Capes game scheduled!!

[Andrew Cooper]

I should have *something* prepared to jump start the process...

Why?  I'm not saying you can't but it isn't necessary either.  In fact, until you see what kinds of characters the other players make, it'll be hard to plan anything to jumpstart the process.  This isn't Champions or Mutants and Masterminds, where you create a situation or plot and then try to hook the characters into it.  If you plan to let the other players make characters there, then just wait and see what they make and then make something guaranteed to really make them say, "That guy really sucks.  Let's pummel him."

The other option is to do what I've done once here at home and Tony did at GenCon.  He had a whole mess of related premade characters and we chose characters from that stack.  This is difficult but can be effective when teaching the game.  The problem is you have to make every character uber cool so that someone goes, "I've GOT to play that guy!"  Tony's Hyperion (I think that's her name) who had the collective consciousness of a whole race inside her head, is a good example of this kind of character to me.  The fact that the voices of the 30 elders of that race were another character that someone else could play added a lot of coolness to the mix also.

[Sindyr]

I should have *something* prepared to jump start the process...

Why?  I'm not saying you can't but it isn't necessary either.  In fact, until you see what kinds of characters the other players make, it'll be hard to plan anything to jumpstart the process.  This isn't Champions or Mutants and Masterminds, where you create a situation or plot and then try to hook the characters into it.  If you plan to let the other players make characters there, then just wait and see what they make and then make something guaranteed to really make them say, "That guy really sucks.  Let's pummel him."

My only fear is that being a relative newb myself (not having yet *played* the game but having discussed it a lot) I worry that if I do not prepare we may wind up sitting around a table with no one instigating any action or play, and that things will stall.

Maybe I will precreate some generic villainy stuff that can be plugged into most any situation, figure out how I will farme the first scene, and roll with it from there...

[Sindyr]

Three days and counting - and I've got my Koosh balls. ;)

Now to cut out all those paper click and locks...

[Tuxboy]

So Sindyr, how did it go?

[Sindyr]

OK, (Deep breath...)

While not bad per se, it seemed unsatisfying to all of us 5 players.  We all had fun, but each person seemed to feel something was lacking...

I have been trying to put my finger on it (which is why I haven't posted) and have not yet really been able to do that, so I will post instead some of my vague impressions, scattershot, and hope a complete picture emerges.

First, the good: there were moments of crazy fun.  One guy played a homeless guy named Mitch the Twitch, and we had a lot of fun with him.

We ran two scenes.  The first started in an (mostly) abandoned warehouse with humming equipment doing something.  I threw down an Event of "The machines overload and explode"

The characters were:
Mitch the Twitch (Homeless mortal)
Mr Jones (a spook mortal)
Mr. Machismo (a super villain)
Marduk (another villain)
CyberJohnny (a superhero)

This was one long ass scene as we tried out the game for the first time.  The scene took around 2.5 hours.  Many people threw down goals, like Mitch escapes!, Mitch find a place to stay, Marduk gets the mind control device, CyberJohnny gets and destroys the Mind Control Device, etc.

As we ran through this scene, different questions and actions brought up different rules: alliance, claims, debt, story tokens.

The 2 villains found that staking and splitting debt seemed to be not as useful.  We tried that, but had a couple of unlucky rolls - which leads me to my first comment.

Unlucky rolls seem to have far too significant effect.

If both villains try to roll up a dice and suck out, and the other side has already been claimed, then that's it, baby.
Perhaps a house rule that no conflict can be claimed for its first two pages.

Even worse are when someone rolls a six - and certain people were having some luck there. It got frustrating.

We villains staked a lot of debt on one particular conflict and were defeated, getting back double our debt and becoming WAY overdrawn.

However at the end of the scene we had the basics of capes mostly down.

One thing everyone complained of right away is with people dropping conflicts every so often, the scene went on and on and on, with no end in sight.  Everyone agreed that a rule saying that on page four not only Events could be vetoed but also Goals.  This way, if people did not want the scene to drag on, they could just veto all additional conflicts.

