Non-debt generating characters...how often?

Quote from: Hans on April 18, 2006, 11:37:41 AM

So, what is Piers to do?� Does he jump in on what seems to be the losing side of the conflict, narrating some stuff that he isn't really invested in, so that he has a chance at the resources?� (note: the real-life Piers is a damn clever fellow, and even his off-hand narrations are golden, but lets assume for a moment Piers is of middling imagination)� Should he just bow out, and use his action to bump up an inspiration or something?� Where does Piers fit into Tony and Tuxboy's perspectives?

If Piers doesn't get involved at all, he gets nothing, and loses nothing. Its going to resolve, regardless.

If he jumps in on the opposing side and doesn't contribute anything substantive, from the perspective of the folks on the other side, he gets nothing. They are not obligated to give him Tokens just for being on the losing side, unless he created the Conflict, and then it's just one. If he knows he has nothing to bring to the Conflict the others'll find cool, he's better off staying out and burning that time on other pursuits ... like the next Conflict.

If he's truly devious, he can jump in on the clearly winning side, stake Debt, then split off all the best dice on his own side and make it clear he'll resolve it such that both other sides are unhappy, thus milking yet more Story Tokens from them if they have Debt still unstaked. This turns what he originally thought was an uninteresting Conflict into something not only intriguing, but evilly convoluted, earns him big money, and, oh, incidentally, makes the story more invested for everyone.

See, my take on this is that I just don't get why folks seem to be going on about the whole implicit issue of the mechanics, the resource race, getting in the way of the "story." Firstly, in the absence of the resource race, story and mechanics have traditionally been unrelated; story is not part of the model, save in the rare cases of an explicit tie (you are rewarded for doing something Genre, you get Hero Points, et al). Secondly, story doesn't pre-exist the events anyway, in my heretical opinion. Story is something we experience when retelling the events. Ergo, if a mechanical system serves to create retellable, engaging events while simultaneously making that engagement the central determinant of resource allocation (as Capes does), then I think its vaguely absurd to talk about people effectively "gaming the system" in the absence of engagement with the evolving narrative. Absent that engagement, they aren't rewarded by others by the allocation of Story Tokens, unless others at the table aren't recognizing that if they get invested on the same Conflicts with that person, but provide more engagement, they'll get the vast lion's share of rewards.

The essential mistake I observe is missing the direct and undeniable connection between personal engagement of the other Players at the table, and reward. Capes makes it about as explicit as it can be, so it eludes me how it eludes others.