In a separate thread, I attempted to coin a new term, called the Silly Limit, as follows:

The Silly Limit is the greatest amount of seriousness that can occur in a Capes session.  The interesting thing about the Silly Limit is that it can never RISE in a Capes game, it can only be as high as least serious thing that has been said during the course of the game.  The minute someone brings squirrels into the narration, for example, then the game will never be able to rise back above squirrels. The new Silly Limit for that session has been set to "Squirrels allowed".  You can never go back to "Squirrels not allowed".  I think the Silly Limit probably exists in all role-playing games, but it is much more obvious in Capes... 

I think the root of my different experience may be that I don't think that serious and silly are mutually exclusive.  If I bring forth something from my character that says something important and meaningful about the human condition then it will usually be recognized as serious, even if everything that surrounds it is silly.

Y'know, I was going to invent an example but Eddie Valiant (played by Bob Hoskins) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is the perfect example already.  You've got a movie that includes animated figures engaged in all manner of silliness, but in the midst of all of it you've got a guy who believed in joy and met with tragedy.  What does it cost him to risk opening up again?  There is no amount of cartoon silliness that can prevent his story from being laden with pathos.

My experience is that if you've got a group that wanted to be serious, and silliness is dissuading them from trying, then even one example to show that it can be done will change the tenor of a game substantially.

I think we may be talking about different kinds of serious, Tony.  I am speaking more in terms of what happens in the game, and not about why it happens or the emotional impact of it. 

Taking animated films as examples: the Invincibles is an excellent story, full of humour but also full of real emotion and interesting relationships.  Fritz the Cat, while not even remotely as good a movie, is also full of humour, and also has real, raw emotion and interesting relationships.  However, if you start out playing a game of Capes hoping for the one, and end up with the other, then there is likely to be a crisis of expections among the players. 

To take comic books as an example, if you start out hoping for Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four and end up with Miller Daredevil, or vice versa, the ground has shifted underneath you, and you are liable to be dissapointed.  Your enjoying the street-level grit of heroes dealing with the grey zones of vigilantism, when Galactus shows up.  Your grooving on the weird science of the Negative Zone when a posse of Jamaican drug-dealers arrive.  It is likely that the story itself will seem incoherent, when looked back on by the players, because of the radical shift in mood and tone that occurred during the course of it.

Moreover, it takes a lot more talent to combine sillyness with drama.  Who framed Roger Rabbit? is much more difficult to pull off then Batman Begins because you have to put the sillyness in exactly the right places to highlight, instead of distract from, the drama.  Just look at the Schumacher Batman films to see examples of the sillyness killing the drama, instead of coexisting with it or enhancing it.  In my experience, the average RPG player (myself included) simply does not have the talent to be able to improvise this on the spot during a Capes game.  In other words, the minute Daffy Duck shows up, most likely that means you now have a Daffy Duck cartoon, not a film starring Bob Hoskins.  You may find it easy to bring something important and meaningul about the human condition into the middle of a Daffy Duck cartoon, but most of us will find it a lot easier to have him get whacked on the head by his own quarterstaff or shot in the bill by Elmer Fudd.

On your last sentence.  First, you are right, if ALL of the group wants X, then the group will get most likely get X, and even if there is a shift away from X the group will probably steer back to X.  The problem is that if at least one person wants Y, then you really can't do anything to stop a shift to Y.  X/Y can be serious/silly, high-power/street-grit, PG-rated/hard R, or just about any other pair of things that are mutually exclusive.  More importantly, these dichotomies are directional; it is easier to go in one way than the other.  Once Galactus shows up, its a lot harder to go back to fighting local gang members.  Once you get full frontal nudity, its hard to go back to the PG rating.  Once the Bat-Mite shows up, it takes the talent of someone like Grant Morrison to go back to the Dark Knight Returns. 

Second, it could be that you are simply very good at making silly situations say something important and meaningful, and hence provide that example you speak of, while I am not. 

