Awarding tokens: another possible flaw in Capes?

[Sindyr]

Please don't all start with the hating, but I may have discovered another possible flaw in Capes, which may also be fixed in post via the Social Contract.

When you win a conflict, you get to award your debt to all the players that opposed you, in any way you see fit, right?

*Note:  Can you award tokens to a player that opposed you but is currently aligned with your side of the conflict?  Or is it more accurate to say you can divide your tokens only amongst those who are currenly aligned with a losing side?

In any case, the Capes rules say that a minimum on one token must go to the author of the Conflict.

Let's say that Bob throws down a conflict that pisses me off - and I engage.  Bob stakes 3 or 4 debt making me work for the victory I eventually am able to squeak out. Two other player, try to help Bob - Dan used one action to roll down one of my dice, and Gary did the same. Bob committed around 17 actions against me, he was really my main opponent.  Still, I won - perhaps a fifth player, Alice, stakes one of her debt to help me out.

*Note: As the resolver of the conflict, do I decide who gets Alice's token, or as the staker does she?

Now I staked 4 debt of my own, which I now have to distribute.  I must give one to Bob, but if he pissed me off enough, why wouldn't I give my other tokens to Dan and Gary?  As I understand it, Dan and Gary are valid recipients, even if they each represented a tenth of the work that Bob did.  Perhaps they say I was pissed at Bob, and wanted to make sure that I could give tokens to them., in case that would be profitable.

So even though Bob provided 9/10's of the opposition, even though he stake his own debt which he is now getting back double, for his trouble he gets 1 measly token because even though I engaged in the conflict, I was mad about it. 

As far as I can see, this is VALID Capes play - is that correct, and is that acceptable within the Social Contract?

Of course, it may not even be a flaw, but a strength - If you piss someone off with your conflict, don't expect to get more than 1 token in return if anyone else has aided you.

Is it valid if Bob does piss me off for me to *ask* and recruit another player to engage once on Bob's side in order to not have to give Bob more than one?

For example, at the beginning of the game, one could make a table announcement:
"Just so you guys know, if you lay down a conflict that I feel is abusive, coercive, or innapropriate, I am gonna ask for it to be rewritten or retracted.  If you play it anyways, so be it.  All I want you to know is that if I win that conflict I will be awarding the bulk of my resources to the player on the opposing side that *least* opposed me - so if you see me thinking that someone is being an asshat to me, this could be a chance for you to get some easy tokens!  Just try to roll down one of my dice, and don't accept any result.  Then when payout time comes you rake in the tokens and they guy who  felt was an asshat gets one"

I this valid Capes play.  Does it break the Social Contract?

If the answer to the first is Yes and the second is No, then this may be indeed a mechanism to prevent asshatery.

[joshua neff]

Sindyr, why do all of your examples and your worries that Capes rules may be "broken" involve you playing with people who are actively trying to hurt you or otherwise make your gaming experience unpleasant? Has this actually happened to you each and everytime you play Capes? Or is this just a general fear that you'll wind up playing with people who are trying to make your gaming experience suck and are unsympathetic to your feelings?

[Vaxalon]

The moral of this story: Don't play Capes with people who suck.

[joshua neff]

The moral of this story: Don't play Capes with people who suck.

Or any other games, for that matter.

[Doyce]

Damn, dude... find other people to play with, seriously.

Or... what Josh said, because... wow.  Capes may be the wrong venue through which to air personal grievances.

[Andrew Cooper]

Joshua's questions are pertinant and you really should consider them carefully.

However, I'm going to address your stated questions while you do that.

Giving out ST to the losers of a Conflict is a reward mechanic and as such is designed to allow players to reward the type of play that they like.  People will notice who gets the ST and for what and they will tend to behave in ways that will garner them resources.  However, your tactic for dealing with Conflicts you don't like is flawed.  If Player A drops a Conflict that pisses you off (in a not good way) then ignore it.  Don't oppose it.  Don't dump any resources into it at all.  Let it sit there and die.  If you spend 4 Debt fighting tooth and nail to win the Conflict, the other players are going to see that and say, "Hey!  Those kinds of Conflicts are gold mines.  Let's make some more!"

