[Capes] Takes Some Getting Used To

[Doug Ruff]

Tony: let me repeat a question I asked up-thread: does Capes do anything in particular to make a player care about the heroes/world/situation, or (as in most RPG's) is that simply assumed?

I know Tony's answered this already, but I just have to say this.

Exemplars. You've got to get into using Exemplars.

Not sure how much of this is covered in the lite Rules, but each spotlight character has to have three Exemplars (loosely defined by me as 'something you give a shit about.')

And as a player, you have to create exemplars that you care about, and you want to see in play. Your Exemplars are the strongest message you can send to other players (outside of just, y'know, telling them) about what you want to see in the game. Want lots of showdowns with villains? Create villain exemplars. Want to rescue beautiful women from burning buildings? Have one as an Exemplar. Heck, have two; one as a love interest, one as a rival (and love interest!).

So, as this is an Actual Play thread, some questions for Fred & James:

(1) Did you create Exemplars in the game?
(2) If so, did you care about them?
(3) If so, did they come into play during the game? What happened?

[Vaxalon]

Exemplars don't exist in the lite rules.

(not only that, in the main rules, each character can have one exemplar for his own; if a player wants more, he has to get another ... hold on, wait... this deserves another topic.)

No, we didn't create exemplars, really.

Chances are, they wouldn't have come into play, because all of the scenes we have played so far have been "first" scenes, that is, scenes for introducing our spotlight characters.

[Doug Ruff]

Exemplars don't exist in the lite rules.

Ah, my bad. I still think that the lack of exemplars is a reason for some of the issues here, but in this case, that's an issue with the Capes Lite rules.

(And Tony, I know you can't put everything in the Lite version. I'm just thinking that Exemplars are a bit more fundamental than most people realise. Happy to take this to a new thread or PM if it needs talking about.)

[Vaxalon]

I agree that a lack of exemplars is important, but it's a symptom of a larger problem.

Caring about what goes on on the table is paramount.  You can do without exemplars, if your character cares about what's going on... cares deeply.  There's no room for any character in a scene who doesn't have a REASON to be there.

[Larry L.]

On a related note. What would the effect be of allowing spontaneous Conflict creation as a reaction to another player's narration. For instance:

"I throw the Hulk into the east river" leads to
"No you don't I"m making that a conflict" leads to there now being a conflict "Hulk gets thrown into the east river"

This is the way I understand the game is supposed to work anyway. I'm a little confused that people are making such a big deal of the "omnipotence" of free narration. Sure, one player can narrate whatever he wants, but you are always free to disagree with his narration, forcing him to resort to the conflict system.

"I blow up the UN Headquarters."
"No you don't."
"Darn. Fine then." Introduces Goal: Blow up UN Headquarters.

[Vaxalon]

"I throw the Hulk into the east river" leads to
"No you don't I"m making that a conflict" leads to there now being a conflict "Hulk gets thrown into the east river"

No, it doesn't work that way.  There's only two places where someone can say, "No you don't" in Capes.

One is if someone tries to introduce either an event that declares something about your character, or if someone tries to introduce a goal for your character.

There is another rule that says that if you are in control of a conflict, and someone else takes an action or reaction, but doesn't take control away from you, you can tack on a bit of narration explaining why what they did wasn't effective.  That's called the "and then..." rule.  Even then, it's not "No, you don't" per se.

You can ONLY create conflicts during your turn. The rules, in fact, explicitly forbid creating conflicts and narrating on the same turn, barring the expenditure of story tokens.

[Larry L.]

No, it doesn't work that way. There's only two places where someone can say, "No you don't" in Capes.

Really? This is not my interpretation of the rules. The way I have read it, you are free to narrate anything you want in free narration mode, but so am I. So I'm totally free to negate anything you just narrated. The only thing preventing me from saying "No, you don't" in free narration is I can't contradict the narrated outcome of a resolved Conflict.

Can you show me where in the rules that this is not the case?

[hyphz]

Really? This is not my interpretation of the rules. The way I have read it, you are free to narrate anything you want in free narration mode, but so am I. So I'm totally free to negate anything you just narrated. The only thing preventing me from saying "No, you don't" in free narration is I can't contradict the narrated outcome of a resolved Conflict.

