Conflicts are about what you *can't* do, not what you *can*.

[Sindyr]

In many ways Conflicts are not about what you CAN accomplish, but about what you CAN'T.

Consider:  You can narrate almost anything without constraint in the processes of a Capes game.  I can offhandedly bring the second coming of Jesus, have the aliens invade the earth, and turn all irish people accross the globe into magical leprechauns while helping to narrate a scene in which 3 guys play poker.

What a conflict *really* does is say what you *CAN'T* narrate (because of the "not yet" rule), at least until the conflict is won or lost.

Also amusing is the fact that, with standard Capes, if someone throws down a goal to prevent a narration of something, I fight to control that conflict and *lose*, as soon as that conflict comes off the table I can know pretty much do the original narration I had planned to.  An extreme example:

I begin to narrate Doc Ock beating up Spiderman.  Spidey's player play's the conflict Spiderman is beaten by Doc Ock, wins it, and narrates the opposite result - that is Doc Ock beating Spiderman.

I then, if the scene continue, simply narrate the Doc picking himself off the floor beating up Spiderman as I was before he played that conflict.

So maybe conflicts are nothing more than fighting over a resolution of one moment in time, and while the conflict exists, can prevent some narration.  But before it goes down and after it gets resolved any narrative result of the conflict can be narrated away easily and without limit - until someone plays another conflict and the cycle begins again.

The only time winning a conflict actually matters (perhaps) is in the moment of the narrated victory.  Because that victory can be freely narrated out of existance the moment that Conflict's resolution is over.

[Vaxalon]

Unless your narration is just so damn COOL that noone wants to invalidate it.

[Bret Gillan]

I disagree. Conflicts are about what you can do, but what they are doing is putting a hold on them - you can do this, but not until the Conflict is won. Basically they're turning what can be done into something that has to be fought over in order for it to be done.

One notion about Conflicts, though. Yes, they can be "narrated out of existence" after the Conflict is over in that Doc Ock can pick himself up and beat Spider-Man down, but nothing that was ever narrated can be un-narrated. If Doc Ock has never lost a fight to anyone ever, then that makes the outcome of the Conflict important because that fact is at stake, and once it's narrated it cannot be undone.

As someone in this forum said to me at one point, the key is to remember that you're not attacking characters, you're attacking ideas. If I want my character to be heroic and uncorruptible, then the sort of Conflicts you'd be laying down would be ones that would lead to my character doing corrupt things, and I will fight like hell over them.

So yes, I can be heroic and uncorruptible afterwards, but that doesn't change the fact that for a time, I wasn't.

[Vaxalon]

Bret, not so; you can un-narrate that too.

"Aha!  But that wasn't the REAL superman, that was one of his robots, gone rogue!"

[Bret Gillan]

There's ways to deal with that, too.

"Goal: Superman proves he wasn't actually controlling the robot," or somesuch. And if you were Superman, I would keep laying those Conflicts on the table for as long as you kept trying to narrate them away because the whole time I would be mining your Debt tokens.

[Bret Gillan]

Oh, and you're right. So maybe you can't make things stick to a character, but you can't narrate them out of the narrative. They still happened even if they're explained away like that. Doc Ock (or his robot clone) got beaten, and Superman (or his robot clone) was corrupted.

[Sindyr]

Unless your narration is just so damn COOL that noone wants to invalidate it.

Yes, ultimately the only way to make and keep achievements is at the social level - make it so thatthe other players do not want to counter it - either because they do not wish to raise the ire of the group or because they like it themselves.

I guess playing a Conflict is way to do 2 things simultaneously: Kepp the subject matter of the Conflict *possible*, but prevent it from actually happening until its (successful) resolution.

But my main point here is that if I want the martians to invade earth,no one can stop me from narrating that long term.  The only tool they have at their disposal are conflicts, and conflicts only have any effect during their play.  The cannot proscribe future narrations.

Let's say I don't want Spidey to be defeated by Doc Ock.  I narrate this.  Doc Ock's player throws down a conflict, wins and narrates exactly how Dock Ock beat Spidey.

I smile, and during my next turn, I simply narrate that, due to some unknown power, history is rewitten and that never happened.

Of course, then another conflict can be played to stop that.  But as long as I am willing to say after every conflict, "Okay, now forget all that, because.."

