The newest version of Capes (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/), Superhero Storytelling, is online. The new system is substantially simpler than the version it replaces... lots of rules that seemed to have a reason for existing when I wrote them had gotten to be extraneous, and have been clipped.
Now the system represents the balance of a conflict (combat or otherwise) with a set of Complications. Opposing sides roll dice, and get to add points to their own particular tally on a Complication. Whoever has the most points at the moment controls that Complication, for now.
There's some fun complexity about when a Complication Resolves, but that's not what I'm going to talk about here today. Instead, say you have a Bystander Complication which has 10 points Villain Control and 7 points Hero Control. The villains have control, so they define the Situation. They say an orphanage is burning down.
It's fairly clear what happens if a Hero spends four points in this Complication. He gains control of the Complication and can define a new situation regarding it. For instance, he can break a hole in the side of the building and start shepherding orphans out to safety.
Now what should happen if a hero spends just two points? They have not gained control of the Complication (Villains: 10, Heroes: 9). They do not get to define a new situation. But neither (IMHO) should their efforts just be ignored. What sort of suggestions and constraints should I give the players for how to narrate something that brings them closer to control, but does not actually accomplish control?
p.s. For those following particular rules questions from previous threads... I sidestepped the difficulties in defining what Issues are, with regard to Complications, by the simple expedient of making Issues a player goal, rather than a static object of the mechanics: They exist inasmuch as the players are thinking "I only need another two-point Stake in Duty to fill out the set that will make an Issue in that Drive".
Quote from: TonyLB
Now what should happen if a hero spends just two points? They have not gained control of the Complication (Villains: 10, Heroes: 9). They do not get to define a new situation. But neither (IMHO) should their efforts just be ignored. What sort of suggestions and constraints should I give the players for how to narrate something that brings them closer to control, but does not actually accomplish control?
I think that not many constraints are necessary here. If the player puts those two points in, and wants to break open the side of the building and start leading orphans out, let him. If the Editor then resolves the complication before the hero can take it over, then the natural resolution is that the building collapses before you got all of them out.
Since resolving a complication is also an action, it's easy to not only use impersonal forces, but the actual villains and heroes getting involved. The villain focuses his laser beam eyes on the building's foundation, it collapses, and orphans are crushed.
Really, the only guideline needed is that the inhibit/assist mechanism stays coherent: if Smoggy is bound by the electrical cables, and the editor doesn't take control back of the complication, but narrates ripping off the cables, there's got to be something else that keeps that -1 penalty on. Maybe Smoggy gets electrocuted really bad as he's ripping them off, which causes him to act dazed for a while, and so on.
The Smoggy/Electrical-Cable example is a nice one. I agree that the person applying the Wonder could be given narration rights to change the Situation that was established by their enemy, so long as somebody also gets Narration Rights to impose a new Situation that applies a similar penalty.
But I'm not sure I agree that those narration rights naturally belong with the person who creates the Wonder. Yes, they are the ones who made the Wonder, but they are not the ones that control the Complication.
In terms of game mechanics it doesn't make any difference. But the color that attaches to the game mechanics is pretty vital.
For instance, suppose that Smoggy breaks out of the Electrical Cables, but doesn't quite control the Complication. Now the Editor changes the Situation by saying "The flying electrical cables tear apart two nearby buildings... the falling bodies of innocent bystanders are obscuring Smogzillas vision, which accounts for the continued penalty."
This has pretty clearly violated an unspoken understanding about what restraints should be placed on the narration. I just want to figure out a way to make that understanding not be "unspoken" anymore.
Hmm. So, thinking about this more carefully, there are three levels here:
<veil-of-smoke target="Ron Edwards">
1) Stakes: there are orphans trapped in a dangerous building
2) Consequences: Currently, they are likely to all be burnt to death.
3) Trappings: But Silverstar is working on routing a water pipe to put the fire out.
</veil-of-smoke>
It seems that #3 should be changable by any expenditure onto the complication, #2 can only be altered by the person in control, and #1 can't be altered much without changing or removing the complication.
Obviously, there are some grey areas between the different levels, but this seems like a pretty good split.
I have been reading the newest version of the rules... Prepare yourself:
1. Everything looks good until Complications. You state:
Quote from: Capes Rules (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/)A given Scene will never have more Complications than it starts with: the only way to add a new Complication is by Resolving an old one.
But it is not clear how you determine the starting set of Complications, there is no hint that such an explaination will show up later in the text either. Note: I think that this is all pretty cool, but i also liked the way things worked before... :)
2. I still think that you should specifically note that not only does the game not distinguish between beating someone up and talking to them, it does not distinguish between throwing someone through a wall or being thrown through the wall yourself. A good place to note this would be:
Quote from: Capes Rules (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/)Note particularly that the rules don't distinguish between, for instance, punching a minion and talking to him about the immorality of his actions. The end result of one may be an unconscious minion, the end result of the other a reformed man, but mechanically both of them remove the minion as an obstacle. They're handled in exactly the same way, so you can feel free to do what makes sense to you at the time.
3. I thought the old dice system was very cool. Without having played the new one i can not really say whether i like it any less though...
4. Having all Complications automatically begin Resolving once you reach the scene target is a very elegant solution.
5. The Level 3 Wonder: Strength Through Adversity is mechanically dangerous. Using it does not correct the Net Wonder Penalty, thus it could be used each and every round (perhaps even more than once) so that you simply win because you have so many dice.
6. Issues. Elegant solution to the discussion, and a nice Advancement system as well. My nit-pick here is that the costs of Advancement spiral
rapidly. It takes 3 points to go from 1 to 2, 10 points from 2 to 3, 21 points from 3 to 4, 34 points from 4 to 5, etc... This is not necessarily bad, and without actual play there is no way to know how long this might take, but these are some big numbers... One alternative suggestion would be to pay as you are (one of each level up to...) with the target being the value you are getting rather than twice the value you are currently at...
7. Scene Length calculations. Very, very cool. This is really great. I especially like preemptive staking of Hope generating longer scenes. My only major problem is that each point Staked here increase the scene length by 2. In your example you have a 24 point Target for a scene involving two characters. That seems to be way too high, of course without playing this i am just expressing my "gut reaction" here...
8. I believe that providing some sort of token bonus during the LetCol section is really a good idea. Maybe a 1 point Inspiration for being voted best question or best answer... Give people something, but not so much that it really effects the balance of the game. Provide a reward though, that is good incentive to work hard here since most people will really be worried about "winning" not about what prize they get...
9. I still think that the game benefits from some sort of rule (or strong guideline) that every Wonder Point you spend you have to define your actions in an equal number of "frames" or "panels". This really plays to the style of comics...
Overall i like it. You have a couple of really good solutions to stuff we argued about extensively in previous threads. I have listed the things that jump off the page at me above. Many of them explicitly, and all of them implicitly, are accompanied by the disclaimer: "Without playing, this is just what i think from reading." The rules seem much more streamlined without losing a lot of the cool stuff from the first draft.
Now for the big question: Do you think that this system will focus on your Premise? Do you feel that the rules provide adequate and powerful incentive to play for the Moral story? Do you feel that the rules as-is promote non-combat play?
Thomas
Mmmm... delicious double posting goodness...
Quote from: LordSmerf3. I thought the old dice system was very cool. Without having played the new one i can not really say whether i like it any less though...
