[Capes] Capes is like pizza

[Andrew Morris]

I had a session of Capes the other night which made me realize that Capes is like pizza -- even when it's bad, it's good.

Let me give the background. There were four players: myself, Dan, Mara, and Kristina. Dan and I have both played Capes at conventions with Tony, but that's the limit of our experience with the system. I've known Mara for years, as we've been in the same LARP crowd -- almost exclusively V:tM stuff. Krista has little or no experience with table-top RPGs.

So, I was all ready to whip out the cool "Iron Brain" set of related characters that Tony uses for conventions, but the rest of the players wanted to start from scratch. Okay, no problem, I thought. Now, this is where things went awry, in my mind. We come up with four characters, each with a different distinct "feel," ranging from weird/silly to dark and brooding. But, since there's no GM, there's no one to say, "Hey, great concepts guys, but they don't fit into this particular setting." Especially since there's no "setting" until you've started play.

Given the cast of characters, the session was very slapstick and funny. One of the Goals was to ruin a villain's public "evil" image by getting him in a ballerina outfit, or convincing the pulic that he wore at tutu, at least.

At the end of the night, we'd had a session which was enjoyable, but certainly not what I know from experience is possible with Capes. The other players, however, all seemed like they'd had a great session. One even told me that it was the "best gaming session" they'd had in quite a while.

Now, let me be clear: I had fun. There was a lot of laughing and socializing going on. In retrospect, we should have discussed exactly what sort of game we were all looking for, so we'd all be on the same page (no pun intended).

What's fascinating to me is that this was as "bad" as I can imagine a Capes session being, and it was still better than your average RPG session. Heck, it was good enough that we were hours into it without the three smokers calling for a break to grab a smoke. I don't know if this rings a bell for anyone, but it was a somewhat interesting point, so I thought I'd share it.

[Eric Provost]

Your description of the dark & brooding characters being blended with the silly characters makes me think of the Teen Titans series that's running on Cartoon Network right now.  No real interesting thoughts to draw from that really, just the affermation in my brain that silly characters alongside dark characters still results in entertaining stories. 

It also brings to mind something that was floating about in my head while I was working last night.  I can't seem to think of a really good & proper phrase or word for it, but I think being spoiled by the increased fun level of indie games is pretty close to what I had in mind. 

I was thinking of it because of my L5R game writeup from GenCon.  The other three players were having fun (I assume).  Lisa and I were not. 

I also thought of my experience playtesting FH8.  So far, I really dislike my own game.  But Nik thinks it's the greatest thing he's ever played.

So what I'm thinking I'm seeing is players who are blown away by aspects of functional gaming in the same game as players who already expect those forms of functional gaming and are looking for more.

Like:
Player A:  Wow!  We have authority over our character and constantly make meaningful choices!  Yay!
Player B:  Yeah.  Too bad we haven't struck any serious emotional chords tonight.

Oh.  And the cigarette break thing?  Oh yeah, it immediately struck a bell.  I remember one group I was in where you could guage the interest in the session by the break times. 

-Eric

[droog]

Me, I'll take a cigarette break when running a game. But when I ran In Utero I went for four hours without a smoke.

Save my lungs--make more games.

[TonyLB]

That sounds like a very cool session.  I am particularly interested to hear (I hope) what happens later, when people no longer view the empowerment of the rules as a huge novelty, but start to take it for granted.

I'm fascinated by this line:

Given the cast of characters, the session was very slapstick and funny.

Why was this?  It sounds like you had roughly equal proportions of people who wanted slapstick, and people who didn't.  Why did one side win so decisively?

[Andrew Morris]

So what I'm thinking I'm seeing is players who are blown away by aspects of functional gaming in the same game as players who already expect those forms of functional gaming and are looking for mor

Like:
Player A:  Wow!  We have authority over our character and constantly make meaningful choices!  Yay!
Player B:  Yeah.  Too bad we haven't struck any serious emotional chords tonight.

Yeah, I think that is probably a large part of it.  My concept of what makes a "great" session is much higher now, and that's really an awesome thing, when you think about it. I'd rather have a higher density to my fun, anyway.

I am particularly interested to hear (I hope) what happens later, when people no longer view the empowerment of the rules as a huge novelty, but start to take it for granted.

Me too! I wasn't sure whether I should post this, or wait to see how it works out in the long run.

Why was this?  It sounds like you had roughly equal proportions of people who wanted slapstick, and people who didn't.  Why did one side win so decisively?

Well, it's easier to take a non-slapstick character and...uhm...slapstickify him than to do the reverse for a slapstick character. Like, you could throw a politician into a bunch of circus clowns, and make it funny. Kinda hard to make it serious. Possible, but harder.

