[Capes] Losing with Style

[LordSmerf]

So we played Capes again.  The report is not complete, but you can take a look at our characters...

Thomas

[LordSmerf]

I finished the Actual Play post up.  There are a couple of notes at the bottom.  I wanted to expand on things here.

1. The Frame thing was really hard to remember.  By the end of the session we were able to remember by expending dice one at a time (or handing them to other players) in order to establish who got what frame and what was in it.
2. How do you handle scenes in which it is just PCs interacting?  I assigned myself some dice as the Editor and just ran interference, but it seemed a little contrived.  We had fun with it, but i had no way to generate additional dice.
3. I actually liked the Wonders that generated just a few dice.  Especially the first two.  I think that Strength through Adversity is still too complex (there is too much going on in the text for it).  Passion on the other hand worked out rather well.
4. I really feel that the current mechanics do not force the Premise to the front.  There is no tension generated as your Debt rises and Falls, it is just another number to keep track of.  In Sorcerer you can really feel the pressure as your Humanity drops towards zero because there are some serious consequences if that happens.  Because of the way Stakes work that solution does not seem to be viable for Capes.  Unfortunately i can not think of another way to generate tension over Debt changes (which i think would greatly assist in driving Premise).

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Quick question before I head out to my Buffy/Pirates game for the evening:  Did the heroes ever lose Complications that they had Stakes on?

[LordSmerf]

Ah, should have pointed that out.  There was only one complication in the first scene and the heroes one that one, everyone had Stakes on it.

In the second (last) scene only Coppertone staked anything and she won that Complication, so no, no Heroes lost staked complications.

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

.... Coppertone's goal is to keep her partnership with the Red Menace. The Menace's goal is to remain oblivious to the fact that his partner is a capitalist pig....Menace burned his hand just as he was about to see what was in the oven (thereby avoiding actually having to see what was inside)...

I just wanted to point out that here we have a player trying to "defeat" his (her?) own character -- i.e. player's success is character's failure (to notice something, in this case). Very high-Narrativist. Kinda Elfs, too.

Did we have fun? Yes. Did we address the Premise? I think not.

Okay, but were you trying that hard to address the premise? (Which is essentially equal to the Spiderman tagline -- "with great power comes great responsibility"). Mechanics are just a tool and you can use them for other than their nominal purpose. You can play Sorcerer as comedy too -- heck, it's the rulebook that you can.

That said, Thomas does have a real point: Do the mechanics as written really make Debt and especially overdrawn Drives hurt enough? Maybe there need to be levels of awfulness beyond "-1 penalty per overdrawn Drive," which hurts you once and then stops.


EDIT because I had a brainstorm in the shower -- and it even brings the thread back to the original stated topic of "Losing With Style," although in a different way:

Forget a simple punishment mechanic where overdrawn Drives make a character less effective. Instead, how about a mechanic that has a real narrativist sting in its tail: Overdrawn drives do not make it any harder for a character to succeed -- but any success he has is somehow tainted.

I originally had this idea (and very vaguely) for My Eventual Game, but here's a way to translate it into Capes -- and thank you, Tony, for the lovely Frame mechanic to work it in: For each point the hero is overdrawn in a particular drive, the Editor gets to add a frame of narration to the resolution of any Complication which the hero won. Whereas normally, for a hero with no overdrawn drives, winning a Complication translates to proof that the hero's take on the staked Drives is correct, the Editor can use his sting-in-the-tail frames against an overdrawn hero to undermine that moral certainty.

Example: Captain Goodness has overdrawn his Hope drive by two. He's trying to rescue some folks in a burning building, a classic Hope situation. He does not get a -1 penalty for an overdrawn Drive while he's struggling to resolve the burning building Complication. Instead, he operates unhindered and succeeds, gaining control. The Captain's player narrates a happy resolution to the burning building situation: Everyone gets out unhurt.

