Story Token Distribution

[Gamskee]

Finally convinced a few people to try capes lite, and it went fairly well. Everybody made it a point to interact with the conflicts created, though a few were definitely less compellingthan others. People put a lot of debt on things they cared about, while little debt was wasted on some of the less important conflicts.

I thought I would bring up some of the things that happened for discussion purposes. A few of the occurences most likely were derived of the fact that two out of the four players were newbies.

1) Debt that became story tokens was generally awarded to those that helped a player resolve the conflict in their favor. For instance, I ran a Vampiric Horde as a character while another player was playing a villain called Vlok the Vampire. When Vlok managed to kidnap Steel Lass (claiming the event), he passed the debt on it to me as story tokens because my hordes assistance made it come out in his favor. Similarly, Steel Lass's player handed story tokens to Robot-O after they managed to beat the initial goons from the Capes Lite scenario. Is this malfunctional play, or is this how tokens are meant to be distributed?

2) A story token was used by Steel Lass to create a new character to play backup for her. At first the character tried to seduce Vlok to distract him from her, but would also begin attackign him randomly. Mostly a newbie thing, but is this tactic what story tokens aim for, or not so much?

3) Odd thought on debt, conflicts, etc. If everyone starts to kind of gang up on the one who continues to introduce conflicts, is it better to sit back and let the scene progress peacefully with your non-conflicting characters, putting out easily won goals for inspirations and clearing off debt? You know, just sort of chill to gain some advantage and let everyone else try and come up with something for a while.

4) Rules question actually. When using story tokens to intro new characters, do you spend story tokens to keep using multiple chaarcters every scene or do you just have them to use after the first expenditure?

BTW, I personally like the game, so don't take any of this as any kind of attack on it.

[Stickman]

Hope it's not against etiquette to offer some answers

1) When handing out Story Tokens from resolving Conflicts, they are only handed out to the losing side. So unless something funky was happening with the Vampiric Hordes working against Vlok (ie being Allied against him) then their controller wouldn't be a viable recipient for the Tokens, they would go to Steel Lass and any other player controlling a character that was Allied with her side of the Conflict.

2) I suppose it's a matter of style to decide wether to introcude a new character or take extra actions with a current one. Certainly in the games I've been in it's a pretty popular choice to inctroduce some kind of new character, either an ally, minion or scene type character.

3) If you sit back and end up on the losing side of a ton of conflicts, you'll get at least one Story Token from each you lose .. if anyone stakes debt on them. On the other hand if you're winning them you'll rack up Inspirations. Yep, you can sit back then come in with 3 or 4 extra characters and really change the way the story is going :)

4) Character selection happens at the start of each scene. So, if in scene 1 you pay a Story Token to play an additional character 'Iron Lad', when that scene is over all characters go back into the 'pool' of characters. When the start of scene 2 comes around you have no prior claim over any character (unless it's a spotlight one) and you get to pick  a single character like everyone else, so while you're free to pick 'Iron Lad' you don't get him for free.

Ta

Dave

[TonyLB]

I'll put my stamp of rules-approval (for what it's worth) on the things Dave said.

#1 is the really key element in all of that.  You can never, never get story tokens by being on the winning side of a conflict.  Only by opposing someone and having them beat you (because they're so morally vested in your defeat).

My intuition is that some of your other concerns stem from that misunderstanding:  For instance, #3 sounds (to me) like you're saying "Hey, I can profit by just avoiding the conflicts going on elsewhere on the table," to which #1 answers "Yeah, unless you want, y'know... Story Tokens.  If you want Story Tokens, and nobody is interested in opposing you and beating you, then you need to kick up your conflicts a notch until they are interested in opposing you."

I love the description of Steel Lass's backup character:  Half the time trying to seduce Vlok, half the time trying to kill him.  Sounds like good, old-school, Chris Claremont comic-book writing to me!

[Gamskee]

That pretty much clears it up. Thanks guys.

I had thought the mechanic had been to distribute them to whoever you felt made the encounter the most interesting, which a lot of people considered to be whoever had helped them. This makes this much better though. Maybe it was a confusion from an earlier capes lite. Play wouldn't have changed much as the game was pretty back and forth and of a short duration, but it wasn't with my regular group either. I think playing with people with a bit more GM and RPG experience will make them a little more agressive, and get the game to pick up faster.

And yeah, the character was oddly appropriate at times. Though I'm not sure if the Chris Claremont thing is complementary to him as a writer or not...