I get what you're saying. In a game of Capes we are both pushing and fighting for what we want to see in the game, but also riffing off the people around us. If someone else does something silly, then it's likely to influence the way I push forward and then I'll feel less hesitant to be silly than if I was in a gritty game full of torture and cannibalism. I see this as not a problem or even something that needs to be identified, but simply how Capes works. We're collaboratively defining the tone and feel of the game, and if someone wants to introduce silliness then that's because they want to see that in the game. Now, the Silly Limit idea seems to imply that silly ideas somehow have more power than other ideas - if I introduce something silly then it's more likely to tug the tone of the game in the silly direction. I think really it's just that in a convention game, people are more likely to cut loose, goof around, and not take things like coherent story and drama as seriously as they would in an ongoing home game of Capes.

In the multi-session Capes games I've run with home groups, they've been serious. In the games I've run with Capes veterans who know what they want and know how to use the system to get it, they've been primarily serious. When I run the game with Capes noobs who didn't know what they're getting into, or are spazzing out because they're not used to having the narrative power that Capes gives them, then yeah - the games tend to get silly. However, silliness does not push the "limit" of the game any stronger than anything else.

If we are in a light-hearted game, and then I narrate my character murdering his children and committing suicide, I don't care how silly it has been or will be in the future - I've made a significant push towards the horrific and serious. These limits aren't opposing each other. They're not a spectrum - silly versus serious. I think Roger Rabbit shows that silly and serious are not mutually exclusive. You can have slapstick and absurdity alongside pathos and drama. And no, we might not be pros at executing it, but we're not any better at executing sexy love scenes or dramatic monologues. We just do our best and have fun.

I tend to like games that are horrific and dark. I once played with a couple of my friends who prefer the wacky. What we ended up with was a Garth Ennis-esque darkly comedic comic about an insane and randomly violent gunslinger who hunted demons. They were pushing the silly, but the silly didn't and couldn't stomp out the horror and darkness that I was pushing into the game. I think if someone else is pushing for silly and you're pushing for serious, I think you'll have humorous and serious themes intertwining.

Hans wrote: Moreover, it takes a lot more talent to combine sillyness with drama.

Tony - I know that lately you've said it's valuable for players to spend at least a couple minutes in pre-game discussion to get everyone on the same page.  Why is that?  Because I think it's related to what Hans is talking about.  (Correct me if I've misunderstood you.)

Hans - it's not just you; it's happened to me a couple of times.  Because there's no ability to say "No," in Capes, you're stuck with the stupidest thing narrated.  I haven't played Capes enough to know for sure, but I would guess there are two ways to handle this: the Battle of the Stupid Things in which players push for what they want even if it means ruining the ability of others to enjoy playing the game, or Getting On the Same Page where people are sharing the same expectations.

Capes is a great game when people compete ruthlessly within a larger collaborative framework.  But when that larger framework isn't there, and you hate everything that others are saying, it can be a very bad time.

James_Nostack wrote: Tony - I know that lately you've said it's valuable for players to spend at least a couple minutes in pre-game discussion to get everyone on the same page.  Why is that?  Because I think it's related to what Hans is talking about.  (Correct me if I've misunderstood you.)

Hans - For what it's  worth, my (limited) experience with Capes left me with the same conclusion that you've reached.  I was in a a game with James, here (Hi James!), and, even though we did spend a good 20-30 minutes hashing out the kind of game we were looking for and our expectations regarding genre & mood & tone, a tremendous amount of silliness (of the scatological variety) was introduced the first time a goal was resolved.  After that, there was just no going back.

For my part, once (1) I saw that silliness was in the game and (2) I saw that it got a reaction from the other players, it didn't make much sense for me to try to fight to keep it out.

Jon wrote:
Hans - For what it's  worth, my (limited) experience with Capes left me with the same conclusion that you've reached.  I was in a a game with James, here (Hi James!), and, even though we did spend a good 20-30 minutes hashing out the kind of game we were looking for and our expectations regarding genre & mood & tone, a tremendous amount of silliness (of the scatological variety) was introduced the first time a goal was resolved.  After that, there was just no going back.