Well, brace yourself, because I'm thinking of changing it yet further: The current system generates 0.6 successes per die earned, which has been leading both to reduced strategic options (i.e. it's always worth spending your fives, because the unspent 5 is worth 40% less than the spent one) and to dice inflation (need roughly 50% more dice to achieve a given level of effect than you would if they were worth 1.0 successes).
I'm examining the possibility of reducing the system to the following:
- 1-2: Discard immediately
- 3-4: Discard in order to gain a Wonder point, or keep for your pool
- 5-6: Return to Dice Pool for a Wonder point[/list:u]The benefits of this plan are (a) it's simpler, (b) it has an important role for any roll, (c) it raises the value of each earned die to (statistically) 1.0 successes over its life-cycle.
I'll run this through its paces at my next playtest, probably sometime this week (if I can get it organized).
QuoteThe Level 3 Wonder: Strength Through Adversity is mechanically dangerous. Using it does not correct the Net Wonder Penalty, thus it could be used each and every round (perhaps even more than once) so that you simply win because you have so many dice.
Yep. That's the intent.
I think you may be overestimating its danger, however. Let me use the new numbers, because it's much simpler to think about these things when each earned die equals 1.0 successes. The dice spent vs. dice gained works out like this:
Penalty Dice Spent Dice Gained Profit
1 4 3 -1
2 5 6 1
3 6 9 3
4 7 12 5
5 8 15 7
It's not until you get to a Net Penalty of three that you're meaningfully swelling your dice pool. That's a pretty serious penalty. It hurts your dice generation through Tropes badly.
Plus, given that people know that sort of penalty gives you those benefits, why would they let you achieve it? The Editor doesn't have to foolishly run out and take minor levels of control in every single Complication. He can plow all his points into one, Resolve it, and move on to the next.
QuoteI still think that the game benefits from some sort of rule (or strong guideline) that every Wonder Point you spend you have to define your actions in an equal number of "frames" or "panels". This really plays to the style of comics...
Agreed. This fits particularly with something I'm about to say (separate post) in response to Statistical. It will be in the next revision.
QuoteDo you think that this system will focus on your Premise? Do you feel that the rules provide adequate and powerful incentive to play for the Moral story? Do you feel that the rules as-is promote non-combat play?
Yes, yes and Not enough, respectively.
Still working on non-combat play. Again, my next post will have relevance.
Statistical: I like your categories for explaining the different Scopes of Outcome. I think that they do a good job of addressing the question of how to draw boundaries between giving Narrative Freedom and maintaining the Authority of the person Controlling the Complication.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there are fun possibilities hiding in the question "Who Narrates the outcome of a Wonder?" If it's possible to give people a framework (like the one you describe) that lets everyone agree on how to narrate both success and failure, for themselves and for other characters, then you can use the assignment of narration rights as a tool, rather than a straitjacket. At its easiest, maybe the person who does the Wonder gets to narrate their own actions, and then
choose who narrates the outcome:
- If a hero gains Control of an "Information" Complication, he might reasonably ask the Editor to narrate the results of his success, assuming that the Editor is the one who has secrets to divulge about the planned story.
- Alternately, if the player has a strong idea about where the story should go ("He should be plotting to release pirhanas into public swimming pools!") then they could narrate that result when they gain Control on "Information", making it into a Perception-dictates-reality result in the style of Donjon.
- The Editor might well describe a mighty blow that throws the hero across the room, then ask the heroes player to narrate what happens when they reach the far side... it's then up to the hero to describe whether they fall to the ground spitting up blood, or nimbly bounce off the wall and regain their footing.[/list:u]But there are, I must confess, more intriguing possibilities. Thomas has advocated before for dividing each Wonder's description into multiple frames (equal in number to the cost of the Wonder). This would be an even more useful tool if narration rights were assigned on a per-frame basis.
So a hero doing a five-frame Reversal could narrate a frame of the hero flying under the surface of a filthy river, then ask the Editor to narrate a frame of the depradations of the evil muck-monster and a frame of its terrified victims, then the hero-player could use a frame to show the hero bursting back out of the water in time to counter the muck-monsters power, and describe a frame of the muck-monster recoiling in pain and fury. Five frames, three by the hero, two by the Editor, but clearly along the arc of progression laid out by the Wonder-creating player.
This also strikes me as very empowering for non-combat applications. "Okay, my romantic speech is a four-frame Wonder ('Sequence'?). Here's my first two frames... yadda, yadda, yadda... Editor, could I have a reaction-frame from the love interest before my final frame?"
EDIT: "Final Frame" strikes me as very important. Perhaps, whoever creates the Wonder, the side that controls the Complication it's applied against gets to control who narrates the Final Frame?
Ok, let us examine Strenght through Adverstity...
With a -1 Wonder Penalty you need to spend 4 dice. Statistically these will be evenly split between 3/4s and 5/6s so 2 of those dice will be lost and 2 will go back to your dice pool. So the "profit" (which i define in the increase in the Dice Pool after the action is taken) is actually 1 die. With a -2 Wonder Level penalty you need 5 successes, we can assume that the extra success is a 3/4. So you spend 5 successes and two of them (the 5/6s) go back to your pool, in addition you gain 6 extra dice. So you rolled 5 and got 8 for 3 profit. Now, this ignores the 1 in 3 chance of a die simply being lost.
My problem is that even with a -1 Penalty using this Wonder round after round allows you to build up 4 points of control somewhere at almost no cost to your dice pool. One of the most interesting tactical situations is that as you play you lose dice. Your pool dwindles as you use it. This Wonder allows you to use pure mechanics (not the narration/description stuff of Level 1/2 Wonders) to sustain the number of dice in your Pool...
Quote from: TonyLBPlus, given that people know that sort of penalty gives you those benefits, why would they let you achieve it? The Editor doesn't have to foolishly run out and take minor levels of control in every single Complication. He can plow all his points into one, Resolve it, and move on to the next.
Unfortunately i can simply Overdraw my Drives to generate a penalty. I can generate a -5 Level penalty simply by Overdrawing all 5 Drives. The reduced Trope generation is a good point, but you have to admit that it is not a big deal if you are able to generate 5+ dice per round through Wonders.
Oh, i like a lot of what you said about Frames... I think there is a lot of potential in Frame sharing and delegation... So, good idea!
EDIT: Are you talking about the "Last Frame" of a Complication as it Resolves (since dice are not spent to Resolve Complications)? It would probably be a good idea to figure out how to handle this...
Thomas
I'm talking about the last frame of every Wonder.
Generic rules example: If you spend five dice on a Complication, and it doesn't get you control, then you get to choose who narrates the first four frames and roughly what they can do, but the controller gets to decide the last one.
Movie example: Spiderman bounces up on the Unity-Day floats, maneuvering to rescue Mary Jane. He doesn't spend enough points to control the Complication. He describes terrific acrobatics, gets to within nearly arms reach of her... then the Green Goblin comes tearing in from stage right and smacks him into a plate glass wall in the final frame of the Wonder.
On Strength through Adversity... I'll playtest it. Mechanically, it is one strategy of many. If you let somebody execute it to their hearts content it will be powerful. There are powerful counters, particularly in the early stages.
Even when its running well, I don't think it's that much more effective than (for instance) ramping up active Powers and chain-smoking Second Winds to constantly renew your Tropes and Attitudes for more dice.