But those two points the Captain is overdrawn in Hope give the Editor two frames at the end -- the sting in the tail -- to narrate a shell-shocked family staring back at the burned-out shell of what used to be their homes, the mother crying quietly, the kid just traumatized and blank. Hope prevails -- but not entirely.

[LordSmerf]

Sydney.  I really like the basic idea (make the penalty a narrative one directly instead of indirectly), and i also like your suggested implementation.  I am just not sure that it is potent enough.  Now, that is not to say that it would not work, but perhaps what you suggest plus something else.  Give overdrawn Drives some serious umph.

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

....perhaps what you suggest plus something else....

Yeah, there'd need to be a mechanical penalty too, at least to impede players overdrawing a Drive to infinity. Actually, the current rules are a bit vague on this -- they say a Drive that's 100% staked may "cease to be" temporarily but it's not clear if this has any mechanical effect. Perhaps as a drive gets overdrawn, each further point of Debt in that drive gets you less and less in-game benefits?

Just musing here.

[TonyLB]

Sydney, Thomas:  Are you assuming that players are supposed to avoid having their Drives overdrawn?

Frankly, I think that overdrawing at least one drive pretty seriously should be the natural outgrowth of most every story.  

On a story level, you can't have a resolution of doubt without having doubt in the first place.

On a mechanics level, you can't bet debt tokens until you've acquired debt tokens.  And if you don't bet debt tokens then you can't use the Passion Effect.  And I have a sneaking suspicion (though I haven't verified it) that if you don't use the Passion Effect you're going to get trounced in the end-game (when Drives, villainous and heroic have risen).

Given the new changes in the rules (i.e. you can now only get debt tokens by using powers and by losing Stakes) that means that players should be actively looking for ways for their heroes to lose Complications where they have a lot of debt at stake.  It's the Editor's responsibility to guarantee a sufficiently nasty challenge that they can lose those Stakes without their character "throwing the game", as it were.

EDIT:  You could discourage "debt to infinity" by saying that the Passion Effect can not be used with a Drive that's overdrawn.

[TonyLB]

Actually, the current rules are a bit vague on this -- they say a Drive that's 100% staked may "cease to be" temporarily but it's not clear if this has any mechanical effect.

They may be poorly written, but I don't think they're vaguely conceived... just a communications gap.

Say you have a Drive of four, with seven tokens on it.  You bet four tokens, which then go to a complication.  You now have a Drive of four with only three tokens still on it.  No longer overdrawn, because three is less than four.

That's probably an example that should go into the rules.

[LordSmerf]

Sydney, Thomas:  Are you assuming that players are supposed to avoid having their Drives overdrawn?

Frankly, I think that overdrawing at least one drive pretty seriously should be the natural outgrowth of most every story.  

On a story level, you can't have a resolution of doubt without having doubt in the first place.

On a mechanics level, you can't bet debt tokens until you've acquired debt tokens.  And if you don't bet debt tokens then you can't use the Passion Effect.  And I have a sneaking suspicion (though I haven't verified it) that if you don't use the Passion Effect you're going to get trounced in the end-game (when Drives, villainous and heroic have risen).

Given the new changes in the rules (i.e. you can now only get debt tokens by using powers and by losing Stakes) that means that players should be actively looking for ways for their heroes to lose Complications where they have a lot of debt at stake.  It's the Editor's responsibility to guarantee a sufficiently nasty challenge that they can lose those Stakes without their character "throwing the game", as it were.

Tony, as i see it the current problem is that there is not sense of risk.  To date none of my players have felt at all threatened by Debt.  There is no sense that accumulating it is bad, and there is no sense of urgency to get rid of it once it has been accumulated.  I think that what you really want is a system in which accumulating Debt is a bad thing, but also a system in which you can not avoid it if you want victory.  Also, since you can now only accumulate Debt by activating Powers it will be rare for anyone to ever need more than 5 Debt in any given scene.

I just feel (and my players agreed when i mentioned it) that the Debt mechanic does not actually provide any incentive to address the Premise.  I am not sure exactly how this could be "fixed", it could even simply be that i am not using the mechanic to its fullest potential.  However, something probably should be done because i really feel that the greatest weakness in Capes at the moment is that the Premise is not being constantly pushed by the system.

