Been reading my new pdf, have quesions...

[Sindyr]

Jon/Glendower...

The biggest thing I would prefer to protect is the integrity of choice of any characters I possess.

So while someone may be able to make something befall my character, they could never make my chatracter do anything or act in any way that I did not approve of.

That's not absolute control, that's just basic ownership.  I get to chose whether or not someone's else's narration of what my character does and how he acts gets veto'ed.

Pretty Simple, and not at all unbalancing, I would think.

The only other piece I guess would be protecting owned characters from dying or otherwise being severely maimed - such as limb loss, power loss, trauma.

I suppose all of the above (except death, and even death) can be cured by narration as well.

What would y'all think of a player that narrated the death of his character only to bring him back in by surprise weeks later?

I think that would be cool.  In other words, the character never really died, he just seemed to die to all around.

[TonyLB]

Or he really died, but comic books have a revolving door to the afterlife.

[Eetu]

Sindyr,

Here's where I think the crux of the argument lies:

I want to achieve one of two things from any rpg I play: ownership of a character or being the sole GM.  Could I have fun playing a game that doesn't have either?  Possibly.  Would I have more fun playing the game that has at least one? In all likelihood, yes.

So, based on your intuition, complete character ownership generates more fun. However, what I think people are telling you (at least what I'm about to tell you) is that complete character ownership ends up not being that big a deal, and you get all sorts of (not readily apparent without actually playing) cool things by sacrificing it. In the following, I'll try to elaborate a bit, and allay fears:

First, getting your ownership overwritten (or any other sort of crap) in free narration: isn't really a problem in actual play.

Why doesn't it cause problems: Because playing Capes you very soon develop a very healthy respect for the power of others, and particularly the balance of power. Free narration is like a mini-world where everyone has nukes. You launch one with malicious intent, the whole game goes down in flames as the cycle of retaliation starts. On the other hand, if someone accidentally steps on someone else's toes, natural negotiation ensues, where either the narration is pulled, or the offended party starts to see cool consequences in the narration actually happening.

What does it give: Lots of room to maneuver to set up interesting scenes and conflicts.

Second, forcing stuff down your character's and your throat via goals and events:

Why doesn't it cause problems: You get a fair chance to fight it. And having lost a fair chance to fight, it turns out, doesn't make you mad, or lessen your emotional engagement with the character. Instead:

What does it give: Actually, losing a fair fight over what your character does creates a cool feeling of "wow, I fought that with tooth and nail but still lost, that's just beautifully cruel". Also, it makes the character surprising, "real", to even yourself. "I guess my character really wasn't like I first envisioned them". It gives theme, meaning, and actually enforces the emotional bond. You fought a hard battle in the trenches alongside your character. That's what makes you closer, not having total command over them.

It's all actually really core Capes. Fight about the things that are important to you, and you will generate emotion, insight, meaning, empathy and engagement.

[Tuxboy]

I want to achieve one of two things from any rpg I play: ownership of a character or being the sole GM.

Lets be realistic...complete ownership of a character in a "real" RPG is an illusion spun by your GM. A good GM will be poke, prod, and lead your character into situations you might never consider, forcing you to make decisions about. Similarly the control of a sole GM is not absolute, a good GM will use the behaviour and reactions of their players to develop plot and conflicts on the fly.

RPGs whether traditional or otherwise are a co-operative medium, they live or die on the group dynamic and the social interaction between the participants. It is just as likely in a traditional RPG that one person's actions will negatively effect your character as it is in Capes, in fact it is considerably more disruptive in a traditional setting as there are no mechanics for you to defend your character with.

I think one of the main points here is that the winning and losing of conflicts in Capes will develop the character, adding layers to the original concept. They may not be the layers you would have chosen, but they encourage roleplaying in a more freeform and developmental manner than a traditional RPG would, in fact in my opinion Capes is closer to the original roots of the roleplaying game than the majority of the traditional games out there.

