[Capes] Vaxalon, Lxndr, and James Nostack have a go

[Vaxalon]

Here's a game we tried to play.  You can find some speed bumps at [05] and towards the end, a collision that ended play for the night.

http://random.average-bear.com/Capes/SessionOne

You can see the conflicts in play when the game stopped here:

http://random.average-bear.com/Capes/GameSpace

I'll leave James (playing Warhawk) to explain his feelings in more detail.

[Grover]

System problems aside, how did you like the setup you had to play in?  That looked like it was working pretty well, and it has the advantage of automatically creating a complete log of the game.  Is it available for anyone to use?

[Vaxalon]

System problems aside, the only reason I like IRC is that it means I can play when otherwise I can't.

IRC is slow.  Ploddingly slow.

[James_Nostack]

Pre-Play
Vax does not mention the week of pre-play discussion we had.  Sometimes this was a little bit frustrating.

A key part of Capes consists of the development of a Comics Code, which is (fundamentally) a set of aesthetic principles concerning which kinds of narration are valid.  Typically this might be stuff like, "No in-game sex" or "No superhuman can get killed without the player's consent," it's also important for establishing what kind of game you're running.

Vax really wanted to play a fairly straightforward superhero comic book type of thing--the sort of thing you might find in the Avengers or the Justice League cartoon.  While I respect his desires, that didn't really very well for me.  I guess I have a jaded appetite, but I can't have any serious emotional engagement with musclebound people wearing spandex and fighting other musclebound people.  I wanted something... different.

One of the ideas that Lxndr and I cooked up in pre-play was sort of a dark, creepy place, based on movies like "Dark City," "Requiem for a Dream," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Donnie Darko," and "Butterfly Effect."  Basically, these badly broken Philip K. Dick protagonists  who are coping with way more emotional crises than anyone should ever have to face... and on top of everything else, they've developed strange abilities.  This was really getting me excited!  

So, we were trying to work out some genre expectations here and couldn't do it.  If you're doing the "powers are extremely rare, destabilizing, and no one would ever wear spandex" thing, it's hard to square that with "powers are moderately rare, not destabilizing, and people definitely wear spandex."

Vax wanted to use his Dr. Trinity character and the Krakatoa setting we'd collaborated on.  Since it didn't look like there was any way to come to an agreement on the Comics Code thing, I decided to go along.  At the same time, I was feeling pretty darn frustrated that we hadn't been able to come to an agreement.  The Trinity/Krakatoa stuff didn't interest me very much, but I felt maybe I could derive some enjoyment from inflicting carnage on the setting.  I decided to play a character devoted to making Dr. Trinity's life miserable.

Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa
I should point out that if the Krakatoa setting didn't hold much of my interest, it's my own fault.  We've been developing it through Lexicon, and about a third of the entries are mine.  Which means that in addition to everyone else's neat ideas, I should at least be interested in my own.

But I wasn't.  I think the Krakatoa stuff is a nifty spine for a conventional superhero setting, but "conventional superhero setting" isn't what interested me.  And once the Krakatoa stuff got some inertia, I either didn't recognize the problem or was unable to dig my way out.  So, that's my own fault.

Nonetheless by the time we agreed on the "invasion of Krakatoa" thing, I knew the setting wasn't doing it for me, and arguably I shouldn't have agreed to it in the first place--in which case we would not have been able to play the game.  Vax wanted that kind of world; I didn't.  Capes cannot run satisfactorily unless everyone buys into the Comics Code, and there was no way we could both do so.

"What is my motivation?"
I'm not entirely sure what went wrong, except that I am probably a terrible match for Capes.  I want to feel that when I come up with a good idea, it matters.  It can matter in pretty much any way: give me a mechanical bonus, make the imaginary world more engaging, or move the story along.  But announcing a neat idea simply to announce it seems very shallow to me.

In this case my main motivation, at the player level, was simply to beat the living hell out of the Krakatoa setting and all it represented, without descending into game-busting silliness.  

This wasn't much of a motivation.  The argument about Fracture betraying Trinity only mattered to me in that it might set up a better invasion scenario, but that's a pretty weak attachment, and as the conflict went on, I gradually realized I didn't want to spend another hour playing it through.  I basically wanted to give up, since the actual outcome of the conflict didn't matter to the SIS anyway, and just get to the blastin'.

But when I facetiously proposed, "Event: invasion of Krakatoa succeeds," and no one vetoed, I realized that I could get what I wanted without any resistance at all.  My one purpose, which was to work out some sublimated   frustrations, got taken away from me.  