For my part, once (1) I saw that silliness was in the game and (2) I saw that it got a reaction from the other players, it didn't make much sense for me to try to fight to keep it out.

I have been thinking about this as well, and think the "Silly Limit" is a misnomer, because "sillyness" is just one possible area in which the effect I am thinking of occurs.  Here is a new description.

The Extremes Conjecture: The most extreme narration of a particular type in a Capes games determines the boundaries of future narrations of that type, tend to drive narrations of that type overall towards that extreme.

This gets rid of the previous dichotomous nature (silly/serious) of the Silly Limit. 

Picture an amoeba-like envelope called the Shared Immaginary Space (SIS) moving through a larger multi-dimensional space of all possible SIS's; let's call it Story Space.  Each region of Story Space has its own aroma (the Kirby aroma, the Miller aroma, the Corben aroma, the Aragones aroma, etc.), and these aromas permeate the SIS amoeba when the SIS amoeba interacts with that region.  Each narration is a pseudopod extended by one player from the SIS amoeba in some direction, which also moves the center of mass of the whole organism in that same direction.  Moreover, if the psuedopod is extended into a new region of Story Space, the aroma of that region will permeate the SIS amoeba.  Even if later the pseudopod is pulled back out of that region, that aroma will still linger, for good or ill.

The overall aroma of the game, therefore, is the mixture of all the aromas that the SIS amoeba has come in contact with.  If a player or group of players are looking for a particular combination of different aromas, say a primary scent of Kirby, with a harsh overtone of Gaiman, and subtle hints of Ditko, achieving the combination can be very difficult, since it is so easy for one aroma to overpower all the others.

I chose aroma as the metaphor above carefully, because I think the sense of smell is very like our sense of what we find enjoyable in narrative.  Even a hint of an aroma you don't like can ruin the experience of a pleasant aroma.  The fresh clear aroma of a beach can be tainted by the faint aroma of rotting fish.  In the same way the very enjoyable sense you get from a Story Space region you like (for me, Jack Kirby) can be tainted by the even a hint of a Story Space region you don't like (for me, Richard Corben).

I would suggest that this conjecture and associated metaphor probably applies to all RPG's, but there are certain features of Capes that make it much more important, namely its super-hero subject matter (which already consists of lots of strong aromas that aren't easy to mix), the wide narrative authority it gives to every player, and the overtly competitive nature of the game play. 

Hans wrote:
The Extremes Conjecture: The most extreme narration of a particular type in a Capes games determines the boundaries of future narrations of that type, tend to drive narrations of that type overall towards that extreme.

TonyLB wrote:
Does that distinction between the implicit boundaries (what boundaries people choose to respect, often without thinking about them) and the explicit boundaries (the ones that they have to respect, because of the rules) make sense?

Hans wrote: * The Extremes Conjecture states that because of Sydney's extreme narration, the tenor of the story HAS CHANGED.

Tony,

I think what Hans is saying Tony is that once Sydney narrated the event it can't be un-said in my mind.  It's there.  You can modify the narration later through your own narration.  You can keep it from happening again (at least on a temporary basis) through the mechanics.  None of that negates the fact that the story, even if only briefly, went to that violent place.  Thus there is now a precident set for going there again, at least in my mind.  If someone wanted to go there again it's easier to do because Sydney had already been there.

Now, I don't know how much I agree with Hans or not but I have seen this in action around the table.  The thing is that it is generally with players who are new to the game and aren't used to quite as much freedom in narration.  So, they start out kind of timid in introducing extremes in narration.  Then someone does a narration that goes beyond what anyone has doen up to that point.  Everyone else at the table thinks about that for a second and the next thing you know everyone narrates the same kind of thing, because that ground has been broken now.  Then someone will take things farther... and people follow there too.

