Retcon: Threat or Menace?

[TonyLB]

Well, I think there is, in fact, a distinction between:

• Telling an illogical and inconsistent story, and...
• Abandoning logic in your actual life

But it certainly is a hoot watching Sindyr rail about it.  I'm sort of surprised that he limited his complaints to rules I could break at the game table.  Surely if I'm to have abandoned logic and reason entirely we could be more inventive than that.  In the absence of logic and rules, what's to stop me from murdering and eating my fellow players?  Indeed, what hideous crimes couldn't I commit with a mind so warped?

Heh.  I'm a super-villain!  Wheee!

[R. Jason Boss]

I've read an awful lot of Sindyr posts by this point, learning about Capes through reading these forums.  I've never felt moved to post before since folks who know the game far better than I are more than willing to do so.  In this case, however, why not?

Sindyr, you can always one-up escalation.  If the most recent escalation is, "Everything in existence is destroyed," then you just have to go outside of existence.  "From beyond the walls of existence, where the cold wind does not blow but is no less cold, a mischievous entity creates a copy of the heroes in a bubble of non-time, curious as to how they would have reacted had they survived.  Just how resourceful are these little creatures of mere existence?"

Or wrap up the conflicts from the annihilation scene and then turn to a new one, with characters like "Entropy," "Spontaneous Generation," "Stagnation" in conflict to see what might become of the newly empty universe.  Heck, if I can come up with these two vague ideas off the top of my head, both of which accept possible meanings of the annihilation Goal, there have to be tons more.

I was inspired by the "oldest game" from Sandman (#4 I think) where Dream and the demon Choronzon do a sort of shapeshifting contest that escalates from things like wolves and hunters to "Anti-life" and "Hope."  

Jason
...and Tony, remind me to never fail to bring snacks to a Capes table if I make it to a con sometime to play with you.  ::grins::

[TonyLB]

...and Tony, remind me to never fail to bring snacks to a Capes table if I make it to a con sometime to play with you.  ::grins::

But as long as you, yourself are attending ... oh, you mean other snacks.  Yeah.  That's a good idea.

[Sindyr]

Well, I think there is, in fact, a distinction between:

• Telling an illogical and inconsistent story, and...
• Abandoning logic in your actual life

But it certainly is a hoot watching Sindyr rail about it.  I'm sort of surprised that he limited his complaints to rules I could break at the game table.  Surely if I'm to have abandoned logic and reason entirely we could be more inventive than that.  In the absence of logic and rules, what's to stop me from murdering and eating my fellow players?  Indeed, what hideous crimes couldn't I commit with a mind so warped?

Heh.  I'm a super-villain!  Wheee!

Sorry, I thought we were having a serious discussion.  Will endeavor not to take you further replies on this thread seriously.

[Sindyr]

Sindyr, you can always one-up escalation.  If the most recent escalation is, "Everything in existence is destroyed," then you just have to go outside of existence.  "From beyond the walls of existence, where the cold wind does not blow but is no less cold, a mischievous entity creates a copy of the heroes in a bubble of non-time, curious as to how they would have reacted had they survived.  Just how resourceful are these little creatures of mere existence?"

If I as a player outside of the narration creates a goal that specifically and explicitly includes eveything inside of naraation, then what you said is impossible without either retconning my achievement or my goal.

Remember, that "existence was destroyed" was not put out there as a character's perception, it was put out there as a player's will, fairly won.

After which no game is possible.  Unless you start anew, or simply ignore what you don't like, the way Tony is doing.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Sindyr, you're tripping up on a fundamental misunderstanding of the rules of Capes -- which is understandable, actually, because you're assuming it works like most RPGs, in which the rules pretty explicitly say, "these rules are here to help you depict a realistic and logical world, but there's lots of room for judgment calls, and you should do what makes the most sense." Hence you get games that tell you, don't bother rolling for survival if a (normal human) character falls into a volcano, because it's impossible, and don't bother rolling to see if you hit a bound and helpless target, it's automatic; and even rules like HeroQuest's "maximum game fun" rule that say "if necessary, ignore all other rules." In these games, indeed, making rational arguments to convince the other players that such-and-such a course of action would work, or that such-and-such event would logically have certain consequences, is a big part of the game -- often, indeed, far more important than the actual die-rolling by the rules.

