[Capes] Speeding character design

[Sydney Freedberg]

Some players know the system well enough to develop and follow a strategy for how they need to play in order to create workable characters.  These players also know the system well enough to write up a character from scratch in five minutes or less. Is there a way for Develop-through-play to be made obvious for the players who don't yet have this level of system insight?  Or is it inherently a more advanced method of character generation, for experienced players only?

I think I'd turn this on its head, actually.
At this point I can probably make a character from scratch in five minutes -- but I can't necessarily make an effective character without a lot more thought, because I lack actual play experience. The nice thing about Develop-Through-Play for either someone like me or a total newbie is that every Ability you add comes in response to an actual play situation and thus has a better shot of being effective. I think it would actually take a more experienced player (i.e. one who's already played the system a fair bit) to come up with an effective character before actual play begins and starts giving this kind of feedback.

I agree there's a real danger of people locking themselves into only being effective in the type of situation they run into first. But to some extent the fact that the dice on Complications skip values on their way up -- they don't just tidily ascend from 1,2,3,4,5, to 6 -- means that Abilities defined in play may well skip values too: i.e. I may need a level 1, a 2, and a 4, but never have the opportunity to use a 3 or a 5, so those slots get left often for the next scene. In fact, you might even make it an explicit rule of this method (which, yes, probably should be an option, not the option) that you must define an Ability at the lowest possible level required to affect the situation.

[Adam Cerling]

(My High Concept is Forum Lurker; forgive me for violating that concept, but the Develop-In-Play aspect to this thread really got me thinking.)

Perhaps the players could focus their Develop-In-Play experience not only by establishing a High Concept, but also by contributing an introductory scene?

If your High Concept is "skater-punk activist werewolf," you might also contribute an introductory scene of "I have to escape the cops after spray-painting my politics on the side of City Hall."

That way you have some control over the kind of situation you're in when you first establish those Powers and whatnot. The Editor might even extrapolate a whole story-arc from those introductory scenes alone.

[TonyLB]

Okay, sorry for the delay in response.  The reason was that I was having trouble dealing with this in the wholly abstract.  So I spent a few hours to write up a solo playtest.

I'm going to base my further opinions on the experience of that actual play.  If folks want to argue with me that the actual play is not representative of what Develop In Play would actually look like in the real world then we'll at least have some specifics to talk about, rather than saying "I think it will work" versus "I have worries".

Here's the executive summary of the solo playtest:  

I went in with three things that I firmly knew would go on the character.  They were three of the first four things I played (Big Guns, Invulnerable and Massive Property Damage), and I had no problem at all getting them into the character.  Yay!

High Concept may or may not actually contain a description of personality.  If it doesn't then there is no real restriction or guidance for what Attitudes you create.  This led to incoherent Attitudes in the example of play.  Boo!

Subjectively... well, let's leave the subjective out of things for the moment.  I'd like to hear what people think about the example before I go too much further.

[Sydney Freedberg]

High Concept may or may not actually contain a description of personality.  If it doesn't then there is no real restriction or guidance for what Attitudes you create.  This led to incoherent Attitudes in the example of play.  Boo!

Yeah, that bit was kinda ugly. Silverstar's personality ended up a lot less
interesting, let alone coherent, than in the original "do it in advance" method. This means that a "High Concept" absolutely, absolutely has to address at least two things, Powers and Personality... which converges with your concept for modular character design. We are all the champions?

The difference is simply, do you have Powers and Personalities modules whose mechanics are worked out in advance (modular design), or do you have freeform choice of Power and Personality which you then flesh out mechanically in play (create-as-you-go)?

[TonyLB]

I'm not sure I get what you're recommending.  Are you saying that the player should create a power high concept and a personality high concept?  Or that they should select from a list of power high concepts and personality high concepts?  Or something else?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Sorry, I'm again using Hollywood-speak (as with "B-plot" in an earlier thread) without making it clear what I mean. A "high concept" is almost always expressed in terms of "clearly established model A combined with clearly established model B," or "cliche A meets cliche B," e.g. "This new movie script is Jaws meets Friends." Often the dynamic tension between clashing cliches is the fun part.

So a true High Concept for Silverstar, for example, is not just "massively armed android," it's "massively armed android with the personality of an anxious teenage girl"; the tension is between physical power and emotional vulnerability. Magneto from X-Men is not just "a villain with magnetic powers," he's a "villain with magnetic powers who seeks to prevent a new Holocaust against mutants"; the tension is between noble ends and evil means. Part A is Power, Part B is Personality, and the tension between the two is the source of story.

Huh. I think my idea just evolved while I wrote it.

[TonyLB]

Yeah, I got that.  Now are you proposing that people invent these high concepts, or choose them from a list?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Now are you proposing that people invent these high concepts, or choose them from a list?