But I could be wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
Story-wise, I agree that it would be nice for there to be some extra detail to help Strength through Adversity inspire the sort of "hanging tough, getting pummelled for the greater good" feel that I imagine for it.
Quite possibly the right way to do this is to explicitly require people using this Wonder to give away more of their narration frames (as above) than they would normally have to do.
Quote from: TonyLBGeneric rules example: If you spend five dice on a Complication, and it doesn't get you control, then you get to choose who narrates the first four frames and roughly what they can do, but the controller gets to decide the last one.
I had not even thought of that. I think that this is an excellent and elegant solution to the problem you brought up ealier regarding changing Complications as you spend points in them, Last Frame rights really should mitigate any problems. Of course there still needs to be some consideration of how to handle narration of Resolution...
Quote from: TonyLBQuite possibly the right way to do this is to explicitly require people using [Strength through Adversity] to give away more of their narration frames (as above) than they would normally have to do.
This is also a very good solution i believe. As long as the system is not
too mechanically broken (and it seems that it might not be), the decreased narration privileges should be enough of a deterrent...
Overall i think we have now reached the stage where the only way to really advance the game will be through playtesting... Congratulations, i think you have something on your hands here that is really exciting.
Thomas
Quote from: TonyLBWhat sort of suggestions and constraints should I give the players for how to narrate something that brings them closer to control, but does not actually accomplish control?
Thomas has already answered your initial question from one important angle: closer to control means more influence over narration of what happens -- and I think you have the seed of a brilliant idea towards implementing that with Frames, where being 80% of the way towards control lets you do 80% of the narration, but not the crucial Final Frame. This'll take a lot of thrashing-out to make it work, of course.
There's another angle as well: As I understand the rules, every time you spend towards Control of a Complication, you are performing a Wonder too -- and Wonders can help you even if they don't get you outright control.
Which leads me to some issue-by-issue thoughts on the latest draft:
(1) Buying Control vs. Buying Wonders?
As I read it, when you spend X points towards Control of a Complication, you buy a (X +/- modifiers) level Wonder at the same time. There's a strong element of positive feedback here: Wonders both strengthen your position in terms of Control and have tactical effects which (here comes the feedback loop) make it easier for you to strengthen Control later.
I'm all for positive feedback loops, especially in portraying comic-book clashes, which tend to escalate wildly; but I think this will take careful playtesting to make sure this mechanism doesn't reinforce itself too wildly. I'm particularly thinking that the higher-level Wonders
may need to be toned down.
Then again, having such strong effects from high-level Wonders may be just the incentive you need for players to go into massive Debt to get them.
(2) Non-combat Wonders?
I still think the Wonder list is somewhat limited, and somewhat combat-oriented (although it's far more flexible than earlier versions). Yes, they're fairly generic, and even "Massive Overkill" could be applied to a social situation ("You're at the prom. Your pants fall off. Everyone laughs.") But I'd recommend that in playtesting, the Wonder list be treated as a set of guidelines of what's appropriate to each level rather than a fixed menu of what's available at each level, and that new Wonders be added to the final draft.
(3) Issues as Super-Complications?
Quote from: TonyLBI sidestepped the difficulties in defining what Issues are, with regard to Complications, by the simple expedient of making Issues a player goal...
I agree with Thomas that Issues get awfully expensive awfully fast. Also, I can't find anything about what Issues actually
do besides act as a character advancement mechanism. I really liked the idea of Issues acting as mega-Complications to be contested over thelong term and where effects of Control permeate everything else (e.g. Peter Parker's up-and-down relationship with Mary Jane increasing or decreasing his self-confidence, or "city terrorized by crime" increasing or decreasing the tendency of Innocent Bystanders to panic and get in the way vs. actively helping the hero); this is a simple way to preserve all the world-defining goodness that was in Facts before they were discarded (rightly, I'd agree) as over-complicated.
It shouldn't take too many rules to add this dimension, I'd imagine, since it's basically saying "Issues are big Complications."
(4) Standard Complications?
I suspect you need not just examples of play showing Complications but an actual list of some "standard" ones (e.g. Clobbering, Innocent Bystanders, Moral High Ground, Information) with guidance on what winning or losing actually means in each case. Most of this is admittedly implicit in the mechanic that "Complications you win become Inspirations to help you in the next Complication"; most, but not all.
Right now, for example, it's
implicit in your examples of play that losing "Clobbering" means the loser is at the mercy of the victor -- but
not necessarily dead or lastingly impaired by injuries, as in many other RPGs; this is the kind of thing that should probably be made
explicit at some point before the final draft.
Quote from: Sydney FreedbergI agree with Thomas that Issues get awfully expensive awfully fast. Also, I can't find anything about what Issues actually do besides act as a character advancement mechanism. I really liked the idea of Issues acting as mega-Complications to be contested over thelong term and where effects of Control permeate everything else (e.g. Peter Parker's up-and-down relationship with Mary Jane increasing or decreasing his self-confidence, or "city terrorized by crime" increasing or decreasing the tendency of Innocent Bystanders to panic and get in the way vs. actively helping the hero); this is a simple way to preserve all the world-defining goodness that was in Facts before they were discarded (rightly, I'd agree) as over-complicated.
One thing that might be interesting would be having Issues as uber-Complications in which whoever controls them can use them for dice once per scene (like an Attitude or Trope). That would be pretty cool (i think so anyway), but it still does not solve the problem of Resolving Issues. I think that until we figure out some effective way to handle that that Issues are not really viable...
Thomas
Well, I spent a goodly amount of time today solo-playtesting the rules while making up a new Example of Play.
Having playtested it... you guys were right. The rewards in the Wonders are currently too rich. They cause a cascading increase in dice that becomes very quickly impracticable. Twenty-eight dice is just too many for the system to feel right with.
So I'm going to have to rework the numbers on the Wonders, then give it another go. Which is painful, but not as painful as discovering these numerical problems in non-solo playtesting.
I've posted the Flawed Example of Play (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/example.html), because (while the numbers go crazy at the end) I think it gives a fairly good idea of how I see non-combat conflicts being resolved in the system. Plus, it's the first example I've made that has the Frame-assignment of narrative rights in action. I'm happy with how it turned out, at least in my mind.
Read the example of play. Well done, it really gets a lot of the "feeling" of play accross. I concur that there are far too many dice gained from Wonders which seem to lessen the value of Attitudes and Tropes. I think that Powers, Attitudes, and Tropes should be the primar sources of dice. In fact elminating all dice gaining Wonders other than those that reset abilities would probably contribute to the idea that Dice come through playing to your character's story instead of through good dice rolling.
One thing that i am hesitant about is the way Complication outcomes are determined. At the moment they are incredibly vague, basically "if you win make up something that makes sense." The problem is in cases where you have Clobbering and a Capture Character type Complications that get split between the two sides... How do you resolve issues when you the goals of each side are contradictory? From the example of play let us assume that Silver Star's Stealth Complication is resolved in her favor and she determines that she gets out of the building undetected... What happens with the rest of the complications then?
Thomas
Numbered topics are fun!
(1) Dice Proliferation
Quote from: TonyLB....you guys were right....
We are the champ-yuns, my friend; and we'll keep kibbitzing, to the end.
No time to design, 'cause we are the champ-yuns...