Negative reinforcement in Capes doesn't come from opposition.  It comes from being ignored.
Positive reinforcement in Capes comes in the form of opposition.

So, if you don't want certain types of Conflict, ignore them.

[Sindyr]

Sindyr, why do all of your examples and your worries that Capes rules may be "broken" involve you playing with people who are actively trying to hurt you or otherwise make your gaming experience unpleasant? Has this actually happened to you each and everytime you play Capes? Or is this just a general fear that you'll wind up playing with people who are trying to make your gaming experience suck and are unsympathetic to your feelings?

Everyone is drawing what may be the "obvious" conclusion, but one which is still wholly incorrect.

One way in which to analyze a system is how it performs at extremes.  In other words, it is not terribly interesting how a system performs in ideal conditions - it is much more interesting how a system perfoms in less than ideal conditions in which it may break.

You learn much more about a system by considering it in extreme cases than you do otherwise.

The other factor is that Capes by it nature tends to encourage play that, without the Social Contract stepping in, becomes a possible area for broken, or at least, "interesting" play.

For example, if a player at the table know I have six cats, and that I love the little buggers, apart from SC consdieration, he would potentially find it rewarding to come up with a conflict that threatens to off a cat in a gruesome and painful way, to motivate me to engage.

I have to kinds of avenues open to me for dealing with this: Social and Game.
Social avenues are asking this guy not to play it, trying to bring the peer pressure of the group on him for being such an asshat.

But I am not a psychologist, and the other avenue is more interesting to me, and quite worthy of exploration.

So using the game system itself to respond, I came up with the strategy of minimum reward for the asshat.

Is this a valid strategy within Capes?  Or to put another way, is it valid play to give your tokens to the player you like more (say an attractive female) who also opposed you a little, but not nearly as much as the conflict creator did?

What specifically are the constraints of who you can award tokens to? Both according to the Capes system and in practice, once the Social Contract has had its say.

Plus, if anyone can answer the other questions I asked above, that would be helpful.

[Sindyr]

Joshua's questions are pertinant and you really should consider them carefully.

Answered above.

Negative reinforcement in Capes doesn't come from opposition.  It comes from being ignored.
Positive reinforcement in Capes comes in the form of opposition.

So, if you don't want certain types of Conflict, ignore them.

I understand that, and embrace it.  I still want to know if the things I am asking here are valid and not unacceptable SC wise.

[Andrew Cooper]

I understand that, and embrace it.  I still want to know if the things I am asking here are valid and not unacceptable SC wise.

Um... that's impossible to answer.  Every game's SC is different.  What would break one game's SC would be perfectly allowable in another.  Only the players at your table can answer that question for your game.

I can answer your technical questions though.

1.)  You can award Story Tokens to anyone who opposed you in the Conflict, regardless of their current alignment.
2.)  Alice gets to decide where her staked Debt goes as a Story Token.

[joshua neff]

One way in which to analyze a system is how it performs at extremes.  In other words, it is not terribly interesting how a system performs in ideal conditions - it is much more interesting how a system perfoms in less than ideal conditions in which it may break.

You learn much more about a system by considering it in extreme cases than you do otherwise.

Then every game is broken. Every one.

Let's say my wife and I are playing D&D with a female DM. The DM knows that my wife can get pretty jealous, so she creates a sexy NPC and plays that character flirting with my PC. The DM then has the sexy NPC attack my wife's PC, armed with magic items that my wife's PC can possibly counter. The scene ends with my wife's PC dead and the sexy NPC getting it on with my PC. D&D has no rules for countering this situation. There are certainly no rules for how players can stop a DM from doing such things. It all boils down to social contract, and if the social contract is fucked (for example, you don't trust your fellow players and assume that everytime they challenge you, it's an attempt to emotionally harm you), no games rules, in any game, will help.

For example, if a player at the table know I have six cats, and that I love the little buggers, apart from SC consdieration, he would potentially find it rewarding to come up with a conflict that threatens to off a cat in a gruesome and painful way, to motivate me to engage.