In a sense, I won my goal as a player--but it didn't mean a damn thing to me.

Does Capes deliver?
In the endless Capes threads that have graced the Forge lately, the defense of Capes's "resistance is futile" approach is that allowing another person to riff on your ideas can come up with some neat stuff.

This is true.  The last thing we wrote involved my character breaking Vax's character's spine and hurling him to the bottom of the ocean; Vax wanted the guy to come back a year later with a techno-spine and allies from the lost continent of Mu.  This is fun.

But--it isn't always.  When Vax thought he had surprised us by showing up in the conversation, I had (what I felt to be) a fun idea--he hadn't surprised us, but holographic representations of us: Dr. Trinity, the big brainy guy, was just a fool!  Except, of course, he wasn't fooled.  I shouldn't have spent that time and energy to come up with a little joke like that: it's only funny if it matters.  I could have hit him with a coconut cream pie just as easily.  Making up something that entertains me is great; having it be undone trivially, on a whim, stinks.

I can't shake the feeling that for me personally, the situation at the end of this session would be an AWESOME situation and immensely entertaining in just about any other system.  But in Capes, it feels utterly hollow and pointless to me.  This, perhaps, is the curse of Capes--because you can narrate anything, it's easy to have wacky far out situations, but by the same token none of them matter.

[hix]

a) That was an amazing read. Stuff like this makes me think it is possible to directly analyse material in the Big Model.

b) I'd be interested to hear when James become disinterested: pre [05], at it, or some time after. Was he invested in the game up till that point?

[James_Nostack]

Hix - no, the thing with this session was, due to the system's inability to support differing agendas in the the Comics Code, my interest wasn't particularly high to begin with.  The incident at 05--the holographic generator stuff--would have been crushing if I'd been new to Capes, but instead it simply confirmed that (for me) Capes totally removes all incentive for people like me.

As I mentioned in my previous post: the setting didn't grab my heartstrings, the conflict was a means to an end that had lasted too long, and then the only thing I wanted to do--mess up Krakatoa--was achieved by fiat.

(Random comments follow)

Capes is very much like Tom & Jerry: the Roleplaying Game, in that players get to do all kinds of screwed-up devious stuff to each other, and then the other one simply bounces back unharmed.  The reward consists in enjoying the momentary gag for its own sake.  

One of Tony's arguments is that if you have creative input on a situation or scenario, you must automatically also have emotional buy-in.  This example of play works as a counter-example.  To use an analogy: I have heard of restaurants where the customer can create his own omlette, but that doesn't matter to me because I hate omlettes: the fact that I've spent energy making the best omlette I can, doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy it.

As Vaxalon mentioned in another thread: in order to play Capes you have to care about winning a Conflict, but not care about the character, setting, or color used to win it.  I appear to be unable to do this.

[Jonas Ferry]

Hello James,

I think your setting ideas sound really cool. It could be a problem justifying Capes' "Power is fun, but do you deserve it", where you usually use your powers and then justify it by acting morally instead of acting morally and then using your powers. But that could be me, and the settings might work just fine.

As Vaxalon mentioned in another thread: in order to play Capes you have to care about winning a Conflict, but not care about the character, setting, or color used to win it. I appear to be unable to do this.

I'll state something obvious, please don't hate me for it: Caring about character, setting and colour doesn't mean they'll have to be your way. Caring could mean that you help someone else realize their goals with their characters. If you see them trying to project a certain attitude through their character, help them or try to put obstacles in their way. Any way, they will be more interested in the conflicts or narrations you make.

But when I facetiously proposed, "Event: invasion of Krakatoa succeeds," and no one vetoed, I realized that I could get what I wanted without any resistance at all. My one purpose, which was to work out some sublimated frustrations, got taken away from me.

Perhaps the invasion was something the others wanted as well, or didn't think was interesting enough to spend resources on? The other players are of course better than me when judging that.

That's something really cool about Capes. If you create a goal or event that falls flat, and no one is interested, that says something about the goal and how or when it was presented. I think the Capes attitude of learning to read your fellow players' intentions and present them with goals they find interesting is very fruitful and very educational. I walked away from my sessions with lots of stuff to think about, like which goals worked and which didn't. It's not always the content of the goal that is important, but the timing. This timing can be used in other games as well.