Ahem. Excuse me.
Quote from: TonyLBThe rewards in the Wonders are currently too rich. They cause a cascading increase in dice that becomes very quickly impracticable. Twenty-eight dice is just too many for the system to feel right with. ...
This has always been my beef with dice pools, actually: They don't scale well because at some point you end up with too many frickin' dice. Normally this only happens when you start playing with characters more high-powered than what the system is calibrated for -- but in your case it happens to every character in every scene as they bootstrap themselves with dice-generating Wonders. Plus as I read through the example, I don't really see much incentive not to roll everything pretty much every time.
One option: I vaguely remember a system that dealt with really large numbers of dice by telling you to assume that most of them came up with average results. Something like, "Okay, instead of rolling 22 dice, assume three 1s, three 2s, three 3s, three 4s, three 5s, three 6s; now just roll for the four-die remainder."
Or -- sacred cow attack! -- is there a way to run this game
without dice pools
at all? In other words have Powers, Attitudes, & Tropes all give fixed numbers of points towards Control and Wonders? To spice it up with randomness, just roll 1d6 for each Major Participant to get extra points (or to take away from the points they have?). This would end up being a more random, not less, because you only have a few die rolling around rather than so many that results approach statistical certainty.
Quote from: Thomas, whom I henceforth refuse to call 'LordSmerf,'... eliminat[e] all dice gaining Wonders other than those that reset abilities ...
Now that's an attractive idea.
(2) Non-Combat Play
Quote from: TonyLBI've posted the Flawed Example of Play...it gives a fairly good idea of how I see non-combat conflicts being resolved in the system.
It certainly seems that Tropes, Attitudes, and (to a lesser degree, unless you redefine them) Powers all apply just fine to non-combat situations; and there's a place for non-combat abilities.
{EDIT: I take that back about Powers. There's nothing in the rules that requires them to be
super-powers, right? They just have to (a) take a serious effort to "turn on" (i.e. taking 1 Debt) and (b) help you continuously. So a rock star's "Animal Magnetism," a preacher's "Rousing Sermon," a lawyer's "Exhaustive Knowledge of Torts," or a homeless person's "I Make You Uncomfortable So You Ignore Me" would work perfectly well as social Powers. For that matter, you can have combat Powers that aren't super-powers, e.g. "SEAL training" or "heavy machinegun."}
Indeed this example is a lovely case of a building-smashing superhero struggling in a non-combat encounter because the other guy is specialized with a bunch of social skills she can't match. Presumably a Batman-like hero would have a much better balance of combat and social/investigative abilities.
The only thing that's mechanically problematic in social situations is those tricksy Wonders, which besides the positive feedback loop are, as I whined before, still somewhat biased towards combat-type effects.
(3) Frames
Quote from: TonyLBPlus, it's the first example I've made that has the Frame-assignment of narrative rights in action.
It's very cool. I'm not sure I always follow who gets what frame why -- have you written up actual rules for this yet?
Quote from: TonyLB, in the rules,Joe: This is sort of strange. I know he's going to screw me, but I get to give him the straight-line to do it with.
Lovely. Rather like players narrating failures in
Trollbabe, come to think of it.
(4) Complications
Quote from: Thomas...the way Complication outcomes are determined. At the moment they are incredibly vague...
Which is (to repeat myself) fine-for-now, but probably will require a set of standard Complications and what resolving them means in the next set of rules.
As for concurrent Complications resolving in contradictory ways -- hmm, not sure I see how often that could happen. In your "Stealth" example, presumably "Clobbering" or "Capture Silverstar" can't even begin
until Stealth fails, Silverstar is detected, and the Editor can name a replacement complication. (Yes, having "Clobbering" show up while Silverstar's still undetected would therefore be a flaw in the Flawed Example of Play).
I suppose you could have "Intimidation" and "Clobbering" going on at once and end up with A scaring B away at the same moment that B clobbers A into the ground -- but that could be rationalized as B's morale breaking at the moment of victory, before he realizes A is about to go down. Thomas, can you think of any more examples where this might be a problem?
Okay, bleary-eyed and exhausted I have posted a revised Example of Play (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/example.html). I changed the payback rates of some Wonders, and I changed dice-rolling so that fives must be discarded to earn Frames (just like 3s and 4s).
I haven't written these rules up yet. Mostly because I'm dead tired. The overall effect seems to be that it keeps dice pools in the 5-15 range the vast majority of the time. At least with my small dice, that's a comfortable number to roll, and one that mixes fairly well with the rules. Though I may modify things to drive that number down a
little bit more.
One possibility I'm considering is saying that you can't "double up" Tropes and dice-generating Wonders. But it's too late at night for me to give that the consideration it deserves.
On the statistics of dice pools... they become statistically uninteresting
much more quickly when you're adding the dice together to reach a total than when you're evaluating the distribution of numbers within the range (as this game does). Smaller numbers of dice would help with variability, but I saw plenty of freaky distributions in my completely honest rolls for the example.
Quote from: SydneyIn your "Stealth" example, presumably "Clobbering" or "Capture Silverstar" can't even beginuntil Stealth fails, Silverstar is detected, and the Editor can name a replacement complication.
I don't think I agree with that. Random 2a.m. example: A tiger is stalking a village. It has control of both the Stealth and Clobbering Complications. A hunter goes into the forest, and when the tiger attacks him he fights it off, wounding it and showing his martial superiority. But he is unable to track the beast when it flees. He's just won the Clobbering Complication, but not the Stealth.
I do think there are instances where Complications could run at cross-purposes, or be dependent on each other. But I haven't yet seen the example that really makes it clear to me
when that happens.
Quote from: TonyLBOkay, bleary-eyed and exhausted
My sympathies. I have that too. 3am baby-waking. So I'll read the new example of play over carefully later. But one thought first...
Quote from: TonyLBA tiger is stalking a village. It has control of both the Stealth and Clobbering Complications. A hunter goes into the forest, and when the tiger attacks him he fights it off, wounding it and showing his martial superiority. But he is unable to track the beast when it flees. He's just won the Clobbering Complication, but not the Stealth.
I was thinking of just such a case (no, not involving a tiger) last night, and I wondered if it might be best to define it as a single "Ambush" complication, with asymetrical results of Control for each side: The Ambusher, when in control, benefits as if in control of Clobbering (i.e. can hurt people), and if he Resolves the Ambush has captured/wiped out the ambushed ones; the ambushed one, when in control, merely benefit as if in Control of an Information conflict (i.e. "Where the hell is he?") and, if they Resolve the Ambush, only then can they replace it with a regular two-sided Clobbering conflict.
Or not.
Sydney... I think I see your point of view. You're viewing Complications as the logical, cause-and-effect building blocks of the story, right?
I tend to think of them more as the goals that characters currently have to choose between, which is slightly different. In the tiger example, for instance, the hunter probably had a choice between winning the Clobbering (and proving he was tougher and meaner than the tiger) or winning the Stealth (and being able to track the tiger later).
Winning the Stealth but losing the Clobbering might (for instance) have meant that the tiger mauled one of the hunters bearers, but was shot in such a way that, though unhindered, he was trailing enough blood to be tracked.
I don't think that you can get the same effect by saying "Okay, you have to Resolve Complication A before you can effect Complication B". Does that make sense?
