[Capes] Tropes or no Tropes

[TonyLB]

In the [Capes] Polishing thread,

Frankly, since chain-reactions of "no, I trope that" was such a big part of the fun in playtest -- and such a powerful form of teamwork -- that I'd be tempted to let everything be used as a trope/reaction:

Andy: "I blast by you using my Super-Speed -- I roll a 4!"
Bob: "Well, I use my level 4 Commanding Attitude to proclaim 'You shall not pass! I get a -- uh -- damn, two. I don't accept that result..."
Claire: "No, take it, I can trope that."
Bob: "Okay..."
Claire: "I use my level 2 'Unsettling Stare' to back up your Commanding Attitude and force him to pay attention -- I get a six! Ha! I am the champion!"

Or something like that.

Argggghhh....  I wish this didn't make so much sense.  This is just not the time in my life to rewrite the system this fundamentally.  Okay, here's my take:

Con

[*]Time constraints (less about rewriting than about adequately playtesting)
[*]If you remove Tropes (folding them respectively into Powers and Attitudes) then the Click and Locks no longer lock in that nifty manner in the Tropes.  (Addressable)
[*]Nine abilities (five and four) may not be enough, and you can't go higher than five without futzing the die mechanic which I will not do at this point.  (Addressable in several ways)[/list:u]Pro

[*]Handling time is reduced by an untested but sizable factor[*]I never again have to explain Tropes to someone confused by what they represent in the game-world (which is everyone)[*]More Abilities come into play in low-Story-Token scenes, since reactions are highlighted.[/list:u]Okay... addressing the Cons.  Yes, I like the idea that much.  Darn you Sydney!  Darn you to heck!  Here's my thoughts... I welcome either other ideas or criticisms and revisions of this.

Tropes stick around and become Styles.  They can be used actively in the same way as Powers or Attitudes.  They can be powered or mundane just as with current Tropes.  Unsettling Stare (in example above) would probably be a mundane Style, rather than an Attitude.  This would help to clarify and systematize Attitudes, which currently are holding two different type of things.  Plus, I don't have to explain Style.  Everybody understands Style.  Or if they don't, they're at least shamed enough to never, ever admit it to anyone more stylish than themselves.

How are Powered Styles mechanically different from Powers?  They aren't.  How are mundane Styles mechanically different from Attitudes?  They aren't.  I think the narrative distinction is probably worthy though... Agree?  Disagree?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Darn you Sydney!  Darn you to heck!

[maniacal laughter] This is of course much more fun on someone else's deadline.

Tropes stick around and become Styles.  They can be used actively in the same way as Powers or Attitudes.  They can be powered or mundane just as with current Tropes....How are Powered Styles mechanically different from Powers?  They aren't.  How are mundane Styles mechanically different from Attitudes?  They aren't.  I think the narrative distinction is probably worthy though... Agree?  Disagree?

Styles (or "shticks"...) might just work. The awkwardness does remain that all Powers are debt-driven, all Attitudes are mundane & blocked-after-use, but Tropes/Styles can be either.

Now you could give people the option of making any Ability powered & debt driven vs. mundane & blocked-after-use. I.e. you'd let people mix "Powers" and "Skills" in current game terms, and allow superpowered Attitudes.

[TonyLB]

Yeah, I could, but I'm not going to.

The Debt/Stake/Story-Token cycle is the main fuel line of the game.  I want it as wide and as fast-flowing as possible.  That requires a good balance of powered and non-powered abilities.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Balance. Oh. Forgot that. You do have a neat little ecological cycle running here and letting people go wildly towards powered or unpowered could break it, that's true.

[LordSmerf]

I know that it has been raised before, but what do you think of all abilities being both Powered and Unpowered.  That is you may use them for free, but they become blocked, or you can take Debt and use them...

I think that this idea has some merit since it futher simplifies things, but it takes the focus of of Powers...

EDIT: Crossposted with Tony below.

Thomas

[TonyLB]

Actually, I think of it more along the lines of "you cannot break the law, you can only break yourself against the law".

