[Capes] Capes is like pizza

[gsoylent]

I've seen the reverse happen to; comedy games in which the tone has come right down becasue someone has just had gone too far or  maybe the humour has turned to pathos. So basically it cuts both ways.

In my experience people crack jokes not just to relieve tension, but its a fun, healthly and creative endevor which has an immediate payoff.

[Vaxalon]

Those have a good chance of shifting someone who's made the choice to go the silly route lightly, but for someone who insists on a silly tone, they can take a page from Carlin and keep the comic tone going. 

Thousands of civilians dying?  Cosby's Noah's Ark routine.

Noone gets his joke?  Johnny Carson made his comedy career out of getting big laughs out of getting no laughs.

Tragic backstory?  Homey the Clown.

Locked away in an asylum?  Animaniacs.

In short, EVERYTHING is funny, if you're sharp enough and on the ball. 

[Vaxalon]

By "those" I mean the tactics Tony proposed on the previous page.

::sigh:: Edit, we miss you...

[neelk]

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.

Yeah, I agree, but can you explain how you do it? I know exactly one trick, which I've already posted -- I'd be really interested in learning more.

[Andrew Morris]

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."

Wow...that's...wow. Tony, you're evil! In a good way, of course.

In short, EVERYTHING is funny, if you're sharp enough and on the ball. 

Or, conversely, everything is tragic, if you're shap enough and on the ball. More likely, any tone can be supported. Just like always in Capes, it's about figuring out what's important to the other players, and attacking it mercilessly.

[Vaxalon]

Any tone can be supported if the players agree to it, tacitly or overtly.  My point is that you can't use the Capes rules to MAKE someone take a different tone, any more than you can make them do ANYTHING in Capes.

[Andrew Morris]

Well, sure. No rules ever make anyone do anything, even if the "rules" in question are laws. But the Capes rules sure make you fight for it, if it's important to you, or abondon it right fast, if it's not.

[Vaxalon]

In terms of tone, I'm not sure you're right, but I'd have to actually play a game where that was true.

How can you make me fight to maintain a comic tone, if I'm sharp and on the ball, in Capes?

[Andrew Cooper]

Yes, but I'm not sure you can make anyone do anything in any game.  I could play DitV as a comedy despite your best efforts to make it serious.  I could do this with any game I can think of if I don't mind being a thoughtless ass.  The point is that some games have a tone built into them and by agreeing to play you agree implicitly to go along with that.  Other games, Capes included, don't have a built in tone or have a set of possibilities.  With these games you need to work out what kind of game you're looking for up front or have some method for negotiation.  Capes has the Comics Code which lists out things you cannot do.  In Universalis you use tokens to negiotiate up front the kind of game you are playing.  In something like GURPS, you simply pick a genre and setting and discuss it among the other players.

If one player's vision of the game is so different from the rest of the group that it is disruptive, you just don't play that particular game with them.  Just like any other game.

[Andrew Morris]

Solid answer, Andrew.

Fred, being "sharp and on the ball" to subvert attempts to insert drama is one way of fighting to defend a comic tone.

[TonyLB]

Andrew:  Do you have some sense of what was driving people to inject humor?  People have put forth a lot of hypotheticals about why it happens generally, but you're the guy with Actual Play under your belt.

[Andrew Morris]

Hmm. One player started off with the humor right away, and that was (I believe) because that was how she interpreted the game. The second saw this and jumped in on it because she thought it looked like fun. The third and fourth players just seemed to go along with the flow. Again, being the "fourth" player, this is just my interpretation.

The comment that humor makes you less vulnerable sounds pretty reasonable to me. It was a bunch of people I knew, but who didn't all know each other, so they might not have been comfortable putting themselves out there emotionally. One of the players actually didn't start playing with the rest of the group, instead observing until she felt comfortable jumping in.

[Josh Roby]

Hmm. One player started off with the humor right away, and that was (I believe) because that was how she interpreted the game.

The one-quarter of the Capes Lite game I played was very light and comedic in much the same way.  I think to a lot of 'seasoned' roleplayers, any game that forwards an 'anything goes!' mechanic sort of connotes humor.  Lots of 'serious' roleplaying has focused on setting out what you can't do (can't break character, can't bring in OOC knowledge to IC decisions, can't break the rules) that a game that does not have those restrictions very well may be mistaken as not having (or being capable of) a serious tone.