[Capes] Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

[Valamir]

Ralph, do you have any Actual Play posts about Universalis that describe the play experience you had?

I just have this nagging suspicion that you've never seen violent functional disagreement in action, and therefore conflate disagreement with dysfunction.  But I could be totally wrong about that, of course.  Actual Play would help me to judge.

Oh no...not at all.  I LIKE creative disagreement in a game.  The whole premise of Uni is to take creative disagreement and mix it together.  I LOVE that stuff...and I LOVE that aspects of Capes.

What I don't love is being completely shut out of the potentially game defining universe altering decisions you make on your turn while shutting you out of the game defining universe altering decisions I make on my turn.  

I'll try a couple of examples:

In The Pregnant Pope you'll find an example of a couple of places of very functional disagreement in the game where other people's vision was very different from my own and it WORKED.  That's still one of my favorite sessions.  But the key for me is that those radical twists and turns and things that happen weren't done unilaterally.  They changed the SIS profoundly in ways that I never thought of doing alone.  They were ultimately BETTER than anything I would have thought of alone.  But they weren't done with immunity.  It wasn't a case where someone could start slaughtering innocents and then on my turn I could stop them, but I had no choice but to accept the slaughter that already occured.


In Guadalupe the Pirate you'll see an example of the kind of play that can result when nobody challenges other people's narration and anyone can say anything they want whenever they want and no one can do anything about it.  Was Guadalupe fun?  Well for me...I was cringing more than enjoying myself, but had been a long day and I was feeling a little punchy anyway.  Plus it was a demo to customers and customers are always right and they were feeling even more punchy than me and were looking for a little escapism.

So for this particular incident...no biggie...it was a lark and they had a good time.  But, after reading the first example...can you imagine how I would feel if the radical changes being made in the Pregnant Pope were Guadalupe the Pirate kind of narrations.

What would have happened to The Pregnant Pope if someone started feeling a little punchy and started narrating about a dead dog and parrot pooping on people's heads.  It would have taken a really great story and flushed it down the shitter.

Thankfully there are tools to stop that in Uni.  Tools that rarely need to be used because just the fact that they are there keeps people thinking as much about "what the group collectively would enjoy" as they do about themselves.

Now you can say that's never happened in Capes, and maybe it hasn't yet.  And maybe it won't ever happen with your particular group of players.  But it does happen.  And I happen to not enjoy it very much when it does.

[Sydney Freedberg]

That's interesting. Universalis has arguably a much stronger "no, don't do that" mechanism in Challenges -- which anyone can bring at any time, right? -- compared to vetoing Effects and using Preventive Goals in Capes. Yet SIS-degrading input still got through in the Guadelupe the Pirate game.

I'm not saying "it's impossible to preserve the integrity of the Shared Imagined Space, therefore there's no point to mechanics to block disruptive input." I'm just saying that even adding more such mechanics Capes does not eliminate the problem -- so, at some level, you have to just trust the players and let it go.

[EDIT: Well, maybe the Guadelupe the Pirate game's not the best example, since it seems everyone was on board for the silly there. But I've read other sessions of Uni -- and Unsung and other distributed-GM-function games, Capes being just one among many -- that seemed to suffer severe SIS disruptions. So examples abound.]

[Valamir]

Not quite.  It didn't get in "in spite of Uni's additional mechanics".  It got in because we weren't using Uni's additional mechanics...it was just an initial demo at GenCon late in the day.  The Pregnant Pope on the other hand was an actual full game with friends who were fully using those mechanics.

So from my perspective Pope is an example of successfully using those mechanics to prevent "SIS-degrading input" (good turn of phrase) while still allowing for lots of "oh wow I'd never have thought to do that moments".

While Guadalupe is an example of what play looks like when you don't use those mechanics to prevent "SIS-degrading input".  Which is why Capes worries me, because Capes doesn't HAVE any mechanics to use. Which strikes me as making Guadalupe-type games much more likely than I'm comfortable with.

[TonyLB]

Here's the basic issue, as I see it:  You claim that without constraints to keep narration in check, the only thing any GM-less rules system can encourage reliably is a certain light-hearted silliness.  If any other outcome occurs, it is either a rarity or the result of great effort by the players, unsupported by the rules.  Right?

So how do you explain the Actual Play that started this thread?  Are we deluded in thinking that the rules system gave us useful tools for supporting these choices?  Are we just on an astonishing run of amazingly good luck?  

How many sessions, how good a story, do we have to achieve before you admit the possibility that something is going on here that you do not understand?  Something that (GASP!) Universalis isn't capable of?

