[Capes] Super Speed

[Sydney Freedberg]

[little dance]

My reasoning on why to take dice for Complications and Overdrawn Drives away from the Success pool .... it gives the roll and the situation more combined variability:  You can roll lots of sixes and lose them, and feel really stung.  You can roll lots of fours and crow that your opponent can only take trash away from you.  You can roll a lot of sixes when you have no Complications pending, and consider it a major victory.  You can choose to roll no dice, in order to not suffer the loss of dice from Complications and Overdraws.

I have to say, I like this. Compared to "subtract penalties from dice before rolling," subtracting them after rolling (a) is an equally simple rule (b) that produces far more complex effects, especially (as Thomas mentioned) by allowing you to choose between "roll a lot, risk a lot, gain a lot" and "roll nothing, risk nothing, gain nothing."

Yes, this extra option requires extra thought, which means it will slow down the play of the turn a bit, but I think it's worth it.

Separate subject: I'm with Tony on allowing players to buy multiple Effects in a given turn, for what it's worth. Again, the rules complexity is minimal, the gain in possible options is high, and the time required is probably manageable.

[/little dance]

[TonyLB]

Well, I thought about the tactics implied by "penalize after roll", and here's what I think clinches it for me:

Say you have a team of four heroes, and a big crazed kill-machine starts out the combat with villainous control in all four Complications (say, because of Inspirations, or because he siezes them quickly from a hefty inherited dice pool).

It now makes sense to have only one or two of the heroes on the team rolling dice and actively engaging the enemy, to keep them on their toes and prevent them from easily resolving anything.  Meanwhile, the remainder of your heroes are largely off-screen, powering up their dice pools by avoiding the constant, dragging penalty that they'd get if they rolled for Actions.

We talked in an earlier thread about how comic books often have "serial head-to-head battles".  And I (at least) thought that it would be neat if you could offer that as an option, but not force it on anyone.  Well, here it is... it's not an explicit rules option, but it's a viable strategy in response to a simple rule.


Fairly exhausted tonight.  I have more thoughts on issues like Thomas's fine idea of using "dice you don't spend" for something, and various other notions, but I won't do them justice right now.  Off to sleep.

[TonyLB]

Okay, having done some more playtesting (particularly internet playtesting, where slow-downs in the system are accentuated by the slowdown of playing over IRC) I am looking at a much more aggressive tactic to speed things up.

The fun of the system is in Complications, Inspirations, Drive, Debt, Exemplars and all that sort of stuff that connects scenes together.  It's past time to get the adjudication of the scenes themselves out of the way and let that stuff shine.

So here's my initial thought:

[*]No more dice pools.[*]Each Complication has two dice, of different colors, one for the villains, one for the heroes.  They sit on top of the card.[*]These dice all start at one at the beginning of a scene.[*]You can use a Power or an Attitude to reroll any die of its level or less, yours or your enemy's.  So a level three Attitude can reroll any 1, 2 or 3.[*]Whoever has the higher die has control of the Complication.[*]When a die is at six at the end of a turn, the Complication starts to Resolve.[*]If you're rerolling your dice (normally) you only keep results that increase the value.  If you're rerolling your enemy you only keep results that decrease the value.[*]You may choose, instead of rerolling, to simply increase the value by one (if it's not already six).[*]Powers cost Debt to activate, but they keep letting you reroll every turn until they're deactivated.[*]Any time you roll a die from Attitude or Power, you may use a Trope equal to or less than your roll.  Like Attitudes, this lets you reroll a die of the Tropes level or less.[*]You can roll a die, get N, activate a level N Trope and reroll that same die immediately.[*]You cannot create a chain reaction of one Trope activating a second Trope.[*]You may roll down one of your existing dice (i.e. roll and only change the die if the result is less) in order to get a Special Effect of the die's level or less.  Effects are:

[*](2) Use Description:  Add +1 to the effective value of the next Attitude or Power you use.[*](3) Power Stunt:  Take a debt token.  Add +2 to the effective value of the next Attitude or Power you use.[*](4) Passion:  Add your Stake in a Complication to the effective value of the next Attitude or Power you use on it.[*](5) Massive Overkill:  Tap everything three or less on one opponent.[*](6) Second Wind:  Unblock all your Abilities.[/list:u][*]Inspirations create a "minimum value" for a Complication.  If you make a Complication from a Level 3 Inspiration, your die still starts at 1 (and is a one in terms of all the Abilities and Special Effects), but it counts as a three for Control.[/list:u]I've posted an Example online.  It's a bit clearer in the example than it is just listing all the rules in a big pile.

I think this will run much faster, and be easier to explain.  I also think it loses some of the tactical complexity of the old system, but I don't know whether it loses "too much".  And it seems somewhat (but not hugely) more susceptible to bad dice-luck.  I'm looking for opinions, as usual.

