In Misery Bubblegum:  Monster Manual for Conflict Resolution, we were searching for ways to connect the desires and actions of one person to the desires and goals of another, and I said ...

TonyLB wrote:
[L]et me propose another way of building significance:  linking items together....[into] a syllogism:  "If you love me then you won't grow up."  Which, of course, also implies its contrapositive: "If you grow up then you don't love me."  ....when somebody proposes "If you are a loser then New Kid won't like you," then suddenly "You are a loser" takes on different meaning.

Tony, I think you've identified two broad categories -- Identity (who you are / what people think) and Action (what you do / what you achieve).  Is it possible that PCs have Identity questions, and NPCs attach Action statements?  PC Jacky wants to ask, "Am I a good person?" and NPC Heather wants to prove, "No one will help my social victims, specifically Kinsey."  You can then combine in four potential ways:

a) If Jacky helps Kinsey, she's a good person.
b) If Jacky doesn't help Kinsey, she's a good person.
c) If Jacky helps Kinsey, she's not a good person.
d) If Jacky doesn't help Kinsey, she's not a good person.

...which isn't quite right, I admit.  In any case, it seems to me that you just need something to take the somewhat abstract statements and ground them in concrete specifics of play.

I don't know whether I buy that NPCs only attach Action statements.  The whole "You are a loser" thing is clearly in Identity, and I think that threat is the kind of thing that provides strong adversity.  Heather's threat isn't just that she will say (as an action) that you're a loser.  The threat is that she'll believe it, and so will Everyone.

(Oh, as a sideline, I do think "Everyone" needs to be a special NPC in the game, with beliefs and expectations ... No individual person needs to think that you're a loser for Everyone to believe it)

Y'know, it doesn't really make any difference to the logic, but I think that for emotional impact the statements should always begin with the Identity side of the spectrum.  So not "If Jacky doesn't help Kinsey, she's not a good person," but the logically equivalent "If Jacky is a good person then she will help Kinsey."  Doesn't that have more kick?

Also, I think the great fun of this happens only when you get more than one syllogism operating on the same end result:  "If Jacky is a good person then she will help Kinsey," plus "If Jacky is cool then she will not help Kinsey," for instance.  "But ... I want to be cool and be a good person!  Isn't being good cool?"  "Well ... No!  Duh!"

I don't get what you mean by "it isn't quite right" though.  I can totally see justification for all of those, in context ("I've been helping Kinsey out so much that she's dependent on me, but even though I know she needs to stand on her own I won't stop because it feeds my vanity ... if I want to be a good person then I won't help her out next time.")  Can you clarify what you were saying?

I'm also starting to wonder about who can make syllogisms on what attributes.  Can Heather make "If Jacky is good then ..." syllogisms if Jacky doesn't really care what Heather thinks about morality?  I'm leaning toward saying that a player has to have control of the part of the character in question to make syllogisms on it.  So Heather can make "Jacky is cool" as a (potential) piece of Jacky, under Heather's control (or take control of a pre-existing "Jacky is cool" fragment).  Then she can make all manner of statements of the "If Jacky is cool then she will pay for lunch" variety, in order to try to shape Jacky's behavior by offering the bribe of coolness.

isnt quite right = those statements aren't reaching out and grabbing me by the throat.

If you want two syllogisms (and I agree there), is it more that both the PC and NPC have an identity statement, and they are both hooked up to a common action?

Jacky: "I'm a good person." + Heather: "Jacky is a loser." + Connection: "Helping Kinsey" yeilds:
"If you help Kinsey, you're a good person; but if you help Kinsey, you're a loser."

Whoever makes the syllogisms for a player, I think it needs to not be the player in question.  High school isn't about making demands on yourself; it's about the world making a thousand and one confusing and confounding demands on you.  IIRC, you're going GMless, so it'd be another player challenging you to decide between two identities based on your action.

