Multiple Characters

[dunlaing]

So, two friends and I decided to sit down and play Capes. None of us had ever played it before. I have the full version, but my friend Jim suggested we use the starting scenario from Capes Lite because he thought it was an excellent way to introduce the game (and it is: kudos).

Capes Lite said that if you bring in another Character, then you get one action per character each Page. Is that correct for the full version as well? Because I wasn't able to find it in the full game's rules. If so, do you do all of your characters at once or do you do one character, then wait your turn again before doing the second?

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We had a good time and, although there were some issues with expectations (Jim was hoping for a more serious play session while Nate and I hammed it up a bit much), we all liked it and thought it could be more fun if we tried it again (which we will).

[Andrew Morris]

Yep, you get one action per character. I've always taken them on my turn, but I'm not 100 percent sure that is accurate.

We had a good time and, although there were some issues with expectations (Jim was hoping for a more serious play session while Nate and I hammed it up a bit much), we all liked it and thought it could be more fun if we tried it again (which we will).

I had much the same experience playing Capes for the first time with my group.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Yes, one action per character; yes, you take all your character's actions in a row on your turn (rather than going round the table again and again).

One crucial thing, though: No matter how many characters you have paid for, you still get only one Reaction to any given roll of the die.

E.g. I have one character, you have two, the conflict on the table is "Goal: I'm cooler than you," the blue die and the red die are both 1. My one character uses an ability, I roll up the 1, I get a 5, I'm happy; you React with one of your characters using a Level 5 ability, you roll the 5 down to a 2, I'm sad; I React, I re-roll, the 2 goes up to a 4 -- and now you can't react, even though you have another character, because it's one reaction per player no matter what.

This has a big impact on tactics and makes fleets of multiple characters less impressive than they'd seem.

P.S.: Definitely play again. What's more, if you haven't lost all the records of Debt and Story Tokens and Inspirations from last time, pick up from where you left off with the same game. (Hey, you can always introduce all-new characters if you want, right?). That's because the game becomes much, much richer once each player has a bunch of Debt and Story Tokens and Inspirations to play around with. In the longrunning campaign Eric "the Czech" Sedlacek and I play in with Tony (yes, Tony Lower-Basch), it took several sessions before the system hit high gear. Capes isn't D&D where you have to play every week for a year to get to the cool levels, but it definitely does coolify over time. All those Actual Play posts of "well, we sat down and made up some superheroes and villains and did weird stuff?" That's just the ground floor.

[TonyLB]

I'll second Sydney on "play a second session with the same situation."  Once you have those characters and (particularly) know where they have Debt they need to spend, you can dig into Chapter 8 of the book and do some prep-work between sessions to make the game better and (if nobody else prepares anything) to earn yourself a dominating majority of the game resources.

[dunlaing]

Hmm, I'm not sure that's a great idea. I mean, my character (Kid Sidekick) was a character that I've wanted to play for a long time, but I got the feeling that Nate and Jim just clicked two click-n-locks together without thinking about it too much. Plus the situation went from goofy to really goofy and Jim has stated that he wants the game to be significantly less goofy. I do want to play it for multiple sessions, I'm just not sure that this scenario is a good one to continue.

(Kid Sidekick used the Mimic for the left side of his click-n-lock and Scrappy Kid for the right side. He uses the mimic abilities to give himself weaker versions of the powers of one of the other heroes so he can be that hero's sidekick, at which point he changes his name (e.g., when he was mimicking Archon, he became Kid Archon). It was fun playing him because putting the goal "Kid Sidekick impresses the other heroes" out there really brought his central issue out into play strongly...particularly because Jim felt as strongly about Kid Sidekick not impressing his character(s) as I felt about Kid Sidekick impressing them.)

[Sydney Freedberg]

So the other two guys create new primary characters. Treat the first-session silliness as a "pilot episode" and forget everything about it except the resources.