[Capes] "Like the Tick?"

[Jaik]

Our tale begins four weeks ago, as four friends gather together...

First, a description of the group:
Me-Late 20's, married, no kids yet.  I've been gaming about 12 years, mostly D&D of some flavor.  I found the Forge a couple years ago and I've bought and readSorcerer, Dogs, Capes, PtA, Universalis, Donjon, Inspectres...You get the idea.  I was able to run Inspectres once and Dogs once.

Adam-My best friend, a year or two older, single.  He's been gaming about as long as I have, also mostly D&D.  He's very analytical and tends to deconstruct systems to see how they tick.

Joel-Mid-thirties, married to Alisha, they have three cute little kids.  Joel is a long-time gamer that I've been playing with off and on for ten years or so.  Long history of highly-modified AD&D preceded by a lot of Champions play.  Also tends to analyze systems and get lost in rules and ramifications.

Alisha-Married to Joel, not interested in systems or rules very much, just wants to get to the "doing stuff" part.  Has been playing with Joel since they were in college, pretty much AD&D thoughout.  Didn't seem to enjoy the last couple of years of D&D 3.0/5 because of the rules density and rules mastery built into that system.

The previous week, we ran a simple little adventure using the Marvel RPG (Old School) without Adam, since he had to work.  We all had a good time.  I was trying to figure out what exactly Alisha enjoyed, as I think the rest of us could enjoy pretty much any system for its novelty and "toy factor" if nothing else.  She seemed to like the simple, open-ended percentile system of Marvel as well as actually being effective.    Cool.  Next meeting, I took a bag full of Indie goodness.

Alisha settled on Capes as it "looked really different."  I thought about saying that it was REALLY different, but decided to let her figure it out.  Which she did.  But wasn't discouraged, only intrigued.  Excellent.

We were unable to play that day due to a pet emergency, but I left them the book to read.

Next meeting, two weeks ago, we start by discussing our Comics Code and a proposed tone.  We were headed for a light-hearted almost comedic style when I said "Like 'The Tick'?"  "YES!"  And so I actually got to play Pedro El Grande, a character based off a T-shirt I saw the previous evening on a bad-fashion show.  I love Capes.

Joel had previously mentioned that he wasn't sure how you would plan or run an adventure with Capes, so I was interested to see how he would react to the upcoming paradigm shift.  He said he had an idea for a scene, so he got to be the first ever Starter.

Joel whips up Dr. Death, a Rasputin-looking powerhouse with lots of blades and a bazooka.  I bring in the before-mentioned Pedro, a classic Brick/Simple Soul, Adam plays BatManuel, a character from The Tick, like Batman, but nonconfrontational, and Alisha rounded out the heroes with Heartflame, a Godling based on Starfire from the Teen Titans.

We didn't quite get the rules on creating or claiming conflicts.  We thought that when it says that you can add free conflicts that everyone had a chance to add a free conflict, which we could then claim.  Lots of conflicts hitting the table at once with confusion over Claiming led to some dissatisfaction as we were pulled in different directions and felt helpless as none of us had any Story Tokens or Inspirations or much Debt.  Regardless, we muddled on through a slugfest, which saw Dr. Death chased off with a remarkable lack of mayhem (I threw out the conflict "Cause massive property damage" and Alisha added "Keep the police safe", so nothing got ripped up and no bystanders really got hurt.)

Here we altered the starter rotation since Alisha had an idea for a scene.  And so we all show up in a knitting class...
Heartfire is trying to learn to knit to make a sweater for her Exemplar, Crow, a gothy kid next door.  She's trying to learn to connect with common people.  Dr. Death is there, learning to Knit For EVIL!  Batmanuel is there hoping to pick up a date and I tossed in Black Sheep, a revolutionary fighting to free Ovine kind (sheep) from their servitude.  (Once again, I love Capes for letting me make a character with a Sonic Baa-aa, Wool Armor, and Ominous Herding).

Conflicts got a little silly here and more task-ish, like "Goal: Starfire's sweater becomes a straitjacket and captures Black Sheep".  We muddled through and ended happy, but realizing that we needed to get some rules clarifications.  Joel and Alisha seemed taken aback when I said "I'll just ask Tony, since he wrote the thing."  "You can ask the AUTHOR?"

Armed with a cheat sheet of rules clarifications, we settled in again this afternoon.  Alisha had an idea for a scene, which turned out to be the only one we played.  And so we find Kangaroo Jack, Joel's too-bouncy hero, first in line at Wal-Mart, 4:59 AM, the morning after Thanksgiving.  Joel added in a thrown-together shopping mob, Adam stuck with BatManuel, I stuck with Black Sheep (there to make sure nobody bought a sweater) and Alisha made the Mystery Shopper, a Hunter/Ex-Victim traumatized by a shopping stampede out to prevent rampant commercialism.  The scene was a wild melee, with typical Tick-ish humor, including me staking 4 Debt to split my dice to avoid "Goal: Shear Black Sheep".

That single scene took us two hours to play, and since we had a shortened session, we decided to switch Apples to Apples rather than possibly stop in the middle of a scene.

Overall, I think we had more fun in this single scene than in a dozen sessions of other games.  The play is still cartoony, both because we haven't worked in Exemplars yet and we are based on The Tick.  I had to explain that if you roll a die up, then it's rolled down again by a reaction, that doesn't mean that you get to narrate how what you earlier narrated fails.  "What you narrate happens" is pretty novel to us, but I think Alisha's eyes lit up when I said that.

I can't wait to see what happens next session.

[Yokiboy]

Sounds like a good time Jaik,

I love the Tick, and Capes certainly seems to be a great fit. Do you think you could use Capes with the same crowd while switching to something more serious like Supreme Power or Alias?

TTFN,

Yoki

[Sydney Freedberg]

Starting silly is easy and fun with Capes -- and with most games that give players a lot of the "director power" traditionally reserved for the GM -- and it breaks the ice of everyone's preconceptions nicely.

Here's the trick, though: Keep on playing, and you'll realize you only get those big stacks of Story Tokens when someone else bids lots of Debt against you, which means you have to make them fight hard for whatever the Conflict is, which means they have to care about it. Learn to introduce threats against, or opportunities for, things the other players really want to see in the story, and they (through the system) will reward you for it.

Here's the trick within the trick: Remember you can narrate basically anything you want, right? In fact, you can narrate all sorts of wacky stuff entirely outside of Conflicts (the "free narration" phase or whatever it's called -- when I play with Tony, we almost never use it). You can. Don't. Because if you just narrate stuff people really like, or really hate, into the story without winning a Conflict to do so, there's no point for the other players to fight for control of Conflicts ("he'll just do it anyway"), which means they won't bid Debt against you, which means you won't get Story Tokens!

That doesn't mean you have to stop the comedy, of course. We care about the Tick's naivete and Arthur's striving to escape his "life of quiet desperation," after all.

[TonyLB]

Dr. Death is there, learning to Knit For EVIL!

BwahahahaHA!  Ouch ... my ribs.