[John Harper]

Ralph, what about a Guadalupe situtation in Uni in which one player has a huge advantage in coins. The Challenge mechanic essentially guarantees that the bigger-coin-pile player will get his way, totally, fully within the rules structure. Thus cementing his odd contributions even further.

I've seen massive coin discrepancies in Uni many times. It has never been a big problem for us, but it could be. Once one player has more coins than the rest of the table combined, that player can get away with anything and no one can "stop" them with the mechanics*.

Do you see that as the same issue with Capes? Is Capes play like Uni with each player having the most coins when it's their turn to narrate? How would you deal with that situation within the Uni mechanics?

*(Aside: Someone once jokingly suggested a rules gimmick where they would be the only player allowed to spend coins from now on. The other players didn't have enough coins combined to Challenge this gimmick.)

[Valamir]

That's an excellent question John.

It does take a little bit of work for a person to get that large of a Coin lead...that or some incautious spending on the part of the other players.  But it could happen.

So it is conceivable that such a situation could occur and the player with the Coins do something dastardly with them.  I won't try to claim uni is bullet proof in that regard.

But worst case...if there was really a problem that you couldn't solve with the Negotiation phase there are a couple of solutions.

1) Facts double your Challenge Coins.  So if as a group you do a good job defining the Tenets up front there's a good chance that many of the worst violations another player could do would violate one of those Tenets or, if not a tenet, a fact that had been previously established.  

To use an earlier example: a player trying to introduce Aliens into the western could do so if all of the other player agreed that sounded cool.  But if someone didn't they could challenge with the weight of the "Its a Western Tenet" backing them up.

It would be pretty hard to wind up with an amount of Coins DOUBLE those of all of the other player combined in order to become immune to Challenge.


2) If that still wasn't enough, and players were fairly unified in their opposition there's always the Fine mechanic.  Fines don't use any Coins, they're Levied by straight vote.  So if more players thought that idea was absolute crap than were willing to accept it and they weren't willing to resolve the issue with negotiation...then the other players could unite to Fine you into oblivion.  Repeated Fines would then bleed their Coin advantage down to where they could be Challenged normally.

Ideally the threat of this possibility would bring that player to the negotiation table long before they lost all of their Coins in that manner.  Once they became willing to negotiate then its likely that the remaining players would not longer be unified in a desire to keep levying a fine and so the fines would stop (because there is a backfire mechanism to fines that help prevent them from being called for frivolously).


So I think that Fines offer the last resort protection against that sort of occurance.

Capes is exactly like that situation, however...without the safty net.


That's a pretty funny Gimmick by the way.  If they were to seriously try it, however, you'd just fine them repeatedly until they repealed it.

[John Harper]

Ah yes... Fines. Forgot about those. We have yet to use them. But your points are well taken. Thanks for answering the question.

I think the Comics Code and Vetoes in Capes go a long way towards providing a safety net in this instance, very similar to Tenets and Challenges in Uni.

I agree that Capes doesn't go as *far* as Uni does (by design), which is maybe what you meant by "without a safety net."

[James_Nostack]

Would I do your position justice, James, were I to say that you point out that there is an equivalent of Complications in Capes, but not an equivalent of Challenges?

Victor, if those terms mean what I think they mean, yes that is the starting point of my position.  This leads to two questions: "What effect does this have on the participants' fun?" and "How does that reflect on the design?"  Tony's stance appears to be, "It has wonderfully beneficial effects on the participants' fun."  My response is, "Not always."  As to the second question, Ralph is right: if this is what Tony intended, he achieved it.  It's just not what I'm interested in, and for the past 10 days I have been trying to explain why to people with whom I am apparently unable to communicate.

I'm wondering why the *frell* you'd just sit down and go without any kind of direction. From initial character creation, you should be able to see where Players A (Multi-millionaire playboy/inventor/vigilante) and B (gritty, hardened Police commisioner) want to go. Player C (God of thunder & lighting on a quest to destroy a devouer of worlds) would obviously be right out.

I chose an extreme example simply so that my point would be abundantly clear.  In that example you would run into trouble before the game begins.  But the issue exists any time the audience cannot agree on the tenor of the game.  These moments are more frequent than one might think.

This is the sort of stuff that gets sorted out in Capes when the group decides on the game's Comics Code.

