Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest
- Thread starter eaglejarl
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- naruto rationalist romance armageddon is looking better and better damn you kishimoto explosions everywhere explosives solve everyone if in doubt surrender to the mercy of zabuza it seemed like a good idea at the time looks like a really bad case of being a jōnin my god. where does the lore end? precommitting is the winning plan screaming in kagome screw the rules i have explosives something bad might still happen sometimes you gotta sociopath stabby zabby subsection c of paragraph 9 should include we can weaponize this so hard
All of that is true, yet it doesn't address my concern. The thing that's worrying me is that IC/story-based effective strategies have become, even if only very slightly, misaligned with OOC/mechanics-based effective strategies.
OOC, it is now an effective strategy (albeit a foolish one) to deliberately gain harmful aspects so that you can get more FP. In character, that wouldn't be true. The disconnect bugs me.
Since it looks like other players aren't concerned, though, I'll let the matter drop.
Noumero
Omit Needless Words
[x] Jiraiya and Keiko talk about the Toads' and the Pangolins' ancient history.
I think it would be interesting, and it would help to confirm/disprove Kagome's theories that summons are descendants from the sages the Sage of Six Paths imprisoned in the summon realm.
I think it would be interesting, and it would help to confirm/disprove Kagome's theories that summons are descendants from the sages the Sage of Six Paths imprisoned in the summon realm.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
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FWIW I'm concerned too. Just not much to be done about it.
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[x] Jiraiya and Keiko talk about the Toads' and the Pangolins' ancient history.
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
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Completely agree. In fact, I think that the best way to increase the challenge of bringing the world into the state of happiness and utopia is to provoke the next world war and maybe glass a couple countries. Think Uplift is hard now? Try doing it when half of the world is dead, and rest of it hates you. Man, the challenge would be so much better then.
Seriously though, argument "But this strategy that makes you less likely to do the thing you currently want (win) will make doing the thing you currently want (win) so much more amusing" doesn't really work unless the hivemind is deliberately challenging itself.
Just off the top of my head:
- Drop the idea of compels, since it's not that important from the mechanical side of the game(which is what rule change is supposed to be about) and esteemed QMs can do narrative consequences just fine themselves
- Give fate points for sucessfully overcoming the consequence of compels, not for just being compelled.
- Estabilish some way to gain FP other than compels in such a way that it's more efficient to use it than to farm compels (because compels by necessity have a negative consequence)
- Make FP be a very minor mechanical advantage, so that accepting compels is worse than having extra FP
- Drop the idea of FP
- Decrease cost of compels for the enemy/give enemy FP for compelling such that having a compellable aspect is a major disadvantage in a confrontation
- Make FP unusable for things we care a lot about-e.g. Sealing. Meh idea in my opinion.
- Something else I haven't thought of
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Well not the only way... We could remove or decrease the importance of FP
This problem is just an expression of the bigger issue caused by FP which is that they intentionally and significantly mix the narrative into the simulation by providing huge simulation bonuses for narrative reasons. I definitely agree that this makes the game more fun on a tabletop RPG (since it forces players to actually roleplay) but for a quest where the format means the QMs are already interpreting everything through Hazou's characterisation (and where we've explicitly relinquished the control to make Hazou perform radically out of character decisions) this seems like a non-issue.
It's definitely worse in this scenario, where the narrative-supporting behaviour that's being in-universe rewarded is directly opposite the IC good decision. But even when they're perpendicular or overlapping it's still (to me) on some level wrong.
E: Semi-ninja'd by @Winged_One! I agree with all he said, especially the bit about reducing FP's role
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Unfortunately, at this point the system is to a large extent balanced around FP, or rather it is balanced around the Aspect system which runs off FP. It would take a truly excellent idea for us to consider replacing it.Well not the only way... We could remove or decrease the importance of FP
This problem is just an expression of the bigger issue caused by FP which is that they intentionally and significantly mix the narrative into the simulation by providing huge simulation bonuses for narrative reasons. I definitely agree that this makes the game more fun on a tabletop RPG (since it forces players to actually roleplay) but for a quest where the format means the QMs are already interpreting everything through Hazou's characterisation (and where we've explicitly relinquished the control to make Hazou perform radically out of character decisions) this seems like a non-issue.
It's definitely worse in this scenario, where the narrative-supporting behaviour that's being in-universe rewarded is directly opposite the IC good decision. But even when they're perpendicular or overlapping it's still (to me) on some level wrong.
E: Semi-ninja'd by @Winged_One! I agree with all he said, especially the bit about reducing FP's role
I brought up a similar concern during discussion, and @eaglejarl pointed out that, in narrative vs simulationism terms, FP actually parallel XP quite well. They're an abstract representation of a vague in-universe concept, with their awarding partially automatic and partially determined by the relationship between the players and the QMs, and which have massive impact on the power of the player character(s).
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If I was still active, I'd be raising concerns about this too. For me it's mostly about how my enjoyment of this quest is down a lot to how legitimate it feels. When one introduces perverse incentives or OOC forces, you risk questioning how genuine outcomes are. This is especially so for things like Consequences, which should by their nature not be a choice. I'll have to see how things go to come to a reliable conclusion, but my personal experience of the few times it has been implemented so far does seem to suggest this is noticeable, at least when the underlying ruleset is made visible.
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Consequences are no more of a choice than they ever were - characters take them when forced to (and only when forced to - this is a new rule designed to prevent FP farming), and their nature is determined by QM judgement in accordance with the in-universe flow of combat.
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Ah, I wasn't aware. Ignore that snippet then.
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I notice I am confused.
