Topic: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Started by: Threlicus
Started on: 7/20/2006
Board: Muse of Fire Games
On 7/20/2006 at 6:52pm, Threlicus wrote:
Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Sindyr's post in this thread got me to thinking. I'm a math geek (well, physics, but close enough) so I'm going to lay out something that's quasi-mathematical here.
First, for a given player assume that we have a utility function for the narrative. That is, just a measure of 'how happy' that player is with the narrative. Now, in general this is a very complicated function of innumerable variables, but it doesn't matter since I'm never going to write one down. :) Now, suppose someone in Capes puts down a conflict. For simplicity of explanation I'm going to assume a simple two-sided conflict in which only two players are interested, though I think the idea generalizes. For each side in a conflict, imagine a circle of 'possible resolutions' around each of two points (Yes or No on the conflict). Now, I'm going to define two things, using the terminology I threw out in the other thread:
1) Enticement is the *maximum* of the player's utility functions over those circles. This is the utility he gets if he gets to pick the narrative outcome.
2) Threat is the negative of the integral of the utility times the player's perceived likelihood of the other player choosing each other possible result. This is what he's likely to end up with if he doesn't win the conflict. (I probably would add additional Threat to cover the variance -- the more uncertain the value is, the more threatening it is -- but I don't think that's essential to understand what I'm saying).
I think these are somewhat meaningful names, except that the names imply some relationship to some average or null-case utility, which I have not defined. Thus, Enticement is the possible good that can come from a player winning a conflict; the Threat is the likely bad from the other player winning. On the other hand, if you do want to define a reference point (say, as the current utility) I think everything still works.
My theory is that a player's engagement in a conflict is a monotonically increasing function of Enticement + Threat (which must by construction always be non-negative). But, a player will feel more coerced into engagement by other players the larger the value of Threat, quite possibly diminishing his happiness with the game as a whole. Of course, both engagement and feeling of coercion are a function of individual players' nature and preferences.
Some implications:
1) A conflict with one very good result and a bunch of similar worse results gets the same engagement as a conflict with no outstanding result but a likely-to-be-chosen, very bad set of results; but the latter feels more coercive to the player.
2) A conflict where the opposing player is likely to pick the same result you would gets very little engagement, even if that result is very good for you.
3) One way to affect another player's engagement in a conflict is to say or do things which affect his perception of your likelihood to resolve. (E.g., making statements, either overt or implicitly through your narration, about how you intend to resolve should you win).
4) Making players worry about whether you will resolve things negatively against them (i.e., increasing the perceived likelihood you will resolve ways they don't like) will increase engagement but also the feeling of threat and is thus dangerous, at least for some groups.
Note that this emphatically does not address the question of players getting pulled into conflicts by the allure of winning resources for the future; but I think that that is a second-order effect. Once a player percieves a high degree of engagement on the part of another player, they may get involved and challenge the other player simply to see how far he is willing to go to win it; but that requires a high degree of engagement in the first place. There's also another second-order effect in that a resolver may want to deliberately not choose the result that gives him the highest utility, in order to affect another player's future perception of likelihood and therefore engagement in future conflicts. Still, I think these are perturbations of the base theory.
I have some thoughts for what this model of players' approaches to conflicts might mean for choosing conflicts and for suggesting ways to tweak Capes' rules to make them more hospitable to players like Sindyr who feel threatened by certain possible resolutions, but I'm going to save them until tonight at least, when I will have stewed on them a bit.
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On 7/20/2006 at 7:17pm, Sindyr wrote:
Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
I need to read your reply more deeply, and I will. Not sure you didn't want to post it on my thread unless having my name as the thread author is the kiss of death here, grin.
I just wanted to briefly mentioned that as I scan through your post, it seems to only cover the types of players to whom ultimately narrative play is the most important. It seems to me from my observations that most of the Capes players I have experienced here in the forums really value the competitive side of Capes more highly. That their primary concern is about proving themselves and participating in these ego wars, coutning coup, matters of bravado, and such like, and for these players, the narrative rewards and penalties come as a distant second (or third) behind the *competitive* rewards and penalities.
If you have four primarily competitive Capes players, you will find I think that elements of narration serving as tools for the competition, and I am not sure if what you are writing would apply to such a table.
Now, if you have a table of four primarily narrartive Capes players, then what you are saying may apply.
I hope to reread you post more deeply sometime soon.
On 7/20/2006 at 7:19pm, Vaxalon wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
The idea that increasing threat results in diminishing satisfaction is an assumption that may not be true, especially for all players.
I agree that you can expect it to be so, but I can name examples where it is not.
On 7/20/2006 at 7:52pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Vaxalon wrote:
The idea that increasing threat results in diminishing satisfaction is an assumption that may not be true, especially for all players.
I agree that you can expect it to be so, but I can name examples where it is not.
I agree that it is not necessarily leading to diminishing overall satisfaction, and I didn't say so, I don't think (though I did imply it was a common case). It leads to a higher feeling of coercion, which many but certainly not all players regard as a negative.
I think it ties into what Sindyr has pointed out as the continuum of Capes play between pure competition and pure narrative (neither of which purity is achievable with the Capes rules as written, of course). A highly competitive player, who loves getting in other players' faces and when they get in his, may well be thrilled about the overall direction of play when high Threat happens, simply by getting into the competitive part of the game, even though he is less happy with the narrative outcomes resulting from him losing conflicts.
On 7/20/2006 at 7:57pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
2) Threat is the negative of the integral of the utility times the player's perceived likelihood of the other player choosing each other possible result. This is what he's likely to end up with if he doesn't win the conflict. (I probably would add additional Threat to cover the variance -- the more uncertain the value is, the more threatening it is -- but I don't think that's essential to understand what I'm saying).
