[Capes] Most Revealing Game I've Played To Date

[jburneko]

Hello,

I've been playing Capes with my weeknight group.  We've had four sessions.  In the past I've tried to respect my fellow players' internet anonymity by only using their first initial.  I've decided to revise that personal policy and go ahead and use full first names.  They can track me down and complain later if they ever come and read this.

Okay so the group consists of myself, my wife Meghann, Tyler whose been my friend since Jr. High, and two newer friends (past 5 years) Patrick and Dave.

We've been averaging only about one scene per session.  We don't start till eight and with five players scenes can last a long time even with only two or three conflicts.

Here's the thing I've noticed about Capes that I wasn't expecting.  Conflicts are really extraordinarlily meaningless in terms of connecting outcomes with game mechanics.  If a D&D character walks into a room and there's a dragon, that instantly means something in terms of mechanics.  That character is going to lose some game resources and those game resources represent SOMETHING in terms of the character's actual state of being in the fictional world.  Even a game like Trollbabe or Dust Devils that have unified conflict/damage systems when you lose a game resource you lose something in the game world be it injury, social status, a valuable relationship, whatever.

That's not the case with Capes.  There is ZERO relationship between conflict outcome and game resources.  The only place the content of conflicts have any meaning at all is in the hearts and minds of the players.  And I realize that's true of ANY RPG but the fact that normally there is somekind of mechanical resource attached to the meaning of the outcome helps cement that.  That cement is just gone in Capes.

This is turning out to be most difficult for Tyler and Dave I think.

Tyler is really attached to two things, characterizing and deconstructing artiface.  He used to love my older games (which were basically classic Call of Cthulhu clue-chain style scenarios) because he got to act out his character's personality quirks and he got to deconstruct my mystery.  Since I've switched to a more Story Now oriented aproach he seems to have trouble engaging the game.  No matter how cool something is, here and now at this moment, he has trouble being emotionally involved because he knows there's no pre-calculated payoff coming for it later.  Some how having to construct the payoff himself or knowing that someone else has constructed the payoff as a riff off of someone elses setup devalues the constructed result.  Because it wasn't PLANNED from the get-go that way, it loses meaning for him.  It's all just a happy accident.  I've had discussions with him about how the result can have that cool setup-payoff, planned feeling if people just pay attention, stay engaged, and play purposefully.  His response: "Yeah, but then we'd have to be good."  I stare blankly.

The most significant comment from Tyler has been, "Does this game ever result in anything but humor?"  I emailed him all of Tony's time travel threads.

Dave on the other hand is very Objective/Resource oriented.  He gets that these Story Token and Inspiration points are important because that's how the game's played.  So he wants them.  He doesn't even seem to have any idea what he'd like to use them for, but since they're the game's resource, he wants them.  But because of the disconnect between the meaning of the fictional content and earning game resources he seems to be having trouble engaging the game's content.  His strategy thus far has been to not touch a conflict until he sees which way it's going.  Then claim the winning side or join the losing side (for the story tokens).  He then uses his character to add a bit of color and roll the dice.  Finally, reap the resources at the end of the page.  It doesn't seem to matter if the conflict is Eat Popcorn or Save the World.

The most significant comment from Dave has been, "God, I just want to say, 'I use arrogant; justify it yourself.'"

Meanwhile, Meghann, Patrick and myself are having a grand old time.  From the start Meghann created a whole family of characters.  An older Grease Monkey whose son is a brilliant Gageteer.  The Gageteer has in turn created a robot son.  In previous sessions I'd been playing my character The Raven pretty selfishishly, (he's basically becoming a borderline stalker for a character Patrick created named Cindy), so, basically I had ZERO Story Tokens because the other players had been milking the Raven's debt.

