[Capes] The Problem of Evil

[dalek_of_god]

Stephen, I believe your sig answers your question ... "Even Gollum may yet have something to do." Redemption  may not always be possible for the villain, but the possibility needs to be there.

[TonyLB]

Well, actually, I'm not clear in my mind yet whether redemption is part of the Premise I'm addressing.  Because I discover increasingly that the Drives aren't easily contained within the superhero in question.  They also pertain to the world that the heroes are living in.

Let's hypothesize a hero, Major Victory.  He's a military man.  He believes in following the rules.  His Justice Drive gets a good work-out, all the time.

(I could go on a tangent here about how Anarchy Lad, who believes that rules exist to be broken, is also highly invested in the Justice Drive.  Maybe later)

Major Victory is trying, on some level, to prove two things:  (1) That he follows the rules and (2) That the world is such that following the rules is the right thing to do.  He is trying not merely to justify that he does follow his morals, but to justify the objective validity of those morals.

Note the all-important paradox here:  The Major's actions change the world.  Heroes make the world more like they believe it to be.  Villains also make the world more like they believe it to be.

If the Major falls from Justice to (say) Righteousness then his faith has been shaken.  He no longer believes in a world where following orders is enough.  And it's probably not for any minor reason... it is probably because the game world, as created by the players together, isn't one where following orders is enough.  Some interpretations of Justice may hold together, but his particular one does not.

The Conflicted Drives are ones laced with doubt.  The hero doubts the world, and doubts himself.  And that, in my opinion, is all well and good.  The 'Righteousness-verson' Major Victory is not diametrically opposed to other people's conception of Justice.  Indeed, he may be trying to craft a new, more fully developed, world-view where he can once again assert an important place for Justice, and live his life accordingly.

But the same cannot be said if he falls (for instance) from Righteousness to Dogma.  The Villainous Drives are not about doubt.  Villains are just as certain as heroes... often more so.  They are certain that the world is a nasty, unpleasant, unworthy place.  A place where God, if he exists, is an evil, sadistic twit.

The problem is that the Gods of the imagined world are the players!  If the world is a nasty, immoral place then it is so because the people playing the game (Editor most certainly included) made it that way.  So villains are (indirectly) insulting and challenging the players!  I believe that's why we get such a thrill out of proving them wrong through our imaginary champions.

I think that a player who gets into that role of antagonism with the players, even by way of an imagined proxy, is in for a world of trouble.  Heroes do fall, and the descent into that level of bitterness is often a terrific story.  But I agree with Stephen that when things have finally gone that far it becomes time to retire the character.  So...

[*]Moving from a Heroic Drive to a Conflicted Drive:  Possible for heroes or villains[*]Moving from a Conflicted Drive to a Heroic Drive:  Possible for heroes or villains[*]Moving from a Villainous Drive to a Conflicted Drive:  Possible for villains only[*]Moving from a Conflicted Drive to a Villainous Drive:  Possible for villains.  Possible for heroes, but only at the cost of retiring the hero from active play.[/list:u]Of the four of those, the latter two don't seem (to my mind) to require much in the way of rules mechanics.  The mechanics I've posited for the first one are pretty sketchy, but I think they'll do the job.  But the second transition, from Conflicted back to Heroic... that's a tricky one.  I'd like to ask some advice on that one.

I originally wrote in the rules that heroes could transition back from a Conflicted Drive when they had zero debt in the drive.  That made the mathematics tidy... but it didn't really encourage the type of stories I'm aiming for.

A hero who is debt-free in a drive is (IMHO) contented in that area.  They're fairly sure that their view of the world (as detailed in that drive) is correct.  So why would a hero who has zero Drive switch to a different Drive?  They're throwing out a world-view that's working for them at the time.

The other thing I've thought of is to say this:  You have (of course) recorded the Debt you had in the original Heroic Drive before you switched.  When your Conflicted Drive is in Debt equal to or greater than the Heroic Drive then you may switch back to the Heroic Drive by combining the two debts.

