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

[Vaxalon]

At the time?  Since Doctor Trinity was (temporarily) in charge of the conflict, I wanted to use the opportunity to show that Doctor Trinity was really JUST THAT SMART.  As long as he was on top of things, he was predicting what everyone around him would do, and reacting to it before they'd even done it.

His highest-ranked ability, after all, is "Prepared for every contingency".  It's what he IS.  I was taking the opportunity to make him someone who's very frustrating to fight against, because no matter what you do, he's thought of it first.

It didn't really matter to me what tactic was used.

[James_Nostack]

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.

Jonas, I think you completely misread me.  I had zero emotional commitment to play going "my" way.  The only way I could find enough enthusiasm to play was by adopting the mindset that I should cause a ruckus and make Vax & Lx work for what they wanted.

It has nothing to do with me getting my way or not.  In fact if you look at the transcript, the minute I got my way I discovered that I was completely
apathetic to all conceivable situations, including that one.  When I said
that I had no emotional connection to what was happening, that's not a facade to cover some deeper gaming pathology awaiting diagnosis.

The standard defense is that no game system can force you to care about
something you don't care about, but that's a fallacy: it assumes that you
never intended to care.  The ease of emotional buy-in is a design issue.
If emotional commitment is absolutely required yet the design makes it
difficult, then the design will run into problems from time to time.

What I find fascinating is that this would have been an ENORMOUSLY
satisfying session of Mutants & Masterminds or free-form!  I would be
peeing my pants in anticipation of the next session!  But something about
Capes made it profoundly discouraging to me.

[James_Nostack]

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.

Lxndr, that's an excellent point, and one I hadn't fully appreciated, but of course the next time Vaxalon got a narration he could have done it anyway.

Part of what kills Capes for me is that I'm being asked to narrate when whatever I say will be undone by the other player.  To me, this is a loss of dignity.  Why should I jump through these hoops, when there's no point to it?  My initial reaction for most of these things was to clam up and say nothing, because it felt like the Capes rules were forcing me to make a fool out of myself by narrating.  I just wanted to roll the dice, see who was victorious, and let them narrate an outcome.

[James_Nostack]

I see two different ways to address that problem.  One is sort of a cop-out - Capes doesn't have a mechanism for tactical play on the part of the players, so he was simply expecting something that the system couldn't deliver.  Another way to look at it is to say that your narration didn't adequately address the coolness of his tactic - that you should've come up with a reason why it failed, instead of just saying that it did (and it was, after all, doomed to failure because he didn't control the conflict).  If I had come up with a cool tactic like that, I might ask for a more explicit explanation of how it had been negated ('I have infra-red cameras', 'I planted a tracer on Fracture', something like that).

For the record, I'm not implying that the holographic nonsense is some sort of brilliant Napoleonic tactic: it wasn't.  And Vax's response is also a classic comic book trope: the mastermind's seemingly inexplicable back-up plan.  It was simply an example of the kind of thing that irritates me about Capes; the irritation in this particular case was relatively small, but I can easily imagine situations in which it would be much worse.  

Your point about Capes not rewarding tactical play is entirely correct; this is why I started the "What Should I Take Pride In?" thread in the Muse of Fire forum.

* I can't enjoy the game on a tactical level
* I can't "step on up" with narration because it does nothing
* I can't commit to the Setting, due to the "resistance is futile" policy
* I can't commit to the Character, due to "resistance is futile"
* I can't commit to the Color because there's no way to definitively settle Comics Code disputes
* I don't remember the other aspects of Sim play, but I'm assuming I cannot commit to them either
* I can't commit to a Story Now type of thing because there's nothing to reward good or obstructive storytelling.[/list:u]

The

only reward for playing Capes, it seems, is the enjoyment of coming up with whatever you like, and then watching the other players squirm their way out of it unscathed.  (Hence, my reference to Tom & Jerry.)  While I can agree that this may be fun, it does not have to be--and even if it turns out to be fun, I'm not convinced I need an RPG system to do it.
A question for James:  What kind of narration would you have liked to see for Dr. Trinity's AND THEN for the hologram trick?[/quote]

[TonyLB]

His highest-ranked ability, after all, is "Prepared for every contingency".  It's what he IS.  I was taking the opportunity to make him someone who's very frustrating to fight against, because no matter what you do, he's thought of it first.

It didn't really matter to me what tactic was used.

So, Fred, suppose James had narrated something that built on all of the cues that you were giving in this regard, validating how in-control Doc Trinity was, but turning it against you:  "See, Fracture, he's never trusted you... whatever claims he makes about his little paradise here, it's a police state of one!", for instance.

Do you think you'd have had Doc Trinity deny that?  Would you have narrated something that undercut the importance of that statement, or let it stand, or would you have elaborated on it (increasing its subjective importance)?