Do you expect this to be a positive number? Specifically: Do you believe that the worst case scenario of what a different player will choose to narrate is likely to be worse than never having had the conflict at all?
That certainly doesn't match with my experience of the game. IME, what with the way Story Tokens are assigned specifically counter-balancing the narrative importance of the loss, all conflict outcomes have positive utility to every player ... it's just that some outcomes are better than others. They're all better than not having gotten into the fight in the first place.
On 7/20/2006 at 8:17pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
Do you expect [Threat] to be a positive number? Specifically: Do you believe that the worst case scenario of what a different player will choose to narrate is likely to be worse than never having had the conflict at all?
That certainly doesn't match with my experience of the game. IME, what with the way Story Tokens are assigned specifically counter-balancing the narrative importance of the loss, all conflict outcomes have positive utility to every player ... it's just that some outcomes are better than others. They're all better than not having gotten into the fight in the first place.
The sign doesn't matter; everything I've laid out is invariant if you add or subtract any number to every point on the utility function.
The utility function I've talked about is purely in reference to the player's satisfaction with the narrative, not taking into account Story Tokens or other resources and how they might impact future utility, so I don't think my theory is challenging your experience. Threat is essentially a measure of how bad things might be if the player simply concedes the conflict without fighting it, in which case he will get no resources.
That said, I certainly think it is possible that for some players, the negativity of some outcomes of some conflicts will outweigh the positiveness from the Story Tokens they might receive, even if it is not usually true or hasn't appeared in your experience. Lots of things operate to help prevent this, of course -- Comics Code and Social Contract factors, other players wanting to keep a player happy and engaged -- and hopefully they are enough (and if they're not maybe the player shouldn't be playing Capes, or not with that group), but I can't see any reason why it should always suffice theoretically.
On 7/20/2006 at 8:33pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
The utility function I've talked about is purely in reference to the player's satisfaction with the narrative, not taking into account Story Tokens or other resources and how they might impact future utility
I could be so much more pithy if John Nash were dead. There really is no phrase quite like "spinning in his grave" to get the point across.
I don't think that a utility function which views a given conflict as an atomic exchange, unconnected to any future outcomes, tells very much of the truth of the game.
On 7/20/2006 at 9:28pm, Hans wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:Threlicus wrote:
The utility function I've talked about is purely in reference to the player's satisfaction with the narrative, not taking into account Story Tokens or other resources and how they might impact future utility
I could be so much more pithy if John Nash were dead. There really is no phrase quite like "spinning in his grave" to get the point across.
I don't think that a utility function which views a given conflict as an atomic exchange, unconnected to any future outcomes, tells very much of the truth of the game.
To be more specific, George, I think that your idea of taking ONLY the narrative results as part of the utiltiy function is not valid from the evidence collected by people who have played the game; that is, it is not a valid model for describing the way people respond to conflicts.
Personally, I love your model, especially the way it treats Enticement and Threat as additive quantities. But expressing these things strictly in terms of narration is simply not appropriate for Capes. Capes is NOT a strictly narrativist game. There are mechanical analogues to both Enticement (i.e. inspirations and story tokens) and Threat (i.e. the other guy gaining more, and more valuable at that moment, resources than you do), and my experience tells me these cannot be considered simply "second-order effects". The relative weightings of each of these factors (one can think of them as a two way table) will vary tremendously from player to player, and even in a particular player from scene to scene and page to page and cannot be ignored.
Sindyr: I have to disagree completely with your implication that narrativist play is somehow the antithesis of competition. Here is the reason; if you and I disagree profoundly as to how the story should go from this point forward, how are we expected to resolve this disagreement. We have already tried negotiation, and there is simply no point of common ground. Is this not a kind of competition? In my own experience in playing other narrativist games (such as Heroquest, Dust Devils, Burning Wheel) it is exactly those moments in which you and I disagree about which direction the story should go that the most fulfulling and interesting fiction occurs. Even in games with a very high level of common veto power (like PTA), there still has to be a conflict resolution mechanic. Personally, I'm just about the least gamist player you could ever meet. I do not value the competetive aspect of Capes because I like competition; I value it because it leads to good fiction.
On 7/20/2006 at 9:38pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
I don't think that a utility function which views a given conflict as an atomic exchange, unconnected to any future outcomes, tells very much of the truth of the game.
Of course it is not all of Capes, it wasn't intended to be. It is a bit of theoretical thinking about one specific aspect of the game and one aspect of players' experiences with it.
As for the atomicity and connection, I was trying to keep it simple and understandable. Of course, in general, you've got to add all the terms from the player's anticipation of the likelihood of other future events and from the other elements of the game state as they stand, but that is a very straightforward generalization that merely adds complexity to the thought-experiment.
Now, the other critique -- regarding other resources gained in a conflict -- may be a more serious consideration. Let me try to explain why I did it the way I did. Consider the perspective of a player when another player has laid a conflict on the table. The first player is trying to decide whether or not to get involved in the conflict. If he doesn't get involved, he certainly will get no resources and may suffer the negative narrative consequences he anticipates. Thus, those negative narrative consequences are a stick, a Threat, encouraging the player to get involved. Conversely, if he does get involved, the positive narrative consequences are an enticement. These are surely not the only considerations a player will have when deciding whether to get involved -- all of the mechanics of Capes, the social contract, how bored the player is, how much the player wants to wrap up the current scene, whatever, all those will be there too. My hypothesis, though, is that a player's feeling of coercion brought on by that conflict will be related to the degree of Threat he feels, since one cannot forcibly take away resources for non-involvement. For some players that feeling of coercion is bad to a greater or lesser degree.