The hero would then be massively in debt in that Heoic Drive.  If they've done a good job of figuring out a new way to view the Drive then they'll be able to prove (through action) that the Drive as they now understand it is a valid part of the game-world.  Which means that eventually they'll be able to get out of debt by staking and succeeding, staking and succeeding.  But there's obviously going to be a period of challenge and remorse.

What do you think of that?  I hope it creates some... interesting dynamics between the hero (who, one presumes, always wants to avoid Debt) and the player (who, in order to create a situation might need to accumulate Debt deliberately).

[TonyLB]

On a practical side-note:

Loved your example of villain creation. The mechanics of the Heroic-Conflicted-Villainous drives strike me -- like the rest of the system -- as really cool in their complex interplay, but potentially over-complicated. But then that's what playtesting is for: to strip stuff down.

I'm not sure whether it's really all that complicated, or whether my presentation is just clumsy.

I've tried rewriting it again, on the page, this time with geometric diagrams.  But I'm working with them so closely that I can no longer tell whether they actually communicate or whether it's just that I know what they're saying.  I'd appreciate it if people could take a look and tell me whether the diagram makes things clearer or more murky.

(N.B.: You're in Alexandria. I'm in D.C. If you ever need playtesters, and I can get a babysitter, I hereby volunteer myself for your hideous experiments).

Ah, excellent!  I had noticed that you were right in my back yard.

I'm drafting people in my already-scheduled group to do a little work on the combat mechanics, but at some point we'll have to run actual sessions, and for that I will certainly contact you.

[inky]

A hero who is debt-free in a drive is (IMHO) contented in that area.  They're fairly sure that their view of the world (as detailed in that drive) is correct.  So why would a hero who has zero Drive switch to a different Drive?  They're throwing out a world-view that's working for them at the time.
[..]
What do you think of that?  I hope it creates some... interesting dynamics between the hero (who, one presumes, always wants to avoid Debt) and the player (who, in order to create a situation might need to accumulate Debt deliberately).

I don't think it's correct that heroes always want to avoid Debt, or that people who are Debt-free are necessarily content in that area. It seems to me that the most important statement about a hero's feelings about a Drive on the character sheet is the score the player's assigned to the Drive, not the amount of Debt on the Drive. I think Drives are like muscles -- you draw upon Justice when you're doing something that requires extra effort, and then later you refresh yourself by doing Justice-y things. Being in Debt, in that case, may just mean that you've been getting a regular workout in Justice, and right now you're tapped out. But you may well be expecting to refresh it in the future.

On the other hand, someone with a score of 1 in Justice clearly doesn't care that much about Justice. Ok, I guess you can call them content with their beliefs but only because they don't have much to threaten.

Anyway, I grant that even under this analogy it's possible to overstrain your Justice muscle and slip into something else (Righteousness, I guess). But I don't know that coming back should be to a debt-ridden Justice -- it seems to me that not being sure of your convictions any more is better represented by a low score in Justice, where you can't rely on your beliefs for much inner strength until they're strengthened once more.

[Sydney Freedberg]

....Drives aren't easily contained within the superhero in question.  They also pertain to the world that the heroes are living in..... Heroes make the world more like they believe it to be.  Villains also make the world more like they believe it to be.

(Head goes POP).

Now can you reflect that in the mechanics? Or should you even try?

....at some point we'll have to run actual sessions, and for that I will certainly contact you.

(Gives thumbs-up sign, goes to check on baby).

[TonyLB]

I believe it's already reflected in the mechanics.  It's why Debt is Staked on success in a scene, rather than some more personal or internal criterion.

When a hero and a villain Stake their Debts against each other, they then vie (in a local way) to create a world-situation that confirms their belief.  When they're done, the world conforms slightly more to the beliefs of the winner (because they said "This is what my beliefs say will happen" and then made it happen).  

Mechanically, the one that succeeds is less endebted.  The one that fails is more endebted.  This may reflect the winner having more conviction in their beliefs, while the loser has a harder time clinging to beliefs that have not been borne out in practice.  I think it does, but... but...