We had one character who was dark and brooding, one who was a standard superhero (could have gone any direction), one who was just weird (Uma Thurman as a shapshifting superhero), and one who was silly (a cross between Pam Anderson and MacGuyver). Now, I don't point out any of these as bad choices, just different. So you've got Uma Thurman and Pam-guyver combined to make a funny, slapstick session. Mr. Regular Joe Superhero naturally gravitates to the same wavelength. And tall-dark-and-brooding can't really stay that way when the others are trying to get him into a ballerina's outfit, can he? Nah! He plays the "straight man" to their humor (and the target of most of it).

[TonyLB]

Interesting.  I'm getting flashes of Batman in the slapstick '80s Justice League.  So was the serious character the one they were trying to force into a tutu?  Was that a conflict?

[Eric Sedlacek]

That sounds like a very cool session.  I am particularly interested to hear (I hope) what happens later, when people no longer view

Given the cast of characters, the session was very slapstick and funny.

Why was this?  It sounds like you had roughly equal proportions of people who wanted slapstick, and people who didn't.  Why did one side win so decisively?

Interestingly enough, I've been talking about a topic related to this one with a friend.  One of his points was that comedy always wins out over drama (tragedy) because you have to have everyone on board for a serious tone but a single person can set a comic tone all by themselves.  I don't know that I fully agree, but I do think that comedy can derail a serious tone while the reverse is less likely.

The discussion was actually about how difficult it is (or in the case of my viewpoint how difficult it isn't) to tell a serious story as opposed to a comical over-the-top story in Capes.  It is a little more far-ranging than this issue, but it was a part of what we were discussing...

[Andrew Morris]

So was the serious character the one they were trying to force into a tutu?  Was that a conflict?

Yes and yes.

I do think that comedy can derail a serious tone while the reverse is less likely.

I'd agree with that.

[TonyLB]

I do think that comedy can derail a serious tone while the reverse is less likely.

That makes a lot of intuitive sense.  I wonder why that is, though... it's not as if comedy has a privileged position in mechanics.  But I agree that people are much likelier to inject comedy into a serious situation than they are to inject serious roleplay into a comedic game.  So, in the gaming psyche, one tends to win out over the other.

Is it because comedy involves not making yourself vulnerable to other players, whereas a serious tone usually involves that sort of vulnerability, putting your own feelings and beliefs up for group judgment?  If I'm in a game whose comedic tone conveys (to me, personally) that other players are treating the game-fiction in a shallow or reckless manner then I'm not going to trust that I can spill my guts on the table and have them handled with respect.

[neelk]

That makes a lot of intuitive sense.  I wonder why that is, though... it's not as if comedy has a privileged position in mechanics.  But I agree that people are much likelier to inject comedy into a serious situation than they are to inject serious roleplay into a comedic game.  So, in the gaming psyche, one tends to win out over the other.

Is it because comedy involves not making yourself vulnerable to other players, whereas a serious tone usually involves that sort of vulnerability, putting your own feelings and beliefs up for group judgment?  If I'm in a game whose comedic tone conveys (to me, personally) that other players are treating the game-fiction in a shallow or reckless manner then I'm not going to trust that I can spill my guts on the table and have them handled with respect.

In my experience, people make jokes to provoke laughter, which is a mechanism for relieving tension. This is a good thing for ordinary social interaction, because it smooths out conflicts between people, but it can be bad if you want escalating tension in the story. Have you ever run a horror game, and then found that you and your players start cracking wise more than usual? The menace starts to build, and then someone makes a joke, and everyone laughs, and the tension is gone and has to start building again. It's a difficult pattern to break -- I do it even when I'm the GM and theoretically bear the responsibility to increase the tension. One thing I've found that helps is to ask the players to restrict their jokes in a horror game to in-character jokes. Then, what happens is that the players still laugh, but since the joke happens within the narrative, it creates the fictive sense that the characters are feeling menaced and trying to defuse the tension, which lets the player continue to treat the game seriously.

I don't know how to adapt it from horror to tragedy, offhand. Maybe you could ask the players to restrict their jokes to the tragic premise somehow? Then, the efforts to treat it lightly might end up focusing attention on it.

[Josh Roby]

That makes a lot of intuitive sense.  I wonder why that is, though... it's not as if comedy has a privileged position in mechanics.

I think you're dealing with human dynamics, not anything to do with your game.  As someone pointed out, it takes one clown to make a scene into a comedy.  Contrariwise, the only way to make a comedy into a drama is to hurt the clown -- make the consequences of his actions stick, give him something that actually makes him feel rather than simply react.  And nobody likes to hurt clowns (well, most people).