[James_Nostack]

I see two different ways to address that problem.  One is sort of a cop-out - Capes doesn't have a mechanism for tactical play on the part of the players, so he was simply expecting something that the system couldn't deliver.  Another way to look at it is to say that your narration didn't adequately address the coolness of his tactic - that you should've come up with a reason why it failed, instead of just saying that it did (and it was, after all, doomed to failure because he didn't control the conflict).  If I had come up with a cool tactic like that, I might ask for a more explicit explanation of how it had been negated ('I have infra-red cameras', 'I planted a tracer on Fracture', something like that).

For the record, I'm not implying that the holographic nonsense is some sort of brilliant Napoleonic tactic: it wasn't.  And Vax's response is also a classic comic book trope: the mastermind's seemingly inexplicable back-up plan.  It was simply an example of the kind of thing that irritates me about Capes; the irritation in this particular case was relatively small, but I can easily imagine situations in which it would be much worse.  

Your point about Capes not rewarding tactical play is entirely correct; this is why I started the "What Should I Take Pride In?" thread in the Muse of Fire forum.

* I can't enjoy the game on a tactical level
* I can't "step on up" with narration because it does nothing
* I can't commit to the Setting, due to the "resistance is futile" policy
* I can't commit to the Character, due to "resistance is futile"
* I can't commit to the Color because there's no way to definitively settle Comics Code disputes
* I don't remember the other aspects of Sim play, but I'm assuming I cannot commit to them either
* I can't commit to a Story Now type of thing because there's nothing to reward good or obstructive storytelling.[/list:u]

The

only reward for playing Capes, it seems, is the enjoyment of coming up with whatever you like, and then watching the other players squirm their way out of it unscathed.  (Hence, my reference to Tom & Jerry.)  While I can agree that this may be fun, it does not have to be--and even if it turns out to be fun, I'm not convinced I need an RPG system to do it.

A question for James:  What kind of narration would you have liked to see for Dr. Trinity's AND THEN for the hologram trick?

It's not Dr. Trinity's respone, really, that's the problem: it's that I bothered to do anything at all.  Whatever I did, Vax could undo with trivial effort, and hence from my perspective it's a waste of energy to commit to anything.

[Vaxalon]

So, Fred, suppose James had narrated something that built on all of the cues that you were giving in this regard, validating how in-control Doc Trinity was, but turning it against you:  "See, Fracture, he's never trusted you... whatever claims he makes about his little paradise here, it's a police state of one!", for instance.

Do you think you'd have had Doc Trinity deny that?  Would you have narrated something that undercut the importance of that statement, or let it stand, or would you have elaborated on it (increasing its subjective importance)?

If the discussion had begun to turn on WHY Fracture was betraying Trinity, I would have been all over it.

In fact, I tried to elicit that very reaction at a later point...

[12] <Trinity> "I'm curious, Fracture... just what is it that could tempt you to betray me? That's one thing you've been skilled enough to keep from me, I admit."

I left that as an opportunity to explore Fracture's motivations, his feelings and history with Jenny Everywhere...

And it got lost.

Was that because Lxndr (Fracture) forgot about it in the rules discussion that came next?  Was it because he didn't like how it was going?  Impossible for me to tell.  All I could do was continue to try to read his reactions and keep playing.

[WiredNavi]

So Capes looks to me like enforced improv acting.  You must be willing to accept the offers that other people give you, and the rules in fact specifically prevent you from refusing them.  You can only roll with them.

[TonyLB]

Hrm... I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like I'm blaming the victim.  First off, I'm very sorry that you had a bad time with the game, James.  That stinks.  I feel responsible, of course.  I wish I could retroactively make the experience better for you.

Now, in case you ever want to play again (or if someone else wants to play, and is reading this thread), I'd like to point out Fred was nicely pointing the way toward not having your narration immediately narrated away:  Make it interesting to him as well as to yourself.

You flatly didn't do that:  Fred clearly established a direction for Doc Trinity, and you didn't parse it.  He would have had to completely reverse what he was projecting for the character in order to find anything interesting in your hologram narration.  That's a lot to expect of him when the easy "Narrate a way around it" option is right to hand.

Some games set the balance differently:  They force players to endure more stuff that bores them, in order to allow them to experience less rejection of their own input.  Capes is set all the way to one side of this scale:  You get instant rejection of anything people can't find a use for.  On the other hand, you never have to tolerate anything boring.

[Vaxalon]

Yep.

It's either fun or infuriating.

[Larry L.]

Could someone point me at some successful IRC games of Capes? I'm still stuck on the idea the things Capes emphasizes are really poorly suited for IRC.

[Vaxalon]

So far we haven't been able to get a group together with three people who think Capes is, at its fundamental level, cool.

[Sydney Freedberg]

this would have been an ENORMOUSLY
satisfying session of Mutants & Masterminds or free-form!

Interesting. Can you elaborate why? From what little I know of M&M, it's very far from free-form, so if you can figure out what appeals to you which those two very different things share but which Capes doesn't, we might be onto something.

[Larry L.]

Rules clarification split to Muse of Fire forum.

[Grover]

Well, I think Capes is, at a fundamental level, cool, and all these discussions have been making me want to play more.  Can we get some more people?