Quote from: TonyLBSydney...You're viewing Complications as the logical, cause-and-effect building blocks of the story, right?
Yeah. It's the residual Simulationist in me, I guess. I take your point that
player choice is central, not in-game casuality.
A couple of things real quick. I will read the new example of play and add more later, but i felt that these were important:
1. The more i think on it the more i feel that the only sources of dice should be Powers, Attitudes and Tropes. If someone wants to get more dice to roll then they will have to refresh their stuff. This will focus play on Attitudes and Tropes rather than what Wonders you can handle (it will also make Massive Overkill even worse since you have no recourse for gaining dice).
2. Complications in opposition. Let us examine the Tiger example. Currently, as i understand thing, when you Resolve a Complication you control you get to declare the outcome with something close to impunity. Let us assume that the Hunter successfully Resolves the Clobbering complication with the Tiger in his own favor while the Stealth complication remains unresolved but in the Tiger's control. The hunter states that the outcome of his resolution is capturing the tiger. So, what happens with the Stealth complication? Sure we can say that the tiger is still stealthy, but it seems that you have allowed the hunter to move the game into a place where Stealth is no longer an issue to deal with. The same could be said of the example of play just before the one you just posted, if Silver Star wins Stealth and declares that this means that she escapes what recourse does that leave for the villains with their Clobbering complication?
Thomas
Quote from: TonyLBOkay, bleary-eyed and exhausted I have posted a revised Example of Play (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/example.html)...
THAT. WAS. COOL.
I just read the revised example of play, and I really think I get the Frames system now (1 die = 1 Frame, can delegate describing a Frame to your opponent if you want, whoever controls complication gets a Final Frame) and the interaction between Frames, Control, and Wonders.
I also realize that the Frames technique would allow you to replicate Japanese manga-style comics very easily, because you can have people posture emphatically instead of talk. In fact, one nagging problem I'd had with the rules to date was that the best superhero concept I ever came up with was
mute (details available on request, but kinda off-topic), and I didn't see how that would work in a game with a "Monologue Phase." But using Frames, I could set up other characters' response to the mute character, just like the author of a comic -- essentially writing, or at least guiding, both sides of the conversation at once. Very cool.
Hmmm. Not substantive criticism here so much as fanboy raving. Oh well.
P.S.: Everyone go buy Bendis & Oeming's
Powers, right now.
One thing that i noticed the first time through the Example of Play (and was reminded of reading the newest version) is that the order of spending dice, checking for Complication control, calculating penalties, and declaring Wonders is confusing. I would recommend simplifying things such that Wonder level is calculated at the beginning of the action when dice are spent rather than allowing you to spend dice, gain control of a Complication which reduces your Penalty and then declare a higher level Wonder.
So, if you do not have enough dice to overcome your penalties you are going to have to rack up some Debt in order get in an action.
Another thing that i noticed is that the Level 1 and 2 Wonders seem a little stilted. Perhaps i just do not see what you are trying to get at with declaring "Important Elements", but i think that they should be replaced with something else. I do not feel that as things stand that they are truly conducive to anything. Feel free to correct me if you feel that they are important, but i just do not see how they are relevant to play or to the Premise.
Thomas
Thomas: I'm actually coming around toward (if not all the way to) your position. My concern with doing only Abilities (Powers, Attitude, Tropes) is that it reduces the strategic side of the game to Massive Overkill and Second Wind, and how to get those at the right moments in the conflict.
A compromise I thought up on my walk is that the sum total of dice that you get from a Sequence cannot exceed its Sequence Level, no matter their source. Under that rule Effects that get you dice are giving you the chance to get them instead of spending your Tropes, rather than in addition to spending your Tropes. It becomes an endurance and desperation issue, rather than a power-up technique.
In particular, it makes Strength through Adversity and Passion tremendously useful just after you get hit with Massive Overkill... they can get you back on your feet when you have nothing left to spend in terms of your abilities.
On Complications in Opposition: Is this directly Complications in Opposition, or are they the Situations that people get to create by controlling a Complication? i.e. The situation of the Tiger for Stealth was "He can't find me" and the situation of the Hunter for Clobbering is "the tiger's unconscious", and these situations cannot both be taken to their logical conclusion, right?
Quote from: TonyLBThe situation of the Tiger for Stealth was "He can't find me" and the situation of the Hunter for Clobbering is "the tiger's unconscious", and these situations cannot both be taken to their logical conclusion, right?
I.e. you could have an unconscious tiger that no one can find? Say, it takes a resounding blow as it loses Clobbering but, having won Stealth at the same time, successfully staggers off into the deep brush before collapsing?
Still think this calls for semi-standardized Complications and potential outcomes in the final draft, but for at least the first phase of playtesting, I think this is wingable.
Sydney... thanks for the fanboy raving! Very energizing.
I'll be interested (as playtesting expands) to see how the Frame Narration effects get played out in games with more than one hero. Giving a Frame to one of your team-mates seems to me an inherently more social thing than giving it to the Editor.
For instance, if you make a seven frame Massive Overkill in one-hero play you basically have seven frames of brutality, either the attacker attacking or the defenders getting pulped. But the
opinions the participants have on it are pretty well pre-scripted.
If you make a seven frame Massive Overkill in five-hero play then you can reasonably have a big central frame of the attacker on the rampage, four reaction shots (one from each of the other heroes), then the defenders getting pulped and a final reaction shot from the attacker. That's a much more evocative story-telling statement.
Quote from: Sydney FreedbergP.S.: Everyone go buy Bendis & Oeming's Powers, right now.
Oh, I would
so love to get into Powers, but I just blew my month's comic budget on The Ultimates. Which, frankly, was worth it for two panels alone.
Quote from: Mark MillarIron Man: No, not okay. Don't you hear what I'm saying? I'm telling you that I just can't do this.
Soldier: Well, if you can't, who will?
Their treatment of Tony Stark is giving me exactly what I need to overhaul the lackluster Duty Drive in Capes.
Quote from: TonyLBA compromise I thought up on my walk is that the sum total of dice that you get from a Sequence cannot exceed its Sequence Level, no matter their source.
How about basing the limit not on number of dice spent, but on number of dice
you did not roll. That gives us another reason not to roll all of your dice since you will not be able to gain any if you do not hold any back. Other than that i am still a little hesitant since it
seems to lessen the importance ot Tropes by providing a valid alternative. It seems to set up a situation in which you will save Tropes for those times when you are not able to pull off a Wonder that gets you dice. This makes Tropes a back-up mechanic to Wonders when it comes to dice generation.
Quote from: TonyLBOn Complications in Opposition: Is this directly Complications in Opposition, or are they the Situations that people get to create by controlling a Complication? i.e. The situation of the Tiger for Stealth was "He can't find me" and the situation of the Hunter for Clobbering is "the tiger's unconscious", and these situations cannot both be taken to their logical conclusion, right?
You are quite right, the problem is one of opposing Situations rather than Complications. The Complications themselves are broad and nebulous enough
in this case that they are not in opposition (more on this later). So what you have is two opposing players who each control a Complication with interpretations of said Complications that are mutually exclusive (Silver Star escapes vs. Silver Star is captured).
However, i can imagine a situation in which the Complications do in fact come into direct opposition. Imagine that Stealth goes to the Editor and he replaces it with Capture Silver Star. Silver Star sacrifices Information in order to start the Escape Complication. These are mutually exclusive, and some rule will need to be developed to cover this situation. Even if it is just: "you can not start a Complication with an outcome tied to a Compliation already in play."