I certainly don't think that having somebody wildly powered or unpowered would break the fun of any other player.  In fact I totally expect such characters to be played, when appropriate.  But I think it might ruin the fun for the player to play that character all the time, whether or not it's a situation where they shine.  So to the extent that people have "spotlight heroes", I think they ought to have a balance.

[Doug Ruff]

OK, how about this?

Each player still picks 3/4/5, and assigns these to Powers/Attitudes/Shticks

Shticks are, well, Shticks - they are the "trademark" ways in which a character expresses their Powers or Attitudes. Thus they can be Powered or Unpowered (Attitude-based) - they should also reflect the characters exisiting Powers and Abilities.

The entirely arbitrary "Rule of 7" states that no more than 7 abilities can be Powered.

So if a character chooses 5 Powers, no more than two of their Shticks can be Powered.

If you want, the "Rule of 7" can apply the other way - so that no more than 7 abilities can be Unpowered.

Does this help?

[Eamon]

Having spent a month playtesting Capes with Tony and Sydney, I can tell you this about tropes:

Tropes are part of what makes the game.  It keeps everyone involved and paying attention to everything at all times.  When it was Sydney's turn and I had to wait for the turn order to reach me, I could still affect things with my Tropes.  Without Tropes (or Schticks or rerolls or whatever they are called), then the game is just an amusing diversion with neat mechanics.  Without Tropes, when its not your turn, you might as well just snooze.

I almost always exclusively GM.  Thats because I hate being a player and waiting around for my turn in actions or discussions with the GM.  Basically, I've got a short attention span.  And I like having control.

Tropes fulfilled that need and made Capes a really fun game to be a player in.  I could always try and execute a level of control on events around me.  It wasn't definate, I might pay the piper later, but I always had something I could do.

Danny

[Sydney Freedberg]

Hey, Danny/Jake/Boneripper!

Tropes are part of what makes the game.  It keeps everyone involved and paying attention to everything at all times. ...Without Tropes, when its not your turn, you might as well just snooze.

Agreed. Which is why this thread is moving (I think -- Tony, correct me if I'm wrong) to the idea that any ability can be used to re-roll someone else's action. In short, there are no tropes only because everything (Powers, Attitudes, "Styles") can now be used as a trope.

[efindel]

Some random comments, based on my own experience playtesting in Smerf's IRC game:

- I liked being able to Trope more than once on the same thing per turn.  Indeed, we played it that way all the time so far, and some of the most fun moments I had were building up chains of Tropes.

- I actually didn't think you could Trope when it wasn't your turn.  I'm not sure if that's just my misunderstanding, or something I remembered from an older version of the rules.  In any case, though, I didn't mind it a bit -- it didn't seem any different to me than most games, where you take turns according to initiative, and you can't go during someone else's turn.

- We played with Tropes not costing Debt the whole time.  I have some mixed feelings about this.  Most of Zip's Tropes are Powers of some sort, so he would've gotten a lot more Debt that way, which could've been useful.  (Indeed, the majority of his powers (small p) were Tropes...).  On the other hand, the way we were using Tropes, there's no way he would've been able to *spend* all that Debt...

- Lastly, if the cycle is Debt -> Stake -> Story-Token, and powers are the way to get Debt... where does that leave non-powered supers, such as Batman?  Do their abilities count as 'powers' for game use?  And if they do, is there really a clear line between 'powers' and 'skills/equipment'?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Lastly, if the cycle is Debt -> Stake -> Story-Token, and powers are the way to get Debt... where does that leave non-powered supers, such as Batman?  Do their abilities count as 'powers' for game use?  And if they do, is there really a clear line between 'powers' and 'skills/equipment'?

This is why I've argued (unsuccessfully, so far) that the key distinction is not "super-powered vs. mortal" but "heroic vs. mundane" -- and that any aspect of a character, from laser-beam eyes to the memory of your dead parents, can potentially be heroic, and thus Powered by Debt.