Has this actually happened to you? If so, why would you play with these people again? If it hasn't...then who cares? You can come up with a zillion hypotheticals, but they're meaningless, because all they reveal is your own psychology, not any weakness in the rules of Capes.

[Hans]

*Note:  Can you award tokens to a player that opposed you but is currently aligned with your side of the conflict?  Or is it more accurate to say you can divide your tokens only amongst those who are currenly aligned with a losing side?

*Note: As the resolver of the conflict, do I decide who gets Alice's token, or as the staker does she?

This issue has the longest entry of any question in the FAQ.  I reprint it here:

Who gets the story tokens when a conflict resolves with debt staked on the winning side?

The basic rule is as follows:

If the player who created the conflict is not allied to the winning side, that player must get the "first" story token.
All other debt tokens are given to players allied with or claiming the any of the losing sides at the whim of the person who staked the debt. The general guideline on how these distributed has been stated by Tony as giving the most ST's to those "who provided the most effective opposition".
If there is no one allied with or claiming any of the losing sides, then the debt tokens simply dissappear, and no one gets story tokens.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14538.msg154333#msg154333
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17293.msg183053#msg183053
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18080.msg191249#msg191249
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18082.msg191275#msg191275
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19067.msg200102#msg200102
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19520.msg204844#msg204844
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19605.msg205565#msg205565
(it is not clear if more than one person staked debt on the winning side, if EACH staked player must give that player a ST, or if only one must do so, and if so, which one. Here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17293.msg183053#msg183053 it seems to indicate they get the "first" one, but since there are no clear rules regarding what order multiple debt stakers award story tokens, the question still seems in the air)
(Tony noted here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=14538.msg154333#msg154333 that sometime people on the winning side should get ST's, if they provided the most effective opposition, but then switched sides. Here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17293.msg183053#msg183053 he seems to say this is a house rule)
(NOTE, here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=17293.msg183053#msg183053 Tony momentarily states that if the player who created the conflict is completely unallied with the conflict, he or she must still get a story token. He then retracts this a bit further down. However, he then clearly states this is errata here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=18080.msg191253#msg191253. He then states something a bit different here http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19520.msg204844#msg204844. I'm not trying to make Tony look bad here, since this is the ONLY thing I have found that he has been somewhat self contradictory on. NOTE that since a claimant need not be allied to the winning side (see above) it seems that if you can get other people to do the work for you, you COULD both win a conflict AND give yourself story tokens. Please, someone correct this with a reference to the rules or threads.)

[Doyce]

I understand that, and embrace it.  I still want to know if the things I am asking here are valid and not unacceptable SC wise.

Whether or not a play is acceptable "SC-wise" depends entirely on the Social Contract of your group.  No one else other than someone taking part in *that* social contract could answer that question.

The play you describe would be unacceptable and somewhat pitiable behavior in my play group, but that's not relevant beyond my play group.

[Sindyr]

A very simple and useful answer, thanks. 

The only issues that remain are mostly the issues that have been here all along.

Such as if I throw down a conflict, work hard and gain double debt for making it interesting, if a third player who is a very popular guy briefly joins me side, then when I eventually lose the conflict to get the tokens, the popular guy may be awarded the bulk of the tokens, though I did the bulk of the work.

I am musing (not even considering, and definately not implementing, so PLEASE don't flip out) about a rule change saying that if debt is staked, the largest share (or maybe at least half) of the resource rewards must go to the person who staked the most debt.

What are your technical thoughts about this idea?

[Tuxboy]

Just give the Story Tokens to those who's play you liked...is that a difficult concept? Positive reinforcement and a narrative you like...win/win

[Doyce]

I keep seeing, in this and several other threads that Sindyr's started, a persistent angling to get someone to say something to justify the need for a GM at the table, like some kind of grade-school playground monitor.

No one's going to say that. 

There doesn't have to be a 'master player' in ANY game to whom responsibility to protect a player from getting picked on by another player falls; there have to be people, acting like human beings.  If you're in a group where a GM is required simply to keep the peace between the PLAYERS (not the characters), or to protect the 'weak sister' at the table... well, no game deals with that.