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I ran another Capes (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/) playtest tonight, solo with my friend Jennifer, to test out whether the new dice balancing had achieved its goal, and how the sequence of Complications to Inspirations back to Complications worked out.

Jennifer handed me a nice juicy opening, setting out Complications for Clobbering and Bystanders, and then adding in what Sydney refers to as "B-plot", in the form of a meeting with her younger sister (and Hope Exemplar) at the mall.  I added in an "Information" Complication, to tie the generic situation to the specific plans I had made.  So on the way to the mall (with plenty of time to get there for once) our heroine came across a rampaging mutated monster and battle ensued trying to rescue the victims of his excesses.  Meanwhile, a shadowy group was watching the combat, evaluating... something... Lady Frost (the heroine) spotted that they were doing that, and even realized that the mutation seemed to be in a torn hospital gown, but she didn't win the Information Complication, so she was unable to put any pieces together.

Pro:  We really had a ball with the combat.  The dice mechanic provided a few groan out loud hardship rolls for each of us, where the pretty plans we'd had for a turn had to be scaled back or scrapped, and a few cheer out loud good rolls for each of us, where we suddenly had opportunities to do much more than we'd planned.  And it all levelled out to a consistent balance of challenge in the long term.  We each Staked debt on three of the four Complications.  In fact, both of us were desperately trying to accrue more debt, in order to Stake more.  Jennifer won two Complications and I won two... she got more Victory Points, but I ended up winning more Stakes.  So Jennifer ended the first scene with a significant VP lead, but overdrawn in one Drive and on the very brink in two more.

Con:  The absence of any rules controlling narration in the Monologue phase was jarring.  Especially as we started getting accustomed to Frame-narration in Action Phase, I wanted something similar for Monologue Phase, particularly to rule how much people got to do as they Resolved a Complication.

Pro:  Resolving Complications lets you narrate all manner of Deus Ex Machina BS without anyone feeling put upon.  Jennifer won the Bystanders Complication by "getting through" to the monstrosity, through its rage and confusion (a Reversal on its "Get Very Angry" Trope)... the monster himself saved the last few of the civilians he'd put in danger, which was gratifying.  When I (in turn) won the Information Complication I had the Shadowy Figures shoot the monstrosity with a poison dart.  Both of these events would have been extremely cheesy if they were resolved on purely Dramatic rules... if the GM just said "Yeah, okay, that works for no particular reason".  But when they were the outgrowth of the numbers everyone had been crunching it felt... right.

For the first time since the earliest playtests I had the time to transition to a second scene from the first.  Critical, obviously, to figuring out how Complications transition from one to the next.

Pro:  The transition from one scene to the next was butter-smooth... Laurel (Lady Frost's secret ID) had failed to meet her younger sister at the mall as she'd promised.  We were both interested in the results of that.  So I took the 3x5 card labelled "Meet Amanda at Mall", crossed out that title, wrote in "Amanda Snit-fit" under it, and slapped it back down on the table.  Jennifer declined to spend any of her Inspirations, so we just filled in with the appearance of another of her Exemplars to liven up the mix.

Con:  It's easy to pick the wrong Exemplar or Complication to jump to.  Jennifer had heavy debt on Truth and none on Love, but I didn't think about it carefully.  I foolishly chose to introduce her Love Exemplar rather than her Truth one, even though it would have been equally plausible for either to be present.  The result, which I obviously should have predicted, is that Jennifer had a hard time mechanically in investing deeply in the relationship with the Exemplar.  I should put some explicit advice in the system about how to include the players's current Debt levels in your decision of what goes in the next Scene.

Amanda's snit-fit was fun, with Laurel desperately shifting away from her sisters massive (and growing) advantage on that particular issue, in order to try to make googly eyes at her love-interest, Jason.  "Snitfit" Resolved in-scene (i.e. without ending the Scene) and I happily replaced it with "Amanda Abduction" (again, crossing out on the same card) with a massive six-point villainous advantage that spelled "inevitable" to me.  I'd had some plans for villains to abduct one of the Exemplars, and the opportunity of Amanda stomping off to "go live her own life" was a perfect lead-in to make our superheroine feel responsible for the wholly unconnected acts of the villains.

Pro:  The transition from one Complication to the next is really quite natural.  People can easily look over the Inspirations hanging about and say "Okay, I have a good sense of what needs to be addressed as we go forward."  But also, they can look at Inspirations as they are played and say "Yes, I see how this emerges from what has gone before".  Score big points to (I think) StatisticalTomfoolery for his insistence that this one-to-the-next threading would serve the same purpose as an explicit issue that exists over multiple Scenes.  He was right.

Sadly, allergy season has been hitting Jennifer so badly that she had to medicate up during the previous scene.  As the scene wore on the dopey-making medicine visibly took hold.  So we had to stop earlier than I had hoped.  About two hours of play all told.

Con:  This hammered home something that's been nagging me for a while about the system:  It is too slow.  In two hours we managed one extended combat with a mutated monstrosity, and one follow-up scene.  For some game systems (D&D for example) that would be a satisfying session in itself.  But in Capes, folks (myself included) have put so much thought into how one scene flows causally and thematically into another that I wanted to get a good solid sequence of them under my belt.

So how can I speed it up?

Some of this will just come with familiarity.  We sped up significantly (I think about doubled our speed) over the course of the session as Jennifer became familiar with the Frame-narration mechanic.

And some of it is in scaling down Victory Targets.  The current method of calculating them is calibrated to the old mega-dice version of the rules.  VP Targets of 5 through 10 are quite reasonable in the new number-balance, and make for nicely compact scenes.

Finally, some of this can be helped with proper organization (and explicitly recommending that in the rules).  Particularly, calculating Effect Levels was just needlessly (and constantly) draining our time because everything was laid out in a chaotic mess.