Where do the transitions from one Drive to another play into this?  

Inky's quite right that the rules as I have them don't work.  The rules aren't encouraging any emergent behavior yet.  They're just sort of convenient place-holders until I figure out something with more zing.

Modifying Drives (as Inky suggests) might very well be it.  The problem is that I don't yet see the common thread to the types of thing I'd like to encourage, so I don't know quite what effect to aim for.

Darth Vader's redemption in Return... I liked that one.  He is redeemed not when his side is on the verge of defeat, but when they are on the verge of an unacceptable victory.  He realizes that the victory of the Dark Side, now that it is within his grasp, is no longer what he wants to believe in.  He would rather die creating the world that Luke believes in than live in the world that his own beliefs have created around him.

And there is (of course, always) Miller's Dark-Knight/Batman.  A "hero" who has clearly discarded some of the heroic Drives, and who seems (by the end of the book) to have made peace with where that leaves him.  " 'Sure we're criminals,' [he] said.  'We've always been criminals.  We have to be criminals.' "

And there's Peter Parker, the world's greatest misery magnet.  He so rarely has an unequivocal victory, and is so often saddled with trials that would shatter the faith of most men.  And yet he sticks to his principles, even when the rest of the world scorns them.  He believes in the power of virtue even when the only decent things happening in the world are the ones that he, personally, has made happen.

I could really use some help.  This is going to drive me crazy.  What is there really in common between these three figures?

[LordSmerf]

It seems to me that you've become fixated on a certain resolution to the question of Villains.  Your stated Premise is "Do i deserve the Power i have been given?"  Defining Villains in the same way as heros seems to be counter-intuitive to that since Villains don't think that way.  Of course Villains deserve the power they have!  It is that very surety that allows them to do whatever they want.  They don't have a sense of responsiblity to anything other than themselves.

It seems that the really interesting stuff is already covered in the mechanics.  Batman indebts Justice to prevail in Hope.  He's willing to kill or torture in order to "save the people," even if it is from themselves.

The only thing i think you need to add is a spiraling increase in Wonder Level penalties as you rack up debt.  You already have -1 Level penalty when you get debt above the Drive's value, increase that to a -2 penalty when you exceed double (or triple, or whatever) the Drive's value.  This allows a hero to throw away a Drive indefinately, but eventually that hero is no longer able to accomplis his goals.

Don't worry about playing Villains, i think any efforts to produce such play would weaken the Premise of the game.  Allow a hero to throw away a Drive by continually indebting it to achieve his other goals, this really drives the Premise forward.

Think about it this way:  Peter Parker has a Love for M.J.  He is constantly indebting that Love by distancing himself from her in order to keep her "safe".  This works for a while, and it allows him to be a "better" hero, accomplishing things faster and with fewer complications.  But eventually he has to deal with it because without that anchor to life outside of responsibility he slowly loses his ability to do anything at all...

Thomas

EDIT: To anwer your "what is it they have in commmon question" i say:  They are each at different points in paying off debt.

Spiderman keeps his accounts balanced which makes it harder in the short run, but easier in the long run to keep going.

Batman has a massive debt in something.  This makes it incredibly hard to dig out of that hole, but it allows him to rack up more debt in order to accomplish his goals.  The problem is that he becomes less and less effective as his debt mounts.

Darth Vader has somehow managed to pay off his huge debts in a short period of time.  He made sacrifices in Hope for Justice (absolute Order at the cost of individual freedoms) and Luke has transferred major parts of that debt to himself in order to save Vader (that's kind of a stretch).

[LordSmerf]

After all that, i think i may be rethinking what i said.  A Villain is simply a Hero with a big stack of Debt which somehow doesn't impare his Wonder Levels.  It seems that the key to redemption lies in allowing that debt to affect you.