It pretty much boils down to a simple matter of taste, you either like it or not...

[Valamir]

A> Capes is not a rpg, albeit a lot of fun in its own right, as a competitive storytelling game.  If this is true, it will probably not fill the need I have to play a character or run a game.  It may be a groovy fun time, but I admit to being addicted to actual RPGs, in either the capacity of GM or PC.  Note: I am not saying Capes isn't a fun game, but it may well not fill the same need that playing RPGs fills for me.

I *think* what you are actually asserting is A.

Actually, no.  I categorically deny any definition of RPGs that relegates games like Capes or Universalis to some "not-RPG" status.  Because despite protestations that these are innocent categories made to make the definition more precise, the reality is its intentional ghettoization. 

Rather I firmly believe that "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "

In other words...such definitions of RPGs are based on dogma and founded on nothing more substantial than tradition and limited experience, where the reality of what an RPG is or can be goes far beyond what you currently expect.

That doesn't make them less of an RPG, that just means your current limited definition is inadequate to capture them.

C> Capes can, as written, with no changes fulfill the needs that either being a GM or being a PC serves when I play RPGs.

If what you are asserting is C however, then I am not sure how that jives with the massively negative reaction I have to neither being allowed to own a PC nor being allowed to be the sole director.  I can give up one of those two goals - Capes as written seems to ask me to give up both?

Permit me to be a bit more blunt in my assertion than, for clarity of meaning.

I'm suggesting the possibility that your "massively negative reaction" is just smoke.  An irrational fear based on being faced with something that rocks your fundamental presumption about what an RPG is supposed to look like...much like my reaction the first time someone put pineapple on my pizza.

That you're looking to make rules modifications to protect yourself from a bogeyman that doesn't really exist because you haven't yet been able to imagine how you could find this other way fun.  So you are focused on makeing this "other way" look more like your "comfortable way".

I'm suggesting you might try turning your back on that "comfortable way" for a while and embracing the "other way" with full on eagerness and excitement.  I'm suggesting this because I've encountered literally TONS of people who say the exact same things you have about what you think you enjoy most about roleplaying (really to the point where I wonder who wrote the original text book that keeps getting religiously parroted ad nauseum) but in the end discovered they were actually mistaken...and now have discovered other ways to roleplay that they enjoy just as much (and occasionally more) than what they'd been used to before.


So what I'm asserting then is D:

D:  Hey I just discovered a whole new world of roleplaying that doesn't look anything like what I usually call roleplaying but which I can now not only see is TOTALLY roleplaying but which is way more fun than I ever thought it could be.  I still like to play RPGs like the ones I'm most used to, but now I'm really eager to run out and try all of these other RPGs that are radically different to see what other fantastically fun ways of roleplaying I've been missing all these years.

That's the goal we have for everyone who comes to the Forge...this is an indie-game advocacy site after all.  But you're never going to get there by just reading about the games and philosophizing about them on line.  You've got to actually roll up your sleeves and dive into play (honestly and open-mindedly) to see if its true or not.

So its not a question of "Maybe I would have a blast playing Capes that way.  But I would still have to find an RPG also to fill one of my two needs above.
"...its a question of "Maybe I would have a blast playing Capes that way, and I might enjoy it way more than the way I've always played before".  Or you may not...but I recommend going into it being open to that possibility or else you're really just sabotaging yourself.

[Sindyr]

I can say that since as written Capes seems to be about highly competitive GMing - ie, GvG, I am dubious that this completely different style of game would answer my needs to play or GM in with *some* (not all) of the conventional trappings (like limited PC protection).  I am however not closed to the idea.

