[Capes] Takes Some Getting Used To

[TonyLB]

Oh, no, they don't.  The scenario I was envisioning was when Player A actually sets out "Goal:  Destroy the space-time continuum."

If they've already destroyed the space-time continuum, and you didn't see it coming or try to prevent it then that's... y'know... done.  Time for "Goal:  Restore the Space-time continuum," or "Goal:  Survive in atemporal space," or some similar way to accept the player's contribution and have fun working with the consequences.

[Vaxalon]

What I am having trouble with (and some others, too, I think) is the "see it coming or try to prevent it" part.  

Given how easy it is to put things into the SIS, without the formal barriers that GMed games, and games like Pantheon and Universalis, have, it seems to be impossible to see anything coming that isn't actually written on the conflict card.

Am I missing something?  Is there some way to see this kind of play coming?  

I suppose one could start every scene with an event that lists all the things a player wants to preserve in the scene, so that if ANOTHER player wants to kick over the sandbox, he has to win a conflict to do so.... but that puts the player who puts that event into play at something of a disadvantage.  He has to spend a precious turn to do that, and if any resource in the game is more limited than any other, it's turns.

(This is all without resorting to the comics code, of course; setting up an appropriate comics code ahead of time can probably stop 99.9% of this problem, to whatever extent it actually happens.)

[TonyLB]

Fred, this sounds very similar to the worries you expressed in this thread.

Did you see such behavior in this instance of Actual Play?

[Vaxalon]

Yes.  We did...

My character (Kozmik Ray) threw the Hulk into the east river, and the Hulk's player, James, was a little miffed that he had no way to pre-empt that action.  That was a minor example of what we're talking about.

When he realized that there was no barrier to placing things in the SIS, he considered having his character, essentially, destroy the Earth.  The reason he didn't do it had nothing to do with the mechanics of the game (as I understand it), but he didn't want to violate an implicit social contract by "kicking over the sandbox".  That would have been a major example of what we're talking about.  What prevented it was not the game rules, as we had no comics code in play, nor any action another player could have taken, but simply the realization by James that he didn't want to play in an "asinine" way.

[TonyLB]

So you threw him into a river?  I caught that bit earlier, but I assumed there had to be more to it.  I register it as a "so what?"  Nothing stops him from just jumping out of the river and continuing whatever he was doing.  With, perhaps, "TAKE MORE THAN PUNY SEWAGE TO STOP HULK!"

So what was the real issue?  Why did it make him miffed?

[Vaxalon]

I'm not really sure; I suggested that he could just jump right out, but for some reason he took his time doing it.

I think there was a disconnect between my expectations of what was appropriate for an action, reaction, or resolution, and what James did; we both had internal censors on what we could or couldn't narrate for a particular action, and they weren't in synch.

The only formal mechanism for that kind of synchronization in Capes is the Comics Code, which we hadn't set up.

This is something of a diversion from my question upthread, though.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Given how easy it is to put things into the SIS, without the formal barriers that GMed games, and games like Pantheon and Universalis, have...

Wait a sec. "Formal barriers"? In "GMed games"? Traditional GMing is pretty darn informal in its barriers:

"I blow up the planet."
"No, that won't work."
"Why?"
"'Cause I'm the GM."
"Okay."

You can do this in Capes too; it's harder because there's no one designated as final arbiter, but it's more open to everyone's input for the same reason:

"I blow up the planet."
"No, that won't work."
"Why?"
"'Cause that would suck."
"Who died and made you GM?"
"You know I'll just narrate the planet back into existence on my turn anyway."
"Okay, okay."

Pure Social Contract, without mechanics, either way.

Now, formal challenge mechanisms a la Universalis are a very interesting point of comparison. But I've never played that game. Capes obviously has formal challenge at the Conflict level but there's no formal way to catch someone in their unrestricted narration mid-turn, which a Universalis challenge allows (unless you already have a relevant Conflict on the table, but this discussion is presuming no one had the prescience to do that). Not sure how that would translate, frankly.

[Vaxalon]

Given how easy it is to put things into the SIS, without the formal barriers that GMed games, and games like Pantheon and Universalis, have...

Wait a sec. "Formal barriers"? In "GMed games"? ...

Nono, I'm sorry, I'm using the word "formal" again in a way I shouldn't, it gets misunderstood here.  I mean "structural"... that is, that it's part of the GM's role to be an arbiter of contributions to the SIS.

[Larry L.]

Once upon I time I got a bicycle. Like all cycles I had ridden, it had a pair of little wheels on the back, with the addition of one big wheel in between them, plus a chain drive and brakes. All these great new features! This thing was a big step up from a tricycle.

Then one day I got a new bicycle, except it had an obvious flaw -- it didn't have the two smaller wheels. It was quite obvious that this vehicle had a problem. If I stopped pedaling just so, it would fall over. I complained about this to my parents, but they seemed strangely unconvinced.

Of course, after I actually figured out how easy it was to ride a bicycle, I realized that training wheels aren't actually part of the design of a bicycle, and the removal of them allowed me to use the bicycle as intended.

[TonyLB]

This is something of a diversion from my question upthread, though.

Really, it's not.  I'm going to wait on James to answer why he was miffed by the action, and then I'll bet you dollars to donuts that I can show you why the question of "Why did he get unhappy with the narration?" isn't a diversion.  'kay?

