[Capes] Takes Some Getting Used To

[Sydney Freedberg]

[Scratches head]

Okay, Fred, I see your point about the mechanics. But: binding or not, they mattered to me.

[Vaxalon]

That's right; it had to do with the social contract, not the mechanics.

Do you see why I say that Capes depends more on the social contract than other games do?

[Andrew Cooper]

Sydney,

Just out of curiosity...  if the mechanics made the effects of the Conflict binding (at least until another Conflict) how do you think it would have affected how you felt about the situation?  Would you have felt irritated at being forced by the System?  Would it have made any difference at all?

[Sydney Freedberg]

To Fred:

Sure, social contract -- in terms of "the behaviours the real human beings playing the game agree to stick to, whether or not formally called for in the written rules" -- is fundamental. But it's fundamental to every roleplaying game; that's what the Lumpley Principle is about.

But is Capes is more dependent on informal social expectations, unmediated and unaided by formal rules, than most RPGs? Hmmmmmm. Compared to the traditional "GM is God" paradigm, I'd say "no." After all, no participant is encouraged by the rules to hide die rolls and cheat when he or she feels it's in the best interest of his/her personal conception of the story.

Capes is definitely dependent on those informal social expectations in different ways than traditional RPGs. Is it more or less dependent? I honestly don't know.


To Gaerik:

A very interesting question. I suspect I play most of the time on the principle "if something significant has been specified as the result of a Conflict, don't undo it without another Conflict" --- which is not in fact written in the rules, as you point out. Should it be written down, as opposed to left up to informal social contract? Perhaps. Or it might be too limiting.

Tony, your take?

[TonyLB]

Well, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'll express an opinion and then ask whether you agree.

In my opinion, the constraints created by situation aren't that motivating.  The opportunities created by situation are what gets players energized.  But playing into the constraints of the past can be the key to grasping the opportunities of the future.  If you know where another players wants things to go then you can follow along and use their energy to help your own agenda.  Does that mean you're selflessly honoring their investment, or just recognizing it and using it to your own ends?

So, Sydney:  When you decided to have Gun-Bunny switch sides, was it to honor the past, or sieze the future, or both?  You wrote both "Okay, you invested heavily in winning this one," and "You've opened up neat new story possibilities and left yourself open to me getting you back with interest later."  That makes it hard for me to really get a read on what you're thinking.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Aha.

Tony, your having invested heavily in the past was important only in that it didn't make me feel as if my character was being arbitrarily jerked around by fiat (e.g. GM-fiat): I'd had a chance to fight for another outcome, Tony had fought harder, I had lost, it was fair.

Far more important were the future possibilities of running with the outcome you'd narrated. If they hadn't been cool, I'd have been sorely tempted to undo them in narration at the next opportunity (and probably face a followup conflict with you well-stocked with inspirations from the last one, admittedly). But they were cool, so I went with them.

Thaaaaaat's interesting. I already knew that salesmanship -- getting the other players to say "ooh, cool" -- was crucial to profiting from defeat in Capes: If the conflict doesn't engage other players, then they won't invest Debt in winning it, and you won't get Story Tokens when you lose. But I hadn't  quite realized that salesmanship is equally critical to making a victory stick: If the outcome you narrate doesn't engage other players, they have the power to narrate it into irrelevance -- either explicitly, or worse yet, by just ignoring it.

[EDIT: This is not a bug. This is a feature! You can be effective only if you're interesting.]

[Vaxalon]

Maybe it's this aspect of Capes, where one's skill at social interaction and playing "social contracts lawyer" has a stronger than normal effect on the game, is what's bothering me.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Understood, but it's a lot more functional than having the social contract wrangling be channeled into "but I should get a +4 for attacking from upwind!" or "the book says these are warrior people, they could never be ambushed like that!" (Paraphrasing an old Tony post here). In Capes, the real issues are right out there on the table: "I just don't want X to happen, so I'm going to make it a Goal and prevent you from just narrating it" or "Gee, nobody's interested in my story idea, I can tell because there's no Debt staked on it."

So again -- different, yes; stronger/weaker than normal, I'm not so sure.

[Vaxalon]

The thing is, creating a conflict to prevent something from happening is a very temporary measure.

Let's say, for example, that you want to push the game into a post-apocalyptic setting.  You want to have a nuclear war in the game.  I don't.  I like civilization.

In order to prevent it, I play "Goal: Start a nuclear war."  We fight it out, and you claim the winning side, and I the losing side.  There's only ONE tactic that will prevent the nuclear war from happening, and that's to keep the goal on the table, and keep it in my control, but NOT claim it, so that it stays from page to page to page.... and as long as it's there, the scene can't end.  My only tactic is basically to filibuster.

I really HATE people who filibuster a game.  It really grinds my stones.

Edit: And this assumes that only you and I are interested!  If you have staked debt, then if I don't claim the losing side, someone else will, if only to get their hands on those story tokens.

