Everybody Gloats

[Matthew Glover]

I'm going to paraphrase rather than quote a whole bunch.  If I get a detail or point wrong, please feel free to correct me.  In this thread a peculiar situation was addressed:

What happens when every player involved in a conflict chooses to Gloat rather than resolve it?

The answer given was that this is legal and legitimate. This will continue for exactly as long as everyone at the table is willing to allow it to continue, just like pretty much everything else in Capes.  As soon as a player is tired of Gloating going back and forth, that player is welcome to split off a new side, then take control of the conflict and resolve it.  Until that happens, everybody is getting the story they want.  As soon as somebody's unhappy with it, it gets handled.  This is a feature of the game.

The response was that this isn't good enough, that everyone at the table can get involved and rather than resolving, always chooses to take the Tokens despite wanting to move on.  What is needed, it was suggested, is a way for a player to both take the Story Tokens and get the goal off the table so that the game can continue.

I get you, but I was left with no uncertainty that my group wants a way to deal with this that doesn't require a player to choose to not get story tokens to make the goal go away.

My thoughts on this:

This sounds like crap.  This sounds like misplaced priorities.  Nobody cares enough about the outcome of this conflict to want to resolve it.  Nobody cares about this conflict's effects on the story.  Nobody wants to narrate the resolution, the just want the conflict to go away.

The players are only jumping on this conflict because they recognized that it's gloatable and they want to suck some Tokens from it.  This isn't a situation of players opposing each other, this is players each separately opposing the Comics Code with no regard for the ramifications upon the fiction created.  I'd really love to hear the narrations going back and forth over this.  I'm curious about exactly how much narrative passion in invested in each exchange after the tenth Gloat.

This is like a game of D&D where two players have their characters kill and resurrect each other over and over for a net gain of experience points each time.

You don't need a rule to stop this.  You just need one person at the table to decide to say "Hey guys, this isn't fun and I'm putting a stop to it."  Every time you choose not to resolve the goal, you're choosing instead to say "Hey, this story we're making by Gloating every time is great."

[drnuncheon]

You don't need a rule to stop this.  You just need one person at the table to decide to say "Hey guys, this isn't fun and I'm putting a stop to it."  Every time you choose not to resolve the goal, you're choosing instead to say "Hey, this story we're making by Gloating every time is great."

I think what we're seeing is a side effect of the competition aspect of Capes.  SIndyr seems worried that his group might not be saying "This story is great", they might be saying "This story isn't great, but I don't want to take the responsibility for stopping it because I will miss out on my 2-3 Story Tokens because of it."

Part of that may well be a hoarding mentality - "gotta get Story Tokens, Story Tokens are what I'm supposed to get, he who dies with the most Story Tokens wins" - and forgetting that Story Tokens are only worth anything when they're used.

[TonyLB]

I think it also reflects a mentality of Story Tokens being cool and Inspirations being wimpy.  The strategic argument for breaking the gloat-fest is very strong.  Not that the story argument isn't (it is) but even if you are going pure strategy, no story, I don't think the gloat-fest is the natural outcome.

[Matthew Glover]

I'm starting to wonder if a gloat-fest would also result in more and more debt being generated while fighting over the conflict, and that debt being staked on the conflict to get it off the characters, meaning that whoever finally does resolve has to hand over a zillion Story Tokens to the others.  Of course, I'd love to be the guy who gets to shove a double-zillion Debt back at the other players.

[Hans]

The response was that this isn't good enough, that everyone at the table can get involved and rather than resolving, always chooses to take the Tokens despite wanting to move on.  What is needed, it was suggested, is a way for a player to both take the Story Tokens and get the goal off the table so that the game can continue.

"Stop me, for the love of God!  Someone please stop me before I Gloat again!  Story tokens are the crystal meth of Capes, and I must have my FIX!"