This is so much easier to discuss in Actual-Play terms.  I'm very much looking forward to James's thoughts on the matter.

[James_Nostack]

Really, it's not.  I'm going to wait on James to answer why he was miffed by the action, and then I'll bet you dollars to donuts that I can show you why the question of "Why did he get unhappy with the narration?" isn't a diversion.

Vax might have been led astray by IRC's lack of verbal or emotional cues.  I wasn't miffed, so much as scratching my head.  

Me: "HULK SMASH UGLY BUILDING!"
Vax: Okay, that's your action.  Now it's my turn!  Kozmik Ray swoops down, taunts the Hulk, and then throws him into the East River!  I roll a 5!
Me: Wait, I smack you out of the sky like the bug you are!
Vax: No, that already happened.  You're at the bottom of the river.  But you can react to that event, if you want to.
Me: Oh.  Um.  This game is weird.
Vax: You can narrate jumping right back out, if you want.
Me: (thinking, didn't type - No, he threw me in the river for a reason.  It would be lame to just say, "Oh yeah?  I jump out of the river right away, sopping wet."  Sort of like the "no tag-backs" rule from playing tag as a kid: it wouldn't be sporting.)
Me: I can't think of any way to use my stuff right now.  (Unspoken: ...that would be respectful to the SIS and the implicit social contract.)  Pass.

What I find strange about Capes is that really, what Vax narrated is completely meaningless.  He said "I throw the Hulk into the East River," but could have just as easily said, "I vaporize the Hulk into a mist of quarks," or "I make the Hulk stub his toe."  All that really matters is the 5 he rolls, because I can undo his narration on a whim.  Making the players narrate what happens at each stage of the process seems undignified, because it's utterly inconsequential.  

I am not saying this is a bug--it appears to be a deliberate feature of Capes play.  I'm just saying that it's unusual in my experience, and may not be to everyone's taste.

PS.  It seems to me it would be interesting to simply roll stuff and trigger powers and capabilities at random, and then whoever loses the conflict has to turn all that crazy stuff into narration.

[TonyLB]

Heh... "He threw me in the river for a reason."  Yeah:  So you could jump back out.  There's a fine line between (a) respecting other people's contributions and (b) deciding you can't contribute as an equal partner.  Well, actually, it's not a fine line.  It's a huge, gigantic line.  But you're on the wrong side of it.

Well, I would have to give out dollars to donuts.  I was guessing that James was, in fact, miffed because being thrown in the East River somehow impinged upon what he personally wanted to be doing with the Hulk.  Like "Hey, I'm not playing the Hulk to look like a god-damned idiot!  What the hell's going on here?"

And I was warming up my whole speech that I give for "Define the Conflicts that protect what you, the player, care about," with a great example of "Goal:  Make Hulk Look Foolish!"   I was so excited, because I thought the example protected the player agenda ("Hulk can't look foolish until this Conflict is resolved") and meshed well with classic Hulk tendencies ("Puny man try to make Hulk look stupid?  We see how smart pretty-boy look when Hulk bends him like pretzel!")

But it's just confusion, not actual disagreement.  I sigh.

I'm curious about this line, though:

Making the players narrate what happens at each stage of the process seems undignified, because it's utterly inconsequential.

Why is it inconsequential?  Because it doesn't directly effect the outcome of the Conflict?

[Vaxalon]

Actually, it doesn't affect the outcome of the conflict at all, directly or indirectly.  The narration is an add-on at every stage except resolution.

Which is why he suggests saving up all the narration until the resolution.

[TonyLB]

Uh... your narration of tossing Hulk into the East River convinced James not to use any ability in response.  How is that not an indirect effect?

[Doug Ruff]

Forgive me if I'm about to state something which is absolutely obvious to everyone involved:

Something that really threw me when I started to understand the rules is that Capes will let you do anything, absolutely anything in the SIS, unless:

- It violates the Comics Code, or
- It is part of a Goal or Event,

This is somewhat counter-intuitive at first: if I just want to smash a building up, the last thing I want to do is to declare it as a Goal or Event. I can just narrate that I smash the building up. There is no requirement for me to appeal to 'continuity' or 'sim' concerns unless these are enforced by social contract.

Most games don't have an explicit social contract to cover 'what makes sense in the SIS' because the rules implicitly enforce notions of what is 'realistic' within the game world. Capes doesn't do this, and I am beginning to find this fascinating.

Where this can become a more specific issue, is that the rules as they are written don't appear to respect character ownership. I don't just mean this in terms of who gets to play a character; I also mean this in terms of who gets to dictate what happens to a character during play.

In most games, no-one would be able to describe hurling another player character into a river without having to 'roll for it'; again, Capes doesn't set any limit on screwing with another character, unless it's part of a Goal or Event, or it breaches the Comics Code.

The obvious solution to this, is to recognise that the Comics Code is social contract, plain and simple, and that, for many groups, the Comics Code will need to contain quite a few rules, some of wich may have to be added during play once people realise they need them.

However, I suspect that the groups that would be most in need of an expanded Comics Code/social contract, would also be the least likely to recognise that need.

I'm not referring specifically to this Actual Play when I say that; from were I'm sitting, you're all perceptive about this sort of thing. But I will ask James & Fred: would this 'throwing Hulk in the river' issue have been prevented by having an addition to the Comics Code that said something along the lines of 'no narrating successful actions against another character without making it a conflict'?