Non-Person Characters and You

[Zamiel]

Has anyone put together an extended example of the use of non-player characters in Capes? Particularly, things like Locations and Situations.

(In the back of my twisted little mind, I imagine a three-player game, all of which pick an NPC ... and the ensuing madness. Rather a clever setup for an early scene, though; a great way to build up Debt.)

[Andrew Cooper]

Actually, I've chosen Non Person Characters in the starting scene before and the problem is that you build up no debt at all since they don't have Drives nor Powers.  You can't ever split a die because you don't have Debt to do the splitting.  If the scene becomes too protracted, you start running out of Abilities to use to roll up dice.  After doing this, I decided that the best use of a Non Person Character is to play them as a second character in a scene.

[TonyLB]

Another strategy-ish point:  Non-person characters are better at farming story tokens than at winning conflicts (the whole "no-debt" thing Andrew mentioned).  So if you're in your first scene, and nobody has any debt yet, that's a pretty bad time to invest resources in playing a non-person character.  By the time anyone has built up a stake that you can try to farm you're already so far into the scene that you're running low on abilities.

By contrast, if Spiderman is carrying ten debt (way overdrawn) in Hope, his connection to the common man, then "Public Opinion" becomes a perfect character to play.  You can structure the whole scene with conflicts like "Somebody recognizes that Spiderman is saving lives, not endangering them" and "Police arrest Spider-man" and "Event: Tomorrow's Daily Bugle headline."  Remember:  dropping those conflicts may cost you your action, but it doesn't expend any of your check-off abilities!

Does that help?

[Hans]

All I know is I have a little NPC waiting in my folder called "Psychedelic Rock Fesitval" that I am just dying to try sometime:

Free Event: The crowd goes wild!

Skill:
Angry Bouncers 1
Tripping concert goers 2
Mud 3
Infectious dancing 4

Styles
Groovy Soul 2
Mystical Sitar 1
Folksy Protest 3
Electric Blues 4

Rock on!

[TonyLB]

"Give it up, Professor Authority!  Your obedience rays are no match for the groovy souls of these trippy concert goers!"

[Hans]

"Give it up, Professor Authority!  Your obedience rays are no match for the groovy souls of these trippy concert goers!"

Don't let the Man make you square!  Its all about the love, baby, and love is meant to be free!