You do mention that not getting involved can lead to others gaining resources without you. I admit I hadn't considered it, and that may well be important in the final decision making, but I'm not so sure it's relevant to the feeling of coercion, because that particular threat is present no matter what conflict is put down, whereas the narrative utility can change drastically depending on what conflict is put down.
On 7/20/2006 at 9:56pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
My hypothesis, though, is that a player's feeling of coercion brought on by that conflict will be related to the degree of Threat he feels, since one cannot forcibly take away resources for non-involvement. For some players that feeling of coercion is bad to a greater or lesser degree.
Okay. It seems to me that, by the mechanics, Threat is also correlated with Enticement. Does that seem sound to you?
On 7/21/2006 at 3:10pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
Okay. It seems to me that, by the mechanics, Threat is also correlated with Enticement. Does that seem sound to you?
A narrative space which is flat in utility over the other player's expected choices is low-Threat. One which has at least one peak of very good stuff is high Enticement. I can easily make the same space have both. The converse is also true. So I don't think they are correlated. But you used 'by the mechanics', so I don't think this is exactly what you mean.
I think what you are saying is that, by the mechanics of Capes, whenever there is a high-Threat situation, there is additonally some positive, non-narrative utility for getting involved and possibly losing. (Or more precisely, the prospect of getting involved changes the set of outcomes so that you are likely to either eliminate the threat by winning the conflict or mitigate it by taking compensatory resources for the future.) This is absolutely true, and is IMHO the heart of Capes, and why it works in the first place. Still, I don't think it diminishes the Threat itself -- that is, the feeling that a player must get involved, or else things they don't want will happen.
I do think that you are right and we need to add non-narrative utility into the mix. The reason I didn't is that I was focussed on Threat and the fact that you get no rewards for not getting involved. But I overlooked a couple of factors -- one is that, by not getting involved, you cede resources to other players. I don't think this is too big a deal, unless you get other players playing off each other and ignoring you, since a conflict with only one player involved generates very limited resources. Still, it could well make a difference, and I was wrong to ignore it. The other factor is Gloating. Here, not getting involved means the other player involved will easily garner significant resources. This is a Threat just as much as narrative consequences are; if someone lays down a Gloatable conflict, you are coerced to get involved lest they garner resources by Gloating it.
This opens up some thinking about Gloating and the Comics Code. One (I want to emphasize -- One, not the only) point of the Code, I think, is that it removes from the narrative space certain outcomes, presumed to be strongly negative for at least some players, and replaces the Threat from those outcomes with a ceiling of how much can be gained by Gloating it. This is great, except that a player may well feel a strong Threat somewhere not protected by the static Code. So, (brainstorming now) how about permitting dynamic Gloating? If a player feels strongly threatened by a particular outcome of a conflict, they may suggest that it be Gloatable instead. Since such a suggestion doesn't take any resources, a player can always protect themselves from the Threat.
Another line of thinking has to do with a narrative space which is mostly okay, but has a couple possibilities which are unlikely but very strongly negative. In this case, the Threatened player is fine with most resolutions, but wants to be able to restrict the space somewhat. Here a player already has a recourse in Capes -- slapping down another conflict that puts the undesireable outcomes under the Not Yet rule, and fighting (probably not very hard, unless other players really want those specific outcomes) for that conflict. However, these conflicts are not connected directly by the Capes rules and it might be worth thinking about ways to make such conflicts tied together better (though I've got nothing but vague thoughts at the moment). Another way of addressing it might be to allow players to make binding statements about how they might resolve the conflict, and let people ask for such statements. Such constraints could be used by other players to reduce the amount of Threat the threatened player feels.
A third category has to do with outcomes that the player doesn't desire -- YET. For example, you may well want Harry and Sally to sleep together eventually, but you think that them sleeping together at this early point in the narrative is highly undesireable. Unfortunately, putting down 'Goal: Harry and Sally sleep together' as a conflict now, while it prevents them from doing so for at least another page, can't have much long-term impact, and may in fact increase the likelihood of other players actually resolving it the way you don't want (when they weren't planning on doing it before). I'm thinking that maybe a mechanism for longer-term conflicts would be useful. My thinking is that perhaps these longer-term conflicts are controlled only indirectly, by winning and losing other, ordinary, Capes conflicts; they can't be resolved until a certain amount of sub-conflict effort has been put into them. But that's just the shell of an idea; there's lots of detail work to flesh out how such conflicts are played and how they might interact with the rest of Capes' mechanics.
An important point I want to emphasize is that, in this theory, no matter how you go about reducing Threat, there is an impact -- reducing Threat means necessarily reducing a player's engagement with a conflict. How strong the Threat has to be before the tradeoff is worthwhile is clearly player-dependent; for some players (Tony?) the answer may well be 'never.'
On 7/21/2006 at 4:55pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
I think what you are saying is that, by the mechanics of Capes, whenever there is a high-Threat situation, there is additonally some positive, non-narrative utility for getting involved and possibly losing.
Actually, that wasn't what I was trying to say. You want to discuss this without reference to the game currency, and though that's hard for me I'm trying.
But yeah, "by mechanics" is a tricky phrase. Let me try to be more explicit.
There is a balance of risk and reward that people do naturally, because of the way we are wired as story-telling creatures. Because the mechanics of the game give both sides the opportunity to declare the meaning of the conflict, people will (in my experience) balance out that risk and reward on their own.