• After the session, as I realized how often we were saying "Okay, you activated... uh... how many powers?" I realized how useful it would be to take a die and set it on a little circle next to Powers on the Worksheet... increase or decrease the die as powers are activated or deactivated.
• Also, I realized that you should have "Editor controlled", "Hero controlled" and "No-mans land" areas laid out on the table where you're keeping Complications.  You could just move the cards around, and see at a glance how many were stacked up against you.[/list:u]But these organization cues seem... well, they aren't really making the game more Comic-book, they're just responding to the necessities of the book-keeping.  I'm not thrilled with them, as solutions, and I'm hopeful that other folks can make better recommendations.  Possibly even (though I am very hesitant) by reducing some of the calculations in the system.

This is just off the top of my head, but I know that layout is something that comic books emphasize. Average comic book is, what, 32 pages (say 28, not counting the ads and letters columns)? And six to eight "normal" frames per page (depending on the title)? Is there some way to use this information to limit how long a combat runs?

I'd also think that there might be an interesting way to use multiple "frame" sucesses to get an action blow-up: a half-page sized "frame"...

Aha!  I have a "two birds with one stone" solution that addresses Framing in the Monologue phase and not rolling all of your dice.  You get one Frame for each die that you elect not to roll...!  This will allow for people to narrate background information and bystander reactions and the like...

I think that currently the big bog down in speed is tied almost entirely to Effects.  First you take a second to figure out what Effects you can afford (from a list of 8), then you figure out which ones you can use (some are limited by situation), then you pick which one you want to use, then you spend your dice, and then you narrate a number of Frames equal to the dice you spend.  Rinse, repeat.  Five steps for every action that you take, every round.

Possible solutions:

1. Eliminate Effects completely, this takes three of the five steps out completely.  I am not sure that this is a good idea because Effects serve an important purpose in the game.

2. Reduce the number of seperate Effects.  If there are fewer to work with then each of the 3 Effect steps will be shortened due to lowered mental overhead.

3. Take all conditions off of Effects.  That eliminates one full step.  If you can use any Effect at any time then you do not have to figure out which ones you qualify for.  I highly recommend this, it should only be a factor for Passion and Strength through Adversity.

More later as i get the time...

Thomas

Quote from: TonyLBWe each Staked debt on three of the four Complications. In fact, both of us were desperately trying to accrue more debt, in order to Stake more.

*Blink...*  Why?  Was there something in the rules that i missed?  What advantage is there to Staking even more Debt in a Complication?

Quote from: TonyLBThe transition from one scene to the next was butter-smooth... Laurel (Lady Frost's secret ID) had failed to meet her younger sister at the mall as she'd promised. We were both interested in the results of that. So I took the 3x5 card labelled "Meet Amanda at Mall", crossed out that title, wrote in "Amanda Snit-fit" under it, and slapped it back down on the table.

Could you elaborate on this?  How did this work mechanically?  What about whatever numbers were already written on the card?

Oh, and another thing that would speed up play would be elimination of Effect bonuses (Powers) and penalties (Overdrawn Drives) since they add time to the "what can i afford" step.

Thomas

First thought: don't just have a die which represents number fo powers are go.

You need a chart on the character sheet, where each different wonder is described in a one line summary, and with room for a counter next to each one. You keep your counter on your base Powers + Helpers - Inhibitors, such that you can always just say: okay, base of 5, 2 wonder points = 7.

Quote from: statisticaltomfooleryYou need a chart on the character sheet, where each different wonder is described in a one line summary.....

Agreed. But I'd also agree with Thomas that

Quote from: Thomas.... another thing that would speed up play would be elimination of Effect bonuses (Powers) and penalties (Overdrawn Drives) since they add time to the "what can i afford" step. ...

I think a lot of these bonuses and penalties might be more easily folded into the "roll a buncha dice" stage*, where you're adding up a lot of stuff already; that means there's only one stage where you're crunching numbers, when you're building your dice pool, and then everything else is straight spending successful dice on a 1-to-1 basis for Control and various Effects.

* I.e. Overdrawn Drives (if you don't use the narrative sting-in-the-tail that I proposed earlier) and Complications controlled by the other side eat into your available dice, rather than impeding every single wonder. As for Powers, they already give you a bunch of dice, so I'm not sure they need to give you a bonus to Effects as well.

Heh... when I started writing this it seemed radical.  In the meantime, Sydney's gone and posted the basic idea of it while I was fiddling with the wording.  Sydney, feel free to do your "We are the champions" dance, you've earned it once again.

What if you remove the concept of Level being different from Dice Spent?

• Active Powers generate one die per turn every Monologue phase after the one they're activated in
• After you roll, for each Overdrawn drive or enemy-controlled Complication, you remove one die from your Success Pool, highest dice first.
• After that, for each five or six in your success pool you put a die into your dice pool
• When you spend a handful of dice you get the Effect that corresponds to the number of dice you spend... exactly.  No exceptions.
• If you don't do "something special" then each time you describe or assign a Frame you pick up a die and toss it into the discard.
• "Something special" includes the Effects that let you keep dice, and Tropes.  When you use those in describing a Frame or set of frames you pick up a die and put it back in your pool instead.
• When you run out of dice you've described all the Frames.
• Note particularly that this means that when (for instance) you are spending in a Complication you don't control you have an actual mechanics penalty, since you cannot control (and therefore must discard) the die corresponding to that final frame.[/list:u]

Quote from: LordSmerf

Quote from: TonyLBWe each Staked debt on three of the four Complications. In fact, both of us were desperately trying to accrue more debt, in order to Stake more.

*Blink...*  Why?  Was there something in the rules that i missed?  What advantage is there to Staking even more Debt in a Complication?