As I have said before, I do not currently have a gaming group.  Capes is motivating me to take steps to rectify that.  Once I do, I plan to:

Run it intensively as written the way Tony wants me to, and really get a visceral feel of the play experience a la TLB.  I also play as a player to pull out all the stops and use everything I can to test the limits of the system, to see how far it can go before it breaks - that is, becomes either an unpleasant experience to me or becomes and experience which, however pleasant, is not the kind of fun I am looking for.  I will scour and re scour these forums for all the devious and "nasty" strategies I can use against my fellow player to completely play Capes as well as I can - and I will be informing my fellow players how I am doing this, so that they use the same actions against me so that I can see what a game where one is both the attacker and the attacked feels like.

I am guessing this will take around 2-4 intense 4-5 hour sessions (one a week).  During this period, I will be creating characters and stories that I will not feel devastated if they are defeated, abused, etc... for self protection as I travel rapidly through this new unknown territory.

Then I will examine the results of this experiment, and note things that do not seem to be working for me (should anything seem that way) and come up with house rules to address these issues.  I will have to ask myself, is being a GM in a GvG environment fulfilling my rpg needs?  Is "playing" a PC under the Capes rules fulfilling my rpg needs?  Is Capes as a whole fulfilling my rpg needs? If the answer to those questions is no, then I will need the fruits of my discussions here to figure out how to fix this so that at least one of those questions becomes a "yes".

Ultimately, one of three things is true.  Vis-a-vis my personal rpg needs, either Capes as it stands will be fine as is, or Capes with a few mods will do the trick, or Capes qua Capes is fundamentally unable to serve me in this fashion.

I have seen so much good in Capes that I tend to strongly believe that the third option is not true.  What I don't know (although I have my guesses) is which of the first two will turn out to be the case.

And of course, should it turn out to be the middle one (Capes with a few mods will do the trick) the next round of investigations becomes about answering what mods would be the minimum to make it work for me.

So I am just covering all my bases.  If I start out suggesting that perhaps I will need to mod Capes to make it work for me, know that I am NOT closed to the possibility that Capes as is will be fine for me - in fact I plan to give that a good shot.

And if I spend a lot of time here discussing what the effect of different mods would be, it does not mean that I won't still try Capes un modded, but just that I want to pre-figure possible mods so that they are ready for implementation if and when they are needed.

Some people have concluded that I am anti Capes - and sure, on the very surface perhaps that's the first impression one gets.

But scratch the surface and you will see someone very committed to investigating and trying out Capes, vanilla, modded, everything.  Someone who passionately wants to see Capes work for him, in some form or another.  Someone who keeps at it on these boards even when certain posters have begun to make him feel unwelcome, and who just takes it in stride, shrugs, and gets back to business.  Someone who, instead of staying with Capes light, bought both the download *and* the book.

This doesn't sound like a person who is anti Capes to me.

Thanks to you and all the others who continue the conversation.  I appreciate your intent, and am willing to try most anything rpg related at least once, thoroughly.

[Sindyr]

Sindyr,

Here's where I think the crux of the argument lies:

I want to achieve one of two things from any rpg I play: ownership of a character or being the sole GM.  Could I have fun playing a game that doesn't have either?  Possibly.  Would I have more fun playing the game that has at least one? In all likelihood, yes.

So, based on your intuition, complete character ownership generates more fun. However, what I think people are telling you (at least what I'm about to tell you) is that complete character ownership ends up not being that big a deal, and you get all sorts of (not readily apparent without actually playing) cool things by sacrificing it. In the following, I'll try to elaborate a bit, and allay fears:

First, getting your ownership overwritten (or any other sort of crap) in free narration: isn't really a problem in actual play.

Why doesn't it cause problems: Because playing Capes you very soon develop a very healthy respect for the power of others, and particularly the balance of power. Free narration is like a mini-world where everyone has nukes. You launch one with malicious intent, the whole game goes down in flames as the cycle of retaliation starts. On the other hand, if someone accidentally steps on someone else's toes, natural negotiation ensues, where either the narration is pulled, or the offended party starts to see cool consequences in the narration actually happening.

What does it give: Lots of room to maneuver to set up interesting scenes and conflicts.