If I'm understanding correctly, your thesis goes like this:
- We have a set of goals we want to achieve -- uplifting civilians, inventing seals, doing research, winning fights, etc.
- FP help to achieve goals by providing moderate bonuses to one roll. That bonus is roughly 10% of our skill.
- We gain FP by failing at things and thereby gaining Consequences.
- Consequences are negative Aspects that apply 5% (Mild), 10% (Moderate), or 20% (Severe) penalties to all of our relevant rolls until they heal.
- Healing takes ~1 hour (Mild), 1 day to 1 week (Moderate), or weeks to months (Severe).
- In the fight where we acquire the Consequence, the opponent gets a tag on it when they create it, meaning that we need to burn an FP simply to maintain parity. We don't get the FP for the Consequence until the fight is over so we aren't actually gaining anything here unless we're okay with not spending for parity and thereby probably losing the fight.
- Every opponent can invoke the Consequence against us in every round of every fight until it heals, meaning we would again need to spend FP every round of every fight in order to maintain parity and therefore meaning that having a Consequence means we will be burning FP faster.
- Therefore, the best way to achieve our goals is to fail at achieving our goals so that we can acquire negative Aspects that will provide penalties to most or all our rolls for a long period of time and allow our opponents to spend FP in order to gain bonuses against us every round of every fight in order to get FP that will supply a moderate bonus to one roll.
Furthermore, notice that the right way to farm XP is to get into conflicts and win without taking Consequences, because that has positive return. Taking a Mild Consequence might be net positive as long as you can still win the fight with a -0.5x Aspect bonus applying to all your rolls -- in other words, if you're already superior to your opponent, in which case you probably won't fill your stress track and therefore won't be allowed to take Consequences. (I think that rule wasn't in the rules that was already released; sorry for that.)
Furthermore, it sounds like you're asserting that this perverse incentive is new and there has never been such a thing before. I disagree; XP has the exact same perverse incentive. You earn XP by being bold and active, which is much more dangerous than sitting around reading books and sparring. This is a perverse incentive to do things that are bold and active but riskier, yet I don't recall any serious objections to the idea of XP in the past.
XP is a mechanic for gating how quickly and how much you can progress your skills. FP and Aspects combine to form a mechanic for gating how much of your environment is exploitable and how much bonus you can gain from exploiting it. Neither of them is perfectly simulationist, but having them provides a standardization that makes the quest more simulationist than not having them and therefore forcing the QMs to judge everything off the cuff.
Thanks, this is really helpful.
We aren't going to be dropping the idea of FP since that would require scrapping absolutely everything that we've done on the system design. (As @Velorien already stated.) Personally, I think "Don't do Compels" is probably the simplest solution, and we hand out FP alongside XP for how well you handle the update. (As stated in the rules doc, these awards might be at the beginning, middle, or end of the update depending on what makes sense.)
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"I have proven flight is impossible!" says man as he points at aircraft in flight.
Uncounted successful games of FATE say it works great. I mean, seriously, sometimes it's like there is no one else in this thread who has actually played a lot of tabletop rpgs.
Compels are great! They encourage player buy in on things happening that are unpleasant but make sense or are in character.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
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On the other hand, pointing that out did cause you to accept the compel to come up with solutions...
Winged_One
Head Engineer of ATHENA
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Uh, I never said it wouldn't work great for FATE? It works great for FATE because FATE is cooperative storytelling, and stories require character faults and all that junk. That isn't how I see the role of players in this thread, and I see no particular reason to change my mind. I want to do complex things to the world through application of careful planning, and Hazou is merely the most convenient way to do that. Narrative-based logic will make it harder for me to achieve complex plans as it introduces a random element. Just accepting it for no reason would be insanity-doing things to make the thing I actually want harder to get. Therefore you are asking me (and other players) to change the thing I want to achieve in the thread. Why should I switch the thing I actually want to do for another thing which I don't want to do?
Making things harder for yourself is fine if you want challenge. I am perfectly content with the current level of challenge (that is to say, "almost impossible"), and don't see why I should agree to make it higher.
On the other hand, pointing that out did cause you to accept the compel to come up with solutions...
You do realise saying this might make me less likely to do that in the future out of sheer contrarianism?
Cariyaga
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But then you won't get fate points!You do realise saying this might make me less likely to do that in the future out of sheer contrarianism?
Here's the issue, I think.
My problem was with "making mistakes that are in character is rewarded now, so putting in effort to achieve character growth (and thus diminish/eliminate oppurtunities for such mistakes) is punished by virtue of not recieving the FP we would have gotten by not doing so and just accepting that the PCs have flaws that we will never try to improve".
And if improving upon our characters' flaws means they will make fewer in character mistakes, then surely we could extrapolate that to mean that trying to worsen their flaws, and therefore maximise in character mistakes, increases the FP they receive.
I don't think I talked about consequences at all.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
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Just saying, it isn't just flaws that can be compelled.
Well, yeah. But flaws are still included in that category.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
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Sure. But it's not that hard to get a not-flaw to replace a flaw that is as easily compelled. Like, I dunno, [Kagome's Successor]
I've been vocal all day about how this is in no way, shape, or form something I want us to do.
My problem is that the system is prepared to reward us for doing it. Kagomeing ourselves should not provide advantage. That is not how a sane world works. Similarly, growing as a person should not provide disadvantage.
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I mean...he's done pretty well all things considered.
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The old XP rewards acted in exactly opposite ways to FP, in my understanding. When Hazō stuck his foot in his mouth, we lost XP, and when he broke out of that box we got a lot (Ch. 102?). If FP were about how a character wants to be, rather than just reinforcing who they are, this would be less of an issue.