Capes is not like that. In Capes, while everyone has some of the traditional GM powers, no one has all of them: Specifically, no one can say "hey, the rules produce a nonsensical result in this situation, let's not follow them." You cannot appeal to the logic (or realism, or continuity, or whatever) of the imagined events to override the mechanical rules of the game.

Thus if someone successfully resolves a conflict to destroy all of reality, that means... absolutely nothing in game-mechanical terms. Just as I can win the conflict "kill Sindyr's character!" without ever impeding in any way your ability to use that character's abilities and debt later in the same scene or in subsequent scenes. We figure out our Inspirations, Story Tokens, and vanished or doubled-back debt, and that's it. Nobody can subsequently appeal later on to the results of a past Conflict and say "but that thing happened that way! You can't do that thing now!"

Remember, the in-game events are fictional. They are imaginary. We can imagine whatever we'd like. In some games, we agree that we want a logical, internally consistent world and are willing to be swayed by argument. The rules of Capes do not require us to make such an agreement; we only have to agree to follow the written rules. You cannot make an argument about what "should" happen in the imaginary world that has any binding force over what the real people playing are allowed to say and do in accordance with the real written words of the rules.

If you want to make the consequences of a past conflict count, you can spend Inspirations from it, or, less obviously, Story Tokens and Debt earned during it, and narrate accordingly -- and then hope that the dice are on your side about what the significance of the past event really is. Maybe you're right: Maybe destroying all of reality does mean the heroes don't exist. Maybe you're wrong. You've got to fight to prove it.



Footnote: Also, there are Indie games where the results of conflicts explicitly change what's permitted for future narration -- e.g. Vincent Baker's Afraid, currently in playtest, requires a conflict to change whether a given character is "lost," "unprepared," "in trouble," or "alone." Again, not in Capes.

[Sindyr]

What you have said *is* my point.

You cannot simultaneously keep the meaningfulness of winning cinflicts AND what you describe.  They are contradictory.

If I fight for and win a Conflict that I explicitly crafted and defined to destroy eveything that could ever exist in the narrative world, you either have to ignore the conflict, retconning it; or you have to start a new game.  You cannot continue playing AND claim you are not retconning my narration.

That's my point.  One or the other.

My *second* point is if you choose option B, and retcon the victory, then you have no rational ground to object if and when I retcon anything you do.

The fundamental truth of the matter is nothing more than sheer popularity, which it what makes the Social Contract so important for Capes, more so than other games.  If I destroy everything, and you retcon it back, the players will be supportive of that and will not discipline you for it.  On the other hand, if you win a conflict wherein your character defeats mine (say I am playing a non PLC) and I were to immediately retcon it, there would be cries of "Foul!", my retconning would be reversed by the group, and I may be punished.

Both retcons were equally valid, or equally invalid.  It's just that one is popular and the other is unpopular.

In this way Capes is a canny clever game.  By relying on the Social Contract in this way, Capes allows popular retconning while preventing unpopular retconning.  By relying on the Social Contract so thouroughly, Capes becomes in many ways only superficially about the resources, tokens, and rules, and more about who can be most popular.  It's a popularity contest at the social level, of who can get away with what.

There's nothing wrong with that intrinsically, although is does give me pause - the latest popularity contest elected Bush, an unmitigated disaster in every way.

Food for thought.

[Sydney Freedberg]

No.

1) "The meaningfulness of winning conflicts" is in the game-mechanical resources it conveys and, more important, in your power that moment to shape the story -- in a way that is underlined and reinforced by the rules in a way that free narration is not. In some other games, the meaning of a conflict would also extend to permanently defining some feature of the imagined world, such that it would prohibit certain kinds of future events: This is not the case in Capes, and it is not a necessary feature for conflicts to have meaning.

2) Capes is not a "popularity contest" among individuals: It's a contest among ideas to see which is more popular among the people involved, incentivized and structured by the Story Tokens-Debt-Inspirations economy.