Maybe this is a key limiter and equalizer in Capes.

Everyone has nukes.

If another player wants to create and achieve Goals that abuse my character, and I feel that this abuse is not good story material, I can always bring out the nukes and create increasing defcon states to back up how serious I am.

What this forces the other player to do, if he wasn't already, is involve my character in ways I find appropriate to his continuing story - to throw down Goals that I *want* my character engaged in.

Goals I don't want my character to even engage in at all:
Goal: Captain Good...
...is defeated by a little girl who has no special significance.
...decides of his own free will to turn evil.
...despite being a paragon of grace, becomes foolishly clumsy, again for no good reason.
...switches sexual orientation
...witnesses a horrific violation of an innocent, and cannot prevent it.
...acts cruelly (or stupidly, or something other out of character way) for no good reason.

So if I pull out the nuke, I can cause the other player to need to modify his Goals, perhaps in the following ways:
Goal: Captain Good...
...is defeated by a little girl who seems to have no special significance.
...turns evil while being mentally dominated by the Dominator. (Defeating this goal means that Capt Good shrugs off Dominator's powers)
...despite being a paragon of grace, becomes foolishly clumsy, because he has been secretly drugged
...switches sexual orientation again, the Dominator's work
...witnesses a simple, quick crime, and cannot prevent it.
...acts cruelly towards a friend because he knows his enemy is watching to decide who to kidnap

Is that what you had in mind?

My only reservation is, if all the other players "gang up" in wanting to be entertained by abusing my character, they will not be happy with repeated threats of nukage to make them stop - they will begin to get resentful that I am standing in the way of their entertainment at my expense.

Sort of like if someone had stood up for the romans condemned in the amphitheatre, the howling crowd would not have been happy to have its lurid fun curtailed.

But perhaps I just nuke anyways, and if anyone has a problem with my character be unavailable for humiliation and abuse, screw 'em?

[Hans]

I am guessing this will take around 2-4 intense 4-5 hour sessions (one a week).  During this period, I will be creating characters and stories that I will not feel devastated if they are defeated, abused, etc... for self protection as I travel rapidly through this new unknown territory.

For reference, it took me three sessions of 4-5 hours to get to the point where I wasn't constantly thinking about the rules, and could loosen up a bit.  After five sessions, I felt like I had really internalized the rules, and no longer had to ask questions like "Is this legal under the rules?" or "What was that rule again?" but instead could ask questions like "What would be cool to have happen right now, and how can I get there?"  However, if I had had the SAME group of players every session (instead of having to teach a new group almost every time) I might have internalized the rules even faster.

[Eetu]

Is that what you had in mind?

Something like that. Though, for understanding the not apparent benefits of doing it this way, the following may work better:

Goal: Captain Good...
...is defeated by a little girl who has no special significance. Consequence: Captain Good has a crisis of faith in his abilities. Maybe someone else was involved behind the scenes intent on just that?
...decides of his own free will to turn evil. Consequence: he has to have some reasons for it. What are they? Is it just temporary, is it necessary for some as-yet-untold desperate personal cause? Maybe Captain Good just wasn't as good as you thought him to be?
...despite being a paragon of grace, becomes foolishly clumsy, again for no good reason. Consequence: Bah, there's always some reason. If nothing else, maybe he isn't always a paragon of grace? For my mind, dented heroes beat squeeky clean heroes in interestingness. Particularly if I didn't at first know they had faults.
...switches sexual orientation Consequence: Whoa! I never would have thought he would! Now I gotta find out why..

etc, these being given as ways the aggressor might possibly make you see the cool consequence possible. And if they can't, they either relent or trust in their vision more than yours, and what eventually comes out either vindicates them or increases group tension.

My only reservation is, if all the other players "gang up" in wanting to be entertained by abusing my character, they will not be happy with repeated threats of nukage to make them stop - they will begin to get resentful that I am standing in the way of their entertainment at my expense.