[Vaxalon]

But when I facetiously proposed, "Event: invasion of Krakatoa succeeds," and no one vetoed, I realized that I could get what I wanted without any resistance at all. My one purpose, which was to work out some sublimated frustrations, got taken away from me.

Perhaps the invasion was something the others wanted as well, or didn't think was interesting enough to spend resources on? The other players are of course better than me when judging that.

Being the player whose character was most invested in Krakatoa, I felt that by letting the event go in, I could control the result.

Basically, if I won that conflict, it wasn't going to be the UN invasion of Krakatoa that would succeed, but some other one.  I hadn't decided exactly which one that was going to be, yet, just that it wasn't going to be the one everyone else expected.

[Lxndr]

Actually, that was the way I was going too.  James left "invasion" undefined enough that there were all sorts of nifty tidbits and ways to go about it, depending on who got control (and man, I can see that turning into a three-way rumble as we all fight over exactly what sort of invasion it might be).

Heck, James, it was Vax's turn, and his Event.  He proposed the invasion starting, so he was obviously heading in that direction.  You just offered a counter-offer that upped the timeline a bit.  He could've said "no, this is my turn, either veto the event, or accept it.  I won't budge!"  But he saw the possibilities in your counter-offer, so he said "okay, I'll use my turn to propose your modification to the event I proposed, especially since it's better than letting you handle it in free narration."

That said, James, Trinity only managed to meet you in the Lost Dreams Lagoon because, well, after your roll, he was still in control of the conflict (i.e., he got an And Then...).  If you'd managed to roll the sides such that your/our side was advantageous, no "And Then..." would've occurred, and you would've gotten away with leaving.

It's worth keeping in mind whether or not there'll be an "And Then..." when you narrate something, because if you're losing the conflict, there will almost always be an "And Then..."

[Larry L.]

Here are my theories on how far you can push genre in Capes:[list=1][*]SIS must be something that could be portrayed in a comic book.
[*]There need to be people with powers.
[*]People with powers need to be driven by some kind of moral framework.[/list:o]The setting here is cool, but seems a little off regarding that last requirement.  In Capes, moral greyness is left to the mundanes.

For what it's worth, the "ranting" in the log is actually very useful to me as a reader. Taking a little time to express your reactions at the moment goes a long way.

[Vaxalon]

I wanted to keep the ranting short, but not eliminate it.  It was important to note when there were problems, but then move along so we could get the scene done.

As it happens, we didn't complete it anyways.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Since it didn't look like there was any way to come to an agreement on the Comics Code thing, I decided to go along.

Yeah, that'd frustrate me too. But, if you're really willing to try this without a net, Capes (and probably Universalis) allow you -- unlike traditional RPGs -- to have major differences of opinion about the setting, tone, etc. and still start playing. You just get to thrash the differences out by expressing them as fairly explicit Conflicts during play. I'd be curious to see this approach in action, since it might either succeed or implode spectactularly.

[Vaxalon]

Can you elaborate on that, Sydney?

Are you saying that early on, you could have, say, an Event or something that says, "Superheroes don't wear spandex"?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Are you saying that early on, you could have, say, an Event or something that says, "Superheroes don't wear spandex"?

Probably not that one (I mean, you could do it, you can do anything -- which is part of people's problem -- but it'd be weird).

I'm thinking more along the lines of Tony's using "Goal: Hurt humans" to prevent carnage in this thread. So maybe, in this context, "Goal: Warhawk is crushed by angst" -- which makes angst an issue on the table, but allows someone to say "nope, no angst here" and roll up the "fail" side -- or "Event: a superpowered slugfest erupts!" -- which prevents any 4-color punchouts until resolved. Of course Conflict results aren't binding or lasting, but they at least serve as a means to push back and forth on disagreements.

As I said, might go KABOOM. Might not.

Frankly, the whole "He's caught us -- but we're a hologram -- but he found us!" thing was pretty cool, and very comic-book-y. As would have been "I break his spine and throw him in the volcano" followed by "muahahaha, that was my robotic double" or "I crawl out, vowing revenge, and unleash my minions." Obviously what seems cool to me in reading was frustrating to you in play, though.

[Vaxalon]

Obviously what seems cool to me in reading was frustrating to you in play, though.

This kind of gets around to my point... that the range of tastes that Capes will appeal to is narrow.

For all my complaining, I find that when the rubber hits the road, I can maneuver myself into the right headspace for Capes and have fun, with a few speedbumps here and there.

Some people can't.  Is that a failing of the game, or of the people who can't do it?  That depends on your perspective.