3) My "rational ground" for objecting to some free narrations (including "retcons") and not to others is not based (as in traditional RPGs) on any arguments about what would or would not "really happen" in the fictional world: It is based on whether or not I like the resulting story. That's a subjective criterion, not an objective one -- but "objective" arguments about imaginary events are usually subjective preferences masked in tenuous logic, anyway.

I have in fact seen at least one group of people where two strong personalities dominated as we sat around talking before play began, but once we started a game of Capes, the turn structure, debt economy, and other formalized systems for input and challenge to other's input allowed everyone to participate in a much more equal way. That is in fact the opposite of the "most popular person gets away with whatever s/he can" dynamic that you appear to be worrying about.

By contrast, a lot of traditional RPGs boil down to "whoever can talk over everyone else and get the GM's attention gets his/her way because whatever the GM says goes," or "whoever can keep arguing and arguing and arguing and arguing and refusing to concede the point and arguing and arguing and refusing to admit that the other side has made a better case and arguing and arguing eventually gets his or her way because everyone else will give in to let play continue."

The first of these behaviors is simply impossible in Capes: if you talk over everyone else, they can't take their turns, and play halts, so nothing happens, including what you wanted to impose.

The second is difficult to do, and when it is possible, it is self-defeating. As long as a Conflict is underway, the other players can simply refuse to listen to your argument and point to the dice and debt on the table: You cannot say "because of this conflict that happened before, this character can or cannot do this" in Capes any more than you can say "because of this and that, this particular pawn can move three squares a turn" in chess, or "in this case, because of special circumstances, your Straight Flush does not beat my unsuited King, Jack, Four, and Ace" in poker. Outside of a conflict, in free narration, you can badger people into doing things your way -- as long as they don't resort to a conflict in response -- but at the price of losing their interest in what you do next, which means losing Story Tokens.

[Sindyr]

No.

1) "The meaningfulness of winning conflicts" is in the game-mechanical resources it conveys and, more important, in your power that moment to shape the story -- in a way that is underlined and reinforced by the rules in a way that free narration is not. In some other games, the meaning of a conflict would also extend to permanently defining some feature of the imagined world, such that it would prohibit certain kinds of future events: This is not the case in Capes, and it is not a necessary feature for conflicts to have meaning.

This is incorrect.  At least in one way: If winning a conflict is to have meaning, it must create at least in the moment a truth.  The truth in the moment MUST extend forward OR if it doesn't then you have a game that permits retconning.

I win "Captain defeats Nekro in combat" either in this the Captain has performed a combat defeat of necro or he hasn't.  If I win and narrate that he has, for any later narration to change that is a retcon and valid in capes.  Most social contracts permit only popular retcons.

Note: I am not saying that narrating the Captain's defeat of Nekro results in a *state* change, I am saying it marks an *event* - and that event cannot be made to not have happened UNLESS you permit a retcon.

2) Capes is not a "popularity contest" among individuals: It's a contest among ideas to see which is more popular among the people involved, incentivized and structured by the Story Tokens-Debt-Inspirations economy.

Frequently the ideas that are popular comes from the people that are.  It's not a coincidence.  Two possibilities:
1) The mob/guru effect - if someone is popular, the mob follows, praising whatever they do to a point.
2) The fanbase effect - if someone keeps on generating popular ideas, they become popular for doing so.

1 and 2 are reverse of each other.  The problem is, both are natural human behaviours, and while I find #2 acceptable, I find #1 decidedly less so.

3) My "rational ground" for objecting to some free narrations (including "retcons") and not to others is not based (as in traditional RPGs) on any arguments about what would or would not "really happen" in the fictional world: It is based on whether or not I like the resulting story. That's a subjective criterion, not an objective one -- but "objective" arguments about imaginary events are usually subjective preferences masked in tenuous logic, anyway.

So you are saying flat out that depending on the circumstance, you would approve of some specific retcons.  So even if I *earn* my outcomes by winning conflicts, you may potentially approve of a retcon that negates that earned victory if its one you don't care for.  That is one of the unfortunate results of employing a social contract to the degree that Capes does - earn a victory only counts if erasing it isn't popular enough.  It's not enough to fight for and win your conflicts, you still have to pander to the players you defeated.  Or they will simply retcon away the result they could not defeat you with using the Capes rules.