But perhaps I just nuke anyways, and if anyone has a problem with my character be unavailable for humiliation and abuse, screw 'em?

Capes doesn't really work well in groups that don't respect each player a decent amount. I don't think any RPG will work for a player everone else molests on the player level. Now, if they just molest a character and the player is grooving it, that's completely different, and something Capes does better than most games, particularly because it sometimes forces you to let go of being an absolute commander of your character.

[Sindyr]

Well, whatever it takes for certainty. :)

Another thought that just occurred to me:  Perhaps a limiting factor for me is that a story can be well written, complex, and compelling, and I can still utterly fail to enjoy it at all.

Stories for me are escapism - escape from a world where it usually seems that the bad guys are just as likely as the good guys to succeed.

Therefor, when I enjoy fiction, be it movies, tv, books, or gaming, there must be a bias toward the virtuous and the good.  I don't like  tragedy, despair, bleakness.  I don't like gritty sin city style stuff.  I like poetic justice, hope, empathy, compassion, moral evolution, and karma. Positive progress and ascension, not static running in place!

So perhaps while some players of Capes are fulfilled by creating any complex and interesting story, I would actually experience mental anguish at some stories, and boredom at others.

Does this mean Capes is not for me because it equally values any kind of story?  Or do I simply nuke or create rule mods to give protection so that the stories do not become ones that I loathe?

It will be intersting to see how this turns out.

[Sindyr]

Goal: Captain Good...
...is defeated by a little girl who has no special significance. Consequence: Captain Good has a crisis of faith in his abilities. Maybe someone else was involved behind the scenes intent on just that?
...decides of his own free will to turn evil. Consequence: he has to have some reasons for it. What are they? Is it just temporary, is it necessary for some as-yet-untold desperate personal cause? Maybe Captain Good just wasn't as good as you thought him to be?
...despite being a paragon of grace, becomes foolishly clumsy, again for no good reason. Consequence: Bah, there's always some reason. If nothing else, maybe he isn't always a paragon of grace? For my mind, dented heroes beat squeaky clean heroes in interestingness. Particularly if I didn't at first know they had faults.
...switches sexual orientation Consequence: Whoa! I never would have thought he would! Now I gotta find out why..

etc, these being given as ways the aggressor might possibly make you see the cool consequence possible. And if they can't, they either relent or trust in their vision more than yours, and what eventually comes out either vindicates them or increases group tension.

I guess to alleviate my worries, I am saying that if the aggressor (as you call him) comes up with a Goal like on of the above, it would go along way to reducing my nukage if in the Goal itself was the reason for the abberant actions or storylines, even if none of the characters know it.

If someone is going to try to make my Captain Good act like a buffoon and klutz, they need to tell me *why* in story terms this is happening before I will sign off on it.  Leaving the "why" of it unspecified will make me extremely uncomfortable, and lead to my nukage.

To continue here are your examples and how I would react at the gaming table:
Goal: Captain Good...

...is defeated by a little girl who has no special significance. Consequence: Captain Good has a crisis of faith in his abilities. Maybe someone else was involved behind the scenes intent on just that?
>Reaction: Eetu - *I*, the player, need to know how and why this could happen, and that has to be written as part of the Goal, for future reference.  It alright for my character to not know why or what's going on, but I as a fellow writer on this story need the info.  At the very least, I would require the word "seems" somewhere in there. "seems to be defeated" or "seems to have no special significance."