I do not know where you are in the world right now, but the bulging veins of frustration on my forehead should be visible from space.  Referring an in-game dispute to the Comics Code solves nothing, since (from what I have heard so far) there is no mechanics to resolve a dispute about the Code itself.  Let's say you want to add something to the Code that I absolutely detest.  Who gets their way, and how?

For people coming in late: this stuff in bold is the core of my argument.  I have been saying this, in one way or another, for ten days.  I do not know how else to say it.

..This example with the gritty noir people wanting street-level conflict and the one guy wanting world-spanning threats, and them constantly fighting tooth and nail to get their vision realized beyond the (to them) raw dreck the other person is offering? I want to play that game.

Tony, you have misapprehended me.  It's not a question of realizing this beyond the disagreeable narration.  It's a question of narrating it instead of the disagreeable narration.  The example you gave, while very creative, isn't a film noir story.  While we might find it entertaining, Players A and B are under no obligation to.

At any rate-- it's been ten days of this and I'm tired of discussing it.

[Valamir]

How many sessions, how good a story, do we have to achieve before you admit the possibility that something is going on here that you do not understand? Something that (GASP!) Universalis isn't capable of?

Wow...that's pretty cutting Tony.  Fortuneately I'm an admirer of good quality cut so I'm not offended by it or anything, but it does highlight that maybe you're starting to get a little defensive.  I apologize for that, I realize these repeated posts must seem a little like "pile on Tony, his game is crap".  Alls I can say in my own defense on that is that I don't spend this much time posting on a game I think is crap.  I think Capes kicks ass.  But if you think I'm not providing anything constructive at this point I'll refrain from posting further to Capes threads as it certainly isn't my intention to upset you.

But as to your question I do feel that I understand what is going on in the thread.  The game designer who understands how he envisioned play looking is playing the game with a group of people with whom he shares a strong social contract and a mutual appreciation of each other's aesthetic.  And lo...the game works exactly as envisioned.  That doesn't surprise me at all and is in fact exactly the result that I'd predict given the repeated note that Capes relies very heavily on the Social Contract to resolve disagreements between players.

More actual play reports from people who aren't you and aren't your group may shed some additional light on how things are working out in the rest of the world.


As a passing thought, however, you might be interested in doing a search on Andrew Martin in the Uni forum.  He and Bailey Wolf tore early versions of Uni up.  He pointed out all kinds of flaws to which Mike and I responded in detail why they weren't flaws and why they were necessary to the game and why they worked just fine.  I'm even sorry to admit that I got pretty defensive on him as he kept making suggestions that clearly were just a matter of his own personal preference...we were pretty secure in our knowledge we were right.  That was on about version 4 through version 6 of the Uni rules.  It was version 8 or 9 that actually got published.  Thing is...a whole lot of what Andrew was saying was absolutely right and Mike and I were just too close to the project to see it.  Not everything...but enough that version 8 looked hella different and hella better than version 4.  I'm not going to claim any special magical knowledge that's guarenteed to make Capes better...but you might want to consider the possibility that there might just be a flaw that you're too close to to see.

[TonyLB]

Well, Ralph, I'm sorry if a bit of frustration is showing through.  I'm trying to figure out some way that you could possibly be satisfied at the end of our lengthy, lengthy discussion.  I find it... difficult.  You seem pretty committed to being unhappy about this.

Are you really holding out for me to say "Oh, I see!  Ralph doesn't think that the game system can support what I've seen, so it must all be in my head.  I'll rewrite Capes the way he wants"?  I don't really think I can go that far to have a meeting of the minds with you.

Me, personally, I'd be perfectly content with you saying "You know what, Tony, I don't see how any game system could possibly do what you claim.  But doing what was previously thought impossible is, after all, the nature of innovation, so I'll hold off judgment until there's more evidence about whether it works with other groups."

I'd be ecstatic if you said "You know what, Tony, I don't see how any game system could possibly do what you claim.  That's very exciting!  So I'm going to get some people together and play Capes straight by the rules, exactly as you wrote it, to see if we can reproduce your results."

[Valamir]

Are you really holding out for me to say "Oh, I see!  Ralph doesn't think that the game system can support what I've seen, so it must all be in my head.  I'll rewrite Capes the way he wants"?  I don't really think I can go that far to have a meeting of the minds with you.

No, I wouldn't expect you to.  I would hope, however, to at least get the concession that maybe there's something there you'll keep an eye out for as actual play reports roll in.  That maybe the issue isn't just one dysfunctional play and could become a factor even in groups that are all trying their best.