I don't know if this would happen with a group of experienced Capes players.  I've never been able to play with a whole group (or even a majority) that had more than a couple of Capes games under their belts.  I'm generally the only one who has played more than a few times.

Andrew summarizes my thoughts on the matter very well, especially his first paragraph. 

However, there is a problem here in the way I phrased the conjecture, and then continued to speak of it.  It is the word "boundaries".  In one place I was using boundaries as "the limits of territory in Story Space that have been touched by the story so far", and in another place was using boundaries as "the limits that players set on what kinds of narrations they find acceptable and unacceptable".  I think this is what generated your initial response; you were reacting to the particular word I had chosen in one of those senses (limits of players) and I adopted your understanding of the word, forgetting that I was using the word in a different sense (area of story space that has been touched).  I will correct this by rewording in a more general fashion, and, I hope, incorporating your objections:

The Extremes Conjecture: Extreme narrations in any particular thematic direction in a Capes games will shift all future narration in that same thematic direction unless action is taken to counter the shift.

Given the above, here is the way I interpret your example:
* Sydney makes an extreme narration in the graphic violence thematic direction.
* Tony, either consciously or subconsciously recognizing he is facing a shift in direction of the story that he doesn't like, takes immediate and obvious action to counter the shift, by playing a very obvious conflict targeting that shift.
* Sydney, and all the other players, either consciously or subconsciously, get Tony's message, and the game proceeds with no perceptible change in tenor.

Based on this, I think the difference between, say, a four hour game at a convention with all new players and a long term game with experienced players is that experienced players understand the ways in which they can act to counter a shift in the tenor of the game, while the new players do not.  The new players may feel helpless in the face of an extreme narration, while an experience player can figure out clever ways to counter it.  Which is pretty much what Tony was saying in the first place.

That being said, I still think that the problem of the fact of the narration is a big deal.  In your case, Tony, that one eviscerated village was something that you and the other players at the table could conveniently ignore, narrate around, or counteract ("just a flesh wound") without monkeying too much with the coherence of the narrative (i.e. events make sense in some kind of order with each other).  But what if Sydney had narrated the entire village being napalmed?  You could still have done the same thing you did, but the fact of an entire village of horribly burned people is a lot harder to ignore or narrate around.

I think this is also where we come back to sillyness.  Lets say the extreme narration was, instead of a graphic evisceration, narration that all the Lizard People are purple and pray to their great god Barney for success.  Where do you take this, if you feel this takes the story in a direction you don't like?  What kind of conflict do you play that prevents future Barney references with regards to Lizard People?  How do you incorporate this new Barney as Lizard People god fact into your future narrations in such a way that maintains the previous tenor of the story you were hoping for?

Oh ... okay.  I think you guys are saying less than I originally thought.

You're not saying "Once the ground is broken, people are compelled or otherwise pushed to go there."  You're saying "Once something has been said, it's been said, and everything proceeds from that point forward ... the tenor of the game evolves based on what people do and say, and how people react to it, and things that are (at the time) extreme are often the sign-posts of the direction the game is evolving in."

Yes?

Because a lot of your phraseology struck me as saying that one player could unilaterally drag a whole bunch of other players into a new tenor, and there's nothing that the other players can do about it ... and that's just not so.  There is really nothing, nothing at all, that you can narrate that I cannot narrate away quickly and convincingly.  Comic book authors have given us decades worth of different ways to say "All your favorite characters just got dismembered and eaten" at the ending of issue #59 and then undo it at the beginning of issue #60.

But if you're not saying that one player can unilaterally drag things in a certain direction then I'm arguing against something you're not saying.

Hans wrote: The Extremes Conjecture: Extreme narrations in any particular thematic direction in a Capes games will shift all future narration in that same thematic direction unless action is taken to counter the shift.