[Valamir]

This is incorrect.  At least in one way: If winning a conflict is to have meaning, it must create at least in the moment a truth.  The truth in the moment MUST extend forward OR if it doesn't then you have a game that permits retconning.

I spent many long and tedious posts making exactly this argument.  This argument is pretty much the core of Universalis...a game that in many ways is very similar to Capes, but in this crucial way it is not.  All of Universalis is predicated on the idea that the "truth in the moment must extend forward to have meaning".  That's why Universalis play establishes Facts, and gives players a mechanical advantage when defending those Facts in the future.

But thing is, I've since come to realize, Capes doesn't work that way.  You've correctly recognized that Capes doesn't have a mechanic that establishes "truth extending forward".  Your mistake however (as mine was) is in assuming it needs one.

See Capes I've learned (and am eager to see this in play) operates on a different paradigm.  Its a simple, but compelling one and it doesn't require anything so fluffy as "social contract" to operate.  It operates on sheer unadulterated greed...perhaps the most fundamental of all human traits -- after lust anyway...and I'm not sure I'd want to play that game with Tony ;-)

In Capes you as a player are nothing without resources.  The only way to get these resources is to be given them (i.e. given the opportunity to earn them) from the other players.  If the other players simply starve you of resources you become impotent and are no longer a factor in play. 

Greed, ambition, and the quest for power then require you to go after resources.  Obtaining resources requires you to not alienate your fellow players.  That requirement effectively puts a curb on the sorts of behavior you're concerned about without needing a special rule or special attention be paid to the social contract.

I am greedy, I want power, to get power I need to have Sindyr feed me resources...therefor I can't walk all over Sindyr or else I won't get the resources I need to fulfill my greed.  So I'm motivated to not cross the line far enough or frequently enough to cause you to punish me...in game...using the game mechanics...not because I give a rip about your preferences or your feelings per se...but because I simply want to keep you engaged enough to use you to obtain resources and hense power.

Its not a game about being nice to each other.  Its a game about pushing as far and as hard as you can get away with...right up to the edge where you can't get away with it any more. 

Now you COULD change Capes INTO a game where being nice to each other is a requirement...but 1) it isn't necessary to do that to get Capes to work as a fully functional game, and 2) you will be losing alot of what makes Capes work to do so...at which point you might as well be playing something else.

Universalis for instance lets you draw lines and defend them.  In Universalis if it is important to you to portray your character as Brave...then your character is Brave, and not only can you Challenge anyone who makes him look like a coward, but you do so with a good deal of mechanical leverage backing you up.  Of course, even in Universalis, if others are, in spite of your advantage, willing to spend the resources to make that character a coward, they can do so...especially if they out number you or you squandered your own resources.

But I'll tell you what...that's not mean...that's not "bad"...that's not immoral.  That's democracy.  In a democracy you don't always get things your way...no matter how vitally important it is to you.  In Universalis if I can afford to make your character a coward and its important enough for me to do so, I can...that's part of the game.  Its not only not wrong for me to do it...its wrong for you to think that I shouldn't be able to.  Because that's putting what's important to you above what's important to me, which is not "courtesy" its just selfishly expecting others to meekly submit to your own preferences.

Capes uses exactly the same logic, but dispenses with the mechanical leverage for defending a fact.  Essentially that makes the game even more purely democratic.  Democracy is brutal...but it works.

[joshua neff]

Ralph is a very smart chap.

[Tuxboy]

I not sure I can believe I'm going to say this...

Although I don't agree with the vast majority of what Sindyr posts, for a variety of reasons, I  personally I feel that Sindyr has made a giant leap forward in his grasp of the Capes ethos with his acceptance that whatever happens to a PLC under his control doesn't actually have to affect his playing of that character.

Maybe this is the stepping stone to the playing of a standard character in the same care free manner. and maybe from that to the concept that Conflicts are not character destroying but character building no matter how the Conflict is phrased.

One small step for Man, a giant leap for Sindyrkind... ;)

[Sindyr]

This is incorrect.  At least in one way: If winning a conflict is to have meaning, it must create at least in the moment a truth.  The truth in the moment MUST extend forward OR if it doesn't then you have a game that permits retconning.

