The Forge Archives

I have pushed myself to get something resembling a cogent first draft of Capes up on the web.

I am looking forward to another round of playtesting fairly soon.  Before getting into that, I'm hoping to address a few things I think I can do better in the basic groundwork.

It's a superhero game with the premise "Power is fun, but do you deserve it?"  So far it's light on description of Situation and Color, since I assume the 'spandex and cowl' motif is fairly well known.

Much like InSpectres it has a running total of successes which are both a player goal and a pacing tool.  You know the world will not be saved until you've saved innocents, given morally uplifting speeches and damaged public property... or similarly spiffy things.

But the villains are also accruing a set of points.  So where InSpectres is a race to rack up points before the punishment mechanic (Stress) totally debilitates you, Capes is a race to rack up points faster than the opposition (both locally and globally).

Given this, do you think I need a further punishment mechanic?  Or is the "relative loss" of having the villains rack up points while your score stands still enough to keep people invested in the importance of success?

Heh... it's hard to be concise.  Let me repeat that the rules are posted here if you want more context.

Hi, Tony.

All I can say is "Wow." Great looking game. It parallels a good deal of my own thinking about the genre.

It seemed to me that Debt is your primary punishment mechanic, rather than the villian point total. The villian point total my dictate when Endgame starts, but Debt is where it hurts.

Debt is somewhat similar to a concept I call Suffering in my game, Excelsior! (free example of play is available at http://incarnadine.indie-rpgs.com/excelsior.html for the curious) I think if you clarify what sort of situation is required to be able to bet for each type of Debt, you'll have the punishment mechanic you're looking for.

I'd love to discuss more right now, but an overtime-filled workday beckons....

Thank you very much for the encouragement.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing in terms of punishment mechanic.

I'm looking for something that (to paraphrase Ron) "reduces the heroines effectiveness or otherwise inhibits her from further action, temporarily or permanently."

You seem to be looking for something that gets at the emotions of the players, immersing them in the pain of their characters.  Is that roughly correct?

As just a rough idea, whenever a character loses a bet, have their involved Drive go down temporarily.  Don't make it related to the amount of debt, make it so that for every bet lost, the Drive goes down one.

A couple of questions:
In the Success and Failure section, you mention Intention Troupes for adding dice to a roll, are Action troupes used in the same way?
If I read the rules correctly, Drive can only be used by going into debt, is this correct?

If my assumptions here are correct, have the Drive go back up any time debt tokens are lost. (ie, when the Editor calls a debt due, or when the character wins a bet.) Also, have the Drives go back up at the end of the comic.

Great game and goodluck!


Jonathan

I don't know what an Action Trope is, so I don't know whether it works similarly to an Intention Trope.

Drives control the amount you can borrow at once, and also the amount that you can bet at once.  But yes, if you never go into debt then they'll never see use.  Which would be a shame.

Edit: The more I think about this, the less certain I am that a superhero game necessarily needs a punishment mechanic.  In many genres of superheroics, being beaten savagely for days on end doesn't actually impair the ability of the heroes to save the day when the time is right.  It's that "time is right" thing that's the killer.

Sorry, I meant Effect Troupe...

The reason I propose "punishing" the characters' Drives, is that very often in a comic, the only time a character is less effective is when he is doubting his calling, ie Spiderman wants to be able to love Mary-Jane, but feels he cannot unless he ceases to be Spiderman.  But, of course, this could resolved using Drama...

Any way you go, I really like your game.

Jonathan

Quote from: TonyLBYou seem to be looking for something that gets at the emotions of the players, immersing them in the pain of their characters.  Is that roughly correct?

You are exactly correct. Thanks for understanding what I said more clearly than I said it. 8^)

Why do you need a punishment mechanic? In InSpectres, Stress serves as something that causes tension in the group between fulfilling common goals (building the Franchise) and individual goals (going on Vacation to relieve the Stress). At the moment, I'm not seeing a hole in your design that a punishment mechanic is needed to fill.

From what I'm reading, it seems that your mechanic is abstracting the nature of the gameworld at any given instant, not really the personal condition of the heroes. If the villains have accumulated "X" points towards their goal, it might mean that the city is on fire, riots and looting are going on, and the heroes have a more difficult time doing anything as a result. Investigation is harder, it takes longer to get from point A to point B, etc. Conversely, if the heroes are thwarting the villain, the villain has a harder time recruiting henchmen, etc.