Two-fold:  First, when you bet your entire Drive then the Drive rises temporarily by one.  In just two scenes, each of us managed to raise three separate drives by a temporary point each.

Second, and connected, the Passion Effect.  Useful on high bets even early, it could clearly become dominant later in the game if rising Drives followed the path I saw in playtest.  People would be able to bet five tokens easily.

QuoteCould you elaborate on this?  How did this work mechanically?  What about whatever numbers were already written on the card?

Scratched a line through them and wrote zero on one side, the bonus on the other, right underneath the original set.  You couldn't do that forever, but if you've got average size handwriting you can probably do it for four or five successive Complications.

Quote from: TonyLBWhat if you remove the concept of Level being different from Dice Spent?

• Active Powers generate one die per turn every Monologue phase after the one they're activated in
• After you roll, for each Overdrawn drive or enemy-controlled Complication, you remove one die from your Success Pool, highest dice first.
• After that, for each five or six in your success pool you put a die into your dice pool
• When you spend a handful of dice you get the Effect that corresponds to the number of dice you spend... exactly.  No exceptions.
• If you don't do "something special" then each time you describe or assign a Frame you pick up a die and toss it into the discard.
• "Something special" includes the Effects that let you keep dice, and Tropes.  When you use those in describing a Frame or set of frames you pick up a die and put it back in your pool instead.
• When you run out of dice you've described all the Frames.
• Note particularly that this means that when (for instance) you are spending in a Complication you don't control you have an actual mechanics penalty, since you cannot control (and therefore must discard) the die corresponding to that final frame.[/list:u]

This seems far more complex than it needs to be.  My suggestion would be:

Calculating the dice pool:

1. Start with however many dice you had at the end of your last round
2. Subtract 1 die for each Complication that your opponent controls.
3. Subtract 1 die for each Overdrawn Drive
4. Add one die for each active power
5. Activate Powers and Attitudes

Spending dice:

1. Give each player one chance per round to spend dice.  You can not get two Effects per round.
2. Allow one Effect that is of less than or equal level to the number of dice spent.
3. Set aside those dice, and then count them off one at a time providing a Frame for each.

How does that work for you Tony?  It seems much simpler...

Thomas... are you suggesting the wholesale removal of Tropes?  Or is their use assumed (but not mentioned) in your write-up?

I'm initially skeptical about the notion of restricting people to one spend per round.  A lot of the strategy I've seen has involved spending some of your success pool to force an enemy to commit more of theirs, and then following up with the remainder of your success pool once the enemy no longer has the dice to contest what you do.  All of that strategy would be removed by this change.  Do you think the system would gain something in return above and beyond speed?

Sorry, Trope use was assumed (along with Dice gain from Effects).  I am not sure that this adds anything aside from speed.  There is probably something, but since i can not think of anything off the top ofmy head it probbly is not signifigant...

Thomas

Okay, putting how many Effects/Spends per turn onto the backburner for a moment, you also suggested taking Complication/Overdraw dice straight from the Dice Pool in Monologue phase.

My reasoning on why to take dice for Complications and Overdrawn Drives away from the Success pool is to make it hurt more.  My experience is that I get really possessive about those sixes.  If somebody were given the right in the rules to just reach in and take them it would sting, even if it didn't greatly influence outcomes.  

In short, it gives the roll and the situation more combined variability:  You can roll lots of sixes and lose them, and feel really stung.  You can roll lots of fours and crow that your opponent can only take trash away from you.  You can roll a lot of sixes when you have no Complications pending, and consider it a major victory.  You can choose to roll no dice, in order to not suffer the loss of dice from Complications and Overdraws.

Whether that's worth slowing things down, I don't know.  I agree that your version is simpler and faster.

Interesting point...  One thing major difference is that removing dice from successes allows you to risk nothing/lose nothing (if you do not roll you can not lose) whereas direct attacks on the pool cause a loss regardless of your choices.  The second generates a de facto time limit (if you spend too much time you just run out of time...)  I see the advantages of your proposal, and i am not sure that a "time limit" is actually a good idea...

Thomas

Thinking about the Effect thing, however, I do see one mechanical abuse that crops up immediately:  As the costs currently go, you could recover every single die you spent if you spend them one at a time doing Use Description.

Now it would take an awful lot of creative brainpower to actually find six new ways (for instance) to take advantage of the setting... I don't mind encouraging that a little, but full dice recovery is too much.

Hrm... tempting to make Use Description and Power Stunt both level 2, and have no level 1 Effect.  People with singleton dice can't spend them.  Don't know whether that would make it too hard for people who are suffering, though.

Then you could leave Use Description as is (i.e. you get back one die) and make Power Stunt "Take one Debt token and get back two dice", which is a variant I used in the playtest that I thought worked out real well.

EDIT:  Another thing that the "Take from Success Pool" does is create a dead zone where it's not worth rolling... if you only have four dice, and you have a four die penalty then you're just throwing them away if you roll them this turn.

Hmm... very good point about potential Use Description abuse.  On a side note, i generally award that extra die if someone is making the effort, but that is because so far no one has tried to abuse it.  One thing that might work (and further my goal of providing reasons not to roll all of your dice) is to allow a number of "actions" (chances to spend dice) equal to the number of dice you have in reserve...

One thing that using a die penalty (whether from successes or before rolling) does that i think is great is that it makes these penalties hurt.  You can probably handle an overdrawn Drive and a Complication or two, but three overdrawn Drives and a pair of Complications can be crippling...

Hey, what about using penalty to assess TN for what is a success or not...?  That could get pretty cumbersome, but then again it might be really cool.  I would guess that something would have to change with regards to die size (the d6 probably does not have enough sides for this), and that may be a deal killer right there.