This isn't a very direct contribution to the thread, but I'm pretty sure you're mis-using "syllogism".  A syllogism is a logical argument that follows a specific form:  Universal truth, specific truth, conclusion.  For instance:

Anyone who helps Kinsey is a loser (universal truth)
Jacky helps Kinsey (specific truth)
--Therefore
Jacky is a loser (conclusion)

It seems to me what you're looking to do is generate universal "truths" for play.  I don't really have anything else to contribute at the moment because I'm still trying to wrap my head around all this, but never fear, I shall return!

Thomas

LordSmerf wrote: This isn't a very direct contribution to the thread, but I'm pretty sure you're mis-using "syllogism".

Joshua wrote: Jacky: "I'm a good person." + Heather: "Jacky is a loser." + Connection: "Helping Kinsey" yeilds:
"If you help Kinsey, you're a good person; but if you help Kinsey, you're a loser."

Well, in the sense of "What's at stake?" as "What's important here?", but not so much in the sense of "What's at stake?" as "What resolves on this throw of the dice?", right?

Or am I failing to understand you?

True.  I'm talking, like, session-wide stakes as opposed to the immediate stakes of one roll.

Have you read the Secret Arts chapter of Weapons of the Gods?

I think there's some relation here. In WotG, you can converse with someone and give them either a weakness or a hyperactivity towards certain actions. Weaknesses are sticks, hyperactivities are carrots. So if Ming Na talks to Michelle, Ming Na can inflict Michelle with a weakness such that from this point on until she resolves the issue, Michelle has a mechanical penalty whenever she pursues/flirts with the New Kid. Alternately, she could talk to the New Kid and give him a hyperactivity so that he gets a mechanical bonus whenever he is ignoring/putting down Michelle.

It's a very confusing chapter, but if you have access to a copy you might want to read it.

No, I don't have WotG yet (though I hear good things).  What sort of resources do you need in order to get in someone's head that way?  Is it a conflict?  Is it something dependent on a pre-existing relationship?  Or can I just walk up to someone on the street and give them an aversion to crysanthemums?

Weaknesses and hyperactivities, while wonky-ass terms, sound very appropriate for adolescent dramas -- how often have we seen either side of those in films and teevee shows of the same genre?

Hey, weaknesses and hyperactivities instill MECHANICAL modifications.

I thought the idea of beliefs/syllogisms was to set story stakes.
Were you planning to have them modify dice outcomes as well?

joepub wrote:
I thought the idea of beliefs/syllogisms was to set story stakes.
Were you planning to have them modify dice outcomes as well?

TonyLB wrote:
No, I don't have WotG yet (though I hear good things).  What sort of resources do you need in order to get in someone's head that way?  Is it a conflict?  Is it something dependent on a pre-existing relationship?  Or can I just walk up to someone on the street and give them an aversion to crysanthemums?

That's sorta spiffy.  I particularly like the idea of adding it (for free) as a sort of provisional "This could be important" step, then inflaming it in more contested settings.  It lets people say clearly "I'd like to do this" and then find out through the system whether other players agree.

Now that also highlights the distinction between the social system and the non-social conflict system (in this case, I think, combat):  what I've been calling in my head "Truth" vs. "Dare."

It strikes me that much of the fun of teen stories, particularly teen comedies, is the way Truth (what you believe, what others believe of you) and Dare (what you achieve, what others do) intercut back and forth.  Tokyo student wants to get girl X to love him.  Girl X explains (off-handedly) that she could only have a relationship with a boy who goes to her college.  Tokyo student now must pass those entrance exams!  It is the test of love!  And if he doesn't, he has to lie about it, because ... God ... anything to defer the inevitable.  Maybe, somehow, he can lie for a whole year, then get accepted in the next set of exams and it will be as if ... oh, who's he kidding?  He's going to be found out.  We all know it.

So, here's some follow-up questions:

• Should a standard syllogism run "If you are a good person then you will try to defend Kinsey from Heather" or "If you are a good person then you will succeed in defending Kinsey from Heather"?
• Should a character get a bonus to succeeeding at a task if a large amount of their personality is riding on it?

In answer to

Should a standard syllogism run "If you are a good person then you will try to defend Kinsey from Heather" or "If you are a good person then you will succeed in defending Kinsey from Heather"?