Hans wrote: I think this is also where we come back to sillyness.  Lets say the extreme narration was, instead of a graphic evisceration, narration that all the Lizard People are purple and pray to their great god Barney for success.  Where do you take this, if you feel this takes the story in a direction you don't like?  What kind of conflict do you play that prevents future Barney references with regards to Lizard People?  How do you incorporate this new Barney as Lizard People god fact into your future narrations in such a way that maintains the previous tenor of the story you were hoping for?

I'm saying less than you thought before, but more than you think now, I think.  :)  

TonyLB wrote:
You're not saying "Once the ground is broken, people are compelled or otherwise pushed to go there."  

TonyLB wrote:
"Goal:  Demonstrate anything even the least bit silly, amusing or comforting about the dark, devouring demon-God B'rnyeh."

TonyLB wrote:
There is really nothing, nothing at all, that you can narrate that I cannot narrate away quickly and convincingly. 

Hans wrote: An interesting example:  Player plays a conflict on the table "Goal: Sexually humilate Hero X".  Note that this extreme narration is actually rules-encoded, in the same way your prohibition of Barney sillyness was rules-encoded.  Until it goes away, this whole idea of sexual humiliation is going to be hanging around the table.  Nothing up to this point in the game was even remotely sexually charged.  I must conclude that this character has unilaterally dragged the story into sexual humiliation territory, whether I like it or not, at least for the duration of this conflict.  We can't just ignore it; to finish the page we have to address it.

Sorry, took me a while to respond to this...

Tony, I simply can't agree with your interpretation here, at least the broader implications of your interpretation.

Lets take sex out of it.  I'm playing in Daredevil in a Capes game based on the Marvel Universe.  Up until this point in the game, things have stayed in a low-powered, street crime type place. 

A player plays "Goal: Galactus destroys the Earth!", spends a story token, and drops Galactus as a character on the table, and narrates "Galactus suddenly appears in Central Park, his massive feet pressing craters into the soil".

It is absolutely correct to say that, it is, by the rules, impossible for Galactus to destroy the world while this goal is on the table.  But that misses the larger point, which is suddenly this player has unlaterally introduced a whole new dynamic into the story.  Sure, Galactus can't destroy the Earth while the goal is on the table, but who cares.  Freaking Galactus is standing in Central Park building a massive world destruction machine and the Silver Surfer is busy trashing out Thor and the Fantastic Four over the Baxter Building.  This is not just "threatening" a shift...it IS a shift. 

Now, assuming I don't like the idea of Galactus in my previous low power level street crime game, I can probably think of ways to react to this:

"Goal: Display any superhuman power"
"Goal: Be bigger than 7 feet tall"
"Goal: Ignore the plight of the common man"
etc.

And they may even work (I especially like the last one), to keep the low level focus.  But all of these things are not me maintaining things where they were.  That train has left the station.  All of these things are attempts for me to GET BACK to where we were, and channel the other players along with me.  A single narration or conflict can make a shift that it takes a lot of game effort to come back from, assuming that one or more players want to get back from it.

Now, back to the sexual humiliation goal.  Sure, your right, the actual sexual humilation part can't happen while the goal is on the table.  But while its on the table, there is likely to be a lot of narration SETTING UP the humilation (which is, in fact, what happened in the game).  Newspaper reporters talking about rumours of indiscretions or impotence, maneuvering to position to pull pants down, etc.  This is not "threatening" a shift, it IS a shift.  A previously untouched area of subject matter (sexuallity) has been thrust center stage; you can either fight it or run with it, but you can't ignore it.

It has nothing to do whether I thought I had a "right" to Cartoon Network.  I know very well I DON'T have the right to Cartoon Network.  The Extremes Conjecture pretty much tells me that.  It also has nothing to do with "fairness".  It is neither fair nor unfair that this is something that can happen.  Saying it is unfair is like saying it is unfair that a DM in D&D can choose to throw Ogres instead of Trolls at you. 