...decides of his own free will to turn evil. Consequence: he has to have some reasons for it. What are they? Is it just temporary, is it necessary for some as-yet-untold desperate personal cause? Maybe Captain Good just wasn't as good as you thought him to be?
>Reaction: Eetu - I take Captain Good storyline personally.  To protect that storyline, I the writer most invested in that character need to have some idea of what is behind this.  As Captain Good's player, I can tell you that Captain good not being as good as I thought him to be would be completely unacceptable.  I refuse to permit or engage in any storyline that even posits as a possibility that Captain Good would become evil in and of his own accord.  I am not even willing to have a Goal conflict battle with you on this subject, I am just flatly unwilling to entertain it.  Turn your own hero evil if you like - I may even partake of *that* conflict in an effort to keep your hero good - but don't threaten to turn the storyline of my character into something completely unacceptable.
Feel free, however, to have the main villain try to coerce and cajole him into becoming evil.  As long as it can never really happen.


...despite being a paragon of grace, becomes foolishly clumsy, again for no good reason. Consequence: Bah, there's always some reason. If nothing else, maybe he isn't always a paragon of grace? For my mind, dented heroes beat squeeky clean heroes in interestingness. Particularly if I didn't at first know they had faults.
>Reaction: Eetu - there's gotta be some reason, unless you are just tweaking my character to have fun attacking me personal in front of others - what is it?  Are you challenging my concept for my character?  Then negotiate with me why you think I should be open to changing it, and accept it if I do not wish to do so. Perhaps being a paragon of grace is a core concept for me.  Perhaps not. Let's talk.

...switches sexual orientation Consequence: Whoa! I never would have thought he would! Now I gotta find out why..
>Reaction: Eetu - I don't want to find out why later - I want to find out before the Goal hits the table, because if I do not approve, if I would become personally distressed at this turn of my character's storyline, then it is not worth it.  Perhaps you could choose some external reason for this apprent change - such as our favorite villain, the dominator - or because due to a transporter malfunction, Captain Good is changing from a he to a she!  You would still have to check in with me about changing the gender of my character, but I might be more open to that than to changing from heterosexual to homosexual.

Eetu - some good thoughts, I hope that I have communicated well the plusses and minuses I find in your approach.  Thank you for the feedback.

[Eetu]

.... but but, actually leaving the reason unspecified gives YOU (also the other players) more room and leverage to make the reason interesting and good, actually focus the game on it, build up on a resolution, and make the reason something is happening the actual interesting thing, not just that it happened.

If you force a negotiation and decision on the spot of the act, you close all those tantalizing doors, and the act suddenly loses the depth that was possible for it. Not to speak of the fact that being forced to give an explanation on the spot often results in the most obvious, easy to think of, and therefore flat explanation being used.

Aside from that, I think we've come to another important point, that I've sort of been skirting around previously, because I didn't think it actually was central to what we were discussing before: to fully enjoy Capes, you have to change perspective with regards to your character. You can, and will still be really emotionally engaged with them, but you shouldn't think of them as /you/, you shouldn't equate yourself with your character. The character is not your avatar or agent in the imagined world, but a separate entity from yourself, not totally under your control.

For me personally, starting to play with Forge games, that was quite a heavy hit to take at first. And I've seen games skirt real damage when people don't realize it and take things that happen to their characters personally.

And yes, that's a real fork in the road, where you really lose something if you choose to take it, and maybe you don't want to do it always. But, also, as I've already tried to tell, going along with that change of viewpoint does also open up whole new, exciting vistas of roleplaying.

[Glendower]

So perhaps while some players of Capes are fulfilled by creating any complex and interesting story, I would actually experience mental anguish at some stories, and boredom at others.

That happens no matter what game you play.  The people you play with are the most important part of the game.  They should be a) your friends, b) available and willing to play, and c) aware of your boundaries and what you want to do and don't want to do.  If they don't have these three pieces, then yeah, mental anguish/boredom ahoy. 

Though System does Matter (thank you Forge speak) so to the people.  In my opinion, people matter more.

[drnuncheon]

My only reservation is, if all the other players "gang up" in wanting to be entertained by abusing my character, they will not be happy with repeated threats of nukage to make them stop - they will begin to get resentful that I am standing in the way of their entertainment at my expense.

This is where the "nuke" comes out - clearly you want something different out of the game than they do, so the best thing to do is to seek it elsewhere.