So i guess you could simply define a Villain by allowing them to define 1, 2, 3, or 4 of their Drives as non-inhibiting.  No matter how much Debt they rack up in that Drive they will suffer not penalties.  Don't allow all 5 drives to be non-inhibiting because that would result in a character with no reason to exist.  I'd be tempted to say that you have to start at the lowest value drives as non-inhibiting and that the highest value can never be non-inhibiting.

Then allow a Hero to make a Drive non-inhibiting through some really horrible action (perhaps a huge debt incurrance as well) like allowing your Exemplar to die...

Thomas

[LordSmerf]

We played some Capes.

Quick summation: it was fun; it needs some work, but it's a solid start.

Thomas

[TonyLB]

It seems that the really interesting stuff is already covered in the mechanics.  Batman indebts Justice to prevail in Hope.  He's willing to kill or torture in order to "save the people," even if it is from themselves.

Huh... yeah.  Yeah, that's how I started out trying to design it.  And it's probably the right way to keep going.

But I don't think I agree that Villains aren't trying to fulfill their own Drives.  I like the symmetry of both people trying to fulfill largely opposing Drives.

New thought:  Any character (hero or villain) may Stake debt in one of two ways.  First, they may affirm the importance of the Drive (Justice, etc.) in the world.  If they do that then the Wonder Dice they spend on Victory get added into the Hero Pool.  Second, they may disavow the importance of the Drive, in which case their Victory Points get added to the Villain Pool.  They win or lose based on the Pool they're donating into for that scene.

I have a feeling that this would require subsidiary rules to make it sing:  Probably a way to handle people betting mid-scene (i.e. the Darth Vader last-minute Stakes), and a way to bet on complications as well as whole scenes.

Would players ever take this option?  What would it take to make it support the kind of things I've been aiming at?

And let me give due credit here to inky for his post on heroes earning villainous VPs.

[LordSmerf]

If you want to encourage a balancing act, i see the solution as rather simple.  "Staking" a drive villainously doesn't incur debt.  If you're all tapped out on your Drives there will be a huge temptation to take the "easy" way out rather than taking a Wonder Level penalty.

One thing that might show your "winning means they have validated their worldview" idea could be allowing each side to spend it's points on things at the end of each session, once victory has been determined.  Stuff like "I spend 10 Hero points to reduce violent crime in the city.  See, it's working!" would really provide consequences to playing by the Villain's rules.  Even if you get 30 Hero points and "win" if the Villains got 29 then the overall change isn't that great, but if the Villains only got 18 then you can begin to see a difference...

How does that sound?

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

One thing that might show your "winning means they have validated their worldview" idea could be allowing each side to spend it's points on things at the end of each session, once victory has been determined.  Stuff like "I spend 10 Hero points to reduce violent crime in the city.  See, it's working!" would really provide consequences to playing by the Villain's rules....How does that sound?

I like that. It gets very mythic, very fast, albeit kinda subtly. It's similar to folk magic: the way a ritual battle between the God of Winter and the God of Summer will not only leave one smacked-down in the dust, but affect the crops for the whole community for the next season. Or, to take a more modern example, to the way that when the couple in a romantic comedy break up (prior to getting back together again, of course), it usually starts raining -- I vaguely recall this being described in high school English as "the pathetic fallacy" (not because it's lame, but because the external world mirrors the pathos of the character's internal world).

And since this is a Narrativist game (or more accurately, "simulates" narrative structure instead of physics), there doesn't even have to be any justification for how spending the victory points affects the world -- it just does -- and not necessarily in straightforward "crime rates rise or lower" ways:

Does Power triumph over Justice when Dr. Megalomania clobbers The Straight Arrow with a Buick? Then the next day at the Daily Planetoid, where the Straight Arrows works in his mild-mannered secret identity, a new Rupert Murdoch-esque magnate takes over and starts firing people unfairly.

Or does "Love is Strength" triumph over "Love is Weakness" when the Amazing Dung Beetle saves his red-haired love interest from the vicious Magenta Goblin? Then the next day, out of costume, our friendly neighborhood Dung Beetle seems to pass happy, kissing couples at every cafe, and his lovelorn best friend finally gets up the courage to apologize to his girlfriend and ask her out again.

