When do scenes end?

[MikeSands]

After playing a session of Capes (in which we had a blast, by the way) there is one question that came up that I can't find an answer for in the book. When do scenes end?

It seems to be implied that a scene ends when you get to the end of a page and there are no unresolved conflicts left. Is that correct?

In play, we generally used this to end them but in some cases we ended the scene when we'd just finished all the major/interesting conflicts. This worked okay too, but I now wonder whether we should have played out even the less significant ones...

[TonyLB]

Indeed, the scene ends only when all of the Conflicts are resolved.

Hrm... thought I'd said that somewhere in the rules, but you're quite right that I'm not finding it right now.  Cool!  I'm always in the market to get the errata (soon to be formalized) more completely filled out.  You guys rock!

[MikeSands]

Thanks for that clarification.

In a couple of cases we went pretty crazy adding conflicts and scens might not have ended if we kept trying to play them out, but I guess that's not really incorrect. You could always start vetoing new conflicts on the grounds "I'm bored of this scene, let's go somewhere different" once the main stuff has been resolved.

[TonyLB]

Plus, people who have Story Tokens can spend them to claim multiple Conflicts in a single Page.  I've found that to be a very profitable and very fast way for one player to unilaterally declare that the scene is ending.

[Alan]

Does a page ever end with every conflict the players care about resolved, but some lone unclaimed and uninteresting conflict lying there?  If so, how does the scene end?  It would seem anti-climactic to play a page about a conflict no one cared enough about to claim earlier.

[TonyLB]

Yeah, that happens sometimes.  I've seen it resolved two ways:

• Skip it.  Group consensus is sometimes to resolve it for the currently winning side, even though it wasn't claimed.
• Make it interesting:  For instance at DEXCON someone put down "Major Victory's butler spits in his face and quits," but then it was overtaken by Major Victory having his brain pulled out, the villain's brain put in, the betrayal of his side-kick and other events.  I saw the conflict was going to linger, so I claimed it... and since I'd claimed it already:  "Iron Brain looks around the foyer... 'Indeed!  This mansion will be a fitting base from which to conduct my new campaign of villainy!'  Jeeves, walking up, looks shocked, then deeply troubled.  'I knew this day would come,' he says, 'as it did for your father.'  Walking up to Major Victory, he spits in his face.  'Sir, I must tender my resignation.'"

Chris, playing Major Victory, did a wonderful double-take on the words "As it did for your father."  I was very pleased.

So, I aim for the second solution, but have sometimes resorted to the first (especially when it's late and the page makes an otherwise perfect ending to the evening's gaming.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Chris, playing Major Victory, did a wonderful double-take on the words "As it did for your father."  I was very pleased.

I presume you yourself had no idea what you meant when you said it? (Well, except for "I bet this will jolt Chris").

[TonyLB]

Oh, of course I was completely clueless.  Or, wait... that doesn't exactly sound skilled does it?  Uh... I was... unrestricted by any preconceived notion of how to interweave this new plot potentiality with the existing and evolving tapestry of player creation.

So yeah, I just said it to tweak him.  I figured with something that vague and ominous, people would leap to help define it for me.