Socially this kind of play I imagine is unacceptable - but yet is it valid under Capes rules.  Which leads me to believe that Capes is fundamentally incomplete and will not and can not be functional (or at least cannot produce a coherent story with valid semantic content) without a layer of social constraints at a higher level to fill in the cracks.

It's (if I may make an extreme example) as if it wasn't against the rules to use handguns in football, yet mostly no one did because if they did no one would play with them.

Just an observation on how weak conflicts are, and how inherently value-less winning them is, without a strong social force to keep them in place.

[Bret Gillan]

Without a strong social force in play, all rules systems are weak. Like the D&D games with players who completely ignore the plot hooks, the rest of the party, and wander off to do their own thing. You're hammering Social Contract here, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the completeness or incompleteness of Capes's rules.

[Andrew Cooper]

Conflicts aren't essentially about what happens at all.  Conflicts are about what has meaning.  Sure, I can narrate all day long about Doc Ock beating Spiderman.  He trashes him again and again and again.  None of it means anything.  Once a Conflict is plopped down, it is going to mean something.  Maybe a little because nobody is really interested and only a small Inspiration is gained.  Maybe a lot because everyone gets involved and multiple Inspirations are gained, Story Tokens are handed out, and Debt is accumulated.

It's engaging the Conflict Resolution system that provides meaning for the narration.  That's why you have to put down what the Inspiration was gained for.  That's why you have to put Debt down on Drives.  Just narrating does get you any of this.  Sure the narration is valid without engaging the system but it is also meaningless.

[Sindyr]

It simply seems to me that any game without a single assigned authority (a GM) is going to require more rules to carefully avoid the kind of broken play I described, or in their absence, the Social Contract will have to pick up the slack.

Capes *could* have more rules added in order to fix this.  Instead, we do not add any rules and simply assign the Social Contract the task of making it all work.

To me, although I am not a "Forgie" and *still* do not fully understand GNS, I would say that this is a "System Does Matter" issue - sure, the Social Contract can patch any hole.  But the game designer's choice of whether or not to add or change rules or instead to depend on the Social Contract when the spectre of broken play rears its head is a significant one.  Neither choice is *wrong*, but they have very different results, and result in very different games.

I guess processing this out, I am realising more and more how dependant Capes is on the Social Contract to make things run smoothly, in the light of a potential additional ruleset that I admit could *never* eliminate the need for the social contract, yet could likely minimize Cape's reliance on it to a great degree.

It's all very interesting to me.  Most games that are not rpg's don't have this issue because their ruleset is Complete, that is, there is no play you can make that results in broken play.  Most rpg's avoid this area but assigning to the sole GM the authority to resolve all disputes.  However, in a rpg where everyone is equal, this is not possible.  There is no way to make such a game *absolutely* Complete (apart from saying, "OK, whose turn is it to be the arbiter").  The game is going to have a degree of Incompleteness in it, and the Social COntract will have to handle it.  But there are ways to make one game more Complete than another, to minimize the need to call upon the Social Contract.

It is interesting to see that Capes does not do this, that it embraces it's fundamental Incompleteness, and challenges the players themselves to find a way to make this work.  Especially given its sometimes competititive nature.

Fascinating.

[Sindyr]

It's engaging the Conflict Resolution system that provides meaning for the narration.  That's why you have to put down what the Inspiration was gained for.  That's why you have to put Debt down on Drives.  Just narrating does get you any of this.  Sure the narration is valid without engaging the system but it is also meaningless.

I understand (I think) and appreciate what you are saying, but I think you have one thing wrong.

Whether or not the narration that does nto engage the system is meaningful is not up to you alone.

Meaning, in this use, is in the eye of the beholder.  You may find it meaningless, and I see why.  But I, or some other player, may find it meaningful to them.  A hypothetical player may lose the conflict, and free narrate later its reversal, and find that emotional fulfilling because now, in his mind, the defeat either didn't happen or has been successfully negated.

You may laugh when he does this, and refuse to take him seriously.  His reversal of your victory may not matter at all to you, as you find it to be meaningless.

But to him, its very meaningful and vital, and thus, he pursues it.

Meaningfulness and meaninglessness can be very much in the eye of the beholder.

