Everybody Gloats

[TonyLB]

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.

Huh?  You said that you had actual play of people gloating, back and forth, over and over.  So ... you did gloat more than once, right?  The first time you were testing the rules.  How about the second time?

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

A story token is more useful when you have very few story tokens.  The inspirations is more useful when you have very few inspirations.  If you have neither, I'd go for the 5 inspiration.  I think it's generally the stronger thing to have, on its own.  But they work well in synergy, so you don't want to load up on just one or the other.  Hence, the more often people have gloated, the less motive they have to do it again.

[Sindyr]

Huh?  You said that you had actual play of people gloating, back and forth, over and over.

Where did I say that?  I don't believe I did.

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

A story token is more useful when you have very few story tokens.  The inspirations is more useful when you have very few inspirations.  If you have neither, I'd go for the 5 inspiration.  I think it's generally the stronger thing to have, on its own.  But they work well in synergy, so you don't want to load up on just one or the other.  Hence, the more often people have gloated, the less motive they have to do it again.

OK, this may simply be a result of my inexperience then.  If you already have nine ot ten story tokens and no Inspirations, and if getting Insps are strategically more useful than getting more tokens, than I can see there being a cap game theory wise on how many time a gloatable conflict will be gloated on.  Perhaps the economy is more complex than that.

On the other hand, here's another thought - the more debt you invest into a gloatable conflict, the more you want to gloat as opposed to resolve.

Do you think the above is true?  Let's say you have 3 debt invested.  you have three dice.  Let's say no one has claimed the other side yet.  If you resolve now, you get, perhaps, 3 high Insps - but you also get back doubled debt, or 6 debt, correct?

If your choice is either

• Gloat, turning all dice to "1"'s, gain one token each, and maybe more later.
• Resolve, taking three high Insps and SIX debt

my question is are the 3 high Insps really worth both the SIX debt you had to get as well as the 3 story tokens you gave up? Really??

To put this another way, is getting one high Inspiration worth sacrifcing a story token for AND gaining 2 debt?

I feel in my gut that this is a very bad trade - can anyone demonstrate to me that this isn't?

[TonyLB]

Do you think the above is true?  Let's say you have 3 debt invested.  you have three dice.  Let's say no one has claimed the other side yet.  If you resolve now, you get, perhaps, 3 high Insps - but you also get back doubled debt, or 6 debt, correct?

Why would you get your debt back?  Usually when you resolve the side as a victory, you don't take the debt back.

[Sindyr]

Brain fart - you wouldn't - my mistake.

For some reason I have trouble remembering:
1) You give away debt as story tokens if you win
2) You gain double debt if you lose.

So the trade off is really:
1) Resolve and gain an Insp and lose a debt (potentially) per die.
2) Gloat and gain a story token and gain a debt (potentially) per die.

of course, if no one has staked debt, than its just one die versus one die, and it comes down to do you wanta token or an Insp.

I am going to have to play more to understand the comparative worth of Insps versus Tokens.

[Vaxalon]

In noone stakes debt, do you get a story token for losing?  I don't think so, but I could be wrong.

[Tuxboy]

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.

OK, this statement is amorphous, how can a goal get someone "unintentionally" killed?

Surely either the goal states that someone gets killed or it doesn't?

"Goal: The Malignite uncovered by Havok kills a hero" or "Goal: Havok uncovers the Malignite"

Did your goal include someone getting killed?

In my perception of Gloating, the first goal is gloatable as "resolving it will breach the Comics Code", but as the second goal is resolvable without breaking the CC how can that be eligible for gloating? I always thought that you could only gloat if the resolution of the actual wording of the conflict would break the CC. Is my perception flawed?

If narration of a conflict, which does not breach the CC, can be used to breach the CC and then gloated on then surely that would mean that any Goal could be gloatable if the player decides to narrate a CC breach during the resolution and that opens up the gloating mechanic for extreme abuse, which I don't think the mechanic was either designed or intended for.

[Hans]

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.