The second scene was in an alleyway.  Everyone changed characters.  This time the major players were:
Lucky Charm - a super hero
An Evil space supervillain trying to destroy city hall
another gadget hero played by a different guy who spent a story token to also bring in his mortal sidekick
a catwoman like mimic supervillain
another mimic supervillain

This scene progressed more quickly, about an hour, during which city hall got destroyed (but everyone evacuated in time, no loss of life) and the spaceship was prevented from beaming up the Malignite Ore under the City Hall.

During this scene, I wrote up a goal: Lucky Charm saves "Catwoman-mimic" from embarrassing herself - thinking that this would involve the player of that character.  I rolled a few times, and got me a six on my side of the conflict.  Then I waited, planning to let her have the victory without a fight once she staked and split.  But she never did, although others were doing that with other goals on the table.  So I shrugged, claimed my side, and walked away with a decent inspiration - but my winning this goal seemed to upset the player, despite my initial hands off period.

We also had an issue that within the scene there seemed to be 2 disparate scenes going on - one in the initial alleyway, and one over and near city hall.  Perhaps when the player put out the goal "So-and-so destroys City Hall" I should have told him that City Hall was not the scene.  What wound up happening is that people got more and more creative and the logic got more and more tenuous how their characters abilities could be used on goals on the table that weren't really physically close to them.

Also, it was noted that everyone was using the thinnest of excuses in finding ways to use the abilities we had left - trying to find some way to apply "surveillance" for example to escape a headlock.  Several times people played the ability and had to be prodded into adding any narration at all.

Likewise some players narrated stuff, but did not take any actions on their turn, such as writing conflicts or using abilities - but this made sense as several of them did not have any abilities left, especially in the first scene.

I should add that all but one were experienced GMs in their own right.

A few of them found the Capes rules cumbersome and overly complex - I did not have that issue.  We all agreed however that the whole affair, the storyline that emerged in both scenes seemed wild, unpredictable, and chaotic.  Also, the two scenes did not seem to have anything in common - like two completely separate comic books.

Oh, we did decide to employ inspiration combining under the rule that 2 insps combine into 1 insps 1 higher than the highest Insp used - max of level 5.  A lot of people had level 1 Insps and they seemed useless.  In any case, this house rule did not seem to cause any problems.

I think (in addition, or perhaps, complementary, to the above) there was also a problem about trying to find one's purpose.  Capes is not about playing a character, and everyone got that.  But several people approached Capes from a GMing point of view, and found that the unstoppable chaos destroyed that idea - I could see in their eyes the thought that if this was a traditional rpg that the GM, as the sole ultimate power, could just wade in and make things right.

So that was that.  One player had a bad time and she probably won't play again, one player said he absolutely would (and so would I) and the other two seemed up for it but with some hesitancy in their voice.

Having played a game of this I think I have internalized 80% of the rules at this point, and hopefully the next session would go better, but it would be hard to say.  I think I am up for trying it again, if I can get another session planned and people committed.

But I have to say that my first exposure of the actual play left me somewhat disappointed.

Now before everyone jumps on me and says I did it wrong, let me say:

Maybe I did it wrong.  Maybe this was the "burn in" and things will get better.

But I do want to raise another possibility.  Maybe Capes is NOT an rpg per se.  Maybe its really a strategic competitive resource game (fighting for control of Conflicts and/or amassing story tokens) with a dressing or veneer of rpg flavor.  Maybe you can't have a combination competitive strategy game and rpg without the former overwhelming the latter.

I want to experience another Capes game or two before deciding if the above is true or false, but its a thought.

So that was my first Capes experience.

[TonyLB]

Out of interest, who brought Passion to the table, and what was it about?

You talk about a lot of other stuff, but I can't twig out the answer to that question from your post.