I'd be interested in hearing what you think of being able to start Conflicts as a reaction to narration.  That's hardly rewriting Capes, but yet would solve nearly 90% of all of the issues raised.  Such a simple seeming rule...are there other game effects that you can see it might have that aren't beneficial.  Would you dislike playing a game of Capes where that was a rule...if so why.  

Me, personally, I'd be perfectly content with you saying "You know what, Tony, I don't see how any game system could possibly do what you claim.  But doing what was previously thought impossible is, after all, the nature of innovation, so I'll hold off judgment until there's more evidence about whether it works with other groups."

I thought I'd already done essentially that a couple of times now, but if not consider it said now.  

But keep in mind I'm not suggesting the game can't do what you claim...it clearly CAN.  The question is whether it will do that reliably and whether the game mechanics are actually helping or hindering that result.

[Christopher Weeks]

Guys, for those of you in this fray, this might be a frustrating thread.  But I just want you to know that I think it's a great read.  My experience with Capes is only three sessions and we had no problems of the sort reported, but that might not be meaningful because...we had no problems of the sort reported.  Hmmm.  Maybe we should set up a game where we intend to push our agenda strongly -- enough to strain things a bit.

[Larry L.]

Let's say you want to add something to the Code that I absolutely detest. Who gets their way, and how?

Negotiation of the Comics Code is not handled by the system in any way. It occurs in the "game planning" part of the social contract. Exactly the same as  if you want to play Sorcerer and everyone else wants to play D&D, or if you want to play at Mike's house, and everyone else wants to play at Joe's house. If the players can't agree these kinds of things, the game never happens.

To my knowledge no game has ever attempted to put this part of the social contract into the system, and I don't think you're suggesting that Capes should do so.

Is that what you were looking for?

[TonyLB]

Ralph:

I would hope, however, to at least get the concession that maybe there's something there you'll keep an eye out for as actual play reports roll in.

It is absolutely something that I will be keeping an eye out for.  You may well be right, and I may well be wrong.  I've split off discussion of your rules recommendations to this thread.

But keep in mind I'm not suggesting the game can't do what you claim...it clearly CAN.  The question is whether it will do that reliably and whether the game mechanics are actually helping or hindering that result.

But Ralph... the claim I'm making is that the game mechanics help to do it reliably.  That's the claim that you have said you are "10000000% certain" isn't true.  If you've become more open to the possibility then I'm very glad, but I hope you won't blame me for thinking that you haven't been very open to it in the past.


Christopher:  I certainly encourage you to give Capes a spin with some more driven and potent conflicts.  My experience (obviously by this point) tells me that's exactly what helps to make the game shine.

[Jaik]

I think I've finally figured out what's been bothering me about the issues people have been raising about free narrations and avoidance of the system.  Granted, if all you want to do is narrate stuff you want to happen happening, then yeah, you can do that, just like Tony says.

But then you're not really playing Capes.

If I'm in a game of D&D and I'm told that the point is to survive, then there is NO WAY I'm actually going on the adventure down into the deep dark hole where all the nasty things with sharp teeth live.  I'll get a job as a farmhand and give up adventuring right now.

Is that within the rules?  Sure!  I could play out getting hired, maybe courting, raising crops, all of it.  But I'm not actually playing D&D.

I think that to truly PLAY Capes, you have to want more than to just say what happens, you have to be willing to step into the deep dark hole and set up some conflicts.  If you engage with the system, and the other players do the same, then the system will help all of you to better engage with one another and add to the excitement and fun.  Conversely, refusing to engage in the system leaves everyone disconnected, each in turn narrating whatever they want, with no connection to anything else.  Nobody seems to honestly think that would be fun.

Now, about the propsed rule of spontaneous conflicts, I get the idea that Tony very deliberately set up Capes to allow you to narrate cool comic book stuff without all the baggage that Champions would require.  Since this rule seems to be in response to behavior that appears jerk-ish (Maybe it isn't, but it feels that way to me), what if we inject similar behavior into a game using the new rules?

Andy: Okay, Captain Heroic shouts "You won't get away that easily!"  He grabs an I-beam from the construction site and...

Bob: Wait, Captain Heroic isn't THAT strong.  I mean, sure, he's stronger than normal, even super strong, but those beams are really, really heavy.  I call Goal: Captain Heroic picks up the beam.

Andy: Umm, okay, I guess I can try to win that...

Wow, now everyone's a critic AND a gamemaster.  Sure, everyone could play in good faith and avoid that mess, but then they could all play in good faith with the original rules and avoid THAT mess as well.

Anyway, I figured I should drop my two pennies while it seemed clearest.