You can narrate, but saying "no, you can't do that" isn't narration.  It's an argument against a prior narration.

If you get thrown in the river, you can say "I jump straight up out of the river", but you can't say "No, I don't get thrown in the river."

[Vaxalon]

You can UNDO anything, but you can only PREVENT someone from putting something into the SIS using the "veto" rule for conflicts.  This occurs at every level of the rules.

1> Scene framing

If I frame a scene on the bridge of the Space Cruiser Potemkin, you can't say, "Wait, didn't we destroy the Space Cruiser Potemkin three scenes ago?"

2> Hero choosing

If I choose to play Gunga Tin, the Metal Mongol, you can't say, "Hey, wait, I created that character for ME to play." (unless the 'spotlight character' house rule is in effect)

3> Taking actions or reactions

If I am rolling on a conflict, and I narrate, "Gunga Tin smashes his fist down, crushing Captain Eo into the deck plates," you can't say, "Captain Eo is insubstantial, you can't just punch him."  The only thing you can do is add some new narration that invalidates the action when you react or take your own action.  The same is true of narration that goes along with reactions.

4> Resolving conflicts

If I win a conflict, and start narrating it, what I say goes.  There's really no limit to what I can do with it.  Examples have already been described elsethread for how this can be abused.  (Tony says it's not abuse, but I disagree)

So as I said, there are only two places where you can STOP something from going into the SIS after it has been spoken.

[Larry L.]

Let's fork discussion of the "No you can't" topic to here

[Vaxalon]

I agree that a lack of exemplars is important, but it's a symptom of a larger problem.

Caring about what goes on on the table is paramount.  You can do without exemplars, if your character cares about what's going on... cares deeply.  There's no room for any character in a scene who doesn't have a REASON to be there.

I believe this is the last post before we got on the topic of free narration.

[Larry L.]

My 2c: Exemplars are not necessary to the game, they just add something.

Of course you have to care about characters and the story they tell. Stories (in general) where one doesn't care about the characters are inherently sucky.

In play, I have noticed that characters whose existence in a scene cannot be justified to the other players just sort of sit off to the side and whither in terms of achieving their goals.

Caring is perhaps not the right work. You have to make your characters sellable, either in terms of "We'll let this guy win his goals; we want to know where his story is going." or "No, this guy must not be allowed to attain his goals at any (Story Token) cost."

[Vaxalon]

Perhaps, during the phase where people are framing in their characters, it would be good to ask (not require) how the character relates to the scene... so that if the other players aren't interested, they can let the currently framing-in player know, "Hey, we're probably not going to be very interested in your character." That way he can adjust if he wants to.

[John Harper]

For the record, there's another game that did this "unrestricted narration" thing, and people got freaked out about it then, too. The game is Wushu, by Dan Bayn.

Check out these threads to see a very similar discussion on this very topic:

Wushu Stuff
Wushu, hard work, but rewarding
Wushu and Fortune at the End

I am a big fan of this game design element (the so-called "Narrative Truth" mechanic). I rant a bit in these threads about why I think it's cool. Those rants apply to Capes, too.

[John Harper]

There's a baseline philosophy in Capes that I think is being overlooked.

Universalis assumes that everyone's contributions are sacred. Thus, you can always protect your vision of the SIS with the Challenge mechanic. If you care about a certain aspect of the SIS, you can defend it -- as long as you're willing to spend the coins.

Capes assumes that no contribution is sacred. You can't easily defend your vision of the SIS, but must instead be always open to the changes created by others. This is by design.

I'm seeing a lot of posts where people seem to be saying "Capes doesn't work like Uni, and I don't like that! I want to defend my vision!" The answer is simple: Play Universalis. It's a great game, and it supports that underlying philosophy. Uni does supers really well, too.

Capes is a different animal entirely. It asks something different of its players. And that something can be loads of fun. Turning Capes into Uni is not the answer. Playing Capes requires (to some degree) that the players embrace the philosophy of a very fluid SIS and virtually no authority of vision. This is, IMO, the whole point of the game.

Maybe that's not your cup of tea. That's cool. But the Capes way sure ain't broken. Not by a long shot.