[Capes] Non-conflict mechanics

[TonyLB]

Capes presents everything that can be done game-mechanically as a series of conflicts between two or more sides.

This forces people to scene-frame right to the juicy conflicts, but that's disrupting pacing.  People need the option for some breaks in the action in order to maintain focus when the conflict is on.  There needs to be a way to include non-conflict scenes.

I've tried for this before, with mixed success... but the rest of the game has evolved since then, so what the heck, once more dear friends into the breach:

[*]Inspirations can now be used as your action, to increase a die on your side to the value of the Inspiration.  So if you're losing a Complication 4 to 1, and you have a level 5 Inspiration you can just turn your die into a 5 and win the Complication.  Obviously, this makes high Inspirations a much more desirable resource.[*]On your turn you may use one of your abilities (of level equal to or greater than the Inspiration) to attempt to increase the level of the Inspiration.[*]You roll a die.  If it is greater than the level of the Inspiration then the Inspiration's level rises by one.[/list:u]This different way of fiddling with resources opens the door to scenes with no Complications, or to non-conflict elements occurring during scenes with Complications.

But, on the extreme downside, it is quite unclear to me how a scene with no Complications would come to an end, at least in terms of the game mechanics.  The pacing mechanism doesn't really click very well with the no-complication idea.

Maybe each scene requires at least one Complication?  So a romance scene could be about the hero trying to boost his "Relationship with Gina Mae" Inspiration while trying to keep "Tenuous Privacy" from resolving and ending the scene when they're interrupted....

[LordSmerf]

One thing you probably want to do is provide explicit reasons not to Resolve a Complication.  It is the race to dominate and Resolve Complications that drives the game forward in its conflict heavy scenes.  Something that provides reasons to maintain things as they stand would probably be necessary in order to slow that driving pace down.  I am not sure exactly what that would look like though...

Oh, and just to be clear: I really think that Capes would benefit from such an option.  Especially for certain "flavors" of comic book.

Thomas

[Doug Ruff]

Hmmm,

I like the idea of Inspirations being used to help with an existing Complication, but it also turns high-level Inspirations into a real Victory Point winner.
IIRC, the current Victory Point mechanics are there to reward players for taking on Complications which the opponents are also taking on. A 6v1 victory gives me a 4-point Inspiration, but only 1 Victory Point. Whereas a 6v5 victory gives me a 1 point Inspiration, but 5 Victory Points.

But if I can use a 5-point Inspiration later on to win a 5v4 conflict, this is a very big payoff - and the net effect of this may be to encourage players to pick on uncontested Complications early in the scene, get their maximum Inspiration and deploy these later. And I'm not sure that this is a good thing.

Having said all of that, I agree with your overall intent, which is to introduce some breaks.

Here's a suggestion: allow Inspirations to be spent for some 'downtime' between conflicts. The heroes can use this to develop their relationships with their Drives and Exemplars, and also to 'heal' a Drive by removing Debt.

A possible mechanic for this:

- The player declares which Drive they are attempting to recover, and how.

Example, Captain Courage has had 'a bad day at the office' and his Love Drive is overdrawn from trying to save a friend from Dr Malevolent's evil clutches. He decides to visit his Love Exemplar.

- The player spends an Inspiration, and rolls one die. If it is less than or equal to the value of the Inspiration, one pont of Debt is removed from that Drive. The player also narrates the outcome of the scene using Frames (except for the final Frame if he whiffs the roll.) I'd give the player 1 Frame for each point of Inspiration, and extra Frames equal to the die roll. That's more than usual, and that's deliberate.

- The player can continue to spend Inspirations if he still needs some healin', but they must be spent on the same Drive.

- Each player can only address one Drive before the next conflict scene.

None of this slows the pace of the conflict scenes; conflict will still be a 'race to dominate and Resolve Complications' as Thomas accurately describes it. But I think it delivers the option to change the pace, without disrupting the existing conflict rules (I don't think these are broken right now.)

Doug

[TonyLB]

People would, indeed, have an incentive to take advantage of untouched Complications to gain Inspirations.  If you could clarify why you think that's a bad thing it would help me.

[Doug Ruff]

I don't think it's a bad thing under the current rules. What I'm concerned about is the impact of this:

Inspirations can now be used as your action, to increase a die on your side to the value of the Inspiration. So if you're losing a Complication 4 to 1, and you have a level 5 Inspiration you can just turn your die into a 5 and win the Complication. Obviously, this makes high Inspirations a much more desirable resource.

It's relatively easy to rack up a high-level Inspiration on an uncontested Complication, which is one of the reasons it's not worth a lot of Victory Points.

It's a lot harder to win a Complication where the opponent has built up a score. Allowing Inspirations to roll up a score in this way removes a lot of the risk from Conflict, and allows players to 'convert' Inspiration into Victory Points. I think this could be a game-breaker - but you may find differently through Actual Play.

By the way, what did you think of the 'downtime' option?

[TonyLB]

I don't really understand why a hero would want to get rid of debt for no benefit... at least often enough to make it a central feature of the game.

