Capes session #2 this Sunday!

[Sindyr]

We have an upcoming (Sunday) Capes session #2 with 4 of the 5 people (I think) who were in the first one.

This is how I may introduce the session.

1)   Remind people that the last session was the "first awkward rule learning" one – and that Capes play will go more smoothly and be more fun as we have to focus on learning the rules less.
2)   One rule we got wrong – you *can* react to your own roll during the reaction phase of your turn.
3)   Additionally, any time one is deciding whether or not to use a reaction, if every player passes in order than the opportunity for further reactions is lost.
4)   The house rules we felt compelled to introduce last session will be in force this session:
         a.   any conflict, even a goal, can be vetoed by anyone after page 3. (to keep scenes from going and going)
         b.   insps can be combined by taking any two, bumping up the higher by one, and throwing away the lower, to a max of 5
         c.   We are using an authorship rule
         d.   spotlights (3 per player)
5)   Remind people that Capes is a competitive game.  That any conflict introduced should have one or more of the following motivations behind it:
         a.   Gaining insps, clearing debt, and narration the resolution through winning it oneself.
         b.   Gaining story tokens through losing it, assuming someone stakes debt on it.
         c.   Using conflict preventatively to stop something from happening.
6)   Further remind people that there are two ways to get another player involved: threaten something they have or entice with something they don't.  Examples:  LC embarrasses himself vs. LC looks GOOD.
7)   Emphasize that the way to get other people to give you story tokens is to figure out what they want, and then make them work to get it.
8)   Emphasize that the way to get other people creating the conflicts you want to win is to communicate with them and engage those conflicts – and that one should refuse to engage in conflicts that you don't want to see more of.
9)   That a lot of what they can get out of this game will ultimately depend on getting involved – going after what they want and dangle stuff other people want in front of them.

That's the start... what else?

[Matthew Glover]

#4:  What's an authorship rule, and why 3 spotlights per player?

#5 - #9:  I appreciate that you're trying to get your players thinking strategically about the game, but since you had a problem with developing storylines and such, this kinda bugs me.  I think if I were one of your players, having this presented in this manner would strongly reinforce the impression that roleplaying is secondary to the greater goal of resource management.  I think that's counterproductive.  I think that if you focus on the resource management game to the exclusion of the roleplaying, you'll again end up with an unsatisfying experience.  Without the roleplaying aspects, the resource management stuff will be hollow. 

You mentioned lacking storyline and continuity and all that good stuff in your first game.  If you want it, you're going to have to work for it.  Have everybody come up with one Spotlight character that they like.  Have each person tell everybody else about their character.  Ask leading questions about their characters.  Pay attention!  The better you understand what they think is cool about their characters, the easier it will be for you to give them story that they like. 

Once you start play, try to have at least half of those Spotlights in each scene, rotating through them so that from one scene to the next you use the characters to reinforce continuity.  Have the folks who aren't playing their Spotlights play characters that support the story, not just random dudes.

Oh, and about your After Page 3 Universal Veto Rule, there's another houserule that may achieve the same thing a little more smoothly.  After a certain point (number of pages or time limit), during the Claiming phase of each page allow players as many Claims as they want for free.

[drnuncheon]

Easter Capes? Bah, I am jealous - we have had to postpone our game because of the holiday, which means that I don't get to talk about it here for another week.

Hope it goes well!

[Sindyr]

#4:  What's an authorship rule, and why 3 spotlights per player?

The authorship rule we use if any player narrates something about another player's spotlight character that's not external, the owning player can veto that part of the narration.

For example, if I win and resolve a conflict such as "Fred turns tail and runs", I could narrate "Fred shouts "you're own your own", gives his teammates the middle finger, and runs".  At this point if Fred is a spotlight character Fred's owner can veto the "you're own your own" and the middle finger.  He cannot veto the "and runs" part as that is part of the goal that was won.  Fred's player can tell me "don't narrate anything about Fred doing this voluntarily - far a I am concerned, he is under some kind of external influence."