[Andrew Cooper]

I understand what you are saying, Sindyr.  I disagree though.  The mechanics are how we, as a group of players, assign meaning to the fiction.  It's what the rules are for.  Sure, you can get cool narration outside of the system but the way you've agreed to give that narration weight is by attaching it to the system.  And yes, you have agreed to that.  You agree to it by sitting down at the table and playing the game.  If you wanted all the free narration to carry the same weight as the narration that resulted from the system, then why use the system at all?  Why not play freeform? 

If you aren't using the system to assign weight and meaning to the resulting fiction, then why have the system at all.  It isn't to stop certain narration.  We've already established that you can't keep something from being narrated via the system.  It isn't to gain the ability to narrate something.  That's trival.  You can do almost at will with the system.  If the system is designed to do either of those things, then it isn't a very well designed system. 

[Sindyr]

I understand what you are saying, Sindyr.  I disagree though.  The mechanics are how we, as a group of players, assign meaning to the fiction.  It's what the rules are for.  Sure, you can get cool narration outside of the system but the way you've agreed to give that narration weight is by attaching it to the system.  And yes, you have agreed to that.  You agree to it by sitting down at the table and playing the game.  If you wanted all the free narration to carry the same weight as the narration that resulted from the system, then why use the system at all?  Why not play freeform? 

I think I again understand, but still respectfully disagree.  The mechanic do not and cannot tell us how to assign meaning to the fiction.  All the mechanics can do is try to govern the methods we use to produce it.

As to why not play freeform if you are going to use free narration for significant events, I guess I would say that people want something more than zero rules and 100% social contract - which is what freeform is.  If anything, perhaps you could be asking not why wouldn't someone like that play a more rules light game, but why wouldn't someone like that play a more rules heavy game, or at least a modded version of Capes.

Ultimately, all sitting down at a Capes table means, apart from the Social Contract stuff, is agreeing to use the rules of the Game and any house mods as the only governing factor over what we can do.  And my point is that leaves all the broken play I have spoken of wide open for use.

Capes seems heavily dependant on the Social Contract in order to avoid broken gaming.  There's nothing wrong with that.  I do find myself asking "What if" - what if there were some rule or mechanism that allowed for semi-permanence of effect - what if winning a conflict had qunatifiable meaning beyond the moment?

I have read some proposal that do just that, but it's also interesting to consider how Capes functions in the absence of those mods.

In fact, I might say that Capes, of all the roleplaying games I know, is the game that most heavily and throughly employs and depends on the Social Contract.  It appears to written to do just that.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

[Bret Gillan]

I'm not sure this can be proven one way or the other except, again, to do some Actual Play and maybe examine some differences between different rules systems, but I really don't see how Capes is any more or less relying on Social Contract than other games. Say we want to play a serious Burning Wheel game. If I'm having my character act like a slapstick dumbass, then that's stepping on the game. If we're playing a cooperative game and I tell everyone my PC is backstabbing another PC, then that's stepping on the game. What you're talking about is a mutual agreement amongst the table as to how things should be, and going against the mutual agreement - you cannot make that a rule. You can't make a rule against being a jerk, Sindyr, and attempts to do so are just trying to keep a bad gaming group together with spit and twine.

I believe all games depend on the Social Contract, none any more or less than others, and someone who's an asshat in Capes is either an asshat straight-up, or he's just not into the type of game Capes is. Though I should note in all of my play experience with Capes, including some that included some asshats, no one has ever done anything like you described.

[Andrew Cooper]

The mechanic do not and cannot tell us how to assign meaning to the fiction.  All the mechanics can do is try to govern the methods we use to produce it.

This is blantantly untrue.  This is practically all the mechanics of Capes does.

"Goal: Doc Ock beats Spiderman."  means that Spiderman is wracked with self-doubt regarding his duties to New York.  It means that because someone put the Debt they earned from the Conflict on the Duty Drive.  It means that Doc Ock is enfused with self-confidence (he unloaded Pride Debt) and that translates into pushing harder to achieve his goals as his world view is validated (he uses the Inspirations later in some other endeavor).

Someone narrates Doc Ock beating Spiderman. So?  Spiderman doesn't feel bad about it.  Doc Ock doesn't feel good.  It doesn't change any of the characters in the story.  It's meaningless beyond interesting story fluff.