If we something like WGP's "pencilling" phase, this would be a lot more clear. For instance, in WGP you could have the following conversation:
Player: Okay, if I win then I get a clue as to the villain's master plan.
GM: Fine, but if I win then you get no clue, and moreover the villain learns that you're searching for him.
That's basically the kind of thing that is happening implicitly as people narrate their way toward a resolution in a Capes conflict. It's sub-rosa, but when the villain player narrates ways in which failure on the goal could lead to the villain learning things, they're setting up those stakes as part of the potential consequences. They're ramping the Threat, in your terminology.
What you will almost never see in WGP (at least I am hard pressed to conceive of it) is an exchange like this:
Player: Okay, if I win then I get a clue as to the villain's master plan.
GM: Fine, but if I win then Millenium City is destroyed in a nuclear fireball, and only the people specifically mentioned in your Aspects survive.
There's a case where Threat is wildly uncorrelated with Enticement. But ... it's wacky. That never happens. Never in all my play of many stake-setting games have I ever seen a lopsided set of stakes like that.
What I have seen in Capes (where the stakes "float" a bit more than WGP) is an escalation:
Player #1: Okay, if I win then I get a clue as to the villain's master plan.
Player #2: Fine, but if I win then the villain tracks you back to your secret hideout.
Player #1: Oh man! But if I win then, in addition to learning his master plan I totally foil it.
Player #2: Yeah? But if I win then, in addition to finding your hideout, he destroys it.
Player #1: Not. Gonna. Happen. Let's go!
Now personally, I'd prefer to see those as separate goals, because I think it's a better way to game the system. But I've seen it happen all on one conflict. Again, the mechanical power to expand the narrative consequence leads people to balance Threat and Enticement. It fulfills our sense of what a story should be. Great risk for great reward, and all that jazz.
Does that seem sound to you?
On 7/21/2006 at 8:21pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Alright, that's easier to understand. I'll try to restate it in my own terms to prove I understand it. ;) You're saying that, when player A puts out a conflict which is high-Threat to player B, player B, by narrating his response to A's Threat, naturally tries to steer the narrative space to where he can justify, if he wins, a resolution which is high-utility for him, and thus high Threat conflicts provoke high-Enticement situations. And, probably (though you don't really mention it), narrating in such a way so try to keep A's possible narrative resolutions, if A should win, away from the things he most doesn't want.
That seems likely to be true, fits my own limited Capes experience, and I'm perfectly happy to accept it. Certainly it seems like a natural response by player B. I'll even agree that it seems likely to increase the overall fun of the game for most players. It also works to some extent if B's response to A's high-Threat conflict is to lay down a different conflict of his own, saying 'sure, I'll let you have that one, but then you'll have to let me have *this* one'.
But, I don't think that that changes the feeling of coercion from having a high-Threat conflict put down. You're still being coerced to get involved in *this* conflict right here, that I put down. I think that that is the feeling of coercion that Sindyr has been trying to find ways to minimize, because he doesn't like it (or at least, doesn't think he'll like it). Do you disagree with that?
On 7/21/2006 at 8:46pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
And, probably (though you don't really mention it), narrating in such a way so try to keep A's possible narrative resolutions, if A should win, away from the things he most doesn't want.
Uh ... so this is saying that you think Threat and Enticement aren't correlated, right? You think that (in the extreme case) everyone's going to be cool with something that turns out as "Okay, if you win then you get a potato chip, but if I win then I rule the cosmos for all time"?
Threlicus wrote:
But, I don't think that that changes the feeling of coercion from having a high-Threat conflict put down. You're still being coerced to get involved in *this* conflict right here, that I put down. I think that that is the feeling of coercion that Sindyr has been trying to find ways to minimize, because he doesn't like it (or at least, doesn't think he'll like it). Do you disagree with that?
I'd rather we not go building on Sindyr's posts about coercion as if they're a foundation for further development until they've survived a bit more enquiry. Let's talk about your take on its own merits, 'kay?
On 7/21/2006 at 10:27pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
Uh ... so this is saying that you think Threat and Enticement aren't correlated, right? You think that (in the extreme case) everyone's going to be cool with something that turns out as "Okay, if you win then you get a potato chip, but if I win then I rule the cosmos for all time"?
Clearly the answer is no, they won't be cool with it, and the other players' responses will end up trying to both mitigate the Threat and increase the Enticement from that conflict, precisely because that is a high-Threat, low-Enticement conflict. But that's not what my model is trying to get at. What I'm trying to get at is the feeling of player B when player A lays down "I rule the cosmos for all time," as a conflict (assuming the popcorn isn't thrown). B cannot ignore the conflict, because if he does, the narrative will go somewhere he doesn't like. That's the coercive power of the Threat. In contrast, if someone lays down a high-Enticement, low-Threat conflict, the player can choose to follow it for the rewards it offers, but if he thinks he has better things to do with his time and resouces, doesn't feel compelled to do so.
Now, I think you're saying that, if someone lays down a high-Threat conflict, there are unspoken rules at play -- basically, "Hey, if you're going to try to rule the cosmos for all time if you win, you'd better have a lot at risk if you lose" kinds of metarules -- that imply Threat and Enticement generally end up correlated. That seems to me a feature of good, functional Capes play -- players willing to put stuff on the line to get what they want -- and I'm sure it mitigates some of the negativity players might get from feeling coerced; but I don't think it diminishes the coercion arising from Threat.