Thomas

[little dance]

Quote from: TonyLBMy reasoning on why to take dice for Complications and Overdrawn Drives away from the Success pool .... it gives the roll and the situation more combined variability:  You can roll lots of sixes and lose them, and feel really stung.  You can roll lots of fours and crow that your opponent can only take trash away from you.  You can roll a lot of sixes when you have no Complications pending, and consider it a major victory.  You can choose to roll no dice, in order to not suffer the loss of dice from Complications and Overdraws.

I have to say, I like this. Compared to "subtract penalties from dice before rolling," subtracting them after rolling (a) is an equally simple rule (b) that produces far more complex effects, especially (as Thomas mentioned) by allowing you to choose between "roll a lot, risk a lot, gain a lot" and "roll nothing, risk nothing, gain nothing."

Yes, this extra option requires extra thought, which means it will slow down the play of the turn a bit, but I think it's worth it.

Separate subject: I'm with Tony on allowing players to buy multiple Effects in a given turn, for what it's worth. Again, the rules complexity is minimal, the gain in possible options is high, and the time required is probably manageable.

[/little dance]

Well, I thought about the tactics implied by "penalize after roll", and here's what I think clinches it for me:

Say you have a team of four heroes, and a big crazed kill-machine starts out the combat with villainous control in all four Complications (say, because of Inspirations, or because he siezes them quickly from a hefty inherited dice pool).

It now makes sense to have only one or two of the heroes on the team rolling dice and actively engaging the enemy, to keep them on their toes and prevent them from easily resolving anything.  Meanwhile, the remainder of your heroes are largely off-screen, powering up their dice pools by avoiding the constant, dragging penalty that they'd get if they rolled for Actions.

We talked in an earlier thread about how comic books often have "serial head-to-head battles".  And I (at least) thought that it would be neat if you could offer that as an option, but not force it on anyone.  Well, here it is... it's not an explicit rules option, but it's a viable strategy in response to a simple rule.


Fairly exhausted tonight.  I have more thoughts on issues like Thomas's fine idea of using "dice you don't spend" for something, and various other notions, but I won't do them justice right now.  Off to sleep.

Okay, having done some more playtesting (particularly internet playtesting, where slow-downs in the system are accentuated by the slowdown of playing over IRC) I am looking at a much more aggressive tactic to speed things up.

The fun of the system is in Complications, Inspirations, Drive, Debt, Exemplars and all that sort of stuff that connects scenes together.  It's past time to get the adjudication of the scenes themselves out of the way and let that stuff shine.

So here's my initial thought:

• No more dice pools.
• Each Complication has two dice, of different colors, one for the villains, one for the heroes.  They sit on top of the card.
• These dice all start at one at the beginning of a scene.
• You can use a Power or an Attitude to reroll any die of its level or less, yours or your enemy's.  So a level three Attitude can reroll any 1, 2 or 3.
• Whoever has the higher die has control of the Complication.
• When a die is at six at the end of a turn, the Complication starts to Resolve.
• If you're rerolling your dice (normally) you only keep results that increase the value.  If you're rerolling your enemy you only keep results that decrease the value.
• You may choose, instead of rerolling, to simply increase the value by one (if it's not already six).
• Powers cost Debt to activate, but they keep letting you reroll every turn until they're deactivated.
• Any time you roll a die from Attitude or Power, you may use a Trope equal to or less than your roll.  Like Attitudes, this lets you reroll a die of the Tropes level or less.
• You can roll a die, get N, activate a level N Trope and reroll that same die immediately.
• You cannot create a chain reaction of one Trope activating a second Trope.
• You may roll down one of your existing dice (i.e. roll and only change the die if the result is less) in order to get a Special Effect of the die's level or less.  Effects are:
  • (2) Use Description:  Add +1 to the effective value of the next Attitude or Power you use.
  • (3) Power Stunt:  Take a debt token.  Add +2 to the effective value of the next Attitude or Power you use.
  • (4) Passion:  Add your Stake in a Complication to the effective value of the next Attitude or Power you use on it.
  • (5) Massive Overkill:  Tap everything three or less on one opponent.
  • (6) Second Wind:  Unblock all your Abilities.[/list:u]
  • Inspirations create a "minimum value" for a Complication.  If you make a Complication from a Level 3 Inspiration, your die still starts at 1 (and is a one in terms of all the Abilities and Special Effects), but it counts as a three for Control.[/list:u]I've posted an Example (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/SpeedExample.html) online.  It's a bit clearer in the example than it is just listing all the rules in a big pile.
    
    I think this will run much faster, and be easier to explain.  I also think it loses some of the tactical complexity of the old system, but I don't know whether it loses "too much".  And it seems somewhat (but not hugely) more susceptible to bad dice-luck.  I'm looking for opinions, as usual.

I am not entirely clear on how rolling your own dice down works.  I think if i read it and give it some time to sink in i will figure it out.  In the mean time i wanted to point out that the system as stands seems to encourage players mechanically to take 5 Powers because with a single Level 5 Power you can reroll just about anything every round...  One thing you might consider is eliminating the Powers/Attitudes/Tropes split, especially with them all working pretty much the same way now...  Perhaps a single unified system of some sort?

I still am having trouble seeing how Debt drives Premise...  I know there is something there, but i just can not seem to wrap my head around it...

Thomas

Rolling Up:  You have a three.  If you roll a four the die is now a four.  If you roll a two you pick it up and put it back to being a three.

Rolling Down:  You have a three.  If you roll a four you pick it up and put it back to being a three.  If you roll a two the die is now a two.