[Doug Ruff]

Lastly, if the cycle is Debt -> Stake -> Story-Token, and powers are the way to get Debt... where does that leave non-powered supers, such as Batman?  Do their abilities count as 'powers' for game use?  And if they do, is there really a clear line between 'powers' and 'skills/equipment'?

I while back I was trying to stat out characters for Tony's IRC game (Tony, check your PM box!) and one of the concepts I tried out was a Batman-type Hero. The Adam West version, naturally <g>

here's some of the things I came up with as potential Powers:

[*]Amazing gadgets[*]Vehicles[*]Acrobatics[*]Fisticuffs[*]My Trusty Sidekick, R***n[*]Crime-fighting Computer[/list:u]These may not be superheroic abilities, but IMHO they are Powers (mainly of the "gadgeteer" variety).

I don't know whether Sidekicks are an appropriate choice for Powers, but Robin seemed to fit better as a Power than an Exemplar. He's a Boy Wonder, after all.

IANT (I Am Not Tony) but I think that Powers can be reasonably defined as unique or special capabilities of the character.

Tony, I would like your take on this, would you have accepted these as Powers if I'd selected them?

[TonyLB]

A lot of these straddle the boundary between "Power" and "Character", some more than others.

The Boy Wonder is clearly a second character, played by the same player and costing a second Story Token (when relevant to the scene).  He should have his own whole set of stats and Drives.  If people want I can spawn off a thread with my thoughts on playing Sidekicks (and, particularly, making them an income source by getting into trouble to earn Story Tokens, so that their mentor can win all the fights and always look good).

Is the Crime Computer a third character?  Could very well be, especially since it really only has an effect in certain Batcave-specific scenes.

Is the Batmobile a fourth character?  Probably not in the Adam West version.  The Tim Burton version?  Oh heck yeah... that car gets scenes (and conflicts) when its driver is nowhere even remotely nearby.

"Amazing Gadgets", "Acrobatics" and "Fisticuffs" are pretty clearly all Powers.  I recognize the question about "Is Fisticuffs a Power or a Skill?", but I think my answer is to ask the question "Does this character use Fisticuffs to engage the games Premise?"  It seems clear (at least to me) that in this case the character does, which makes it a Power.

[Doug Ruff]

Tony,

Thanks for the clarification. I hadn't even considered using these as Characters (but at the time, we didn't have the Story Token economy, either.)

One thought on Sidekicks: Robin is such a major character in the original Batman series, I'd usually expect him to have his own player. My original design thoughts were based upon the assumtion that I'd be playing solo - in which case, I am totally happy with the idea that he costs Story Tokens to use.

[TonyLB]

Well, even "playing solo" you're going to have at least two players.  So maybe one of them plays Batman and one of them plays Robin.  Though that makes me think that the two would conflict more frequently than I see in the Adam West, so maybe you were right the first time.

It gets really hard (but fun) to figure out how many players a movie would naturally have, if translated into Capes.  I try to figure it out based on the asusmption that when two characters are in emotionally freighted conflict they're being played by different players.

So, for example, X-Men has two players, one for Wolverine and one for Rogue.  Wolvie's player usually plays: Wolvie, Storm, Mystique, Toad, Prof. X and Senator Kelly.  Rogue's player usually plays: Rogue, Magneto, Cyclops, Jean and Sabretooth.  (EDIT:  I forgot to mention the characters "Cerebro" (played by Wolvie) and "Big Magnetic Mutating Device" and "Xavier Mansion", played by Rogue)

Spiderman, by contrast, clearly needs at least three players, one for Spidey, one for the Goblin and one specializing in Exemplars.  That thanksgiving scene, for instance, makes very little sense if you don't assume a third player in the roles of MJ, Aunt May and Harry all at the same time.

I can even amuse myself wondering which of the two non-Spidey players is the genius who looked at Peter's load of Debt after the wrestling match and refused to be deterred when the first (frankly, cliched) attempt to drag him into Debt-spending behavior failed.  So he's not keen to give me Story Tokens for something as boring as a criminal robbing the wrestling office?  Nooooo problem.... I've got a Conflict that will get him involved, oh heck yeah....