Also, i am a little uncomfortable with allowing people to sacrifice Complications that they are losing and replacing them with one of their choice. I like it in principle since it will tend to eliminate Complications that all parties are not interested in. On the other hand it generates a situation in which i can sacrifice Stealth and then replace it with Clobbering even though it would make sense for the successful resolution of Stealth to make Clobbering impossible. Silver Star successfully avoid detection, now she must fight! This could become a more serious problem if people start sacrificing Complications that they have no points in (and therefore nothing to lose) in order to do whatever they want. I suggest at least testing whether eliminating the -1 Wonder Penalty incurred by being on the losing side of a Complication is reason enough to sacrifice one and still allowing the winning player to name the new Complication. The advantage to the "losing" side would be the elmination of the penalty and being able to start over at 0 to 0 in the new Complication.
And yes, i believe that Frames is really, really good here. I especially like the way you can hand them out. It is also nicely balanced that the Complication's controller gets the Final Frame. That was a very elegant solution to a problem that i had not even realized would come up...
Thomas
Quote from: LordSmerfOther than that i am still a little hesitant since it seems to lessen the importance ot Tropes by providing a valid alternative. It seems to set up a situation in which you will save Tropes for those times when you are not able to pull off a Wonder that gets you dice. This makes Tropes a back-up mechanic to Wonders when it comes to dice generation.
I've got a new Capes edition (http://home.earthlink.net/~albasch/Capes/) up. I refer you to that (particularly the section previously known as Wonder Levels") rather than detail exactly how I recast all of the Wonders and their dice-gathering effects.
Executive Summary: I think that Wonders where you get back dice equal to the Wonder level from the Effect itself will be very few and far between, under the new rules. I'm interested to see what folks think of them.
Quote from: LordSmerfImagine that Stealth goes to the Editor and he replaces it with Capture Silver Star.
Huh... I would never have imagined "Capture Silver Star" as a Complication. It is clear that, as Sydney has been repeatedly pointing out, I need to do some work on creating a set of example Complications with serious description.
One way to address this issue might just be to say that there aren't Situations for each Complication, there is a single Situation, and any time a Complication changes hands the new Controller can recast anything that was dependent upon that Complication.
Practical Example: Editor controls both Stealth and Clobbering. Situation is defined as Silverstar pinned by searchlights while goons move in with net-guns to try to capture her.
Silverstar now regains control of Stealth. She can't redefine the Situation to say that she's beaten up the mooks, but she pummels two of them long enough to break through their ranks and hide in a janitorial closet.
So long as the Editor still controls Clobbering, the goons have such a tactical advantage that Silverstar 'must' avoid confronting them in mass. She might pick off one here, one there, using her stealth to advantage, but she cannot simply narrate beating them all to a pulp... to do that she needs to gain control of the Complication.
Likewise, so long as Joe controls Stealth, Silverstar has such a stealth advantage that the goons cannot reliably find her. Which is not to say they can't beat her up: You could easily have Sequences where a goon happens upon her, they exchange blows, and then she manages to go back into hiding.
Okay, it's late at night. I'll talk again when I'm more coherent.
Tony, i like the new Wonders. My only suggestion would be to change Strength through Adversity to one die per level. One die per level is much simpler and keeps inflation down. You might also considering some system in which you get a die for each Frame you let your oppoenent narrate, but that might rapidly spiral out of control.
As to Complications you will need to either define the exact scope of how broad or specific a Complication can be or provide a list of acceptable Complications. Clearly i was considering much narrower Complication definitions, probably because we used stuff like "Bolo" and "Hostage" as Complications in our game...
Thomas
1) Complications vs. Situation
Quote from: TonyLBIt is clear that, as Sydney has been repeatedly pointing out...
Weee are the champ-... ahem. Excuse me. Sorry. Go on.
Quote from: TonyLB, again,... I need to do some work on creating a set of example Complications with serious description. One way to address this issue might just be to say that there aren't Situations for each Complication, there is a single Situation, and any time a Complication changes hands the new Controller can recast anything that was dependent upon that Complication.
This is an interesting idea but awfully vague in the revised rules as they stand.
2) Special Effects / Wonders
Name change is probably good for reader comprehension, although I have a soft spot for "Wonder." I'd agree with Thomas's worry that you can still rack up dice a little fast, but that'd have to be playtested to know one way or t'other.
3) Frames
Nicely written up. It's all just color, really, but a lovely, well-defined mechanism for handling something that's normally left to "well, you know, describe cool stuff."
4) Shared Exemplars -- stray thought
Seeing how powerful these were in the playtest, might the rule be not, "share at least 2 exemplars with 2 other heroes," but rather, "share one exemplar with each other hero (up to a maximum of five)"? This could be a bit constraining in larger groups but I think well worth it in terms of collaboratively building a relationship map (to use the Edwardsian term).
So we played Capes again. (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=132591#132591) The report is not complete, but you can take a look at our characters...
Thomas
I finished the Actual Play post up. There are a couple of notes at the bottom. I wanted to expand on things here.
1. The Frame thing was really hard to remember. By the end of the session we were able to remember by expending dice one at a time (or handing them to other players) in order to establish who got what frame and what was in it.
2. How do you handle scenes in which it is just PCs interacting? I assigned myself some dice as the Editor and just ran interference, but it seemed a little contrived. We had fun with it, but i had no way to generate additional dice.
3. I actually liked the Wonders that generated just a few dice. Especially the first two. I think that Strength through Adversity is still too complex (there is too much going on in the text for it). Passion on the other hand worked out rather well.
4. I really feel that the current mechanics do not force the Premise to the front. There is no tension generated as your Debt rises and Falls, it is just another number to keep track of. In Sorcerer you can really feel the pressure as your Humanity drops towards zero because there are some serious consequences if that happens. Because of the way Stakes work that solution does not seem to be viable for Capes. Unfortunately i can not think of another way to generate tension over Debt changes (which i think would greatly assist in driving Premise).
Thomas
Quick question before I head out to my Buffy/Pirates game for the evening: Did the heroes ever lose Complications that they had Stakes on?
Ah, should have pointed that out. There was only one complication in the first scene and the heroes one that one, everyone had Stakes on it.
In the second (last) scene only Coppertone staked anything and she won that Complication, so no, no Heroes lost staked complications.
Thomas
Quote from: Thomas, in the playtest thread, wrote.... Coppertone's goal is to keep her partnership with the Red Menace. The Menace's goal is to remain oblivious to the fact that his partner is a capitalist pig....Menace burned his hand just as he was about to see what was in the oven (thereby avoiding actually having to see what was inside)...
I just wanted to point out that here we have a player trying to "defeat" his (her?) own character -- i.e. player's success is character's failure (to notice something, in this case). Very high-Narrativist. Kinda
Elfs, too.
Quote from: Thomas, in the playtest thread, wroteDid we have fun? Yes. Did we address the Premise? I think not.
Okay, but were you
trying that hard to address the premise? (Which is essentially equal to the
Spiderman tagline -- "with great power comes great responsibility"). Mechanics are just a tool and you can use them for other than their nominal purpose. You can play
Sorcerer as comedy too -- heck, it's the rulebook that you can.