On that Level 5 Power... yeah, that's a problem I've been mulling for the past few hours.  Three options have occurred to me:

• (1) The power is worth one less every time it's used.  Five the first round, four the next, etc.  Lot of book-keeping, though.
• (2) The power costs a Debt Token every time it is used... when it's activated and when it's used later.  Discard the confusing notion of "Activation".
• (3) The power costs Debt tokens equal to its value... so a level 5 means you have to distribute five points of debt around your Drives.  This could mix with #2, above, though then you'd probably need to recalibrate the starting Debt/Drive levels of characters.[/list:u]

Quote from: TonyLB...So here's my initial thought:

• No more dice pools.

Quote from: Sydney, way back on pg. 2 of 'Losing with Style,'Or -- sacred cow attack! -- is there a way to run this game without dice pools at all?

Ahem.

Quote from: TonyLB

• Each Complication has two dice, of different colors, one for the villains, one for the heroes.  They sit on top of the card.
• These dice all start at one at the beginning of a scene.
• You can use a Power or an Attitude to reroll any die of its level or less, yours or your enemy's. [/list:u]...it seems somewhat (but not hugely) more susceptible to bad dice-luck.  I'm looking for opinions, as usual.

I'm skeptical of re-roll systems, since mathematically they tend to stabilize around maximum possible values -- which doesn't produce the wild escalation characteristic of super-battles. Albeit the ability to re-roll the other guy's good dice down, and your own dice down to get special effects (which latter is awfully counterintuitive), may counteract this.

My personal inclination would be to mark control of each Complication not with two dice but with two piles of poker chips, and have Powers, Tropes, Attitudes, etc. add chips equal to their value to your side of the Complication, plus a random "luck die" worth of free chips per Major Character per round. This would create crazy escalations and show with visible piles of chips (or pennies, or cookies) just how hard-fought a given Complication is.

But I'd have to playtest to really get your re-roll system, and at this point I'm sitting in a converted post office supposedly writing coverage of the Republican National Convention, so time is short.. but I'm so pleased to see Capes email pop into my inbox again that I couldn't help myself.

P.S.

Quote from: TonyLB2) The power costs a Debt Token every time it is used... when it's activated and when it's used later. Discard the confusing notion of "Activation".

This seems the most elegant and simple solution.

Sydney, no question, you deserve credit for recommending the removal of dice pools.  I was just too strung out on lack of sleep to give it to you.  Very much my bad.

The stabilizing around maximum values is definitely something I see.  It is mitigated, but not eliminated, by being able to roll down the enemy die.

I am thinking that if, at any point, both sides of a Complication have sixes on their dice, those dice are shoved to one side (but continue to count toward eventual Victory Points), two new dice are started at 1, and the Complication is no longer Resolving.  

My intuition is this would allow people to repeatedly approach resolving a Complication, only to have their opposition catch up and reopen the same issue with more on the line.


On the counterintuitive nature of rolling your own dice down to get special effects... guilty as charged.  But we've got such a good set of effects for reinforcing the atmosphere of the game... and where else can they fit?

Quote from: TonyLBSydney, no question, you deserve credit for recommending the removal of dice pools.  I was just too strung out on lack of sleep to give it to you.  Very much my bad.

Oh, I'm not trolling for credit. I didn't even think you remembered that -- I presumed you'd come to the same conclusion as me and/or Thomas independently, which is what you've done a bunch of times. I just have these small, not particularly attractive moments of smugness about it.

Well, I did remember that you'd made the comment, and I even meant to credit you, but had a brain-sneeze.

Anyway, the more I think about this reroll mechanic, the more interesting permutations I see peeking out of the woodwork.  The main problem is (as I hazily intuited and you clearly stated) that dice tend to drift toward 6, and that drives complications into stasis.  I wanted a counter-balance that would let players profit by reducing their dice, but it makes no sense when it also means that they're reducing their control in the Complication.

Better solution:  Split them.  Take one die that has (for instance) four, and replace it with two dice that total the same amount ("1 and 3" or "2 and 2").  This helps to break the stasis and drive the system back toward wildly escalating power levels.

There are some vulnerabilities of having two dice over one, but overall it's a benefit for the player who splits.  They no longer have all their eggs in one basket, they statistically get more each time they "roll up" and they have a substantially higher long-range potential if they concentrate a lot of their rerolls in that one complication.

And I think that the way to govern how much they can split is how much they have Staked on a Complication.  They can have dice equal to their Stake, or one die if they aren't Staked at all.  I think this nicely compliments the idea that Complications they're Staked on should get more of their attention... there are more dice needing to be rerolled in order to get the best results.

Thoughts?

Actually, while reading your proposal, before i got to your "limit how many splits you can have" part i was thinking: Yeah, and limit the number of dice on a Complication to the number of Debt staked!  So, i am with you there.  Are you planning on being able to reroll both simultaneously?  Or would it be two seperate rolls to get them both rolled?  Also: are you intending to sum values or to take the highest?  The former implies that staking even 1 more Debt than your opponent will give you the victory.

I will have to give it some more thought... Hmm...

Thomas

Quote from: TonyLB...Take one die that has (for instance) four, and replace it with two dice that total the same amount ("1 and 3" or "2 and 2").  This helps to break the stasis and drive the system back toward wildly escalating power levels....

Hmmm. If you just go from having one die to two dice, then you're not "wildly escalating"; and if you let people keep on splitting dice, you'll end up with huge dice pools, which was part of the problem you were trying to avoid.... but that's just at first blush. I'd have to see a playtest or example of play to really get it.

Thomas:  I was assuming that it would be two seperate rolls to get them both rolled, and that the control values would be summed.

My intent is that having more Staked on a Complication will be a large, but not necessarily decisive, advantage.  Overdrawing your Drives is going to have to be a similarly substantial penalty, to keep people balanced.  I don't know what yet, but it will have to be major.