OK, this statement is amorphous, how can a goal get someone "unintentionally" killed?

I just noticed this.  I too am completely confused by unintentionally in this context.  Havok might "unintentionally" get someone killed, but Havok's player (or anyone else) must INTENTIONALLY describe the killing, so there is not such thing as an unintended death in Capes. 

Surely either the goal states that someone gets killed or it doesn't?

"Goal: The Malignite uncovered by Havok kills a hero" or "Goal: Havok uncovers the Malignite"

Did your goal include someone getting killed?

In my perception of Gloating, the first goal is gloatable as "resolving it will breach the Comics Code", but as the second goal is resolvable without breaking the CC how can that be eligible for gloating? I always thought that you could only gloat if the resolution of the actual wording of the conflict would break the CC. Is my perception flawed?

If narration of a conflict, which does not breach the CC, can be used to breach the CC and then gloated on then surely that would mean that any Goal could be gloatable if the player decides to narrate a CC breach during the resolution and that opens up the gloating mechanic for extreme abuse, which I don't think the mechanic was either designed or intended for.

I agree completely with Tuxboy.  In our own Capes game, we are generally pretty intentional when writing conflicts to make it clear which ones are gloatable and which ones aren't.  As an example..."Event: The Tidal Wave Hits".  In and of itself, its not really clear whether this is gloatable.  Is the tidal wave a 7 foot high swell or a 500 foot hight civilization killer?  Is it targeted at uninhabited Antarctica (where it could only be gloated on if your code includes "Penguins cannot be killed") or at Southern California?  The only way you know is from context, and because someone says "this is gloatable when it is played."

[Tuxboy]

As an example..."Event: The Tidal Wave Hits".  In and of itself, its not really clear whether this is gloatable.

Which sparks another point, is an Event gloatable? As Events are definites, they will happen, can they be phrased in a way that would break the CC? I'm not sure they could and not get vetoed straight out the box.

Lets consider "Goal: The Tidal Wave hits"

Is the tidal wave a 7 foot high swell or a 500 foot hight civilization killer?  Is it targeted at uninhabited Antarctica (where it could only be gloated on if your code includes "Penguins cannot be killed") or at Southern California?

As you said i think this depends on the context of your CC, but as the wording stands I would lean toward it being ungloatable given a standard CC as it could be narrated with no loss of life but lots of major property damage.

I think I'll stick with the concept of the wording of the goal actually having to breach the CC to make it gloatable. It should stop any possible misunderstandings and arguments.

"Penguins cannot be killed"

Not in my game! As the victim of an unprovoked penguin attack as a child I consider the black & white b@stards fair game (no seriously I was) *L*

[Eric Sedlacek]

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.

This is completely true...and utterly fails to make your point.

Gloating is, in fact, the best tactic when you can do it.  It is a nice influx of story tokens.  It is always a winner.  The thing is, the endless gloat cycle requires more than everybody choosing to gloat.  It requires that everybody lets all the other players gloat.  Stopping the gloating cycle is quite easy because the dice on that side reset to ones every page.  If anyone chooses to stop it, it will likely stop.

Letting other players gloat is always a bad move.  There is no way I can conceive for there to be a possible net gain for you in doing so. 

The argument you keep making is "gloating is good".  You get no argument from me there, but the argument you need to make to support your position is that letting other people gloat will benefit you in the long run more than you benefit them.  I don't think a cogent argument for that position exists.

Which do you think is a superior result for me?
1.  I get 100 story tokens.  All other players get 100 story tokens.
2.  I get 1 story token.  Everyone else gets nothing.

I'll pick option two every single time.  All the first option means is that the next time I really want to win something and another player does too, we each burn through 100 story tokens.  Option two means that the next time I really want to win something and another players does too, I have a one token advantage I would not otherwise have had.  100 story tokens means nothing in and of itself.  If I have a single story token more than you have, that is power I have over you.

[TonyLB]

Stopping the gloating cycle is quite easy because the dice on that side reset to ones every page.  If anyone chooses to stop it, it will likely stop.

