The Shrine

Found this article http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060 ... s_01.shtml and I think it describes the problem with plots in all sorts of stuff. If you assume each story has a credibility budgets, most stuff, even some good stories, uses way more credibility then they are allowed to.

Don Wang wrote:Found this article http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060 ... s_01.shtml and I think it describes the problem with plots in all sorts of stuff. If you assume each story has a credibility budgets, most stuff, even some good stories, uses way more credibility then they are allowed to.

But the very notion of a credibility budget is subjective and, as such, is nearly impossible to implement due to the fact that the tolerance level for such "improbable" things is different in all people.

Basically, you can't really build a control mechanism like a credibility budget that will be acceptable to all parties. As such, all such a budget would do is overly complicate something with no real gain.

I don't think you can come up with a precise algorithm to determine that this action costed 47 credibility points, but you can certainly get a good general idea.

For example, Dragonball basically has infinite credibility budget. If you need anything done you just go get 7 dragonballs. Therefore it is impossible for Dragonball to exhaust its credibility, which is true. Everything makes sense in Dragonball within its world.

Now take Naruto, a similar action-based thing. Naruto has a considerably smaller credibilty budget because of the rules in place on its world. Whereas the dead can come back to life in Dragonball all day long without anyone worrying about it, you can't do that in Naruto. Naruto would be something that's close to exhausting its budget. Some people (including me) thinks it doesn't make sense. Some people do. There's no clear consensus because it's borderlining on using up its credibility.

Death Note is a good example where it is very clear the credibility budget has been exhausted where no one can possibly believe what has happened is credible.

But, to me, the credibility budget on Dragonbore is shot 'cause they can just do ANYTHING they want. Is it within the world? Well, yeah, if they keep writing it in it is. But, to some of the audience, like myself, it LOOOOOOONG surpassed its credibility by continuously increasing the power level to points of insanity. Thus, it blew its credibility budget to me whereas to you or Eric, it didn't since basically anything is possible.

This is the contradiction I'm referring to and why the implementation of such a notion as a credibility budget would only serve to over complicate, rather than solve, things. People's notions of what's credible or improbably differs so much such a control would prove to be useless in the end.

Dragonball never said that there is some power level is the limit of what people can get to. No one says you have to like it but it is credible within the rules it established, namely if you train harder you become more powerful and this process can be repeated indefinitely.

While different people have different limits on what is believable, there is still a good consensus on what is believable and what is not. Some people find Death Note to be believable but it doesn't mean most people think it's reasonable to believe someone would try to write on a piece of paper with 6 guys pointing a gun at you telling you not to write it.