Why 3 spotlights?  Well, I figure at least 2 are necessary so each player has a main and an alt, and I figure give each one a second alt.

Oh, and about your After Page 3 Universal Veto Rule, there's another houserule that may achieve the same thing a little more smoothly.  After a certain point (number of pages or time limit), during the Claiming phase of each page allow players as many Claims as they want for free.

Tried this rule, seemed to work smoothly.  Will continue to test it.

[TonyLB]

The authorship rule we use if any player narrates something about another player's spotlight character that's not external, the owning player can veto that part of the narration.

For example, if I win and resolve a conflict such as "Fred turns tail and runs", I could narrate "Fred shouts "you're own your own", gives his teammates the middle finger, and runs".  At this point if Fred is a spotlight character Fred's owner can veto the "you're own your own" and the middle finger.  He cannot veto the "and runs" part as that is part of the goal that was won.  Fred's player can tell me "don't narrate anything about Fred doing this voluntarily - far a I am concerned, he is under some kind of external influence."

Why would you want such a rule?

Its only value seems to be that it protects people from feeling that they really have to win a particular goal, or else bad things might happen.

EDIT:  Though I suppose it would encourage goals like "I force Fred to, of his own free will and due solely to outright cowardice, flee the battle."  So that could be a good thing.

[Sindyr]

Perhaps the above question deserves its own thread?  Because I figure it could drift significantly off topic as we debate it.

[TonyLB]

Sounds good.  Feel free to quote the question into a new thread.

[Sindyr]

Am a little hectic today and tomorrow.  If you like and want to frame it, go ahead and make a new topic.  If not I probably will once I can find the time to frame it and answer it fully and well.

[Matthew Glover]

Why 3 spotlights?  Well, I figure at least 2 are necessary so each player has a main and an alt, and I figure give each one a second alt.

I should've asked my question more clearly.  What I meant[ was "Why X spotlights?"  Why do you have to put a limit on it?

Also, I'm itching to hear some details on how the game went.  What did you tell them before you got started playing?  Was it what you wrote up here verbatim, or did you change it up?  What did they think about it?  Did it have a positive affect on gameplay?  Did you get better story continuity this time?

Is there any chance that other players in your group would be willing to drop by to talk to us about their play experiences directly?  I'd love to hear their impressions.

[Sindyr]

I should've asked my question more clearly.  What I meant[ was "Why X spotlights?"  Why do you have to put a limit on it?

Didn't occur to me not to have a limit at all - thought it might go against the spirit of Capes or something.  But if you are asking me this, then I guess it doesn't.  I'm cool with no limit on spotlights - let me ask the group next time and see wha tthey think.

Also, I'm itching to hear some details on how the game went.  What did you tell them before you got started playing?  Was it what you wrote up here verbatim, or did you change it up?  What did they think about it?  Did it have a positive affect on gameplay?  Did you get better story continuity this time?

I don't have a good memory for specific details, but this is pretty much what I covered:
1) can react on your own actions
2) all players pass an opportunity = opportunity over
3) same house rules
4) three main tactical motives to play a goal in general - to win it for the insps and story control, to lose it to get tokens for getting another player involved, or as a preventative measure (Goal: the villain escapes).
5) Introduce the idea that we should probably not all swap in and out of characters like mad between scenes - that it may be a good idea for at least around 1/2 of the characters to be the same if we want continuity between scenes.
6) I asked each player to speak about there character(s) and what they (the player) would be interested in exploring of their characters near future storylines.
7) We recapped the first session we did, and discussed for about 20 minutes the possible backstories behind the scenes