Since it was my scene last night I decided to play Meghann's Grease Monkey old man.  I had decided that he was concerned about his son and his robot child.  So, the first conflict of the scene was about the Grease Monkey trying to set his Gageteer son up on a date.  I lost that conflict but by that time Meghann had brought both the Gageteer son and the Robot child into the scene.  She introduced the Robot son's Free Exemplar Conflict: Exhibits Genuine Human Emotion.  I fought that one hard, as the Grease Monkey complained to the Gageteer that he was caught up in a fantasy about having a "real son."  I lost that one too,  I got the Story Tokens I wanted and Meghann, resolving the conflict, just turns to me in full Actor Stance for the robot child and says, "I hate you."  I thought I was going to cry.  It was brilliant.

That's been the best "pay off" moment so far in the game.  But Patrick's characters have been UP TO STUFF, one hero and one villain but we're not quite sure what yet.  But we can see it coming.  That and The Raven is stalking the exemplar of Patrick's hero and Patricks in to that.

I just wish I could figure out how to engage Tyler and Dave more.

Jesse

[TonyLB]

She introduced the Robot son's Free Exemplar Conflict: Exhibits Genuine Human Emotion.  I fought that one hard, as the Grease Monkey complained to the Gageteer that he was caught up in a fantasy about having a "real son."

Oh wow... I'm having trouble getting my jaw to un-drop.  I am filled with horror and admiration.  I can't believe you would have the old man say that while the robot is in the room.  That's... oh my God.  That makes me sad in all the right ways.

I lost that one too, I got the Story Tokens I wanted and Meghann, resolving the conflict, just turns to me in full Actor Stance for the robot child and says, "I hate you."  I thought I was going to cry.  It was brilliant.

It totally was.  I love that it's something that Meghann never could have done if you hadn't provided her with that fabulous shot straight at the heart of her character's internal conflict.

I hope that, at least, answered Tyler's iconic question for him.


I'd love to kibbitz on how to draw Tyler and Dave in, of course.  Kibbitzing is fun!  I don't have to live with the results of my own folly.  Need a bit more information, though:  What sort of creative content do they contribute to the game in the interstices between conflict?  Like, what type of characterizing is Tyler doing?  What aspects of his character does Dave choose to emphasize in pursuing resources?

[Callan S.]

I don't even have a grasp of the capes quickstart, but; with Dave, aren't you supposed to start conflicts on what he's invested in, probing for which one will make him go "Hey, your attacking what my character holds dear!". You might probe for awhile, but I imagine it's still fairly interesting to find what his character doesn't care about during that process.

So he invests in eating popcorn and you make some sort of new conflict that the corn its made from was ironically harvested by starving third world children. Okay, a crappy example but that's how it sorta works. As they gamist along they expose themselves at thematic points...then you nail those points.

[TonyLB]

My experience is that not many people actually care about the popcorn.  What they're doing in an "Eat popcorn" conflict is revelling in their ability to ignore the GM's plot.

What?  Capes has no GM?  Yeah, that takes people a little while to grasp.  In fact, Jesse sounds like he's still suffering from it.  He wants to engage Dave and Tyler, and that's nice, but it's also not his responsibility.

Another possibility (I kid you not) is to simply ignore Dave and Tyler, and put all your attention on the people who are entertaining you.  Scary, but it often works.  Players are really good at picking up unconscious tells.  When they are "hearing" signs from you that say that their disengagement is your concern then they'll stay disengaged and count on you to fix it.  When they start "hearing" that you couldn't care less they'll often realize that they need to get up off their butts and engage themselves, or they'll never get into the game.

In my experience that has worked for three out of the four players I tried it on.  Neither a huge sample nor an encouraging success rate, I'm afraid.

[jburneko]

Hey There,

I should point out that the Eat Popcorn was not a conflict actually introduced.  It was an example that Dave tends to claim sides of conflicts just because he can mechanically no matter how great or small the conflict is and no matter how relevant to his characters or personally involved in the conflict he is.

The closest we've come to something like Eat Popcorn is when Tyler introduced, Goal: Order Pizza.  But at the time he was playing an incompetent henchman that had been created by Patrick for his villain, so it kind of worked.  Tyler was trying to demonstrate the henchmen's obliviousness to what was going on.