Should a character get a bonus to succeeeding at a task if a large amount of their personality is riding on it?

TonyLB wrote: Should a character get a bonus to succeeeding at a task if a large amount of their personality is riding on it?

Joshua wrote:
I thought success and failure of the conflict resolution system put traits on the character sheet as it is?

TonyLB wrote: Yes, but I don't see what you're drawing from that.

TonyLB wrote: My question, overall, is how do teen romance/angst stories work?  Because they seem (at first glance) to be inconsistent, even within a given story.

Interesting. The sylogisms (really stakes setting) is put forward by a player as a gambit. It sets up the conflict to be resolved, potentially very narrativist.

Your original question was about who should have the power to do this and when. The conversation then spoke a lot about Loser/Not Loser as a trait or attribute. I think this misses the original question.

For example: If I'm given the authority to make a statement (set the stakes) I want to be free to make it about anything (not just about specific traits/attributes), but if I'm given complete control then I may not use it well. I might set my fellow players up so I win and they lose - gamism kicking narrativism in the teeth - dysfunctional play real fast.

Arguments in Engle Matrix Games can be used to introduce stakes setting in games but they are not automatic. Arguments that build on past arguments or which take small steps have a better chance of happening than extreme ones. This "gamble" suggests that players moderate their gambits.

If you give any player the right to make an argument like this it pulls thinking away from the individual character to a higher level. At that point I'm using my character as a prop more than playing them. If players are given arguments every turn it does this even more. That's what Matrix Games do. The results can be fun are but not as personal.

Good luck with the approach - sounds very useful.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press = Engle Matrix Games

Joshua wrote: On the other hand, the teenage romance/angst story is a different genre than the Buldungsroman, which is the asking-questions-about-yourself thing.

Does Misery Bubblegum work to emulate the light-weight stuff, too?  I'm personally not sure what the goal is, so I ask for clarification's sake.

Prrrrobably not ... but I'm not honestly sure.  I think the difference is going to be in the questions that people originally ask, and how seriously they take them.

Like, if players go around the table and ask questions like "Am I ready for sex?" and "Am I a good person?" and "Am I happy?" and "Am I important to anyone?" and then they deliberately drive scenes that make those questions real and non-trivial ... well, I don't think the result is going to resemble Wierd Science very much.

If they ask "Am I a geek?" and "Am I as cool as I think I am?" and then they drive scenes that pretty much make those questions trivial (i.e. provide a clear, pre-existing answer without examination) then I suspect you can get something very much like Wierd Science indeed.  But that's not what I want.

Still, if people decide not to put real issues on the line, I'm pretty sure I can't force them.  Shallow comedy is such an easy defense mechanism, after all.

I'm going to suggest something, Tony. Play some PTA. No, play a bunch of PTA. Because the deeper you get into the "what is the essence of the teen drama" question, the more I think some fieldwork is necessary. PTA ought to work as an engine for creating these kinds of stories. Does it? What things happen in play that feel like they need more system support to really hum?

My intuition is that this is an incredibly tricky genre to make work as a game, because it's SO artificial. Why don't these characters solve their problems and get to the Happy Ending in the beginning? Because it's not time yet. Why do they suddenly become able to do so after X episodes? Because it's Time. I think you CAN make that work as a game, but it's going to need some really aggressive management of pacing.

Mark wrote: Why don't these characters solve their problems and get to the Happy Ending in the beginning? Because it's not time yet. Why do they suddenly become able to do so after X episodes? Because it's Time.

TonyLB wrote: Should a standard syllogism run "If you are a good person then you will try to defend Kinsey from Heather" or "If you are a good person then you will succeed in defending Kinsey from Heather"?

It's interesting ... that sounds like a series of examples of the difference between Task Resolution and Conflict Resolution.

"Okay, yes, you could name 'Defeat Darth Vader' as your stakes ... but think about how different it feels if you name 'Show that I am a Jedi' as your stakes, and defeating Vader or choosing to be defeated by him are both just ways you pursue those stakes."