That said, Thomas does have a real point: Do the mechanics as written really make Debt and especially overdrawn Drives hurt enough? Maybe there need to be levels of awfulness beyond "-1 penalty per overdrawn Drive," which hurts you once and then stops.
EDIT because I had a brainstorm in the shower -- and it even brings the thread back to the original stated topic of "Losing With Style," although in a different way:
Forget a simple punishment mechanic where overdrawn Drives make a character less effective. Instead, how about a mechanic that has a real narrativist sting in its tail: Overdrawn drives do
not make it any harder for a character to succeed -- but any success he has is somehow tainted.
I originally had this idea (and very vaguely) for My Eventual Game, but here's a way to translate it into Capes -- and thank you, Tony, for the lovely Frame mechanic to work it in: For each point the hero is overdrawn in a particular drive, the Editor gets to add a frame of narration to the resolution of any Complication which the hero
won. Whereas normally, for a hero with no overdrawn drives, winning a Complication translates to proof that the hero's take on the staked Drives is correct, the Editor can use his sting-in-the-tail frames against an overdrawn hero to undermine that moral certainty.
Example: Captain Goodness has overdrawn his Hope drive by two. He's trying to rescue some folks in a burning building, a classic Hope situation. He does
not get a -1 penalty for an overdrawn Drive while he's struggling to resolve the burning building Complication. Instead, he operates unhindered and succeeds, gaining control. The Captain's player narrates a happy resolution to the burning building situation: Everyone gets out unhurt.
But those two points the Captain is overdrawn in Hope give the Editor two frames at the end -- the sting in the tail -- to narrate a shell-shocked family staring back at the burned-out shell of what used to be their homes, the mother crying quietly, the kid just traumatized and blank. Hope prevails -- but not entirely.
Sydney. I really like the basic idea (make the penalty a narrative one directly instead of indirectly), and i also like your suggested implementation. I am just not sure that it is potent enough. Now, that is not to say that it would not work, but perhaps what you suggest plus something else. Give overdrawn Drives some serious umph.
Thomas
Quote from: LordSmerf....perhaps what you suggest plus something else....
Yeah, there'd need to be a mechanical penalty too, at least to impede players overdrawing a Drive to infinity. Actually, the current rules are a bit vague on this -- they say a Drive that's 100% staked may "cease to be" temporarily but it's not clear if this has any mechanical effect. Perhaps as a drive gets overdrawn, each further point of Debt in that drive gets you less and less in-game benefits?
Just musing here.
Sydney, Thomas: Are you assuming that players are supposed to avoid having their Drives overdrawn?
Frankly, I think that overdrawing at least one drive pretty seriously should be the natural outgrowth of most every story.
On a story level, you can't have a resolution of doubt without having doubt in the first place.
On a mechanics level, you can't bet debt tokens until you've acquired debt tokens. And if you don't bet debt tokens then you can't use the Passion Effect. And I have a sneaking suspicion (though I haven't verified it) that if you don't use the Passion Effect you're going to get trounced in the end-game (when Drives, villainous and heroic have risen).
Given the new changes in the rules (i.e. you can now only get debt tokens by using powers and by losing Stakes) that means that players should be actively looking for ways for their heroes to lose Complications where they have a lot of debt at stake. It's the Editor's responsibility to guarantee a sufficiently nasty challenge that they can lose those Stakes without their character "throwing the game", as it were.
EDIT: You could discourage "debt to infinity" by saying that the Passion Effect can not be used with a Drive that's overdrawn.
Quote from: Sydney FreedbergActually, the current rules are a bit vague on this -- they say a Drive that's 100% staked may "cease to be" temporarily but it's not clear if this has any mechanical effect.
They may be poorly written, but I don't think they're vaguely conceived... just a communications gap.
Say you have a Drive of four, with seven tokens on it. You bet four tokens, which then go to a complication. You now have a Drive of four with only three tokens still on it. No longer overdrawn, because three is less than four.
That's probably an example that should go into the rules.
Quote from: TonyLBSydney, Thomas: Are you assuming that players are supposed to avoid having their Drives overdrawn?
Frankly, I think that overdrawing at least one drive pretty seriously should be the natural outgrowth of most every story.
On a story level, you can't have a resolution of doubt without having doubt in the first place.
On a mechanics level, you can't bet debt tokens until you've acquired debt tokens. And if you don't bet debt tokens then you can't use the Passion Effect. And I have a sneaking suspicion (though I haven't verified it) that if you don't use the Passion Effect you're going to get trounced in the end-game (when Drives, villainous and heroic have risen).
Given the new changes in the rules (i.e. you can now only get debt tokens by using powers and by losing Stakes) that means that players should be actively looking for ways for their heroes to lose Complications where they have a lot of debt at stake. It's the Editor's responsibility to guarantee a sufficiently nasty challenge that they can lose those Stakes without their character "throwing the game", as it were.
Tony, as i see it the current problem is that there is not sense of risk. To date none of my players have felt at all threatened by Debt. There is no sense that accumulating it is bad, and there is no sense of urgency to get rid of it once it
has been accumulated. I think that what you really want is a system in which accumulating Debt is a bad thing, but also a system in which you can not avoid it if you want victory. Also, since you can now only accumulate Debt by activating Powers it will be rare for anyone to ever need more than 5 Debt in any given scene.
I just feel (and my players agreed when i mentioned it) that the Debt mechanic does not actually provide any incentive to address the Premise. I am not sure exactly how this could be "fixed", it could even simply be that i am not using the mechanic to its fullest potential. However, something probably should be done because i really feel that the greatest weakness in Capes at the moment is that the Premise is not being constantly pushed by the system.
Thomas
Quote from: TonyLBSydney, Thomas: Are you assuming that players are supposed to avoid having their Drives overdrawn? Frankly, I think that overdrawing at least one drive pretty seriously should be the natural outgrowth of most every story.
Oh, I definitely agree with you that we
want characters to be dangerously overdrawn on a regular basis, just as
Sorcerer characters should be constantly feeling the downward pull towards zero Humanity rather than safely hanging out and never doing anything risky.
Where I agree with Thomas (though I've not playtested this, so what do I know?) is that the "dangerously" half of "dangerously overdrawn" is so far underdeveloped. The key to good stories and good game design both, I have come to think, is the creation of dilemmas: Problems with a clear optimal resolution are less interesting either dramatically or strategically than those which involve a painful trade-off either way you go. So far, there's a strong temptation to overdraw in a Drive (you get more juice for your powers) but not a comparably high risk to doing so. "You get what you pay for" is less true than "you value what you pay dearly for, and undervalue what you got easily." To really make it count, you gotta make it hurt.[/i]
Quote from: Sydney FreedbergWhere I agree with Thomas (though I've not playtested this, so what do I know?) is that the "dangerously" half of "dangerously overdrawn" is so far underdeveloped. The key to good stories and good game design both, I have come to think, is the creation of dilemmas: Problems with a clear optimal resolution are less interesting either dramatically or strategically than those which involve a painful trade-off either way you go. So far, there's a strong temptation to overdraw in a Drive (you get more juice for your powers) but not a comparably high risk to doing so. "You get what you pay for" is less true than "you value what you pay dearly for, and undervalue what you got easily." To really make it count, you gotta make it hurt.