I believe Sindyr is proposing a situation where both sides are being gloated alternately.

Like, you've got "Goal:  Kill Comet Boy dead, dead, dead!" at Red 5, Blue 4 ... the person resolving the Red side gloats.  Now it's Red 1, Blue 4.  Next turn it rolls up to Red 2, Blue 6 ... and the blue side gloats.  Now it's Red 2, Blue 1.  And so on, and so forth.

Still a stupid plan, for many reasons, but not the actual stupid plan you were rebuffing.  Make sense?

[Eric Sedlacek]

I believe Sindyr is proposing a situation where both sides are being gloated alternately.
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Still a stupid plan, for many reasons, but not the actual stupid plan you were rebuffing.  Make sense?

Maybe it's not the exact same plan, but it is still a cycle which can be broken with relative ease by any involved party, so it is still gloating by collusion.  This means that aside from some small mechanical details, it is essentially the same thing.  The silliness is the belief that I am somehow winning by keeping the endless fountain of story tokens flowing over everyone...or at any rate a subset of everyone that includes me but it not only me.  There is always at least one person participating in the collusion who is not benefitting (and therefore making poor decisions) and it is highly likely that no one is.

[Sindyr]

I don't understand why I am not being understood - I must not be being clear at all.  Let me try again.

The entire chain of reasoning is based on one essential assumption.  Tony has remarked that the assumption is incorrect.  If the assumption *is* incorrect, then the rest of the reasoning does not follow.  However, given the assumption, the conclusion is unavoidable.

Assumption:  In general, getting story tokens is more desirable than getting Inspirations.

Given the above assumption:
1) At the end of a page, if a gloatable conflict has been claimed and the claiming party is in control, then the player has but two choices:
-Resolve the conflict, collect Inspiration(s)
-Gloat the conflict, collect the Story Token(s), reset his dice to 1's

In general, given the above assumption, the second choice is better.

This means that *anytime* a player could choose to resolve a gloatable conflict, their best play would be to Gloat.  If all anyone does is gloat, then the conflict will never be resolved until things external to the Capes rules are brought to bear, such as weariness, social pressure, or some other factor that somehow makes a player choose Resolution over Gloating even though Gloating pays better.

Since their is no restriction on who may Gloat - *any* player is allowed to gloat equally on a gloatbale goal - then there is no escape from this loop without the aforementioned external to Capes influence.

What this means is that unless one acts to one's own detriment, gloatable conflicts will never be resolved.  But if all the players at the table always act in ways that are tactically and strategically advantageous for them, then in general Gloatable conflicts can't ever be resolved - because the resolver sacrifices his chance to get a story token while all that came before him do not - therefor he is at a disadvantage - therefor if made aware of this, he too would choose to Gloat rather than resolve.

Now if story tokens are not better than Inspriations in general, then all of the above is moot and not accurate.

But if any of you think that story tokens indeed are better than Inspriations, than the above chain of logic is flawless.

I cannot tell you if I believe that Insps are equal to story token's without a lot more play under my belt.  But I can tell you, without hesitation, that if story token's are (in general) better than Insps then the Capes rules on Gloating break Capes.

And that is all I was pointing out.

[drnuncheon]

Assumption:  In general, getting story tokens is more desirable than getting Inspirations.

You make the secondary assumption that everyone will always make the "best" choice while playing.  That's fine - but when you put that together with your first assumption above, you see that you won't get into an "endless gloat" situation, because at some point there will be a time when gloating is not more desirable than getting Inspirations.

So, when would it be more desirable to stop the endless chain of gloating?  By shutting off the Gloat Machine, you accomplish the following things:
1) You get rid of any debt you have staked on the conflict.  This might be important if your strategy doesn't involve being Overdrawn.
2) You get inspirations.
3) You stop the other people from continually getting story tokens and you double their debt.  This in turn has these effects:
     a) They might become Overdrawn, and thus less able to oppose you on other conflicts in this scene.  (If the character isn't seen as "disposable" this could last into later scenes as well.)
     b) They are a great big chunk of debt to mine for even more Story Tokens.
     c) Your Story Tokens are worth more.  (Just like any other economy, inflation can exist with Story Tokens.  Someone who has 10 story tokens when everyone else has 3 is going to be able to dominate.  Someone who has 100 when everybody has 100 is only going to be on equal ground.)