A potentially useless observation: all of Sydney's examples are selfish at first and selfless when successes.  Is the difference that at first the character is an individual unconnected to society and in the end they are socialized and taking their place as members of a community?

Tony: I hadn't thought of that. Hmmm. Well, at one point you did propose a system for this game that hybridized Task and Conflict such that you could win at one and fail at the other.

Joshua: Yes! I was struggling to think of any way to mechanize my logic, and I think connectedness is the key, because the internal change that makes you grow up is something that makes you less focused on internal change -- adolescents are self-absorbed, (functioning) adults are not. To make this a mechanic, perhaps you could give some kind of bonus or superior power to any goal that's focused on another person rather than yourself (perhaps because you get to tap resources on the other person's character sheet you couldn't access when you didn't care about them so intensely?). Now, whether your goal is about helping or hurting that other person is your big (Nar) choice that says what kind of person you've become.

Sydney, Joshua:  Does Emma, who starts off as oriented completely on helping others and her community, and then gradually learns the importance of listening to her own desires and needs as well, fit this mould?  I'm honestly not sure whether I think she does or doesn't.  It's just the first example that leapt into my head as being confusing under an otherwise very enticing pattern.

Emma starts of rather selfishly dabbling in others' lives, has some life experiences, and afterwards connects herself to others' lives.

Agreed with Joshua. It's harder to reflect mechanically, but I'd argue that Emma does not start out with any Emotional Commitment Points (or whatever) invested in the people she's trying to "help." She does come to care about them later, though.

Hmm. Perhaps the crucial factor is investing yourself in (i.e. caring about) others enough to (a) make yourself vulnerable and (b) make yourself powerful?

I think the reverse arc is pretty well-represented, too - particularly in girls' stories. The character who is completed dominated and shaped by the expectations of others, who must rebel against the people whose approval she craves in order to find herself as an independent person. It is only by departing from the comfortable and safe confines of peer group and family that the character becomes a whole person.

I'll play devil's advocate, Mark.  I know the stories that you're talking about, but the lead character doesn't start the story connected to the world; she starts by being dictated to by the world.  She does not have a relationship with the greater world any greater than a puppet on strings.  The progress of the story has the character cut those strings, yes, but she usually does it by making real connections to other people, as opposed to the superficial and false connections she had before.  The story climaxes and ends with the character taking her place in the world, rather than being told her place.  The character still takes an active stance in saying, "This is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I fit in to the community."

That said, I think you've got an important insight.  I think these stories are about finding where you fit -- whether the character starts as a selfish outsider loner or as a member of a popular clique, they are not self-actualized, and they are not an active participant in their community.  These stories tell how the character actualizes herself and takes up that active place in society.  It is a fictional rite of passage.

And 'finding where you fit' when applied to a social group is all about your identity and what others think your identity is -- so assuming that sort of play is still what Misery Bubblegum's about, I think that could work really well.

Joshua wrote:
I'll play devil's advocate, Mark.  I know the stories that you're talking about, but the lead character doesn't start the story connected to the world; she starts by being dictated to by the world.  She does not have a relationship with the greater world any greater than a puppet on strings.  The progress of the story has the character cut those strings, yes, but she usually does it by making real connections to other people, as opposed to the superficial and false connections she had before.  The story climaxes and ends with the character taking her place in the world, rather than being told her place.  The character still takes an active stance in saying, "This is who I am, this is what I do, this is how I fit in to the community."

100% agreement, Mark.

Alrighty, then, how does Tony make the decision to change not one with a 'bunk' choice?

I'm not Mark, but this is a stab at an answer...

Mark wrote:
I think the reverse arc is pretty well-represented, too - particularly in girls' stories. The character who is completed dominated and shaped by the expectations of others, who must rebel against the people whose approval she craves in order to find herself as an independent person....

Okay, I'm digging back into my notebook of disconnected thoughts (yes, I actually have a notebook of disconnected thoughts).  This one seems relevant to the topic at hand:

Defeat and pain are the player's friends.  The character has defenses that must be battered down before they can make the important choices.

