Negation of narration

[Larry L.]

Continued from Takes Some Getting Used To

Summary: I think the rules permit one to free curb abuse of free narration, Vaxalon and others say the rules do not allow this.

[Vaxalon]

Define "curb".

[Larry L.]

Other ways I say you can negate free narration:

1) The Dallas

  "Bobby dies." (Bobby not being a character yet.)
  "I wake up, and find Bobby in the shower. It was all a dream!"

2) The Persuader

  "I blow up the UN Headquarters -- with CHEESE!."
  "Huh? That sucks."
  "You're right, that does suck. Nevermind, I don't blow up the UN Headquarters."

[TonyLB]

If it were a book, you could add any text that you wanted, but you could never remove text that anyone else has already added.

So you can do a lot of stuff along the lines of "Ah... indeed you did kill me, see the body, compare the dental records, DNA and astral signatures.  But my dear Major Victory, things are not always what they seem."

But you can not, even in the most trivial way, say "No, you didn't actually kill him," except by the Not Yet rule or the Comics Code.

Does that answer the question?

EDIT:  Cross-posted.  Dallas, yes.  Persuader, no.

[Larry L.]

Also worth noting: if you get into the habit of putting things into the SIS that everyone else just can't stand, the other players can effectively unite to see that your CA goes nowhere fast.

[Larry L.]

Interesting. So a player cannot retract something he just narrated, or other players just can't nudge him into retracting?

I have to go back to the text and look at the Not Yet rule; I don't believe we ever used it.

[Larry L.]

I think the rules permit one to free curb abuse

Whoops. That should have read "...freely curb abuse..."

I am not sure what "free curb abuse" consists of, but I'm sure there's a civic ordinance against it.

Curb as in curtail, Vax.

[Vaxalon]

So a player cannot retract something he just narrated, or other players just can't nudge him into retracting?

Oh, he can, surely... but there's no mechanism by which the players can force him to.  Whatever he narrates goes straight into the SIS.  Capes is the only RPG in the world that does this.  Every GMless game I know has a mechanic by which players can spend some kind of resource to say, "Nono, not that."

[Larry L.]

Dallas, yes.  Persuader, no.

Wait... does that mean Dallas is okay or not okay?

[TonyLB]

Dallas is fine.  I don't think it's going to make you any friends if you use it indiscriminately, but it's fine.

Mind you, "Goal:  Wake up and find it's all a dream" is, in fact, something we've played in our Wednesday game.  Minerva Danann was in a strange, contradictory, insane situation, rife with symbolism and sudden inconsistencies.  She saw her parents killed (well, actually, caused her parents to be killed) and almost fell in love with a demon, and all that.  

All of this, of course, was happening while we worked on "Goal:  Wake up" and other conflicts.  I ended up winning "Goal: Wake Up", and narrating that no, it wasn't a dream.  Deal with that!

Damn, that was a good little sequence.  I should write it up for Actual Play.

[Vaxalon]

I would be very interested in seeing how that worked out.

[Larry L.]

Right, Dallas is cheesy. I'm just coming up with ways to alleviate "abusive" narrations.

But it's not okay/possible to even suggest another player should recant/revise a narration? (I understand there's no way you can MAKE him recant.)

[TonyLB]

I'm not going to tilt at the windmill of out-of-character chatter.  Of course you can make suggestions.

I think "Huh, that sucks," (from the Persuader) crosses the line.  There's nothing constructive there.

But yes, now that you point it out to me, that's not a rules issue, it's just my personal philosophy.  There is nothing saying that you have to be supportive.  It's just that your "that sucks" has no rules support whatsoever.

Dang, now you're tempting me to tilt at that windmill.  Stop tempting me!

[Vaxalon]

What's stopping you?  There's already a swath of smashed windmills littering the landscape behind you...

[Larry L.]

Got it. So technically okay, just kinda unsporting, especially w/ regards to new players.

So would something like

"With CHEESE? That doesn't even make sense! Since when is Doctor Chaos have elementary mastery over cheese?"
"Sorry, too many Pixie Stix. Uh, then I blow it up with CHAOS BEAMS! Bwahahaha!"

be more appropriate?

Already, though, I'm coming up with clever ways to play off the cheese destruction. Event: Scheme of the Cheese-Industrial complex is revealed. Which doesn't really make sense until I introduce The Rodent.

Crazy supervillains: the reason behind all your comics silliness.


So, uh, yeah, question answered.