And all this without even contradicting your assumption above.  Now, consider this: for some uses, Inspirations are better than Story Tokens.  A Story Token will get you an extra action, sure - but using an Inspiration effectively gives you an extra action where you know the outcome of the die roll already, and it doesn't give you debt or cause you to check off an ability.

Read over the strategy section again, because Tony puts in some great stuff with Inspirations in there.

J

[Matthew Glover]

The entire chain of reasoning is based on one essential assumption.  Tony has remarked that the assumption is incorrect.  If the assumption *is* incorrect, then the rest of the reasoning does not follow.  However, given the assumption, the conclusion is unavoidable.

Assumption:  In general, getting story tokens is more desirable than getting Inspirations.

Whether or not that assumption is correct is irrelevant.  Your problem is with your strategy.  You can't say "A is better than B, so players should always do A."  The issue is not "getting Tokens" versus "getting Inspirations."   That is a misunderstanding of the situation as well as an oversimplification of the issues at hand. 

In this Gloatfest, when you choose to Gloat and get tokens you allow the other players to do the same thing.   When you choose to resolve it and take the inspirations, you prevent other players from farming Tokens.  Your choice is "get Tokens and allow them all to get Tokens too" which is horrible, terrible, extra super bad strategy (for reasons other people have mentioned but which can be reiterated for clarification if necessary), or "prevent everybody else from getting all those Tokens and while you're at it, get some Inspirations" which is good strategy. 

This is completely separate from the other reasons that the Gloatfest is bad.  If the conflict never resolves, you never get to move on.  You're stuck doing the same crap on this same conflict all night long.  If I were playing with you and this came up, I would put an end to this Gloatfest just to get the damn thing off the table.  Never mind that it's strategically terrible to let this continue, it's actively preventing me from moving on with the story.

[Sindyr]

In this Gloatfest, when you choose to Gloat and get tokens you allow the other players to do the same thing.   When you choose to resolve it and take the inspirations, you prevent other players from farming Tokens.  Your choice is "get Tokens and allow them all to get Tokens too" which is horrible, terrible, extra super bad strategy (for reasons other people have mentioned but which can be reiterated for clarification if necessary), or "prevent everybody else from getting all those Tokens and while you're at it, get some Inspirations" which is good strategy. 

And if they have already gloated that conflict?  That means they get the story token but because you reolved it, you don't.  IF tokens > inspirations, then you lose by resolving the conflict. On the other hand, if preventing other people from gloating was super important, extra good tactic, than why would anyone gloat in the first place?

Game theory says that is gloating is worth doing once, it very well may be worth doing multiple times.  And if it's not worth doing multiple times, it very well may not be worth doing once.  The two facts are not independant.

Therefor if either gloating is worthwhile and people will do it endlessly, and the gloating rule is therefor broken, or gloating is not worthwhile and people will not do it, and the gloating rule is useless and should be removed. (IF tokens > Insps)

This is completely separate from the other reasons that the Gloatfest is bad.  If the conflict never resolves, you never get to move on.  You're stuck doing the same crap on this same conflict all night long.  If I were playing with you and this came up, I would put an end to this Gloatfest just to get the damn thing off the table.  Never mind that it's strategically terrible to let this continue, it's actively preventing me from moving on with the story.

So the rule is even more broken.  IF tokens > Insps, and if I know you will want to resolve a conflict rather than gloat because even though the Insp is worth less than the token (accorinf to our IF above) you are willing to take it to get the bloody thing off the table.

In other words, I can count on you to not gloat the conflicts while I gloat them as long as I can.

So, it's broken. (IF tokens > Insps)