Mechanically, you might work this by making Victory Points from a super-battle work as plot points for later on -- each VP earned by the heroes allows the players to make a positive statement about the wider world, each VP earned by the villains allows the narrator to make a negative statement.

EDIT: I realize my superhero/villain names in examples are getting increasingly, uh, weird. Allow me to plead very powerful migraine medication.

[LordSmerf]

I've compiled a single list of my suggestions for the game.  Disclaimer: these are all "In my opintion" so don't think of them as absolute truth...

Capes – Suggested Changes:

1. Reveal more about Heroes as they activate Powers
2. Use accumulated Wonder Points in the Epilogue
3. Provide a reason not to roll all of your Dice Pool every Turn
4. Consider (do not necessarily provide) additional ways to work off Debt
5. Produce a reason for there to be a contest over who gets to resolve Complications
6. Consider (and list) ways to mechanically make Compromises (using evil to fight evil)
7. Mechanically reinforce a comic book "feel"[/list:u]
Issue 1: Mechanically encourage the revelation of information regarding Heroes (similar to revealing information about Villains as they activate Powers)


1. Require detailed character developing statements when Debt is incurred.
2. Provide bonus dice whenever a Revelation is made about a character[/list:u]
Issue 2: Provide a Use for accumulated Wonder Points at the end of a session in order to show the degree of victory.  How much have you changed the world?


1. Allow both sides to spend Wonder Points during the Epilogue to state Facts
2. Allow the winning side to spend the difference in final Wonder Points to state Facts[/list:u]
Issue 3: Consider mechanical encouragements not to roll all your dice every turn


1. Give +1 die to whoever has the most unrolled dice (crude)
2. Give some sort of penalty to whoever rolls the most dice (probably not a good idea)
3. Put some sort of cap on the number of dice you can roll (I like this, but I don't know what the cap would be)[/list:u]
Issue 4: Consider ways of slowing the accumulation of Debt


1. Make Activating Powers a 1st Level Wonder and don't add Power level to the dice pool.
2. Increase the starting values for Drives[/list:u]
Issue 5: Consider ways to mechanically encourage both sides to Resolve Complications


1. Award Wonder Points towards victory equal to the number of Points you have invested in that Complication if you successfully resolve it
2. Reduce debt when or provide bonus dice when you resolve a Complication[/list:u]
Issue 6: Consider ways to mechanically push the issue of Compromise (using evil to fight evil)


1. Allow extra dice or extra Wonder Points to be earned by adding Victory to the Villains instead of incurring debt
2. Allow players to reduce debt through "expedience" – I'm not sure how that would work mechanically other than using solution 1[/list:u]
Issue 7: Mechanically reinforce the comic book "feel" of the game


1. Include a rule that requires the description of a number of panels (comic style) for each die you spend on an action[/list:u]
So, that's what i think anyway...

Thomas

[inky]

(Sorry, this is a scraps-and-patches post with replies to a couple people in it)

Or does "Love is Strength" triumph over "Love is Weakness" when the Amazing Dung Beetle saves his red-haired love interest from the vicious Magenta Goblin? Then the next day, out of costume, our friendly neighborhood Dung Beetle seems to pass happy, kissing couples at every cafe, and his lovelorn best friend finally gets up the courage to apologize to his girlfriend and ask her out again.

Mechanically, you might work this by making Victory Points from a super-battle work as plot points for later on -- each VP earned by the heroes allows the players to make a positive statement about the wider world, each VP earned by the villains allows the narrator to make a negative statement.

I agree that the thing you're describing is a pretty integral part of comic books (and stories in generally, really -- there's pretty much always background stuff that mirrors the main story, whether it's Shakespeare's low plot/high plot or the romance between secondary characters in a romantic comedy) and the system should be set up to encourage them, but I don't think there's any real need to encourage them at the end of the game. What should happen is dilemmas get introduced during the main part of the game and then at the end we know how they resolve -- if the heroes win they resolve happily, and if the heroes lose they resolve unhappily (or maybe you have an ironic twist or two for some of them, but the overall thrust is known).