On 7/21/2006 at 11:41pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
Now, I think you're saying that, if someone lays down a high-Threat conflict, there are unspoken rules at play -- basically, "Hey, if you're going to try to rule the cosmos for all time if you win, you'd better have a lot at risk if you lose" kinds of metarules -- that imply Threat and Enticement generally end up correlated.
We really can't get into which rules are "unspoken" in Capes if you don't want to discuss the token economy. But in other games, yes, I totally agree with your assessment: unspoken rules of play keep Threat and Enticement correlated.
Threlicus wrote:
That seems to me a feature of good, functional Capes play -- players willing to put stuff on the line to get what they want -- and I'm sure it mitigates some of the negativity players might get from feeling coerced; but I don't think it diminishes the coercion arising from Threat.
See, I don't get what you think the functional distinction is between Threat and Enticement. They're that tightly intertwined. When somebody threatens me, I immediately begin salivating over the enticement I can create for myself (if they haven't already offered me one). I don't feel that it's coercion, I feel that it's inherent opportunity.
"Oh, you want to humiliate me on national TV? COOL! If I win then I cement my reputation and a grateful city builds me a five story penthouse super-hero complex atop Liberty Tower! With a trap door and a pool!"
In fact ... come to think of it ... what sort of a pattern do people expect when they do get that feeling of coercion? Does that indicate that they think they have the right to get something for nothing (enticement without threat)? Or that they are interested in effectively sitting out the game (getting no enticements in order to suffer no threats)? Or what?
I guess I just don't get the mindset, even in games other than Capes.
On 7/22/2006 at 1:30am, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
"Oh, you want to humiliate me on national TV? COOL! If I win then I cement my reputation and a grateful city builds me a five story penthouse super-hero complex atop Liberty Tower! With a trap door and a pool!"
In fact ... come to think of it ... what sort of a pattern do people expect when they do get that feeling of coercion? Does that indicate that they think they have the right to get something for nothing (enticement without threat)? Or that they are interested in effectively sitting out the game (getting no enticements in order to suffer no threats)? Or what?
I have two answers to this. First, I think you have completely internalized the tradeoff, so much so that when you see a threat you immediately turn it around into the opportunity you can tie to it. That's great, but it may be blinding you to how challenging that can be for other players. It's much like the mindshift between simple failure and 'interesting' failure in task-resolution games, which I'm also only starting to internalize. I can easily see how a player might see a conflict like 'Goal: Major Victory is humiliated on national TV.' and not realize the implicit story possibilities in winning the No side, other than Major Victory not being humiliated. It's just like the mindshift between 'simple' failure and 'interesting' failure in more traditionally based games -- it's the task-resolution GM looking at a player failing to pick a lock and saying 'The door is still locked' rather than, "You fail, and you hear the footsteps of the guard approaching." For such players, Threat is probably harder to mitigate with concomitant Enticement, simply because they don't perceive all the possibilities. For myself, I'm just starting to be able to do it, and it is something I have to consciously work on to achieve.
Second, I think there is a possible playstyle which involves little Threat. Bear in mind that Threat doesn't necessarily mean bad things happening to the characters, it means things happening in the narrative that the player actively doesn't want. This could even been good things happening to the characters. (A player may strongly resent someone getting their Professor Xavier character out of his wheelchair, for example). This kind of playstyle would be what you get if, for example, everyone at the table has an arbitrary veto that they can use for any narration or conflict. They still would fight over specific outcomes, since they will think that some outcomes are better than others, but they would not have any narrations that anyone at the table thinks are 'worse than nothing'. With players who liked inflicting bad things on their characters, this could still be an interesting narrative, but it is an open question how engaging the gameplay would be.
On 7/22/2006 at 2:23am, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
First, I think you have completely internalized the tradeoff, so much so that when you see a threat you immediately turn it around into the opportunity you can tie to it. That's great, but it may be blinding you to how challenging that can be for other players.
Okay. It's challenging. So? We can still examine their concerns and say "What sort of a world-view does this indicate?" For instance, when you write ...
Threlicus wrote:
Second, I think there is a possible playstyle which involves little Threat.
I think about the example I listed of people who avoid getting Enticement in order to avoid Threats. Does that sound about right? Or are you talking about a play-style where those two are not correlated?
On 7/22/2006 at 9:41pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
Okay. It's challenging. So? We can still examine their concerns and say "What sort of a world-view does this indicate?" For instance, when you write ...
The fact that it is challenging for some players means that, even though Enticement and Threat are strongly correlated for you, they may not be for others.
I think about the example I listed of people who avoid getting Enticement in order to avoid Threats. Does that sound about right? Or are you talking about a play-style where those two are not correlated?
There may well be such players, but I am mostly thinking about players and playstyles in which they are not correlated.
On 7/22/2006 at 10:59pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
There may well be such players, but I am mostly thinking about players and playstyles in which they are not correlated.
Okay so ... we're talking about people who want to be offered cool stuff (say, a Staff of the Magi) but don't want to be threatened in a proportionate way (like, say, a Metal Dragon Golem guarding the wizard catacombs in which the Staff is entombed)?
Or is it something else?
On 7/22/2006 at 11:15pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
Okay so ... we're talking about people who want to be offered cool stuff (say, a Staff of the Magi) but don't want to be threatened in a proportionate way (like, say, a Metal Dragon Golem guarding the wizard catacombs in which the Staff is entombed)?
Or is it something else?
Yes, I think we are talking people who want to be offered the opportunity to drive the story where they want, but don't want the threat of the story going ways they really don't want. But, I disagree with your example. The Staff of the Magi might be something they want (or it might not; it might even be a Threat for some players). I don't think the Metal Dragon Golem is going to be a Threat for such players -- I think it is more of a narrative obstacle, which is likely not a Threat; in fact, the opportunity to beat one and look cool doing it might well be an Enticement. A better example of a Threat here might be 'Your Wizard loses his magic powers permanently,' because that is attacking his conception of his character in a way he doesn't want.