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

Sydney, Thomas:  Are you assuming that players are supposed to avoid having their Drives overdrawn? Frankly, I think that overdrawing at least one drive pretty seriously should be the natural outgrowth of most every story.

Oh, I definitely agree with you that we want characters to be dangerously overdrawn on a regular basis, just as Sorcerer characters should be constantly feeling the downward pull towards zero Humanity rather than safely hanging out and never doing anything risky.

Where I agree with Thomas (though I've not playtested this, so what do I know?) is that the "dangerously" half of "dangerously overdrawn" is so far underdeveloped. The key to good stories and good game design both, I have come to think, is the creation of dilemmas: Problems with a clear optimal resolution are less interesting either dramatically or strategically than those which involve a painful trade-off either way you go. So far, there's a strong temptation to overdraw in a Drive (you get more juice for your powers) but not a comparably high risk to doing so. "You get what you pay for" is less true than "you value what you pay dearly for, and undervalue what you got easily." To really make it count, you gotta make it hurt.[/i]

[LordSmerf]

Where I agree with Thomas (though I've not playtested this, so what do I know?) is that the "dangerously" half of "dangerously overdrawn" is so far underdeveloped. The key to good stories and good game design both, I have come to think, is the creation of dilemmas: Problems with a clear optimal resolution are less interesting either dramatically or strategically than those which involve a painful trade-off either way you go. So far, there's a strong temptation to overdraw in a Drive (you get more juice for your powers) but not a comparably high risk to doing so. "You get what you pay for" is less true than "you value what you pay dearly for, and undervalue what you got easily." To really make it count, you gotta make it hurt.

This is what i was trying to get at exactly.  There is no danger or thrill when it comes to incurring Debt.  You do not get the sense that your Hero is being pushed close to the limit, constantly teetering over the edge of self-destruction.  From the two games i have run so far Debt is incredibly abstract, there is no tie between Debt and the reality of your character.

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

Thanks, Thomas.

And come to think of it, the end of the first Spiderman movie (WARNING: SPOILERS though not for any frequent readers of this thread, I think) maps very tidily onto my proposed "sting in the tail" mechanic. Spidey wins his battle with the Green Goblin, and without having to kill him at that -- the bad guy's own attempted treachery does him in, a moral victory of some sort. So Spiderman's "player" gets to narrate a resolution to that situation, including bringing Osborn's body back to his house... but Spidey's badly, badly overdrawn on Truth at this point, so the Editor gets a few frames to put him in a nasty Truth-related situation: His best friend sees Spiderman standing over the dead body of his father and misreads the situation as "Spidey killed my dad."

[TonyLB]

Guys, you seem to be saying that I haven't made a system where being in Debt is a terrible, dangerous thing that the players should fear, and indulge in only out of sheer necessity.

To which I can only say... "Correct.  I wasn't trying to build that system."

Capes is not Sorceror.  Debt isn't about stepping inch by inch closer to the abyss.  Debt is opportunity.  A drag on your short-term effectiveness, yes, but a boon (indeed, a necessity) long-term, through raising Drives and the Passion Effect.

The dilemma in the game is not "Do I use my power or not use my power".  Power is fun, remember?  Of course you're going to use your powers at every opportunity.  You're supposed to.

The dilemmas are "Do I stop the bank robbery or make it to my date on time?  Do I convince the cops that I'm not part of the criminal gang, or play along to find out what they're planning?" and so on.

That's why I worry a bit when I see Thomas's Actual Play report where the heroes won all of the Complications offered in the game.  The Editor should be winning about half of the Complications.

[Sydney Freedberg]

The dilemmas are "Do I stop the bank robbery or make it to my date on time?  Do I convince the cops that I'm not part of the criminal gang, or play along to find out what they're planning?" and so on.

Okay. So how do the current rules encourage that kind of trade-off? (Honest question, not rhetorical).