[Eric Sedlacek]

I think you're dealing with human dynamics, not anything to do with your game.  As someone pointed out, it takes one clown to make a scene into a comedy.  Contrariwise, the only way to make a comedy into a drama is to hurt the clown -- make the consequences of his actions stick, give him something that actually makes him feel rather than simply react.  And nobody likes to hurt clowns (well, most people).

This can be a powerful tool for drama.  I can't help but think of the movie Seven Samurai, where the clownish character ends up being the most poignant and tragic of them all.

[Eric Sedlacek]

That makes a lot of intuitive sense.  I wonder why that is, though... it's not as if comedy has a privileged position in mechanics.  But I agree that people are much likelier to inject comedy into a serious situation than they are to inject serious roleplay into a comedic game.  So, in the gaming psyche, one tends to win out over the other.

Is it because comedy involves not making yourself vulnerable to other players, whereas a serious tone usually involves that sort of vulnerability, putting your own feelings and beliefs up for group judgment?  If I'm in a game whose comedic tone conveys (to me, personally) that other players are treating the game-fiction in a shallow or reckless manner then I'm not going to trust that I can spill my guts on the table and have them handled with respect.

I think your analysis has merit.  I also agree with previous posters that this is more a matter of human behavior than game mechanics.  This is one reason why I have generally been lukewarm on the concept of player rewards for role playing.  In theory, they are designed to rewards good storytelling, but in reality, I have rarely seen them do so.  Usually, people who do long, interesting, meaningful scenes go unrewarded and the goodies go to those who can come up with the best one-liners.  I've seen it time after time after time in many different gaming groups.

Capes is, in fact, the first game where I have really bought into "fun" based rewards.  I think it works better because the rewards are tied to specific conflicts.  My rewards are specifically tied to the situations I care enough about to spend resources on them, not some offhand remark.

Still, the question remains, what is the proper strategy for encouraging seriousness in a game of Capes?

Here is a scenario for you.  Say I am playing Captain Darkity Dark of Darkness.  He's serious.  He's brooding.  He has issues.  So someone introduces "Goal: Captain D prances around in a pink tutu."  My instinct is to make sure I win that conflict, perhaps spending some debt to do so, after all, I want to maintain Captain D's seriousness.  This means giving story tokens to someone when I win.  Have I rewarded fun or have I just put an incentive on behavior I do not want repeated?   Would I have been better off not contesting the confict at all and either minimizing its impact the next time I get a chance at some narration or just completely ignore it...thus clearly demonstrating my utter distain for the conflict and determination not to reward it?

I tend to think that the latter choice is the correct one.  In Capes, you choose what is important to you by declaring a conflict or participating in an existing conflict.  Staking debt in a conflict is communicating that something is extra important to you.  Staking debt on a comedic conflict when comedy is not what is important to you sends the wrong message.  The way you express disinterest in Capes is to opt out, and that is what you should do.

[Andrew Morris]

This can be a powerful tool for drama.  I can't help but think of the movie Seven Samurai, where the clownish character ends up being the most poignant and tragic of them all.

Well, maybe if the character just has a silly personality, but not when the concept is off-the-wall-wacky. I mean, it's hard to integrate a character with bunny ears who throws egg bombs into a tense, political drama, for example.

Still, the question remains, what is the proper strategy for encouraging seriousness in a game of Capes?

Oh, I'm pretty sure about that, and that's the area where I fell down on the job -- sitting down and talking to the other players about what kind of game we all wanted, and making sure everyone was on board.

Here is a scenario for you.  Say I am playing Captain Darkity Dark of Darkness.  He's serious.  He's brooding.  He has issues.  So someone introduces "Goal: Captain D prances around in a pink tutu."  My instinct is to make sure I win that conflict, perhaps spending some debt to do so, after all, I want to maintain Captain D's seriousness.

Well, you could just veto it, since it directly targets your character.

[TonyLB]

Well, you can always take the fight back to them:

"Goal:  Jester's lack of seriousness leads directly to the death of thousands of civilians."
"Goal:  Jester says or does something that anyone else finds remotely funny." (Preventative)
"Goal:  Reveal the tragic backstory behind Jester's whimsical exterior."
"Goal:  Jester is committed to an asylum and locked away."

There's all sorts of stuff that has a decent chance of engaging anyone who is interested in more than silliness for silliness's sake.  You just have to be willing to challenge their right to freely make jokes, as directly and forcefully as they're challenging your right to be serious.  But, because of all the human dynamics cited previously, people are often unwilling to challenge the right of others to freely make jokes.