I got the great pleasure of running Capes at TerpCon (thanks Josh!) out at U-MD last weekend. It was a hoot.

A fun aside wrote: Publishers: Do not let yourself get trapped into only showing your games to people who already understand indie games and the breakthroughs they've made. They will be impressed, but they can never be quite as wonderfully surprised as a neophyte. I saw jaws drop and stay dropped. People hung around afterwards and said pleasant things like "I never even knew roleplaying could be like this." And then I got to act all sage and worldly, and point them to the plethora of other systems that they should be looking at. These are people who have never even heard of Dogs in the Vineyard, or My Life with Master, and who think Sorceror is a White Wolf splat-book. Great ego-boost.

This sort of conflict feels so immediately right that I'm hugely surprised that I haven't encountered it as a tool in roleplaying games from the day I started playing. There are arguments that happen where nobody cares about what they're arguing about, they only care about being the one to win the argument. It's not about the subject matter, the subject matter is just an excuse.

Now I've seen people having these arguments... but the meat of the argument is always out-of-character. Like, they'll argue about whether their paladin gets protection against this or that, but what they're really arguing is whether the GM is letting them play the heroic character they were hoping to.

That's a cool thread, but after perusing it, I don't think it's about exactly what I'm talking about here (though I can certainly see why you were reminded).

What I'm talking about is this:

• The players aren't having an argument a'tall. They're both playing in the clear, cooperating and competing to have fun and raise caine.
• The characters are having an explicit argument that doesn't matter: trivial, unimportant, silly.
• The characters are having an implicit, unstated argument that matters quite a bit, and using the explicit argument as a mask to hide it from each other and themselves.
• The players know both levels of these arguments, and their interconnection, and are using them as tools.

You seem to be talking about making implicit conflict between players more explicit, yes? Or were you talking about something more relevant, and I didn't grok it?

Tony,

That's really interesting. I love the creativity that these sorts of negotiations make. I'm wondering whether you want to add a mechanical step to these negotiations, though, in order to make them run more smoothly.

Right now, Capes has a set-up where you state the conflicit and whether it is a Goal or an Event. But what about situations, like these, where no-one wants to claim the 'Goal fails' side? They all just want to claim the 'Goal suceeds' so they can explain how. In this case, it's not really a Goal, but actually an Event.

Would it be functionally simpler to have a step in which you poll the table about a given conflict: if no-one objects, then it is automatically an Event, otherwise it becomes a Goal?

I know this would change some coll things that Events and Goals do, but would it make it easier for people to think things through? Thoughts?

Additional play example of the mirror-image of the situation Tony described, from our Wednesday night game:

Tony's protagonist character, Zak the Naive Jungle Boy, is single-handedly trying to rescue his sister from the evil reptile-men. Eric (the third player) and I are piling on him with a lizard priest, hideously obese egg-guarding females, and an invention of my own I'm particularly proud of which can only be described as a "dragon/robot/hottie."

One of the several Conflicts at stake is, as I recall the wording, something like "Zak admits defeat."

And then I introduce my protagonist character, Colonel/Doctor Kettridge (played by Laurence Fishburne), who has been steadfastly paternal, and paternalistic, trying to keep Zak out of trouble. I narrate how he leaps out of a time portal 20 feet above the floor, dart gun in hand, and starts taking out bad guys right and left.

Tony thinks he's finally getting some help here.

I roll up the bad guy side of "Zak admits defeat."

Tony yelps, "What?!?" (Not an exact quote).

I say, "If I win this, Zak admits defeat because he couldn't have gotten out of this mess without Kettridge's help."

And the horrific slaughter continues. That scene ends after I use Kettridge's abilities to roll up the bad guy side of a conflict on "Capture Kettridge," narrating how he rushes back into the fray to rescue the already-captured Zak.

This is a particularly neat feature of Capes, which I suppose in technical terms is "facilitating Author stance," but which I personally think of as "allowing bank shots": often, aiming at one thing is in fact the best way to hit a completely different target.