I think what will happen is that "Number of Dice I can reroll each turn" will become a new resource to be considered by the PCs

• They get one off of Attitude (until those run out).
• They might get one, possibly more, off of Tropes (until those run out).
• Depending on how Effects get rewritten they might get an entirely free one off of that (to keep people limping along even after they've expended all their on-character-sheet resources).
• And then they can pay for more rerolls off of Powers.[/list:u]I'm not seeing much more than three or so dice rerolled in an average turn.  If you choose to spend two of those on a single Complication (because you have two dice you want to bump up) then you're neglecting other Complications in order to favor a specific one.  And that's really good news, as far as I'm concerned.  That means that the system is highlighting the choices you make.
  
  Okay, I think it's solo-playtest time again.  I'm going to write up an example and see how this works.  Maybe I'll figure out a new idea for where Special Effects fit in, while I'm at it.

Over in the  latest playtest thread (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=12549), there seemed to be a real question about whether the distinction between Powers, Attitudes, and Tropes still mattered, or whereas it just created needless mechanical complexity.

I recall that way back in a thread before Capes was Capes, the seed of Tony's idea was defining super-powers not as "always on" but as characteristic actions a hero took to change the situation, e.g. Wolverine popping out his claws.

But what we may have here is a classic example of the idea that spawned a project -- the one closest to the designer's heart -- turns out in the end to be scaffolding that must be removed from the final product. What's cool about Capes now is not the Powers/Tropes/Attitudes distinction (it's cool that you can have all those things, but not particularly exciting that they operate slightly differently). What's cool about Capes now is the full-speed-ahead Narrativist logic that simulates story instead of physics through Complications, Frame narration, and the generation of Inspirations.

P.S.: It may be that the Monologue Phase as such isn't necessary either at this point, because Frames already give you space to do that. Perhaps you could spend from your initial dice pool (or poker chips, or whatever) to activate "Aspects" (to borrow a term from Ron Edwards and With Great Power), which then generate more dice (chips).

P.P.S.: It may be that I am totally wrong. That happens a lot.

Yeah, I've got the advantage of being two days ahead of you (Sydney) on that particular Actual Play experience.  So those thoughts have already been percolating.

First, in the new speed-system I don't see any need for the Monologue Phase.  Most of that complexity has fallen away.  Maybe a moment or two to say "Did this Complication Resolve?", but no more than that.

Tropes in some fashion are here to stay.  I've played undifferentiated systems like HeroQuest, where everything is interchangeable and homogenous.  I like them for many things, but not for this.  Just my style.

But Tropes are changing... possibly even changing their name.  I'm thinking of redefining them as an explicit "anti-whiff factor".  i.e. There are things that your character is so practiced at, that are so much a part of their style, that they can rescue you from a bad roll immediately.  So any time you get a reroll you don't like, you can use a Trope of that level or above to reroll it again.

This does almost the same thing as Tropes previously did, and strikes me as much easier to explain.

Of course, my judgment on what is easy to explain is obviously a little shaky when it comes to Tropes and Powers... heh.

Okay, I've got the new Example of Speed Play (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/SpeedExample.html) up for people to look at.

It's long.  I think it would go very quickly, since there's virtually no calculation and minimal records-keeping involved.  But there's just flat out a lot of stuff happening in the scene.  If this solo-playtest has taught me anything, it's that there is a huge difference between a scene with a 5 VP Victory Target and one with 10.  Like, it's about twice as long, consistently.

Which means that the pacing mechanism as a whole is golden, but also means that I need to recalibrate how VP targets are calculated.  Five is a much more manageable scene size than ten, believe me.

Quote from: TonyLB, in the revised example of play,Joe: The lady slams him upside the head with an obviously heavy handbag.

Ha!

(Substantive, thoughtful commentary to come... uh... later. I just had to applaud Granny, though. Director power rocks...)

Okay, I'm in the midst of writing up the new, simpler rules.  So far it looks like there will be about half the page count of the previous set (!)... it really does simplify down nicely, and explain better.

In the meantime, Thomas brought up a very useful point (in Actual Play) that goes hand in hand with keeping things speedy... making single-hero scenes still be a community event:

Quote from: LordSmerfAs i (hopefully) mentioned in some thread somewhere, i believe that it would be good to include some sort of meta-game mechanic that allows people not in a scene to do stuff... Perhaps allow them a Frame during Monologue (if it is kept) or allow them to buy singleton frames for narration. Basically get everyone involved even if their character's are off-screen.

So how about this... everyone who does not have their character present in a scene is playing the villains.  They all work off of the same pool of resources (which must, of course, be laid down on the table), and they have mostly the same game-mechanical rights, though the Editor should have a "first among equals" position, since he presumably knows more of the enemy plans.

In other games I would worry that this would result in people "softballing" their friends by having the villains deliberately engage in bad tactics.  But the more I playtest this, the more I realize that softballing would be counter-productive in Capes.  Why?  Because you don't get big VPs just for winning a Complication (or, you get some, but nearly trivial) you get the big VPs for winning a hard-fought Complication.

So the other players create more VPs in the world the harder they fight for the villains.  And more VPs is good for inactive players for two reasons.  First, the heroes might win those VPs.  But second (and, I think, far more important) the faster VPs are earned, the faster the scene concludes.

People who are playing in the scene don't mind if it drags on.  More spotlight time for them.  People who aren't playing in the scene want the essential elements of the scene to happen, Bam!, Bam!, Bam! and then for the scene to conclude so that they can get to their scene.  They're the perfect group to draft for the job of keeping things moving forward.

Quote from: TonyLB... everyone who does not have their character present in a scene is playing the villains.....the other players create more VPs in the world the harder they fight for the villains.....