Threat and Enticement are all in the eye of the beholder, and it's in the eye of the player, not the character involved.
On 7/23/2006 at 1:16am, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Oh, come on. Read charitably.
If we read "Staff of the Magi" as "If you win then your character will get the power to do all sorts of neat new tricks which will reinforce your sense of your character as a bad-ass, and further allow you increased ability to impact the game" and we further read "Metal Dragon Golem" as "If you lose then your character will be eaten, digested and excreted, which will severely limit your ability to further impact the game" are we on the same page?
On 7/23/2006 at 4:27pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Yes, I think we are. I just wanted to emphasize that I don't think these players believe in their characters getting something for nothing; but they may not see any reason why (assuming the other players don't actively dislike it) the players can't.
On 7/23/2006 at 7:39pm, Hans wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
Okay so ... we're talking about people who want to be offered cool stuff (say, a Staff of the Magi) but don't want to be threatened in a proportionate way (like, say, a Metal Dragon Golem guarding the wizard catacombs in which the Staff is entombed)?
May I suggest that the question is not the proportionality of the threat, but its nature? There are certain things that a person may not be willing to live with, regardless of the Enticement. Here is an example, based on Tony's original one, my changes in bold:
Player #1: Okay, if I win then I get a clue as to the villain's master plan.
Player #2: Fine, but if I win then the villain tracks you back to your secret hideout.
Player #1: Oh man! But if I win then, in addition to learning his master plan I totally foil it.
Player #2: Yeah? But if I win then, in addition to finding your hideout, he kills all your characters family.
Player #1: Hold up...killing my characters family, I don't think I can live with that, regardless of what I win.
On 7/23/2006 at 7:39pm, Hans wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
I just noticed I butted in to what could be considered a personal conversation. My apologies.
On 7/23/2006 at 8:50pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Nah. If it were a private conversation then we'd be having it in private, right?
On 7/23/2006 at 9:15pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Hans wrote:
May I suggest that the question is not the proportionality of the threat, but its nature?
This seems a bit hard to pin down though, since the "amount" of the threat is a subjective measure to start with (utility function to that player) and therefore figures into the quantity.
But, also ...
Hans wrote:
Player #1: Hold up...killing my characters family, I don't think I can live with that, regardless of what I win.
... My experience is that people can and do believe that a lot of things will be deal-breakers when, in fact, they totally wouldn't be. The question "Could you play this character if his family was killed?" will get a lot of "No, I couldn't do that." The question "Okay, the characters family has been killed ... can you play the character?" usually gets the answer "Yes."
The reason I've seen most people get upset about this stuff is not, in fact, that they've absorbed and meditated upon this stuff (dare I say "owned the tragedy"?) but rather that they balk ... they insist that the conflict is still open for business when everyone else is ready to move on to the next thing. You get these wierd conversations where people say "No, if that's how the story goes then I'm not part of it!" and the only sane response is "What on earth do you mean 'if'? It's done. They're dead. If you want to go then go, but don't keep talking about 'if' as if we're still negotiating."
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On 7/24/2006 at 12:44am, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
You may well be right about how people generally feel after the fact, but even so, Threat is clearly something prospective. Unless and until a player finds out that he can actually deal with these things that felt like Threats (and thus they aren't actually Threats anymore), they're still going to feel coerced about them.
On 7/24/2006 at 1:13am, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Okay. But then, that casts a fairly positive light on "coercion," right?
On 7/24/2006 at 1:01pm, Hans wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
... My experience is that people can and do believe that a lot of things will be deal-breakers when, in fact, they totally wouldn't be. The question "Could you play this character if his family was killed?" will get a lot of "No, I couldn't do that." The question "Okay, the characters family has been killed ... can you play the character?" usually gets the answer "Yes."
I think, though, that here is the "problem" in Capes. I personally think its a design feature, but anyway...
Think about a Conflict in Dust Devils. Here is the conversation:
Player: If I win, I rescue the Hidalgo's daughter.
Dealer: OK, then if I win, you get captured.
Player: Hmm, well if arresting is the price to pay, I REALLY want to not only rescue the daughter, but get lucky as well!
Dealer: If you throw in getting lucky, then the if I win you will be captured AND she will be killed.
Player: Hmmm, Ok, lets go back to the rescue vs. capture thing.
Dealer: Lets deal!
Note that the stakes are negotiated before any execution and more importantly, before any thing has happened in the fiction. Also, note that the Dealer proposed a stake that the player wasn't really ready to accept, and the player backed down; the player was willing to live with less reward in order not to risk the greater punishment. Also, in Dust Devils, you can Fold, if you get in too deep, and leave the conflict unresolved for later.
In Capes, however, the stakes are negotiated, in essence, THROUGH the fiction, if one can say they are even negotiated at all. Moreover, a person can raise the stakes and it can be almost impossible to back down from it; because of the nature of the veto rules and the fact that, as you mention, once someone says something it HAS happened and if you want to back down it might take more creativity than you have. Therefore, stakes are essentially raised unilaterally; there is no requirement that your opponents agree with those stakes. Finally, there really isn't any "fold" option either. That Conflict must resolve, otherwise the game stalls; you can't end the scene.