[LordSmerf]

I am not entirely clear on how rolling your own dice down works.  I think if i read it and give it some time to sink in i will figure it out.  In the mean time i wanted to point out that the system as stands seems to encourage players mechanically to take 5 Powers because with a single Level 5 Power you can reroll just about anything every round...  One thing you might consider is eliminating the Powers/Attitudes/Tropes split, especially with them all working pretty much the same way now...  Perhaps a single unified system of some sort?

I still am having trouble seeing how Debt drives Premise...  I know there is something there, but i just can not seem to wrap my head around it...

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Rolling Up:  You have a three.  If you roll a four the die is now a four.  If you roll a two you pick it up and put it back to being a three.

Rolling Down:  You have a three.  If you roll a four you pick it up and put it back to being a three.  If you roll a two the die is now a two.


On that Level 5 Power... yeah, that's a problem I've been mulling for the past few hours.  Three options have occurred to me:

[*](1) The power is worth one less every time it's used.  Five the first round, four the next, etc.  Lot of book-keeping, though.[*](2) The power costs a Debt Token every time it is used... when it's activated and when it's used later.  Discard the confusing notion of "Activation".[*](3) The power costs Debt tokens equal to its value... so a level 5 means you have to distribute five points of debt around your Drives.  This could mix with #2, above, though then you'd probably need to recalibrate the starting Debt/Drive levels of characters.[/list:u]

[Sydney Freedberg]

...So here's my initial thought:[*]No more dice pools.

Or -- sacred cow attack! -- is there a way to run this game without dice pools at all?

Ahem.

[*]Each Complication has two dice, of different colors, one for the villains, one for the heroes.  They sit on top of the card.[*]These dice all start at one at the beginning of a scene.[*]You can use a Power or an Attitude to reroll any die of its level or less, yours or your enemy's. [/list:u]...it seems somewhat (but not hugely) more susceptible to bad dice-luck.  I'm looking for opinions, as usual.

I'm skeptical of re-roll systems, since mathematically they tend to stabilize around maximum possible values -- which doesn't produce the wild escalation characteristic of super-battles. Albeit the ability to re-roll the other guy's good dice down, and your own dice down to get special effects (which latter is awfully counterintuitive), may counteract this.

My personal inclination would be to mark control of each Complication not with two dice but with two piles of poker chips, and have Powers, Tropes, Attitudes, etc. add chips equal to their value to your side of the Complication, plus a random "luck die" worth of free chips per Major Character per round. This would create crazy escalations and show with visible piles of chips (or pennies, or cookies) just how hard-fought a given Complication is.

But I'd have to playtest to really get your re-roll system, and at this point I'm sitting in a converted post office supposedly writing coverage of the Republican National Convention, so time is short.. but I'm so pleased to see Capes email pop into my inbox again that I couldn't help myself.

P.S.

2) The power costs a Debt Token every time it is used... when it's activated and when it's used later. Discard the confusing notion of "Activation".

This seems the most elegant and simple solution.

[TonyLB]

Sydney, no question, you deserve credit for recommending the removal of dice pools.  I was just too strung out on lack of sleep to give it to you.  Very much my bad.

The stabilizing around maximum values is definitely something I see.  It is mitigated, but not eliminated, by being able to roll down the enemy die.

I am thinking that if, at any point, both sides of a Complication have sixes on their dice, those dice are shoved to one side (but continue to count toward eventual Victory Points), two new dice are started at 1, and the Complication is no longer Resolving.  

My intuition is this would allow people to repeatedly approach resolving a Complication, only to have their opposition catch up and reopen the same issue with more on the line.


On the counterintuitive nature of rolling your own dice down to get special effects... guilty as charged.  But we've got such a good set of effects for reinforcing the atmosphere of the game... and where else can they fit?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Sydney, no question, you deserve credit for recommending the removal of dice pools.  I was just too strung out on lack of sleep to give it to you.  Very much my bad.

Oh, I'm not trolling for credit. I didn't even think you remembered that -- I presumed you'd come to the same conclusion as me and/or Thomas independently, which is what you've done a bunch of times. I just have these small, not particularly attractive moments of smugness about it.

[TonyLB]

Well, I did remember that you'd made the comment, and I even meant to credit you, but had a brain-sneeze.

Anyway, the more I think about this reroll mechanic, the more interesting permutations I see peeking out of the woodwork.  The main problem is (as I hazily intuited and you clearly stated) that dice tend to drift toward 6, and that drives complications into stasis.  I wanted a counter-balance that would let players profit by reducing their dice, but it makes no sense when it also means that they're reducing their control in the Complication.

Better solution:  Split them.  Take one die that has (for instance) four, and replace it with two dice that total the same amount ("1 and 3" or "2 and 2").  This helps to break the stasis and drive the system back toward wildly escalating power levels.

There are some vulnerabilities of having two dice over one, but overall it's a benefit for the player who splits.  They no longer have all their eggs in one basket, they statistically get more each time they "roll up" and they have a substantially higher long-range potential if they concentrate a lot of their rerolls in that one complication.

And I think that the way to govern how much they can split is how much they have Staked on a Complication.  They can have dice equal to their Stake, or one die if they aren't Staked at all.  I think this nicely compliments the idea that Complications they're Staked on should get more of their attention... there are more dice needing to be rerolled in order to get the best results.