[fanboy raving] Now that's a cool idea. [/fanboy raving]

You'd likely end up with particular players taking semi-ownership of particular villains ("Oh, let Joe do Dark Wallaby. You can't do the Dark Wallaby Voice"). Might even work to have some mechanism whereby each player creates & usually plays his/her own hero plus some other PC's arch-nemesis. (Obviously you shouldn't try to play both your hero and your own archnemesis....).

Potential problem: if all the heroes are active, it puts a lot on the editor -- there's an inverse ratio between the number of active PCs that must be managed and the number of inactive players to help manage them. Not a killer, just an issue.

Also interesting to see the bit of convergent evolution here with Scarlet Wake, another really innovative game to come out of the Forge of late.

It's not convergent evolution.  I lifted the idea.

This provides a very elegant solution...!  Definately something that needs testing, but the basic premise is solid.

Quote from: TonyLBIt's not convergent evolution. I lifted the idea.

And that is what i love about the Forge.  Someone has got the solution to whatever problem you are having.  All the games just get better!

Thomas

It would be even nicer if there were some way that they could be pursuing a single player agenda, and have ways of benefitting both when their hero is present and when they're absent.

In short, what goal should they be pursuing as they play villains in a Scene, above and beyond "make the Scene end"?

Hrm... perhaps Inspirations won by the villains can be awarded to a particular player (though not their hero) by popular acclamation.  Then the player can be constructing sequences of events as both hero and villain, and tying them together...

• Concrete, the Living Rock, has an advantage over the Road Crew (rogue excavation-themed villains) because he learned the locaton of their Hidden Base in a previous scene (Information Inspiration).
• Kara, Concrete's player, also did most of the work of voicing Queen Midnight, the evil arch-villainess.  The group agreed to give her control of the villainous Inspiration when that unscrupulous arch-enemy sucessfully kidnapped Trudy Trueheart, the Love Exemplar of Captain Courage (Bystander Inspiration).
• Kara decides to use both Inspirations, maintaining that the Road Crew is clearly acting under orders from Queen Midnight, and that therefore Trudy is being held in an elaborate death-trap at the aforementioned Hidden Base.  The heroes start with an advantage in the "Sneaky, sneaky" Complication, because they can enter the Base without anyone suspecting they yet know where it is.  The villains start with an advantage in the "Chinese Acid Torture" Complication, because they have an Exemplar to stick in their death-trap.
• Kara, specifically, gets a lot of spot-light time, because Concrete's knowledge and cleverness proves to be essential to solving two big problems, rather than just one.[/list:u]Credit where credit is due, this goes back to what Sydney was talking about way, way back that the goal players have in telling interesting stories is to earn the right to tell more interesting stories.

This is really more of a kernal than an idea in and of itself, but now that we are discussing players playing Villains has any consideration been made toward eleminating the Editor?  I am not sure that it is possible, much less desireable, but i was wondering whether you had even thought about it.

What about people playing Villains in scenes where they have their Heroes?  Would this work at all?

Thomas

Quote from: TonyLBIt's not convergent evolution. I lifted the idea.

Well, that works too. [If I were a person who used smileys, I would have inserted an appropriate smiley here].

Awarding villains' Inspirations to players to tie the plot together moves the game even further over towards Director Stance, which (as I understand it) is essentially player-driven creation of plot, setting, and (non-player) characters -- all traditional GM tasks. From there it's not far to eliminating the Editor altogether.

Now, the thing that always worries me about so much player control of the plot (as opposed to particular details) is the danger of incoherence. There's a playtest of Xiombarg's Unsung online somewhere that shows this: (minor spoiler ahead) there's a bomb, it's not clear who's set it, and two different players end up introducing mutually contradictory suspects, and while one is (as I recall) eventually explained away as a red herring, the integrity of the Shared Imaginative Space takes a bit of a beating in the process. (Am I being terribly Simulationist? I think not, because an incoherent "reality" is terribly distracting either to creating meaningful story -- Narrativism -- or tackling worthy challenges --Gamism).

Admittedly, long-running comic books get themselves into nightmarish mishmoshes of incoherence over the course of a few decades and feverishly revamp their continuity all the time. But I'm not sure this is something we want to replicate.

Universalis handles the potential for incoherence by having mechanisms for players to challenge each other's ideas; but even there you're dealing inevitably with improvization. The attraction, for me, of some kind of GM position is that there is someone who can act as the final arbiter of the imagined reality.

Now perhaps the only power the GM needs is some kind of veto over player ideas; I'm not sure.

P.S.: The logistics of "if every major villain is played by a player, what happens if every player's hero is active" -- that's a separate issue I'm drawing a blank on. But I don't think it's as inherently (and theoretically) knotty as the director power/GM veto question.

Annouce:  I've uploaded a new, simlified, version of the Capes Rules (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/Capes%20Temp.pdf), now in thrilling PDF!

My fonts didn't embed properly, which seems to have whacked the pagination on one or two pages a little, but it's still a lot better looking once printed to paper than the web site.  Hopefully I can appease the anger of the many folks who have had to read it in its previous, unpleasant, formatting.


Re: Director Stance and Incoherence.

I think this may be more of a problem in other games than it is in this one.  Not to minimize the importance of the issue, but there are a couple of things already built-in to keep it in check:

• Complications aren't facts... the facts associated with them ("Battle in an underwater fortress" implies that the fortress is, in fact, underwater) are very clearly window-dressing for the conflict itself.  It's a subtle change of emphasis but (IMHO) a powerful one.
• Inspirations can be ranked against each other numerically, which lets you often just say "A conflicts with B... but B had bigger dice, so A just doesn't happen, or has to happen in a modified way to suit B".  It's arbitrary and capricious in squashing one players views to present another, but it emerges from the game system in a way that doesn't associate it with anyone's judgment.  Nobody has to get into an argument whether B is a better idea than A.  And that, in my experience, is where the big emotional conflicts start.[/list:u]Honestly, I think the real problem in playing without an Editor is that the villain and hero sides start to resemble each other too closely.
  