That being said at least in a game where humour has a central place, I could see "Goal: Villain shoots the hero dead" being milked for a some laughs, as each person tries to come up with an even more outlandish way the hero someone manages not to get shot.  Could be funny the first four times or so. 

I really think the boredom angle of this cannot be stressed highly enough.  Remember that the Goal only resolves at the end of a page.  So every Gloat involves a whole new page.  As soon as there is only one Goal left on the table, and no one plays a new one in the next page, that means people are done and want to move on.  I have seen people avoid playing new conflicts, even though they were fairly excited about them, simply because it was already 10 PM and they wanted to try to get another scene in before the end of the night.  Sure, Story Tokens mainlining story tokens into your veins gives a buzz, but how many hours do you want to spend earning them? 

[Eric Sedlacek]

Boredom is not necessary as a factor to stop the cycle.  The simple fact is that it is strategically poor to allow it to continue.

Story tokens are not xp.  Story tokens are an economy.  They are like money.  What your story tokens are worth are a factor of how many you have and how many everyone else has.  When everyone is a millionaire, millionaires aren't rich.

Here is a scenario I've seen more than once.  Sydney and I have large piles of tokens.  Tony has less, not because he doesn't earn a whole bunch but because he is constantly spending them.  Sydney and I are more picky.  Then, inevitably, since Sydney and I agree on virtually nothing narratively, we hit one conflict we both want to win really badly.  So Tony gets to sit back and laugh his ass off while we whittle our piles down to nothing.  (Dollar Auction!)  Note that me recognizing this pattern does absolutely nothing to help stop it.

So, with this in mind, say you've just gloated, do you want to feed gloats for all the other players in the hope that it gets back to you again?  Hell no!  If the other players are foolish enough not to claim the non-gloating side of the conflict before it gets around to you, claim it and win it.  It's pretty easy to do since you just turned all the dice you are now opposing down to ones.  Serves the suckers right for letting you gloat in first place.

[Sindyr]

Situation: A gloatable goal is on the table.

• Fact: ANYONE can gloat it.  Heroes, Villains, Mortals - any player that has claimed a side that is in control at the end of the page can elect to either gloat, or resolve it in a non gloating way to get rid of it.
• Fact: Story tokens are very good to have.
• Fact: Any resolver of this goal is faced with a choice - get one or more story tokens and leave it on the table, or resolve it, do not gain a story token, and it goes away.
• Fact: Under normal circumstances, if someone will pay me one or more tokens to leave a goal down, I will.  The rest of my gaming group seems to agree.  Apart from unique circumstances, the best gaming theory choice is to gloat the goal instead of resolving it.

Problem: Under these conditions, a gloatable goal will hang around for much too long and the game will get stagnant as people fight over who gets to milk it this page.

Answer:  No answer has yet been offered, apart from the advice of "don't play that way", which I cannot take seriously.  (Because rules and game systems exist for a reason and many excellent essays on the forge make this point far better than I can.)

Ideas:

• One has to declare when one claims a gloatable goal whether one intends to gloat or resolve if one has control at the end of page
• Once a conflict has been gloated on by one player, no other player can gloat that conflict and must instead resolve it in a non gloating way.
• One has to declare at the start of the scene whether one is narratively allied with heroes or villains.  Those narratively allied with heroes can't gloat.

While I like the idea of modal narrative alliance, and think some sort of mod like that could be useful, especially in games where one wants to promote poetic justice and four color gaming, the idea is to complex and undeveloped at present to serve as a fix.

How about fix number 2 though?  Any real problems with that?

Or, perhaps, an alternative to that:  Conflicts can only be gloated on by their creator.

Which is better?  Do either have unintended side effects?

[TonyLB]

Fact: Under normal circumstances, if someone will pay me one or more tokens to leave a goal down, I will.  The rest of my gaming group seems to agree.  Apart from unique circumstances, the best gaming theory choice is to gloat the goal instead of resolving it.