But, no matter how well the villain is doing, it seems the heroes can always confront him/her/it in some dramatic way and reset the clock to zero. Maybe some method of wagering plot points, like a high-risk/high-reward thing. "If we win, we win all. If we lose, the city is doomed..."

Greg Porter
BTRC

Michael, Greg, Jonathan, terrific comments!  Thanks!

Greg, you're right that my current system measures only the nature of the gameworld and not the personal condition of the heroes.  Which means that I don't have a strong rules mechanic to support a heroic decision to (for instance) take a fire-blast on the chest rather than let it set an orphanage on fire.  The number of dice in their Dice Pool is something of an indicator of how in-control of the situation they are, but I'm not sure it's enough (worth playtesting).

So to answer Michaels question (working my way backward) I think that the hole in the design is that any choice of Wonder Points is mechanically equivalent to any other choice.  Players don't need to make choices about what to pursue, only how many dice to dedicate.  Which has its plusses and minusses.

Which, returning to Jonathans comment, is something that the Debts and Drives system should, indeed, address.  You're right that heroes don't slow down because they've been hit hard physically, they slow down because of the blows to their confidence.  If going into debt applies some penalties then there is more of a sense that debt levels are an indicator of overall heroic stress.  But I think it's an important point that when characters choose to address the issues that they're endebted on, those penalties should mostly evaporate.

So... (phew... long post, lot of good material to consider)

Suppose I say the following:

[*]Different Wonder levels (1-point, 2-point, etc.) allow different functional changes in combat (change venue (i.e. from ground to flying, crowded mall to empty half-built building), change mode, add complication, resolve complication, etc.).  More desireable effects are more expensive[*]For each Debt that is equal to or greater than its Drive, the same effect costs one Wonder level more[*]Wonder points still accumulate as normal (because working under adversity is killer heroic)[*]Debt that is currently being staked does not count toward these penalties[*]Remove the (inelegant) ability for the Editor to cash out the heroes debt, debt is only repaid by staking it[/list:u]I think that this change would encourage people to stake Debt (for an immediate boost and long-term benefit).  I also think it would encourage them to (de facto) shuffle debt from one account to another... e.g. endebting themselves in Love to resolve their issues in Truth, rather than be deeply endebted in both.  But I fear that it will discourage people from going into debt in the first place.

Do you think the change would work roughly as I'm expecting?  

Would it be easier for people to think about going into Debt if there were some things that they simply could not do without accruing Debt Tokens?  Like maybe activating their flight power costs them a Debt Token and gives them dice for their dice pool... cheaper than borrowing, but if you want to fly then there's no way to avoid debt, so you might as well relish it.

If you want to go that way, don't place the focus on something like flying.  Aim it at actions which involve the object or goal of a particular drive.  Back to Spidey:

Everytime Spiderman has to save Mary-Jane, he has little trouble using his abilities, unless he is doubting himself.  Where does this doubt come from?  From having to save Mary-Jane.  So, everytime Spiderman saves her, his Love drive goes a little more into debt, eventually weakening all of his drives...

However, I would add a little twist.  Often when the object of the drive is destroyed or killed, the opposite effect occurs.  The character will do anything to restore the object of their drive.  Failing that, they will work overtime to see that similar objects do not suffer the same fate.

One last Spiderman example:

When his uncle is killed, Spiderman snaps out of his selfish, vengeful phase and becomes a force of Justice.  He suffers little doubt about his identity.  However, his Love drive has been made more sensitive.

How to do this?  Here's my rough idea:

When an action involves something important to one of the character's drives or maybe just one specified drive, he must go into debt (by one point) and receives the dice.  Eventually this effects all of his drives as he transfers the debt to them.  In the special situation where the object of a drive is destroyed, forgive the debt in one of the other drives, as long as the player can justify his character reacting in such a manner as to positively affect that drive.  However, for the drive that was affected by the destroyed object the character receives two points of debt everytime he acts with a similar object on the line.

I hope this is clear enough...  I'll understand if you think it's too complex, but I think it adds some interesting opportunities for exploring character.

Jonathan

It seems to me the easiest way to get people to go into debt is to have them run out of dice otherwise. The way you have it set up right now, the ways to get extra dice into the pool are 1) evoke an intention trope 2) evoke an effect trope 3) go into debt. How about dropping 1 and 2, and having tropes have some other effect that doesn't give you extra dice?