  The new rules make a point, in several places, of the fact that players acting their heroes have to cooperate and reach consensus on how to apply the various joint resources that they have for a turn... for instance, each side only gets on Special Effect.  The villainous side doesn't reach consensus.  The Editor has a supervillain-like role of bossing around the players acting villains, all while trying to incite them to their scurrilous best.  
  
  If you take away the Editor as a central bossy authority then you'd want to replace it with some similarly dysfunctional method for the villain-group to decide who gets what resources, to differentiate them from the polite, cooperative hero-players.

I am still parsing the new rules (which means i have not read them yet), but i was thinking about the last Example of Play and i am somewhat concerned about Complication generation.  Not once the scene gets underway, i believe that is handled very well, but to start.  It seems that with the Editor just assigning a bunch of things there is a significant risk of generating Complications that have no narrative relevance and little player interest.  I point at the Banter Complication.  It seems unimportant to the story, and it seems almost as if it is only contested because it was cheap and the other Complications were pretty much decided already...

It may not actually be a problem, but i believe that a really tight set of rules describing setting up a Scene (especially guidelines for Complications) would be a huge asset to the game.

Thomas

Before I answer the question, I'm interested:  Is there something new to the rules that makes this stand out to you?  Or is it just the different sequence of events in the Example?

Now, to answering the question:  That Example was written separate from the Inspiration system, to simplify it and focus on the particular rules changes I was putting forward.

However I expect that in normal play more than 50% (and possibly as high as 100%) of new Complications would be created from Inspirations in the hands of players and the Editor.  Particularly once players earn the right to gain villain Inspirations for NPC play, and therefore have a vested interest in both sides of the Inspiration coin.

Guidelines for setting up a new scene are on Page 12.  Man, I like having page numbers to refer to.

This will be short since i only have about 5 free minutes.  I started reading the rules this morning and two things stood out, one comment and one suggestion:

1. I really like the way that Overdrawn Drives work in the newest system.  Each one really hurts.  And that is definately a good thing.

2. I was thinking about making sure that the players are invested in each and every Complication and something hit me...  You get as many dice as you have Debt staked...  This eliminates the Passion Effect, but it replaces it with a system in which you can not roll at all unless you find a Complication important enough to Stake on...  I am not entirely sure what kind of systemic repurcussions this would have (can you create Complications in which you are totally unopposed?  what does that do to Inspiration balance) and thus am not sure if it is even a good idea.  I thought i would toss it out because it struck me as quite cool and appropriate.

I will continue reading and hopefully have some more for you this evening.

Thomas

Before i begin my (brief) commentary on the newest rules i want to answer the question that i so thoughtfully ignored in my last post:

Tony, it is not the new rules, it was as you said the new set of events in the Example that got me thinking about ensuring that Complications are important.

Now, having finished reading the PDF rules i have decided that i only have one major quibble at the moment.  The introduction the Frames mechanic seems to indicate that playing without Frames is the preferred method of play.  I must strongly disagree.  I feel that the Frames mechanic is one of the things that makes Capes truly great, which is probably why i suggested Frames of some sort early in the project.  I feel that Frames both empower and limit players in a really exciting and narratively powerful way.  Basically i feel that the text should read differently.  Frames are hard to get used to, as evidenced in our IRC game, but i feel that if the rules can be tightened up (especially for dialog and non-combat stuff) the game will be much more powerful...

You are, of course, free to disagree, but if you do i would like to hear why you think the game plays better without Frames.  Do you feel that they are a crutch and that better stories are told with no limits?

Thomas

The rules are still in process, and one of the more labor-intensive sections that I'm working on is, in fact, a good description of Frames (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/Frames%20Page%201.pdf), in the only medium really suited for the discussion.  Because I know that description will eventually come along to make Frames much more accessible and attractive, I deliberately shelved the issue for the current revision, rather than spend a lot of energy in a text-only presentation destined for the scrap-heap.

That said, even with a really well constructed description, Frames are an inherently visual construct.  I think it's oversimplifying to say that it takes a long time to get.  Some people are going to leap to it instantly, because it meshes with the way their minds work, and some people are never going to feel fully comfortable using it.

I can envision particular groups agreeing that Frames will be the universal gold-standard for their sessions, but I do not feel comfortable making that standard an unwavering part of the rules.  There are folks who just aren't going to enjoy it, as much as thee and me both might find that difficult to comprehend.

Quote from: TonyLBa good description of Frames (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/Frames%20Page%201.pdf), in the only medium really suited for the discussion....

Ha! Pretty pictures. Me like.

More seriously, and in more complete sentences, I see your point that not all groups would get Frames, but I'd argue for making it the default, with an opt-out in the rules for groups that really don't want to do it. In fact, in the final version, I'd argue for making at least some of the Examples comic strips too.

Quote from: TonyLBIf you take away the Editor as a central bossy authority then you'd want to replace it with some similarly dysfunctional method for the villain-group to decide who gets what resources, to differentiate them from the polite, cooperative hero-players.

Here's a thought: Whoever's controlling the villain with the least invested in the scene has final say. E.g. whoever's staked the least Debt, or has the most untapped Powers and unblocked Attitudes (not sure of an elegant way to track this mechanically, off the top of my head). Why the least invested rather than the most invested? Because these are the bad guys, and their dynamics should be, as you said, disfunctional: You want to give them an incentive (a) to hold back vs. the heroes and (b) to fail to back each other up.

After all, isn't it common in stories that the bad guys fail because Villain A, while nominally cooperating with Villain B, is quite happy to let B take most of the punches while A takes most of the loot? Heck, this even happens in the Example, with Cheshire's minions running off with the money while their boss is getting pounded.