Heya Tony,

I think it's me who isn't groking. My other thread was about the conflict being at player level, not character level. But this perspective advances that idea better, in my mind. Permit me a few questions to see if I'm anywhere close.

We got into the exact same situation when I played "Goal: Repress romantic feelings toward Smoke". We both claimed, and both of us wanted the feelings to be repressed. But, of course, both of us wanted it to be our character who did the repressing.

"You're rejecting me? No, no, no, no, no. No. You can't reject me, because I don't have any feelings for you. It's you who has the poorly hidden infatuation with me. I'm afraid I just have to reject you though. It would never work out."

This sort of conflict feels so immediately right that I'm hugely surprised that I haven't encountered it as a tool in roleplaying games from the day I started playing. There are arguments that happen where nobody cares about what they're arguing about, they only care about being the one to win the argument.

Now I've seen people having these arguments... but the meat of the argument is always out-of-character. Like, they'll argue about whether their paladin gets protection against this or that, but what they're really arguing is whether the GM is letting them play the heroic character they were hoping to.

Wow... no, that's much cooler than what I was saying.

I wasn't saying "I've seen this sort of argument happening before in other roleplaying games, and it's narrativism at it's finest." I was saying "I've seen this sort of argument happening before in other roleplaying games, and that's not what I'm talking about, because there it was horribly dysfunctional."

It was meant to head off misunderstanding, and seems to have wholly backfired in that regard. But it's taken things to interesting territory, so I'm not objecting.

So you're proposing that in Rifts people are playing a narrativist game, exploring the theme (roughly) "What does my character deserve for having lived as they have?" and addressing the question largely through non-explicit rules of social manipulation and expression?

Hrm.... I'm intrigued.

Ah, oops. I had wondered if you actually meant something like that post where you talked about the 'lizard men killing people' being changed to 'lizard men hurting' without any horrible social stuff to do so. My mistake. I just saw them doing a 'no, I'm rejecting you!' thing (much like a 'You didn't dump me, I dumped you!' arguement). The presence of it seemed to be a statement of character (indeed I still think it is, even now you've clarified that you brought it up for other reasons). So that's why I read this into the heroic palladin arguement as well. I've heard it oft said and also felt myself the justification "But I'm a hero!" for how something should work. It did always bleed into the meta game, but now I look at the core of it, I'm seeing the urge to make a thematic statement.

If we were doing it in TROS, I'd be pursuing my chosen SA and getting dice for it because of my PC's devotion shown to it. In Rifts I'm pursuing my chosen character class and demanding special effects (from vaguely defined powers), because I'm stating how devoted to this lifestyle my character is (or even just saying that "I'm a hero" and expecting results from that, which sort of works that way in TROS as well).

I think I'm going to have to try (ie, avoid sneaking up on mode) and play test this next time I run Rifts.

Oh, I forgot to say it and it is important to note:

So you're proposing that in Rifts people are playing a narrativist game, exploring the theme (roughly) "What does my character deserve for having lived as they have?" and addressing the question largely through non-explicit rules of social manipulation and expression?

Okay, I suspect that topic would benefit from a new Actual Play thread then, drawing on some of that Rifts experience to cast the issue into sharp relief. Now that you've got it clear in your head, we can both see that it's not what I was talking about, right?

Yes, so I'll leave of with my comment that the 'No, I'm rejecting you!' is a statement of character, as well as something that can turn into petty meta game quibbling. Perhaps going nasty like that because people hate their address of premise being bypassed rather than recognised for what it is. But why not here? They were trying to clarify the conflict, right? But that ended up being an address of premise rather than just system handling.

The primary goal of the players was to have a heated conflict. So when it became clear that they couldn't easily get on opposite sides of the most obvious conflict, they immediately cast about for what sort of conflict they could get on opposite sides of.