I have never found any of this problematic. However, it is different from the other conflict resolution type games I have played. I believe what people are calling coercion is this unilateral stakes raising I mentioned above, without the recourse of a fold or back down. But as I said above, I think this is a design feature. Capes requires either a much higher level of trust between players, and/or, more importantly, a much lower level of caring about any particular detail of the fiction, than other games. That is, if you are the kind of person for which there are things that could be realistically proposed by the people you are playing with that you just can't live with, frankly you should be playing a different game.
"Realistically" because many of the hypothetical examples of "coercion" I have seen around simply aren't going to happen in a real game. They are more examples of someone just being silly or vindictive.
However, I do think this is an important player requirement for Capes. I was in a game of PTA where a major argument took place because a player could not stand the thought of a particular character wearing a cloak. While I love this player, I'm not going to be playing Capes with them anytime soon.
On 7/24/2006 at 4:21pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Hans,
I think you're exactly right about how this is a design feature, and I agree wholeheartedly that for many players and groups it's not a problem in the least.
What I was trying to do with this thread was to get a better understand of the nature of the problem (for those for whom it is or might be a problem) and then, with that understanding, see if it suggested ways to tweak the Capes ruleset so it is better useable by such groups.
Tony, I don't understand what you're getting at by saying it's putting it into a positive light. I have some thoughts about what you might be thinking but I've been proven poor at reading your mind already in this thread, so if you could elaborate I would appreciate it.
(N.B. For myself, it's a purely theoretical problem. There are things I can imagine people putting down that might trigger Threat/coercion feelings, but I don't think I'm likely to play with people who would put those things down (and if they did I'd probably resort to the popcorn). Still, I think the thought-experiment lets me see where others might be coming from in this regard.)
On 7/24/2006 at 4:30pm, Sindyr wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
First, for a given player assume that we have a utility function for the narrative. That is, just a measure of 'how happy' that player is with the narrative. Now, in general this is a very complicated function of innumerable variables, but it doesn't matter since I'm never going to write one down. :) Now, suppose someone in Capes puts down a conflict. For simplicity of explanation I'm going to assume a simple two-sided conflict in which only two players are interested, though I think the idea generalizes. For each side in a conflict, imagine a circle of 'possible resolutions' around each of two points (Yes or No on the conflict). Now, I'm going to define two things, using the terminology I threw out in the other thread:
1) Enticement is the *maximum* of the player's utility functions over those circles. This is the utility he gets if he gets to pick the narrative outcome.
2) Threat is the negative of the integral of the utility times the player's perceived likelihood of the other player choosing each other possible result. This is what he's likely to end up with if he doesn't win the conflict. (I probably would add additional Threat to cover the variance -- the more uncertain the value is, the more threatening it is -- but I don't think that's essential to understand what I'm saying).
Just off the bat, while I will try to engage to the best of my ability this thread, I do not have the math background to parse or understand that, so I will be commenting from a perspective of general principles.
On 7/24/2006 at 4:37pm, Sindyr wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Hans wrote:
Sindyr: I have to disagree completely with your implication that narrativist play is somehow the antithesis of competition. Here is the reason; if you and I disagree profoundly as to how the story should go from this point forward, how are we expected to resolve this disagreement. We have already tried negotiation, and there is simply no point of common ground. Is this not a kind of competition? In my own experience in playing other narrativist games (such as Heroquest, Dust Devils, Burning Wheel) it is exactly those moments in which you and I disagree about which direction the story should go that the most fulfulling and interesting fiction occurs. Even in games with a very high level of common veto power (like PTA), there still has to be a conflict resolution mechanic. Personally, I'm just about the least gamist player you could ever meet. I do not value the competetive aspect of Capes because I like competition; I value it because it leads to good fiction.
I am not saying that narrativist play is somehow the antithesis of competition. Capes contains both competition and narrative. But when Competitive goals and Narrative goals are contradictory, and it happens, one must choose to either use the tools of competition to fight for and hopefully win the right to achieve your narrative goals; or to use the tools of competition for proving that you are a "better" competitor. Sometimes those two are incompatible. But I have no problem with competetion when the primary goals of each player at the table are narrative in nature - when each player is *not* trying to "prove" themselves so much as they are trying to each achieve narrative ends that may or may not be in conflict.
On 7/24/2006 at 4:41pm, Sindyr wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
TonyLB wrote:
See, I don't get what you think the functional distinction is between Threat and Enticement. They're that tightly intertwined. When somebody threatens me, I immediately begin salivating over the enticement I can create for myself (if they haven't already offered me one). I don't feel that it's coercion, I feel that it's inherent opportunity.
Here's a note: Other player's may in fact not have the same feeling as Tony. FYI. Perhaps a lot of them. Tony's unique. ;)
On 7/24/2006 at 4:54pm, Sindyr wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
OK, read through the thread. Whew!
Threatening play, which if I understand you correctly is what I call coercive play, occurs when one players tries to motivate another by threatening an outcome unnacceptable to the targetted player. Tactically speaking, the more unacceptable the outcome, the greater the target will be motivated to engage to stave off the threatened outcome. This leads to coercive play like "Captain Good empties his bowels on live TV" or "Captain Good's reckless driving puts 12 people in the hospital".
In my opinion, coercive play has it's place - when the threatened outcome is really important for the one who created it. If Jack is playing Captain Good and Dan is playing Nekro, perhaps Dan puts down "Captain Good's reckless driving puts 12 people in the hospital" because Dan sincerely wants to explore the story of Captain Good being responsible for something bad. Or maybe Dan for some reason really wants the story to be about traffic safety - perhaps in real life he lost his dad to a reckless driver and Jack's narration of the Captain's reckless driving has been stressing him.