This is what i was trying to get at exactly. There is no danger or thrill when it comes to incurring Debt. You do not get the sense that your Hero is being pushed close to the limit, constantly teetering over the edge of self-destruction. From the two games i have run so far Debt is incredibly abstract, there is no tie between Debt and the reality of your character.
Thomas
Thanks, Thomas.
And come to think of it, the end of the first Spiderman movie (WARNING: SPOILERS though not for any frequent readers of this thread, I think) maps very tidily onto my proposed "sting in the tail" mechanic. Spidey wins his battle with the Green Goblin, and without having to kill him at that -- the bad guy's own attempted treachery does him in, a moral victory of some sort. So Spiderman's "player" gets to narrate a resolution to that situation, including bringing Osborn's body back to his house... but Spidey's badly, badly overdrawn on Truth at this point, so the Editor gets a few frames to put him in a nasty Truth-related situation: His best friend sees Spiderman standing over the dead body of his father and misreads the situation as "Spidey killed my dad."
Guys, you seem to be saying that I haven't made a system where being in Debt is a terrible, dangerous thing that the players should fear, and indulge in only out of sheer necessity.
To which I can only say... "Correct. I wasn't trying to build that system."
Capes is not Sorceror. Debt isn't about stepping inch by inch closer to the abyss. Debt is opportunity. A drag on your short-term effectiveness, yes, but a boon (indeed, a necessity) long-term, through raising Drives and the Passion Effect.
The dilemma in the game is not "Do I use my power or not use my power". Power is fun, remember? Of course you're going to use your powers at every opportunity. You're supposed to.
The dilemmas are "Do I stop the bank robbery or make it to my date on time? Do I convince the cops that I'm not part of the criminal gang, or play along to find out what they're planning?" and so on.
That's why I worry a bit when I see Thomas's Actual Play report where the heroes won all of the Complications offered in the game. The Editor should be winning about half of the Complications.
Quote from: TonyLBThe dilemmas are "Do I stop the bank robbery or make it to my date on time? Do I convince the cops that I'm not part of the criminal gang, or play along to find out what they're planning?" and so on.
Okay. So how do the current rules encourage that kind of trade-off? (Honest question, not rhetorical).
They obviously don't do enough in that arena. I need to write up a GMing section that gives the tools for an Editor to provide a challenging balance of villains with motives to strongly contest complications where the heroes are Staked.
I do think that some of it would emerge from having numerical equivalency on two sides of a contesting fence (i.e. a roughly equal amount of dice-power between the Editor and the Heroes).
If the Editor and the heroes are spending the same amount of dice, I wouldn't expect (for instance) that the heroes would win every Complication in a conflict, right? It seems... well, possible but statistically unlikely.
Quote from: TonyLBCapes is not Sorceror. Debt isn't about stepping inch by inch closer to the abyss. Debt is opportunity. A drag on your short-term effectiveness, yes, but a boon (indeed, a necessity) long-term, through raising Drives and the Passion Effect. [Emphasis mine - Thomas]
The problem as i see it Tony is that Debt is not a drag. It does not provide any sort of serious penalty (the -1 Wonder Level has not been a factor in any of my games, at least not yet), on the other hand it does not seem to provide any sort of bonus. At this stage, and to mer personally, it feels very "tacked on".
Moving onward, yes, i believe that you have the right of it when you assume that if both sides have equal numbers of dice then they should split the Complications about equally. The problem being that at the current level of focus (tactical situations) there is not enough room for you to have the Bank Robbery and the Late for a Date Complications effectively work. At least i do not think that there is enough room.
So i guess i feel a need to return to one of my earliest questions: "What is Debt, and what do you want it to do mechanicall?" I think i am still having a difficult time wrapping my mind around what your goal is here.
EDIT: Also the current version of the rules pretty much garuantees a dice advantage to the heroes' side roughly proportionate to the number of heroes in play.
Thomas
You mean that it guarantees that dice advantage if you challenge the heroes with one villain of equal numeric strength, yes?
Yes, sorry, i should have made that clearer. However, it should be noted that genre conventions hold that super-hero teams almost always outnumber their opponents, and the current system does not really provide for differing power levels...
Thomas
Oh, oh, oh! This just hit me. Depending on how you want to set thing up Tony, it might be cool to set up a definition for each of the Drives with regards to the Game as a whole instead of hero by hero. Then you could track overall Debt (the levels of the protaganists summed) for the Game and use that to somehow generate Dice/Control for the Editor...
Thomas
Yep... I've been thinking of ways to deal with team-vs-megavillain combats, but I don't have anything well crafted yet.
One fun way to handle it, that I've been toying with as a technique to put into the Editors toolkit (but not the only technique) is to make it a tag-team battle: Only one hero may be combatting the villain at a time, and they may tag out with "Second Wind" (which would let a new hero in as it refreshes the abilities of the hero going off-stage). It seems well suited for certain kinds of combat... particularly when one powerful hero mows his way through a crowd of mooks, then (Tag!) a minion-level villain, then (Tag!) the arch-villain.
My experience with solo-playtests has been that a -1 Level penalty can be very painful. Out of interest, have you had a situation where a hero was overdrawn?
EDIT: Crossposted with Thomas's second post. What do you envision the "mass debt" thing doing for the game? Can you give a fictional example?
It's a flurry of posts....
Quote from: TonyLB....One fun way to handle it...is to make it a tag-team battle: Only one hero may be combatting the villain at a time, and they may tag out with "Second Wind" (which would let a new hero in as it refreshes the abilities of the hero going off-stage). It seems well suited for certain kinds of combat... particularly when one powerful hero mows his way through a crowd of mooks, then (Tag!) a minion-level villain, then (Tag!) the arch-villain.
This works well for depicting a certain kind of super-hero combat, true -- although it's frankly the least tactically interesting kind. (Why do the mooks insist on fighting the hero one at a time? Why do the heroes take turns tackling the mega-villain? Why does no one ever display actual tactics? As a military historian turned defense reporter, I am annoyed). But this game is less about tactics than chararacter.
That said, let's not make the "tag team"/"one on one" model the only option: Occasionally, even in the comics, The Amazing Icicle uses his freeze-power to freeze Speed Demon in place so Slow Punching Guy can hit him.
Quote from: Thomasat the current level of focus (tactical situations) there is not enough room for you to have the Bank Robbery and the Late for a Date Complications effectively work.
Hmmm. Not sure about that, actually. If you use the number of Complications recommended in Tony's current rules, and if you have explicit guidance to the Editor to include at least one "B-plot" Complication -- i.e. the girlfriend's waiting, you're late for work, whatever -- that might just do it in itself.
Because essentially what Tony's saying is, the dilemma is not "do I go into high Debt and suffer agonizing penalties" but "do I lose this Complication to win this other one?"
That said, I still like the idea of giving overdrawn Drives narrative teeth, darn it.
Perhaps you are correct Sydney. On the other hand there are no mechanical reasons to pick one Complication over another, it is purely narrative preference. Now, that may be just fine, but it does not seem to make the choices very meaningful aside from whatever meaning each player assigns personally. So, if that is not a problem then, well, no problem. On the other hand, if that is a problem (i.e. if we want to make these choices matter mechanically) then some work needs to be done.
Oh, and the tag-team stuff is not a bad idea at all, but as (both of you) pointed out that should not be the only option.
Thomas