I understand a lot of your nervousness, because I've been in the same place.  Sometimes with a character there are things you want to have challenged and changed, and things you don't (because changing them would mean changing the things you find fun about playing the character.)  Whenever you play a character you have to worry about the GM changing the fun things instead of the things you want to have challenged.

Here's the thing: Capes is not a magic bullet to fix that.  It may help, because everyone has equal power (instead of the GM/player power imbalance in traditional games) but the only real cure is communication.  You have to make sure everyone in your group knows what the others are after and is willing to give that to them.  And maybe that means that the first few times you play with a certain group, you choose your characters and situations more carefully - just like there's stuff you wouldn't tell someone on a first date.

[Sindyr]

I do take your points, but they also sometimes worry me.

I mean, given what you said:

The character is not your avatar or agent in the imagined world

this means that (I imagine) I will not be investing emotionally in that character - because its not safe.  But if I emotionally disconnect from each and every character, what left to enjoy?

The only thing left I guess would be connecting with the story itself - but that is also an unsafe proposition because other people's footprints will be all over them...

I worry, I'll admit.  But maybe when I try this, it will be as good and as safe and fulfilling as many have said it will be.  I certainly hope so.

One thing I really do like about what you said is that by leaving the explanation open, more interesting and still safe and acceptable explanations can come forth later instead of a prenegotiated one before it even occurs. I get that.

If there was only some way to ensure that, to make it safe to trust one's fellow player, especially since the game's very nature encourages competition.  If it gets no holds barred, who's to say that leaving the explanation till later won't be used against one?  Now that would be a circumstance I don't ever care to experience - it would make me want to throw something a lot heavier than popcorn.

Can you see where I am coming from?

I guess the question is how do you find safety in such a competitive game without at least some rules to set some limits on what we can do to each other?  Reminds me of the naive conservatives that push for a free market free of all limitations and oversight, and then they wonder how enron or microsoft happens.

How can you make the game safe enough, either in terms of character storyline or in terms of overall storyline, to make it seem worth invest so heavily emotionally speaking in it?  What assurances can we give the prospective player that the storyline that emerges won't cause anguish as suddenly his recreation that he uses to escape from reality becomes an attack just as bad as he experiences in real life and on the news, but even more vicious?

For people to have fun they need to feel *some* element of safety.  They need to feel that either certain actions cannot be done because the rules don't allow it or that they have a way even if outnumbered to protect their most vulnerable places. 

Because being in a game where I feel traumatized is not my idea of fun.

Now, maybe the answer as someone said above is nukes.  Maybe I can afford to allow the storyline to cross into dangerous territory if I make plain that I will unilaterally nuke and devastate anyone and everything that goes too far or does not permit to bring it back in the near future.

But I sure would like not to have to socially threaten and coerce my fellow gamers, because that's how bad things get started, like physical assault - either them on me or vice versa.  All it takes is two people neither of which are willing to back down for infinite escalation to occur.

Which makes me think, isn't it essentially stupid to *not* have rules setting limits within the game to make sure it never goes that far?

When people get emotionally invested in SIS, and a red flag issue comes up, such as one player wanting the City to be destroyed and another player who cannot bear that, the Capes rules be damned, it quite possibly or even likely that one or both sides simply cannot mentally and emotionally permit such an event to pass, regardless of story tokens, abilities, or whatnot.

All I am trying to do is address that piece of the complexity of shared storytelling.  Either their is a safety net, or there may be great danger, not just within the story, but between the actual players as relationships get damaged and real interpersonal conflict spirals out of control.

In a perfect world, this would not be an issue.  Your fellow players and you could rationally work things out.

In the real world, things can take an unexpected turn for the unpleasant, and perfectly amicable people can begin to hate each other.

All potentially because they were given insufficient protection of their needs, and were simply and naively asked to work it out amidst projectile popcorn.

It's a little more complex than that.