The character isn't strong enough to break these defenses from the inside.  They must be weakened from without before there can be any growth.

Mark wrote: "Why doesn't she just tell him how she feels?" Well, because treasuring her misery is way easier than risking rejection.

First off, Tony & Sydney are indeed on the same wavelength I'm on.

Joshua wrote:
1Alrighty, then, how does Tony make the decision to change not one with a 'bunk' choice?

Mark n Tony, that all sounds very cool.  I'm thinking this also all but requires some heavy disassociation between player agenda and character agenda -- the player is all about hacking away the character's defenses, while the character very much wants to keep them!

Hit Post too soon.

Tony, are the defenses composed out of "truths" about the character?  "I'm worthless 2d6" and "Others' happiness is more important than mine d10"?

Would play be a process of whittling down the stats in the "Defenses" part of the character sheet and building them up on the... I dunno, "Self-Actualization" side?  If so, somehow there needs to be a mechanic for moving a Defense into a Self-Actualization (not without some roleplay and manipulation, of course) for those instances where the character does the same thing at the start and finish but succeeds at the finish.

Note: I'm not seeing a lot of replay value -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

TonyLB wrote: • For a satisfying ending, the defenses get totally removed, and the protagonist makes themselves utterly vulnerable.
• For a satisfying and sad ending, the ones they make themselves vulnerable to hurt them, and the character grows stronger.
• For a satisfying and happy ending, the ones they make themselves vulnerable to help them, and the character grows stronger.

And the answer to questions like "Why doesn't Emma just confess her love to Knightley in the early acts?" is "She can't."  She's too hemmed in by her own defenses to be capable of such an admission.

Joshua wrote: Would play be a process of whittling down the stats in the "Defenses" part of the character sheet and building them up on the... I dunno, "Self-Actualization" side?  If so, somehow there needs to be a mechanic for moving a Defense into a Self-Actualization (not without some roleplay and manipulation, of course) for those instances where the character does the same thing at the start and finish but succeeds at the finish.

Joshua wrote: Note: I'm not seeing a lot of replay value -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Sydney wrote:
What you really need are short-term and long-term goals to trade off against each other. If Sorcerer were all about keeping your Humanity and the GM never threw you up against eyeball-eating cultists, no one would ever do any dangerous sorcery; if Capes were all about accumulating Story Tokens and there was no point in spending Debt, no one would ever do anything heroic. Now of course high school is full of short-term goals in whose name you can sacrifice long-term personal growth -- but how do you make those valuable to the players?

Tony, like Socrates, I will point out that you already know the answer to your own question:

Question:

TonyLB wrote: [Opposing short-term vs. long-term goals - ] I have only the vaguest notions of how to make it happen.  I suspect that the "if / then" statements of previous threads will be key, because they can make short-term goals seem like the easiest way to achieve your long-term victory

TonyLB wrote: There is a certain elegance to simply saying "All those important truths you discovered about yourself last session?  Those are your defenses this session.  You can either rest on those laurels, and not risk further growth, or you have to figure out how the revelation you were proud to reach last session isn't the end of the story." 

Sydney wrote: No set of "truths about myself" is privileged, in this set-up -- you don't have one set of things labelled "this is the final answer about who you are" and another set labelled "this shit don't matter, really." You have a whole bunch of "truths" and the game keeps testing you (Dogs in the Vineyard-style) to see which ones are final and which ones aren't. Maybe "I stand up for those weaker than myself" is a permanent truth about your character, or maybe that's just who you were last week. Maybe "I always write a little heart over an 'i'" is an abiding truth of who you are.

Hi!
  Well, mechanically, maybe what you need to do is have the resolution feed strength into specific defenses.
  For instance, if I make a character that uses "Perfect Student" as a defense, then I get so many toekns to use that defense. When the conflict arises, I give cotrol of that defense to another character. And they spend the tokens for my character. And my character's actions and changes get my tokens back. And if the character doesn't act like a perfect student or discovers that they are not a perfect student, then they don't get tokens.
  I dunno, just riffing here...