(for example, we had a supervillain lizard alien in session 1 that destroyed city hall and started beaming Malignite into his ship from underneath where city hall had been.  The player of the villain and I were hanging out between the 2 sessions, chatting, and we thought that perhaps the lizard came from a super-advanced alien race called the Slarnak that, based on lizards, were pragmatic, focused, alien, devoid of the passions that they see in "warmbloods", us humans - and Earth happens to be smack dab in the middle of their empire.  The don't care to rule the earth, and don't really care if we live or die, but as it so happens earth is a resource for them.
     They place uncharged malignite crystals under our govertment buildings, in corporate centers, anywhere that the power, despair, fear, obession, or pride thrives.  The crystals absorb the hate and other negative emotions, turning into charged malignite, which the Slarnak use to power their empire.  On the one hand, this reduces the amount of nastiness in that area. On te other hand, the Slarnak sometimes stir things up to get the nastiness flowing again - nothing personal, just busniess.
    To them, earth is a factory)

Anyways, we chatted about this and other ideas about behind the scenes stuff.
7) I also emphasized the idea and worth of narrative nexi - something in the story that connects to several of the characters. (But not necessarily a Capes mechanical thing like an exemplar).  Like Malignite - the villains want it, the heroes want to study it.  Also we had a mortal scientist someone made that we wove into being a contact for seveal of the characters.
8)Finally I recommended that the scene framer not just frame the scene, but explain how and why we are in this scene, coming from the last one.  This worked awesomely!  The first scene was the site of the city hall crater with several governmental agencies on the scene as well as some heroes - and some villains too!.
   The second scene was at a corporate (wolfram & hartish) headquarters.  We chatted with the scene framer of the second scene and he took our contributions, and made it so after the first scene, all the heroes went back to Lucky Charm's lab to study the Malignite, the Professor discovered how to track it, and a whopping large Malignite signature was found in a nearby corporate building.  The heroes went to investigate.

I actually threw in a monkey wrench - instead of Lucky Charm showing up, a guy called Havok did - saying he was Lucky Charm's cousin (true) and that LC couldn't make it and had sent Havok in his place (false).  Actually, finding out about this mission, Havok had tied up LC and resolved to take his place.  You see, where LC is favored by the universe, Havok is cursed.  Where LC is charming and persuasive, Havok is forceful and chaotic.

Havok is a villain, but he thinks he is a hero, and he is desperate to proove that to others, usually with chaotic and life-threatening results.

So Havok was a great instigator of action in the second scene.  Knowing that the goal was to find the Malignite, he attacks the security guards to get them to reveal the stuff, he chrages through walls, his chaos field eating at the building and threatening the structure of the building.  He smashes through the central pylons in a rush to find the stuff, and the other heroes are pissed - trying to dodge the attacks of the now furious and alerted guards, trying to keep the building from collapsing.

The goal I had played was something like: Goal:  Havok finds the malignite, but his tactics get a hero killed.

I Gloated on that twice.

Is there any chance that other players in your group would be willing to drop by to talk to us about their play experiences directly?  I'd love to hear their impressions.

Don't know, I will ask.

[Matthew Glover]

Now that sounds like a lot more fun than what you described for your first session.  Did everybody come away happy?  Will there be a third session?

You've told us about the story created and it sounds like you guys had a blast with it, but what I'd really like to hear are the details about how the players used the system this time differently than last time.  What Spotlights did the other players play, and how were they engaged?  How were you pushing their buttons to earn Story Tokens off them? 

I've got some questions about the authorship rule as well, so I'll go ahead and split into a new thread for that.

[Sindyr]

Now that sounds like a lot more fun than what you described for your first session.  Did everybody come away happy?  Will there be a third session?

You've told us about the story created and it sounds like you guys had a blast with it, but what I'd really like to hear are the details about how the players used the system this time differently than last time.  What Spotlights did the other players play, and how were they engaged?  How were you pushing their buttons to earn Story Tokens off them? 

I've got some questions about the authorship rule as well, so I'll go ahead and split into a new thread for that.

I commented on the authorship thing on the new thread, as to the rest of what you asked:
We *did* have a blast.  I think everyone came away happy.  There will probably be a third session someday, but logistics are a factor.  I now know enough about capes to find value in setting up a regular play session - but it is likely that only one or two at most from that session can commit to a regular day and time on a weekly or biweekly rate.