That last one is not so much a "fact" as an "error."  The strategically smart thing to do (as Eric and I, among others, have pointed out) is to break the gloating cycle and farm the inspirations.

Answer:  No answer has yet been offered, apart from the advice of "don't play that way", which I cannot take seriously.

Again, not so much a "fact" as an "error."  Several answers have been given to you.  You choose not to pay attention to them, but that's not the same as their not having been offered.

[Sindyr]

I stand by what I said as accurate.

[TonyLB]

Do you have any argument for why the gloat-fest is good strategy?  Or are you just going to ... y'know ... stand by it?

[Sindyr]

That's a valid question. ;)

If a gloatable conflict is on the table and I have claimed it and am in control of it at page's end, I can either:
>Take a story token for each die I have involved.
>Resolve it and take an inspiration of some kind.

Just for sake of argument, and because it actually happened in game play, let's assume a goal of Havok, in trying to find the Malignite, unintentionally gets one of the heroes killed.

I rolled up a side of that to 5 (i think), the other side was a one. (no one else was acting on it, they were working on other things)  I claimed it next page, and at the end of the page I had two choices:
Resolve it without gloating and receive a 4 Insp, or turn the 5 back to a 1 and get a story token.

Which is better, a 4 Insp or a Story Token?  I am sure that one can manufacture several cases where a 4 Insp is more useful than a story token, still, all in all, over the course of all possible uses, in terms of averages, it seems self-evident that a single story token is more useful than any single Insp (with the possible exception of a 6 Insp, since it can't be rolled down).

I guess that's a place to start.  Let's compare a 5 Insp to a Story Token - while we can come up with created examples in which the Insp is more helpful than the token, or vice versa, overall which is more useful more of the time, and has a greater effect?

It seems to me that gaining a Story Token is preferred over gaining a 5 Insp.

Now, if someone agrees with the above assessment, than that explains why Gloating is the preferred strategy of anyone trying to plays as tactically and strategically as possible - in general anyways.

[Sindyr]

One other point.

As I understand it, a gloat explictly leaves the conflict on the table - that is, if I gloat a conflict, it will be here next page.

If there are strategic reasons to gloat a conflict once, the same strategy applies the second time, and the third, and so on.

If on the other hand the third gloat somehow can be shown as bad strategy, than so can the second, and so can the first gloat as well.

Bottom line - if it gloating is a strategy - that is, if people are *supposed* to gloat in Capes at all, exactly the same reasoning why the should gloat once is the reason to do it again. And again. And again.

Now, one other question: Should I split off my proposed gloat mods into their own thread?  I am looking for critiques on ways to prevent unlimited gloating and end the cycle - or prevent one from starting.  I offered a couple of choices above.  Is this thread only for discussing if there should be limitations on gloating, or can we simultaneously discuss what those limitations should be *given* that my group wants one and will have one?

[TonyLB]

Now, one other question: Should I split off my proposed gloat mods into their own thread?  I am looking for critiques on ways to prevent unlimited gloating and end the cycle - or prevent one from starting.  I offered a couple of choices above.  Is this thread only for discussing if there should be limitations on gloating, or can we simultaneously discuss what those limitations should be *given* that my group wants one and will have one?

I think it would be better keep this thread being about gloating as the rules stand right now.  Otherwise it gets awfully confusing.

[TonyLB]

So ... let me get this straight.  You're pushing Gloating as the best possible strategy, and you're only gloating on one die?  Why not two or three?

[Sindyr]

Is that important?  I mean, to the fundamental issues we are discussing?

For the record, I gloated on one die because it was the first time anyone gloated in our game and I wanted to see how it worked.

But the principles are the same aren't they?

Whether we are talking about getting one token versus one 5 Insp, or multiple tokens versus multiple Insps - it all rests on whether Insps or Tokens are generally more useful, right?

So lets look at it.  Which is overall better, more effective, in more varied situations - a 5 Insp or a Story Token?