Even a hero who has twice their Drive in debt is better off waiting for the perfect moment to introduce jump back into the story, immediately staking their whole drive.  If they time it just right they can do so without a single overdraw roll (or, depending on how the rules-timing pans out, with just a single such roll) and get the benefit of staking on a Complication.

If you think heroes are commonly going to be running at double-overdrawn or worse, of course, that's another story.  Then debt management could be as crucial as you say.

[Sydney Freedberg]

It looks like the idea of explicitly requesting "B Plot" scenes has reared its (ugly? lovely? dunno) head again, with the tangled tail of Issues dragging behind. But darn it, we should be able to do this.

One thought that struck me after last night's playtest is that, since an Inspiration allows you to introduce a Complication of your choosing, each character could start with a couple of Inspirations at level one (i.e. no bonus) that they can introduce at will -- i.e. convert to Complications of their desiring.

These would take the place of Issues to the extent of allowing characters greater story control even without having won relevant Complications in-play. E.g. my traumatized kid character could introduce "Fear of Intimacy" in any scene where someone's trying to be nice to her.

[TonyLB]

It would also be nice to be able to introduce a Complication on your action turn (or Event, depending) for those annoying but common times when you look at the board and say "There is absolutely nothing I can sensibly play on, the dice are so high... so very, very high."

[Doug Ruff]

I don't really understand why a hero would want to get rid of debt for no benefit... at least often enough to make it a central feature of the game.

A good point, in which case you could allow the hero to add or remove a Debt Token, or attempt to increase the temporary value of the Drive, or something else.

I think the main point I'm trying to make is that it is possible to introduce a 'non-combat' or 'downtime' mechanic that gives each character a chance to expand their backstory by narrating Frames and also fortify themselves for the next encounter. At least, that's what I'm looking for initial feedback on, sorry for not being clear about this before.

And, yep, totally agree with your last post, and have posted to the new thread on Events.

[TonyLB]

I agree that non-conflict scenes should be interspersed among conflict scenes, and should serve as a way for heroes to address some issues and fortify themselves for the next encounter.

Now, looked at from a purely game-mechanical point of view, how do you prevent them from fortifying themselves ad infinitum?  If the downtime scenes are pure benefit, and the conflict scenes are more risky, what keeps them choosing to come back to conflict (as, indeed, they must... the GM cannot force conflict upon them in any sane manner... it takes two to tango)?

[LordSmerf]

So, think Doug made a great suggstion.  We want down-time scenes to produce a benefit for the players such that they will seek them out.  As Doug said: Temporary Drive increases!  None of this "you risked it all so you get more of it" stuff.

Tony, you also have a legitimate worry that if non-conlict scenes are so beneficial why would people do anything else.  I think the solution is simple: It takes Inspirations to initiate a non-combat scene, and you can not earn inspirations in non-combat scenes.  Thus you eventually will reach a point where you no longer have the resources required to begin a non-combat scene and must move over to combat (or Conflict, whatever) in order to get that resource.

I think it might work... but i am somewhat tipsy and slightly feverish at the moment, so it is entirely possible that i am just babbling incoherently.

Thomas

[Doug Ruff]

Thanks for the support, I appreciate this.

I think it's mainly a question of scaling, the trick is to make the benefits (increased Temporary Drive) commensurate with the cost (Inspirations).

As higher Drives = higher Debt to stake before going overdrawn = more dice, I'd be tempted to increase the cost of improving higher Drives.

For example, a successful roll against the Inspiration allows a 'check' against the Drive in question. Once you have as many checks as your current score inthe Drive, you gain another point and erase all of your checks.

This also means that raising a Drive to 4 or 5 will need a lot of backstory, and will itself become a central part of the story.

[LordSmerf]

My original intent had been that the Drive increases would be strictly temporary (until the end of the current Issue), but i can see some great potential in handling permanent increases here...

My suggestion would be: You may spend an Inspiration.  Roll a d6.  If the result of that roll is less than or equal to the level of the Inspiration then add a check mark (or something) to your Drive.  Once you get check marks equal to your Drive's current value then it goes up by one.

Eh, i do not know that i really like that, but it is something to consider...

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Okay... why Drives instead of Inspirations?  I'm not getting the appeal.

My sense is that you couldn't add more than one (or maybe two) points to a hero's Drive without it radically altering the flow of the game.  When people have four or five dice in a Complication it's a whole different thing from having two or three.

Inspirations have far more granularity:  If the heroes have a downtime scene where they "Further Perfect Their Teamwork" (moving it from +2 to +3) and my villain has a downtime scene where he "Eliminates More of those who Stand Between Him and the Throne" (moving his +1 to +2), it's all still fun.  I can do that a dozen times and it's not going to unbalance the game.

Are Drives so appealing that you'd work all game just for a chance to raise them one point for the last scene or two?

[LordSmerf]

Interesting point Tony.  If you do choose to use increasing Inspirations as the mechanical focus of non-combat scenes the question arises: What is the cost?  We know how the economics of Combat work: Accrue Debt, spend Inspirations in order to work some Debt off, get some Inspirations, and move the story forward.  In non-combat we know the output: either raise drives or raise Inspiarations and drive the story forward, but we do not know what it costs to produce these outcomes...  Any ideas about that?

Thomas