But if the goal was only created to 1) generate resources or 2) engage in player versus player domination, than I find coercive play used that way boorish and uninteresting.
To my way of thinking, a Capes game with players that primarily value narrative goals can do no wrong, whether its coercive or enticing play. But if the goal is to prove how you can outplay the other players first, and worry about the story a distant second - well that's just so much macho posturing and ego stroking in my opinion - and I do not value it.
What does this all boil down to? Context. I can find coercive play much more acceptable to me if I know that the player sitting accross for me really want to win the conflict not for resources of competitiveness, but because the outcome of the Conflict is important to him narratively.
Hope that helps.
On 7/24/2006 at 5:05pm, Tuxboy wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
To my way of thinking, a Capes game with players that primarily value narrative goals can do no wrong, whether its coercive or enticing play. But if the goal is to prove how you can outplay the other players first, and worry about the story a distant second - well that's just so much macho posturing and ego stroking in my opinion - and I do not value it.
What does this all boil down to? Context. I can find coercive play much more acceptable to me if I know that the player sitting accross for me really want to win the conflict not for resources of competitiveness, but because the outcome of the Conflict is important to him narratively.
Pretty much goes for any game system, it simply gets dragged into the spotlight due to Capes' Conflict resolution mechanic being central to narration.
In any game someone trying to hog the limelight for player-based ego purposes is unacceptable, and no more or less in Capes, but at least the Conflict mechanic can be used to rein this kind of behaviour in by denying them narrative control through winning conflicts.
I think the issue is knowing when it is resource, ego or narratively based coercive play and acting accordingly.
On 7/24/2006 at 6:33pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Threlicus wrote:
Tony, I don't understand what you're getting at by saying it's putting it into a positive light. I have some thoughts about what you might be thinking but I've been proven poor at reading your mind already in this thread, so if you could elaborate I would appreciate it.
I'm mostly saying that if most of what people read as "coercion" will, in fact, lead to them finding new ways that the story can go, and appreciating and valuing those ways then the end product of the coercion is that they're playing a better game that they value more.
Likewise, one of my sons is a picky eater. I have to absolutely insist that he tries any new food ... even (I kid you not) new flavors of ice cream. I have to coerce him to give Chocolate-Chip-Cookie-Dough ice cream a try. I do not feel bad about applying that coercion. It's for his own good.
And before people jump on it as if it's a flaw in my statement: Yes, I feel that sometimes other players know what's good for me better than I do. I am totally fine with the idea that they can force me to do something I don't think I want, and that it turns out to be not merely okay but actively cool. And I think the same applies for every last one of you, too. There are things you can learn from your fellow players, but you have to get past your own defense mechanisms before that can happen. When that happens you're going to feel coerced, and that is not a bad thing.
On 7/24/2006 at 7:39pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Right. So, the reason to let people force you into things you don't think you want is because you trust them to know better than you what you want.
That is to say, you have to trust your fellow players to be *good* fellow players, and not throw yet another plate of Brussels Sprouts at you when you don't like Brussels Sprouts, and you're right about not liking them. You are forced, by the mechanics of Capes, to reward the other players for sticking Brussels Sprouts in front of you, by fighting not to have to eat them. Other than throwing popcorn (holy mixed food metaphors, Batman) -- which is to say, using the Social Contract, and thus I include saying "Hey Tony, that's stupid and I really don't like it, please take it back." -- does the honest, correct Brussels Sprouts hater have any recourse?
Yes, this whole line of inquiry is very much about a safety net that you emphatically don't need with good players who know you well enough to stick stuff in front of you that you'll turn out liking.
On 7/24/2006 at 7:56pm, TonyLB wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Okay, see ... I think we're stretching the food metaphor too far.
What I'm saying is that most roleplayers (at least in my experience) can continue to play no matter what happens to their characters.
Like, suppose you handed me a pre-gen character that said "Your character was once a proud northern barbarian, but has been enslaved for ten years, during which time he has been repeatedly humiliated, tortured and degraded. That's where you start." That, to put it bluntly, rocks on toast. I am all over playing that character. I can do all sorts of stuff with that character.
Now, suppose I'm playing a proud northern barbarian, and you say to me "So how about if we enslave you for ten years, during which time you are repeatedly humiliated, tortured and degraded?" Odds are I'm going to say "Uh ... I don't think I could enjoy playing the character after that," and I would (obviously) be completely wrong.
Trust is a very cool thing. It makes it easy for me to realize that whatever (say) Eric narrates, it will leave me with a character that I can be psyched about playing. But that's true even for people I don't trust ... I just have a harder time realizing it. I play Capes with random folks at conventions all the time, and I have never seen a single one of them have difficulty playing their character forward from the strange and often nonsensical places that people put them in. They just do it.
I think, in terms of the metaphor, I deny the existence of Brussels Sprouts. I think that if you sit down to the gaming table and say "Whatever my character was five minutes ago, this is what my character is now, and playing it is why I'm here," then you will find ways to play the character and get excited about it. It's scary in theory, but easy in practice.
On 7/24/2006 at 8:32pm, Threlicus wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Well, I don't think I want to debate the question of whether genuine Threat (which is all the Brussels Sprouts are) really exists. I don't have enough personal experience with Capes to say for sure one way or another, though I'm certain perceived Threat does. Certainly if the problem doesn't really exist there's no need for a solution. For those who feel it does exist, I hope my theory has helped you towards figuring out how to use Capes in ways you like better.
I'm done here.
On 7/24/2006 at 8:34pm, Sindyr wrote:
RE: Re: Threatening vs. Enticing and its meaning for Capes
Same. (if permitted)