Uh... "yes"? I hadn't thought of it, but a "Chinese menu" (pick 1 Power from Column A, pick 1 Personality from Column B) might be a great kickstarter; but of course people should be free to add their own ingredients.

[efindel]

My first thought is that more examples would be helpful.  Right now, the only example of a complete character that the rules give is Silverstar.  There's a few more bits of characters in other examples, but giving three or four example characters seems to me like it would be a great help.  They don't all have to be in the "main text" -- you could throw them in the back as just "sample characters" rather than narrating their creation the way Silverstar's is done.

Giving some examples of how things that don't fit the "standard superhero RPG" mold of powers and such can be useful would also be a good idea.  Not to be a glory-hog, but I've gotten a lot more use out of "ignores the pain" and "other people's equipment" than out of "makes a whirlwind", even though the latter seems like it ought to be a much more powerful ability going by the SSRPG way of doing things.

Lastly, on the topic of DIP superheroes -- for my own off-and-on superhero RPG project, I wanted DIP to be well-supported.  To keep things consistent with a theme, though, I wanted players to supply both a basic "powers theme" description and a "character's philosophy" description.

I also intended to use the character's philosophy in another way -- for creating nemeses for the heroes.  A hero's nemesis should have a philosophy that somehow reverses or twists the hero's.  To give some classic comic book examples:

Batman:  "The world only makes sense when you make it.  I will make it."
Joker:  "The world makes no sense at all, and I will prove it."

Superman:  "Truth and Justice are the highest callings."
Lex Luthor:  "Truth and Justice are outmoded concepts; Power is everything."

Spider-man:  "With great power comes great responsibility."
Green Goblin:  "Those with power should rule as they wish."

Charles Xavier:  "Humans and mutants can live together."
Magneto:  "Humans and mutants cannot live together; humans must be destroyed or enslaved."

[LordSmerf]

Tony, as i read your example of play i thought i saw Debt being incurred for Trope use.  Am i hallucinating?  Did i miss something important?

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Thomas:  As of the Sept. 17 revision, you can declare Tropes to be either powered (in which case they cost debt but can be reused in the same scene) or not (in which case they don't cost debt, but block).  We're playtesting with that, and we have a hero who has chosen to have five powered tropes, so I think the rule will get about as extreme a workout as could be imagined.  I'll report.


Efindel:  I've been thinking (in general terms) of making a large (but not ludicrous) stable of pre-made Power concepts and Personality concepts.  I may also end up doing a Philosophies set, but that's going to take a bit more thinking, because it's tricky to figure out how to select a fragment of an Exemplar that will work well with their philosophy.  It's easy to represent them (using the Power/skill-sets and Personality-sets described above) but it's hard to get a good match to philosophy that will work much of the time.


Anyway, again I waited to post until I had something more concrete than earlier abstract discussions of these click-and-lock sets.  I've got a first example page up online.

With just three power-sets and three personalities, my best estimate is that I can get to within a few minutes of fiddling and rewrite separating an initial click from each of the following comic book characters:  Hulk, Kid Flash, Flash, Green Lantern, Swamp Thing, Magneto, Storm, Jenny Sparks, Captain Marvel and some personality-phases of Superman.  Frankly, that strikes me as pretty good for a first effort, especially as possible combinations rise geometrically with more modules.

No combination is likely to make a perfect match for anyone's well thought out hero.  I want to make clear, before people try to judge the idea on those grounds, that it is meant to produce a playable baseline from which people can progress by modification.  In my play experience I have found that taking an existing, functional character and changing it is much easier, faster and less scary than starting from scratch.  With an empty 3x5 card writers block rears its ugly head.

[Sydney Freedberg]

The more I look at these things, the more I think they're brilliant, actually.

[LordSmerf]

Hey Tony, i was just wondering if you had done anything more with the click and lock stuff.  The reason i ask is that i had a guy in the local gaming club express interest in playing Capes.  The local group is not really all that experienced with RPGs so i thought that having something to ease character design might allow me to get a short campaign running.

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Well, actually, I'm at work on a demo package, complete with a set of click-modules, the Drive/Exemplar version of click-and-lock, stripped down rules-explanation and my attempt to actually create a scenario that people can present.  The Event structure has made rough scenario-building feasible once more (yay!), without crippling the flexibility of the Editor or ignoring the input of the players.

That's not getting a huge amount of my time today (since I'm prepping for tonights face-to-face) but I'll be back on it during the week.  Hopefully I can have a rough out by the start of next week.  In the meantime, all I can offer is another set of Click-modules that I wrote up last week and didn't remember to post.

[John Harper]

Every time I come back to Capes, it's like x-mas morning.

Holy cow, Tony. Click and lock! Amazing. I love it.

Now kindly sit still while I steal your brain and place it in this convenient jar.