Thoughts?

[LordSmerf]

Actually, while reading your proposal, before i got to your "limit how many splits you can have" part i was thinking: Yeah, and limit the number of dice on a Complication to the number of Debt staked!  So, i am with you there.  Are you planning on being able to reroll both simultaneously?  Or would it be two seperate rolls to get them both rolled?  Also: are you intending to sum values or to take the highest?  The former implies that staking even 1 more Debt than your opponent will give you the victory.

I will have to give it some more thought... Hmm...

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

...Take one die that has (for instance) four, and replace it with two dice that total the same amount ("1 and 3" or "2 and 2").  This helps to break the stasis and drive the system back toward wildly escalating power levels....

Hmmm. If you just go from having one die to two dice, then you're not "wildly escalating"; and if you let people keep on splitting dice, you'll end up with huge dice pools, which was part of the problem you were trying to avoid.... but that's just at first blush. I'd have to see a playtest or example of play to really get it.

[TonyLB]

Thomas:  I was assuming that it would be two seperate rolls to get them both rolled, and that the control values would be summed.

My intent is that having more Staked on a Complication will be a large, but not necessarily decisive, advantage.  Overdrawing your Drives is going to have to be a similarly substantial penalty, to keep people balanced.  I don't know what yet, but it will have to be major.

I think what will happen is that "Number of Dice I can reroll each turn" will become a new resource to be considered by the PCs

[*]They get one off of Attitude (until those run out).[*]They might get one, possibly more, off of Tropes (until those run out).[*]Depending on how Effects get rewritten they might get an entirely free one off of that (to keep people limping along even after they've expended all their on-character-sheet resources).[*]And then they can pay for more rerolls off of Powers.[/list:u]I'm not seeing much more than three or so dice rerolled in an average turn.  If you choose to spend two of those on a single Complication (because you have two dice you want to bump up) then you're neglecting other Complications in order to favor a specific one.  And that's really good news, as far as I'm concerned.  That means that the system is highlighting the choices you make.

Okay, I think it's solo-playtest time again.  I'm going to write up an example and see how this works.  Maybe I'll figure out a new idea for where Special Effects fit in, while I'm at it.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Over in the latest playtest thread, there seemed to be a real question about whether the distinction between Powers, Attitudes, and Tropes still mattered, or whereas it just created needless mechanical complexity.

I recall that way back in a thread before Capes was Capes, the seed of Tony's idea was defining super-powers not as "always on" but as characteristic actions a hero took to change the situation, e.g. Wolverine popping out his claws.

But what we may have here is a classic example of the idea that spawned a project -- the one closest to the designer's heart -- turns out in the end to be scaffolding that must be removed from the final product. What's cool about Capes now is not the Powers/Tropes/Attitudes distinction (it's cool that you can have all those things, but not particularly exciting that they operate slightly differently). What's cool about Capes now is the full-speed-ahead Narrativist logic that simulates story instead of physics through Complications, Frame narration, and the generation of Inspirations.

P.S.: It may be that the Monologue Phase as such isn't necessary either at this point, because Frames already give you space to do that. Perhaps you could spend from your initial dice pool (or poker chips, or whatever) to activate "Aspects" (to borrow a term from Ron Edwards and With Great Power), which then generate more dice (chips).

P.P.S.: It may be that I am totally wrong. That happens a lot.

[TonyLB]

Yeah, I've got the advantage of being two days ahead of you (Sydney) on that particular Actual Play experience.  So those thoughts have already been percolating.

First, in the new speed-system I don't see any need for the Monologue Phase.  Most of that complexity has fallen away.  Maybe a moment or two to say "Did this Complication Resolve?", but no more than that.

Tropes in some fashion are here to stay.  I've played undifferentiated systems like HeroQuest, where everything is interchangeable and homogenous.  I like them for many things, but not for this.  Just my style.

But Tropes are changing... possibly even changing their name.  I'm thinking of redefining them as an explicit "anti-whiff factor".  i.e. There are things that your character is so practiced at, that are so much a part of their style, that they can rescue you from a bad roll immediately.  So any time you get a reroll you don't like, you can use a Trope of that level or above to reroll it again.

This does almost the same thing as Tropes previously did, and strikes me as much easier to explain.

Of course, my judgment on what is easy to explain is obviously a little shaky when it comes to Tropes and Powers... heh.

[TonyLB]

Okay, I've got the new Example of Speed Play up for people to look at.

It's long.  I think it would go very quickly, since there's virtually no calculation and minimal records-keeping involved.  But there's just flat out a lot of stuff happening in the scene.  If this solo-playtest has taught me anything, it's that there is a huge difference between a scene with a 5 VP Victory Target and one with 10.  Like, it's about twice as long, consistently.

Which means that the pacing mechanism as a whole is golden, but also means that I need to recalibrate how VP targets are calculated.  Five is a much more manageable scene size than ten, believe me.