and in that position, going down the fanciful path you illustrated.

I would have said the same thing, Sindyr, until I'd gotten several games under my belt. The social reward reinforcement for cleverly narrating something that seems impossible is very strong. 

[Sindyr]

I *do* of course reserve the right to change any and all opinions I express after I have experienced many play sessions of Capes.

;)

(And I *am* continually trying to get a Capes game going, even though I don't talk about it all the time here)

[Eric Sedlacek]

I think there is usually so much interesting stuff going on in a game of Capes anyway that using your action to cunningingly craft a goal you think blocks another is probably a waste of time.   Really all you are doing is throwing down a gauntlet to the other players to imaginatively come up with a way around it and do what they wanted to do anyway.  You action is better used to try to affect the original conflict, OR, play a distracting conflict (that is, a conflict that doesn't attempt to block the other conflict, but instead is SO much more interesting than the first one).  Preventative conflicts are much better are preventing specific narration (Villain escapes), rather than messing with other existing conflicts.

This is most definitely true.  You can certainly do things just to poke other players in the eye, but the last thing you want in a Capes game is for the other players to think you are enothing more than a big jerk.  Once that happens, things get very ugly for you.

It is a competative game, and players naturally do mess with each other in many ways, but ultimately, you only succeed in Capes if other players value your contributions.  That is a powerfully controlling social force.  You just can't bully people into liking your contributions.