Say, you start out and roll however many dice. Sixes are a success and a keeper, fives are a success or a keeper, fours are a success if you have an intention trope that's activating, threes are keepers, twos mean you lose the die unless you have an effect trope that's activated, ones mean you always lose the die.

I guess another idea would be to have a different-colored bonus dice, and pick up bonus dice whenever an intent/effect trope gets activated, but the bonus dice only stick around for one roll. This is much simpler in practice but you do need a different kind of die.

Anyway, something like this pretty much guarantees people have to go into debt to pick up more dice (I guess to be nice you could even let going into debt be the same as rolling a six -- you get a success and a die) since you're going to be losing a die or two every roll.

Jonathan:  I don't think what you're describing is too complex.  I do think it may be too subjective for my taste.

But I think that's secondary to the fact that it's a little off-kilter to my Premise ("Power is fun, but do you deserve it?").  Spiderman does not accrue his emotional debt by protecting Mary Jane.  He accrues his emotional debt by web-swinging carefree over the streets of New York.  Or by using his spectacular powers in any way (including, but not limited to, protecting Mary Jane).

I don't really know whether this is the Premise of good comic books.  I've been reading them for more years than I care to admit, and I still don't know what makes the great stories tick.  I'd be happy to discuss it, but it probably belongs in private messaging.

Inky:  Fang Langford wrote a terrific explanation of how to deal with Bunker Players.  I must confess that I'm taking his advice as I proactively design for players who will want to avoid Debt at all costs, because they feel it compromises their characters ability to be defended from the nasty, unpleasant story.  So I want to tempt people to go into Debt, not force them to it.  Which is why I give them Tropes, but have the Tropes run out over the course of a conflict.

But you have a very good point that the temptation will (for some people) not be enough until it reaches the fever pitch of "Go into Debt or fail!"

I'd been considering a mechanic whereby peoples Tropes could be 'used up' by enemy action (similar, in fact, to elements of John Harper's excellent Danger Patrol).  I think your cogent argument encourages me toward such a mechanic:  It wouldn't really be a bad thing for people to run out of Tropes in tougher confrontations, as you point out.


General:  I've gotten a huge amount of useful commentary and inspiration from this thread.  Thank you all!  That's a good thing, but it's starting to make it hard for me to integrate further suggestions.  The simple fact is that I have been inspired to a substantial redesign of several relevant elements of the system.  So people are now commenting on an old system, which I've already designed past.  I'm going to hold off on asking folks more questions (though more ideas are always welcome), until I can get the revision written up and put online.  Hopefully tonight.

QuoteFang Langford wrote a terrific explanation of how to deal with Bunker Players. I must confess that I'm taking his advice as I proactively design for players who will want to avoid Debt at all costs, because they feel it compromises their characters ability to be defended from the nasty, unpleasant story. So I want to tempt people to go into Debt, not force them to it. Which is why I give them Tropes, but have the Tropes run out over the course of a conflict.

Yeah, I am a big fan of the stuff Fang's written, but I think you're mistranslating this particular concern in your system. Players turtle up because they're worried about losing something in-game that's important to them; they don't do it because a value on their character sheet temporarily decreases. Unless that value decreasing leads to them actually losing in-game effectiveness or possessions, but going into debt in your system doesn't do that, does it? It just means you're shrinking your pool of reserve points, and there's a well-established system for regaining them (calling for a Justice scene or whatever).

The thing I like about the setup you have is that whereas in Riddle of Steel genre games, the characters are generally on some quest to take revenge on the evil king and so their SAs fire when they're on the main plot of the adventure, my (admittedly brief) experience is that superheroes tend to have their personally-important stuff happen when they're not on the main plot -- Peter Parker talks to his girlfriend or gets yelled at by his boss, or the X-men angst about nobody understanding them or not having anyone to smooch or whatever. Then after a pause for the personal stuff they go back to battling Meteor Man. And, right, this system supports that perfectly -- after fighting Meteor Man for a while you're probably in debt, so you call for a Truth scene to get out again, giving a nice break in the action, and after that's done you can get back to kicking ass.

The point here, though, is that the players have control over what they risk: if they want to be Spider-man they can pump up Love and have all sorts of relationship angst, and if they want to be untouchable Batman they can put most of their points into Truth and Duty and have their downtime scenes be flirting at parties as Bruce Wayne or hanging out on the rooftops being silhouetted against the moon.

I am eagerly anticipating the revised rules, as well as eventually playing this.  

Jonathan