Issue 1: Mechanically encourage the revelation of information regarding Heroes (similar to revealing information about Villains as they activate Powers)

It seems to me the place for this is in the non-action scenes that Tony mentions elsewhere. I'd like to see them used for Debt recovery so that'd lead to mechanical encouragement, but presumably there'll be some reason to have them.

Issue 3: Consider mechanical encouragements not to roll all your dice every turn

The encouragement for this ought to be as simple as "you tend to lose a good chunk of the dice when you roll them, so you should save your dice for when you really need them". I agree the system doesn't always seem set up to encourage this, but there are some minor things that work in favor -- most notably, since you get a bonus to your wonder level for every power you have in play, it seems like you're better off activating a couple powers and then rolling a bunch of dice, so you can score an overall higher-level wonder (assuming a level-X wonder is better than two level X/2 wonder, but I think that's often the case).

Think about it this way: Peter Parker has a Love for M.J. He is constantly indebting that Love by distancing himself from her in order to keep her "safe". This works for a while, and it allows him to be a "better" hero, accomplishing things faster and with fewer complications. But eventually he has to deal with it because without that anchor to life outside of responsibility he slowly loses his ability to do anything at all...

There's something important here about how you can only tap the relationship for so long before you risk breaking it, and the resolution at that point has to be taking the relationship to a new level (which might mean getting rid of it entirely), not just going back to where you were before.

Darth Vader's redemption in Return... I liked that one. He is redeemed not when his side is on the verge of defeat, but when they are on the verge of an unacceptable victory. He realizes that the victory of the Dark Side, now that it is within his grasp, is no longer what he wants to believe in. He would rather die creating the world that Luke believes in than live in the world that his own beliefs have created around him.

And there is (of course, always) Miller's Dark-Knight/Batman. A "hero" who has clearly discarded some of the heroic Drives, and who seems (by the end of the book) to have made peace with where that leaves him. " 'Sure we're criminals,' [he] said. 'We've always been criminals. We have to be criminals.' "

This and the last quote seem to be getting at something pretty central in comic books, which hasn't really come up explicitly before -- personal integration. Batman's got this question of Justice he's always trying to grapple with, and I think good stories are ones where he sees what it costs him in terms of Truth and decides if he's willing to pay. Spider-Man has a similar decision he's making in terms of Duty and Love. Darth Vader does an even more extreme version of this, where he decides to sacrifice Need or whatever for Love. Here he doesn't just go into Debt for it, he actually switches drives.

Anyway, none of these points are exactly helpful, and I'm not sure the system can cover all of the, but it seems like there are a few things that I've mentioned that could end up in Capes.

[TonyLB]

Wow, lots of really good stuff to consider!

The idea of bidding your Wonder Total for indirect effects on the game-world is extremely cool.  From a meta-game perspective, I love how it draws the players into collaboration in defining the setting.

Mechanically I like the notion of the reward system being that the world gets better, not that the heroes necessarily get more powerful.  I had been thinking that the difference between an experienced hero and their humble beginnings was less about power levels and more about Drive levels.  But the Drives and the world-improving thing are interconnected, so that's probably going to work out as the rules develop.

And Inky has, I think, given me the perfect question to think about in terms of encouraging more strategy in how many dice are rolled:

assuming a level-X wonder is better than two level X/2 wonder, but I think that's often the case

What's the strategic difference between two level X/2 wonders and one level-X wonder?  Or, rather, what should it be?  I think I need to make very sure that Wonder Effects are constructed so that low-level Wonders have a different and useful place in an overall strategy.  I'm not quite sure what that place should be yet, but it's a good place to start thinking.

I'd like to have people offering (indeed insisting) that their players be beaten up at the beginning of a fight as a stepping-stone to their eventual dramatic victory.  It's pretty thoroughly ingrained in the genre, and I'll be happy if I can alter the dice-mechanic so that it encourages that sort of dynamic.