Just to clear up any idea that this is just sour grapes on my part, I can think of circumstances where the same unilateral pulling happened and it was fantastic thing to have happen for my enjoyment.  The time my friend Piers suddenly turned a story into a Zombie story from left field, or another friend pulled a Matrix-like shift to a higher plane of reality, as examples.  But make no mistake, those shifts were no less unilateral shifts just because I found them enjoyable.  The Extremes Conjecture, I am arguing, simply describes the way Capes works, independent of whether particular instances are viewed as enjoyable or unenjoyable.

The reason I think this discussion is important is that Capes is so very different from other games that it consistently throws people off, and I think Extremes Conjecture is explanatory regarding this effect.  The actual play examples in my own experience and those that have been described on this forum that generated my initial "silly limit" comments, all typify the Extremes Conjecture in action.  By understanding this effect and recognizing it when it is in operation, one can prepare oneself and others to more fully to enjoy the game AS IS, rather than worry over its perceived limitations.  It helps outline the kinds of enjoyment that are possible in Capes, including types of enjoyment that are ONLY possible in Capes.  Capes is pretty much the only game that allows this kind of incredible unilateral power on the part of every player, and should be embraced for this feature because of all the fun it can bring with it. 

Now, could it be that you and I are having essentially this Pythonesque conversation?

Hans: "Tony, look right there, that is a shift in tone."

Tony: "No it isn't.  The shift in tone hasn't happened yet."

Hans: "Yes it has. I can't see how you can possibly say the tone hasn't shifted."

Tony: "And I can't see how an otherwise reasonable person such as yourself could say it HAS shifted."

Hans: "C'mon, it's shifted!"

Tony: "No, it hasn't."

Hans: "Yes it has."

etc., etc., until I ask you if our time is up and was this five pound argument or three?

If so, hey, I'm fine with that.  If we can't agree on an example of where the tone has shifted, then we certainly can't agree on an idea based on the idea that tones can be shifted.

I actually don't think that we're in all that much disagreement.

It seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that you think that the tone of a game shifts when the potential for a certain kind of story development enters play.  And your Extremes Conjecture (written that way) would say that once a new potential is offered/threatened, everybody recognizes that it's the kind of potential that they can offer/threaten in the future.

Whereas, I was originally reading you as saying that the game shifts when the actual story development enters play.

So I think it's not so much that I was arguing to argue (at least I hope not) but rather that I was arguing against something I thought you were saying, rather than what you were actually saying.  Which is still mea culpa, but hopefully more understandable.

Hans wrote:
A player plays "Goal: Galactus destroys the Earth!", spends a story token, and drops Galactus as a character on the table, and narrates "Galactus suddenly appears in Central Park, his massive feet pressing craters into the soil".

It is absolutely correct to say that, it is, by the rules, impossible for Galactus to destroy the world while this goal is on the table. 

TonyLB wrote:
It seems to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that you think that the tone of a game shifts when the potential for a certain kind of story development enters play.  And your Extremes Conjecture (written that way) would say that once a new potential is offered/threatened, everybody recognizes that it's the kind of potential that they can offer/threaten in the future.

epweissengruber wrote:
[- Events can be vetoed

- Could you introduce a house rule to the effect that Goals can be vetoed?
>> A player might say "sorry, Hans, but a guy who shoots flaming vanilla ice cream out of his nose has no place in our 'film-noir meets The Watchmen' game -- I Veto."
>> Players have to use the Capes mechanics to resolve goals but perhaps it might be worthwhile for players to have tighter control about what gets subject to mechanical resolution

Thanks for the clarification

Universalis begins with a proposal to be approved
Capes with a reality about which people contend

Hans wrote: I think where you and I are disagreeing is exactly in the word "potential".  I am saying that when "Goal: Galactus destroys the Earth" hits that the story has just become a Galactus related story, not that it is potentially a Galactus related story.

Like the Zeppo episode in Buffy, where the whole demons-breaking-through-into-reality-argh-apocalypse thing is just backdrop for Xander going up against the zombies who just want to blow up the school.