Apart from the Gloating snafu, which I am working out in the new thread on it, everyone was much more comfortable about using the system.  I cannot overemphasize how important is was for us to find out that one can react to one's *own* roll on one's *own* turn.

By the way, we decided (since I could not find any rule about it in the book) that the first player that gets to react to an accepted roll is not the player who's turn it is, but the player to the left of him.  That way the original roller gets the last chance on the first go 'round at reacting to his own die.

I must admit that I had a blast playing the Villain (sort of) - play Lucky Charm's cousin Havok and being the character that the other players hated.  It felt nice being the center of attention as the other three players tried to stop him from "helping" them.  Of course, eventually he was knocked out and detained by security, but I didn't mind - Havok is a villain (and an ass) and got a little of what he deserved.

We *are* still feeling our way around, and part of what we are learning is not just how to play Capes, but how to handle the stuff that Capes is silent on.

I feel like Capes is half a game - the "what to do to resolve conflicts" half.  But equally important I think are the techniques of fostering creative, coherent, and consistant stories.  We invented a few techniques to serve as the foundation for storytelling in general - like between game discussions of what it all means and possible backstories, like having each player choose a character a the start and flat out tell the rest of us what kind of character evolution or story lines they are interested in exploring.

Capes can be played I now feel in an equally competitive and cooperative way simultaneously - competing over the resources, the goals, and the right to narrate results, while at the same time engaged in achieving mutual storytelling goals and not just being "me,me,me" about achieving fulfillment in this game.

In a way, Capes in the kernel of the game, and you *can* run that without much else, but we seem to be having a richer and more fulfilling experience running not just the kernel of Capes but wrapping it in several layers of shared storytelling tools and goals.

It's pretty cool and at this time (with the exception of the broken gloats) working pretty well.

[Sydney Freedberg]

We *did* have a blast.  I think everyone came away happy. ...I feel like Capes is half a game - the "what to do to resolve conflicts" half.  But equally important I think are the techniques of fostering creative, coherent, and consistant stories.  We invented a few techniques to serve as the foundation for storytelling in general - like between game discussions of what it all means and possible backstories, like having each player choose a character a the start and flat out tell the rest of us what kind of character evolution or story lines they are interested in exploring.

That's great. I'm glad you guys are getting into the swing of it. And your out-of-character discussions about what you'd like to see -- absolutely, 100%, that's classic Forge advice (and marriage counselling advice, too): "If you want something from somebody, don't expect them to read your mind -- tell them!"

What makes Capes tremendously powerful is that you don't just tell people what you want, you pay people for what you want, by investing Debt that turns into Story Tokens that turn into extra Goals, Claims, characters, and actions that generate more Debt, infinitely. Between "hey, I want a scene where Lucky Charm looks cool" and "hey, I just invested three Debt in 'Goal: Lucky Charm Looks Cool', you wanna take the Story Tokens and let me have it already?," the latter is a lot better at getting people's attention.

So I wouldn't say Capes is "half a game": that conflict resolution system is only part of an economy of interlocking incentives that will reward you heavily for finding out what the other players care about. Capes is arguably incomplete in the sense that while it has the "preparing a story-thread" advice in the back, it doesn't have a step-by-step procedure for creating dramatic situations -- but then, the only published game I've seen with such a procedure is Vincent Baker's Dogs in the Vineyard ("town creation"), although the draft I've seen of Joshua Bishop-Roby's Full Light, Full Steam has one, too. And Dogs doesn't have as tight an incentive economy as Capes.

Situation-building procedures help kick-start fun play, avoiding the "fumbling around" that you and a lot of other people have in their first sessions of Capes; incentive economies reward people for getting in synch with their fellow players, making the story tighter and stronger as it evolves, avoiding the "drifting apart" that kills a lot of campaigns. I'd love to play the game that combined both tools, but it hasn't been designed - yet!

We're on the cutting edge of RPG design here, people. These techniques are evolving as we watch.