You, on the other hand, want to get it OFF the table as soon as possible, win or lose, because whether you win or lose doesn't matter, only that the goal is gone, and now you're free to narrate yourself your nuclear war.  If you win, cool, you get inspirations, if you lose, that's cool too, you get debt and story tokens.

And if there's more than one of this kind of issue at stake?  Forget it.  I'll never be able to defend them all.  There's just not enough opportunities to play new conflicts to prevent them all.  [Edit: You say that the real issues are on the table, but that's not necessarily so.  I may not have had the chance to get them all out there yet.]

[C. Edwards]

It's a combination of issues.

Capes is a resolution system for deciding the outcomes of goals. It gives no weight to the specific outcomes of a resolution beyond the limited effect of Inspiration. Also, it can behoove one to to skip stating a goal and just narrate the outcome one desires without using the resolution system.

Characters have no differentiation in the SIS in terms of areas of influence. It doesn't particularly matter what's on my character sheet for the most part because I can narrate my Magician tossing the Hulk through several large buildings. There's nothing resembling niche protection, not even based solely upon Color.

There's no system in place, beyond the suggestions in the Comics Code, for resolving disputes between players are helping to keep them on the same page in regards to the imagined content.

So all we really get is the goal resolution system which, while interesting and fun in its own right, leaves every other possible aspect of play relying purely on Social Contract. What tools does Capes give a player that make it functionally different than free form play with coin flipping to resolve disputes?

-Chris

[Larry L.]

This is getting somewhere.

In my play experience, we've spent a lot of time "rules lawyering." (Really, social contract lawyering, I suppose.) Except the sorts of things that were debated weren't mechanical minutae, they were substantive narrative elements. We played at a game store, and some of our "heated arguments" were unusual enough to draw some confused glances from the regulars. Damn, I wish I could remember an example, it seemed a little absurd at the time. (But absurd in a good way.)

Also, our game had a decent amount of kibbutzing anytime a player wasn't particularly confident that what he was narrating was cool (interesting).

[TonyLB]

Okay, let's say I want nuclear holocaust.  I mean, who wouldn't?

I try to do it, and you block me.  I've just learned something about my future opportunities:  You think that if I blow up the world, you won't find that fun.  If you don't find it fun, I won't profit from it, win or lose.

So tell me, why would I try again?  Only if I were either (a) convinced that I know what you'll like better than you do or (b) I want it so much that I don't care if I lose tons of resources because you dislike it so much.

Honestly, I think both of those are valid reasons to override your disagreement, if I really feel them.  What do you think?


EDIT:  I find it immensely amusing that I'm taking complaints on one board that the system totally destroys the ability to freeform roleplay by giving too much power to the rules, and on another board that the system totally destroys the ability to use the rules by giving too much power to freeform roleplay.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Wow. I go out for lunch and the discussion leaps ahead.

But I just want to go backto

creating a conflict to prevent something from happening is a very temporary measure.... if there's more than one of this kind of issue at stake?  Forget it.  I'll never be able to defend them all.  

Okay, you have hit a very important asymmetry: You can change the Shared Imaginary Space with no commitment of resources in narration, but it takes resources (having a turn or Story Token to declare a preventive Conflict) to prevent such changes. And you're right, that can absolutely be abused.

But... (and you saw that coming, right?)... it's the same kind of abuseable asymmetry you get in traditional GM-dominated games, just from a different angle, because in Capes traditional GM powers are distributed. Traditionally, the GM can narrate anything into the SIS without regard to other players' input, which raises the danger of tyranny; in Capes, anyone can narrate anything into the SIS without regard to other players' input, which raises the danger of anarchy. (Both cases assume that conflict resolution hasn't kicked in, because as Fred rightly points out, you can't always preemptively engage it in time).

Is there a way to end the abuseable asymmetry and make it as easy to block changes to the SIS as to make changes? Probably; I think Universalsis does it, although I've never played.

[Vaxalon]

I think that when the "goal in, goal out" mechanic has been worked out (it'll probably take some playtesting) it'll go a distance in that direction.

[Andrew Cooper]

Okay, let's say I want nuclear holocaust.  I mean, who wouldn't?

I try to do it, and you block me.  I've just learned something about my future opportunities:  You think that if I blow up the world, you won't find that fun.  If you don't find it fun, I won't profit from it, win or lose.

I think I just figured out what seems to be problematic to me about Capes.  Let me see if I can actually verbalize it.

Capes seems to be a competitive game where the competition is over the SIS.  It's all about who gets to add what to the SIS.  The statement above that I won't profit if you don't find it fun may be true but it is also true that I won't profit from it if you DO find it fun.  Why?  Because the rewards aren't worth anything in relation to the competition.  Who cares if I have 5000 Inspiration and 1000 Story Tokens, if they don't help me keep what I want in the SIS?  It's like giving a player a +5 Vorpal Longsword in D&D that only works for a pacifist.  The moment the player with the sword attempts to use it, it no longer has the bonuses.

Maybe I've gotten the point of the competition in the game wrong but it SEEMS like the point to me.