I think I'm with Hans on this one.  Even if you pull it back down to the "gritty" level, Galactus is still there.  The fact that he's in the story now (if only as background) influences the tone.  Sure, you can mitigate it a great deal but the influence is still there.  Also, I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing.  It's just a thing.

What Andrew said. 

You are allowed to sound contrary, Tony, and I understand your point of view.  You are right that people can keep things all about Hell's Kitchen and low level crime.  In fact, I think what you are describing would be awesome and would be exactly where I would try to keep things given my example. 

But the Extremes Conjecture is all about Galactus (and other extreme things) "automatically getting more story weight" because he is extreme, and pulling things towards "lets make this about Galactus".  The players can get what you are talking about in response to Galactus, but they will be working against, not with, the pull.  My own experience tells me that it is far easier for the players to go to the extreme, instead of fight against it. 

Oh!  Galactus automatically gets more story-weight because he's tall and omnipotent!  GOTCHA!

Yes, I do see that in action.

I will say that I see it in action less the longer a person has played Capes.  Which is not to say that it's not a very real thing for 99% of the people playing the system.  It's just by way of explaining why I have a hard time intuitively grasping this bit.  "Galactus destroys earth" no longer strikes me as inherently more important than "Turk mugs an old lady."  In fact, given the long history of Daredevil and Turk, I'd have to go with the latter conflict as the one I'd personally give more weight to.  I'm screwed up that way.

But yes, absolutely, the vast majority of other roleplaying works (and works well) by assuming that people come to an unspoken consensus on the importance of something, based on its importance in the fictional world of the story.  That measure is still going to be active in Capes (because people do not change quickly) and there is no corresponding damper to make it harder for people to create these fraught events than it is for them to make "smaller" ones.

It sounds to me like that imbalance is driving the Extremes Conjecture behavior.  Does that sound right to you?

Boom baby!  It feels like Reykyavik in 1986.  Do you want to be Gorbachev or Reagan?  I'm easy either way.  :)  I think we are grokking each other.

I love the terms imbalance and damper in what you said.  They are perfect in describing what I was getting at. 

The only quibble I would make with your last statement it is not just the fictional importance of the narration that creates the imbalance, per se, but the extremity of the narration compared to the sum of previous narrations.  Narrating Galactus in a game that has already seen trips to the Negative Zone, the Sub Mariner attacking New York City with Atlantean armies, etc. doesn't really cause any imbalance; it is not extreme.  An extreme narration in that sort of game might be something like Sue Richards declaring she wants a divorce from Reed, or Alicia getting beaten up by street thugs, or Johnny trying heroin for the first time, or similar.  Extremity is always in relation to what has come before. 

In other words, extremity does not equal importance.  Turk mugging an old lady may be important in a Daredevil story, but it is not extreme.  Turk becoming the new Sorcerer Supreme would be both important AND extreme, same for Turk being revealed as a horrific serial killer or Turk being revealed as gay and asking Foggy out on a date.

So I guess it is not quite the unspoken consensus of what is important that the Extremes Conjecture addresses, so much as the unspoken consensus of what is customary, expected, or typical. 

That being said, I can see how the more important the extreme narration is, the more it will imbalance things.  Take the exact same street level supers game, but in one case it is set in Hong Kong, and in the other in Manhattan.  In the game set in Hong Kong, narrating that Galactus has landed in Central Park NYC is extreme, assuming nothing world shattering has ever happened in the game before, but is probably not that imbalancing...it is likely to become color in the background of whatever is happening, as TV's or radios play in the background.  Narrating Galactus into Central Park in the Manhattan story is a different thing; he's standing right there, all 100's of feet of him, with tanks driving on the streets and Thor zipping overhead and helicopters flying overhead telling everyone to remain calm.  That has more weight, and hence more imbalance.  I would argue that Galactus is equally extreme in both cases, though, compared to what has gone before.

Hans wrote:
Do you want to be Gorbachev or Reagan?  I'm easy either way.  :)  I think we are grokking each other.