My rather harsh analysis of my two fellow players shouldn't come off as "they're not trying" or "they're not playing the game."  They are. But I just don't feel like they're *engaged* or emotionally invested.

Let's see if I can remember the details.

The first scene took place in a cathedral where my villain Reverend Eden was trying to convince the parishoners that he was devinely empowered.  Dave played a creepy informant guy named Max.  Tyler played his hero The Silent Shield.  Dave introduced the conflict, Goal: Figure out what the Reverend is up to.  Tyler introduced the conflict: Goal: Change into Silent Shield persona unnoticed.

It was the first scene and the first time we'd played so there's a steep learning curve at this point.

The second scene was at a hospital since the church had nearly been destroyed.  Tyler played Patrick's hero Exemplar Cindy.  Dave played his hero Speedster.  It might be very telling that I can't for the life of me remember what Dave did in this scene.  I think he may have been trying to stop Patrick's villain, Dick, from stealing some oxygen tanks.  What I remember most is Tyler's performance of Cindy made me realize that I wanted to get my hero, The Raven, involved with that character.

The third scene took place in a shady area of town.  Dave created this scene and said that his Speedster (whom he was playing) was meeting up with Max from Scene 1.  Patrick played Max, this time.  Tyler opted to sit this scene out.  Dave introduced the conflict: Goal: Get the skinny on the Reverend from Max.

This scene is notable because it actually angered Dave to the point where eventually he stopped participating in the scene.  He was rolling very poorly and I think he was getting frustrated that there was nothing he could do at the Ability level.  That is, I think he was getting very upset that his "Faster than a speeding bullet" ability didn't necessary trump another characters "Striaght Shot" Ability.  His original conflict about getting the information from Max was the last one on the table too and he just didn't care.

The fourth scene took place in a cave that is Dick's lair.  Dave played his Speedster and introduced Event: My car is returned safely home. (It had been stolen at the end of the last scene).  Tyler played Dick's henchman and introduced the Goal: Order Pizza.  Latter in the scene Tyler used a Story Token to bring in his character The Silent Shield.  He introduced the conflict, Goal: Convince Cindy (played by Meghann) to look after his ward.

The fifth scene took place back at the hospital.  Tyler played his hero's exemplar Jenna and introduced the conflict: Goal: Find out what happened to Cindy's mom.  Dave played The Raven's exemplar Violet.

An interesting exchange that happened here was when Dave staked a point of Debt from Violet's undifferenciated debt stack on the conflict about the robot displaying a human emotion.  I thought that Dave was riffing off the fact that back in the first hospital scene I had introduced a conflict between Violet and the robot about Violet forming a real human connection.  That pair interests me because they're both "broken" humans.  Violet's insane and the robot, is well, a machine.

So when Dave staked some of Violet's debt on the robot's conflict I said, "Interesting" and both Dave and Tyler stared at me blankly. Dave asked if he'd done something wrong.   I said, "No."  Tyler asked, "So what's so interesting about that?"  So, I explained that I thought Dave was reinforcing my previous investment of Violet in the robot.  And both Dave and Tyler had kind of a "pish-posh" reaction to my analysis.

Jesse

[TonyLB]

Cool info!  That gives me lots of ideas for kibbitzing.

It sounds like Dave wants to rise to challenges, and show how cool his character is.  Also, playing a speedster, he probably wants to race against time.  Which is great.  Make him work for it.  Here's the type of stuff I would do:

Rival speedster introduces "Goal:  Prove that I'm faster than Speedster"
"Clobber Speedster"
"Deal with the villains before the building collapses"

Likewise, you can make him work for his creepy characterization of Max:  "Goal:  Reveal exactly what Max is up to," for instance.


Tyler's first conflict was about his secret identity.  I'd follow up, just more aggressively:  "Goal:  Reverend Eden discovers Silent Shield's secret identity."


See, now I'm all interested, too.  What's Max up to?  Can Silent Shield hide his secret identity?  Is Reverend Eden really divinely inspired, and if so is that a good thing?