I spent many long and tedious posts making exactly this argument.  This argument is pretty much the core of Universalis...a game that in many ways is very similar to Capes, but in this crucial way it is not.  All of Universalis is predicated on the idea that the "truth in the moment must extend forward to have meaning".  That's why Universalis play establishes Facts, and gives players a mechanical advantage when defending those Facts in the future.

But thing is, I've since come to realize, Capes doesn't work that way.  You've correctly recognized that Capes doesn't have a mechanic that establishes "truth extending forward".  Your mistake however (as mine was) is in assuming it needs one.

Sorry, no.  Nothing you have said in this reply I feel contradicts the irrefutable logic:
The truth in the moment MUST extend forward OR if it doesn't then you have a game that permits retconning.

The reason it is irrefutable is this:
If I win a conflict in which spidey defeats doc ock, and then soon after that defeat is made to *have never happened*, that is a retcon.  If it does not happen, then the truth of spidey defeats doc ock stands.  There is no thrid option.

This is not to say that retconning is itself good or bad, just that Capes without the SC stepping in has no constraints on retconning.  Now Capes *with* the SC will prevent all the unpopular retcons.

The only issue then is it becomes a popularity contest - which is seemingly opposite the base idea of competing for resource because those resources can help you accomplish stuff against the will of others.

Why is Sindyr so terse and rude? Read the below topic with my apologies to find out:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=20593.0

[TonyLB]

The reason it is irrefutable is this:
If I win a conflict in which spidey defeats doc ock, and then soon after that defeat is made to *have never happened*, that is a retcon.  If it does not happen, then the truth of spidey defeats doc ock stands.  There is no thrid option.

Well ... does it matter whether the defeat has any consequences?

'cuz, yeah.  Of course it happened.  As people have pointed out, even if someone goes back and changes the past, it has still happened in the story.  You narrated it, it happened.  But if it Doc Ock goes into complete denial and says it wasn't a defeat ("It was a DRAW!  A DRAW I TELL YOU!") and he doesn't go to prison, and the Daily Bugle runs a story about Doc Ock's defeat of Spiderman (because, seriously, they would) ... it still happened, but it hasn't had any consequences.

If I kill someone, and then they come back to life, that doesn't mean they weren't killed.  I totally killed them.  It just didn't stick.

If I destroy the timestream for ever and ever, and then the next scene is in our headquarters ... well, the timestream was still destroyed.  That happened.  It just didn't have any consequences.

You cool with that?

[Sindyr]

The reason it is irrefutable is this:
If I win a conflict in which spidey defeats doc ock, and then soon after that defeat is made to *have never happened*, that is a retcon.  If it does not happen, then the truth of spidey defeats doc ock stands.  There is no thrid option.

Well ... does it matter whether the defeat has any consequences?

'cuz, yeah.  Of course it happened.  As people have pointed out, even if someone goes back and changes the past, it has still happened in the story.  You narrated it, it happened.  But if it Doc Ock goes into complete denial and says it wasn't a defeat ("It was a DRAW!  A DRAW I TELL YOU!") and he doesn't go to prison, and the Daily Bugle runs a story about Doc Ock's defeat of Spiderman (because, seriously, they would) ... it still happened, but it hasn't had any consequences.

If I kill someone, and then they come back to life, that doesn't mean they weren't killed.  I totally killed them.  It just didn't stick.

If I destroy the timestream for ever and ever, and then the next scene is in our headquarters ... well, the timestream was still destroyed.  That happened.  It just didn't have any consequences.

You cool with that?

I am cool with *most* of that.

All I want is to be able to say to a player "this happened" and for him not to be able "no, it didn't"

So all but the last element I would be cool with.

However, if the character and their headquarters are OUTSIDE the timestream, or if the defintion of timestream was not explicitly all-inclusive, than I could also be OK with that.

BUT...

If the creator of the conflict explcitly incuded in what was destroyed what you are attempting to narrate (base, heroes, etc) that you either have to not use them or perform a retcon, rendering the previous conflict and time and energy spent to win it, meaningless.