[Tuxboy]

But I have to say that my first exposure of the actual play left me somewhat disappointed.

Now before everyone jumps on me and says I did it wrong, let me say:

Maybe I did it wrong.  Maybe this was the "burn in" and things will get better.

But I do want to raise another possibility.  Maybe Capes is NOT an rpg per se.  Maybe its really a strategic competitive resource game (fighting for control of Conflicts and/or amassing story tokens) with a dressing or veneer of rpg flavor.  Maybe you can't have a combination competitive strategy game and rpg without the former overwhelming the latter.

I want to experience another Capes game or two before deciding if the above is true or false, but its a thought.

So that was my first Capes experience.

I think the last sentence sums it up...it was a first...it takes a while to get into a Capes "headspace". I've had some great experiences and some bad ones, pretty much depends the other players I've found. I wouldn't be too discouraged...

Also, the two scenes did not seem to have anything in common - like two completely separate comic books.

Did anyone, in particular the person that narrated the beginning of the second scene, try and make a connection between the two scenes or was the whole thing left up in the air?

The fact that none of the characters from the first scene appear in the second would also increase that feeling of a disconnect.

During this scene, I wrote up a goal: Lucky Charm saves "Catwoman-mimic" from embarrassing herself - thinking that this would involve the player of that character.  I rolled a few times, and got me a six on my side of the conflict.  Then I waited, planning to let her have the victory without a fight once she staked and split.  But she never did, although others were doing that with other goals on the table.  So I shrugged, claimed my side, and walked away with a decent inspiration - but my winning this goal seemed to upset the player, despite my initial hands off period.

Did the player articulate why they were upset? Was it the loss of the conflict or what was narrated that caused the reaction? Did they not understand that this could be claimed? If it bothered them that much why didn't they roll against it?

[Tuxboy]

Out of interest, who brought Passion to the table, and what was it about?

Very good point...

Did you try and drive a plot along and involve the others? Or did everyone just wait for someone else to make the first move?

[Matthew Glover]

I'm not trying to say "you did it wrong," exactly.  More like, I see some problems in the way your group approached the game.  Problems that understandably arose from an unfamiliarity with the techniques required to get really satisfying play from Capes.  Here's what I see:

You emphasized to your players that Capes isn't about playing a character.  I think this may have been a mistake.  It's kinda true, but also kinda misleading.  One facet of Capes is all about being invested in a character's story.  You have to really care about what happens in order have the drive to stake everything to get what you want.

You also emphasized that each person is more like a GM.  This is also quite true, but to a player whose primary experience is with traditional games this may be a harmful idea.  If you go into a Capes game expecting to have the sort of control that a GM has, you're going to be savagely disabused of that notion pretty quickly.  I think that it may be painful to have to try to figure out exactly what your role is while you play, especially if you came into the game with preconceptions or confusion about your role.

In my experience, I don't discuss this sort of stuff with people before I play with them.  I just show them the game like any other rpg and then encourage them to expand on their narration.  There's typically a little bit of "I can do that?" but it's always been positive.

Stuff that contributed to your broken story experience:  The things I noted above probably didn't help, but I think the thing with nobody playing a character for more than one scene was a big factor.  You said that the two scenes didn't have anything in common.  If even one or two of you had played characters from the first scene, you would have instantly had a thread of a storyline without any particular effort.  If you don't have reoccurring characters, then somebody has to do some work to tie the scenes together in some other fashion. 

An idea somebody suggested that I liked very much was to start out by having everybody make up Spotlight characters.  Even if you're not using the Spotlight house rule, make up the guys that the comic is going to be about.  Make up your X-Men or your Avengers or JLA or your Batman/Robin/Joker/Catwoman.  Whatever.  There's something to be said for just jumping in with both feet and seeing where you go, but much of the time, you go nowhere.  If you have some main characters at the beginning, you'll be more likely to get a story you like.

You mentioned that the storylines within scenes played out wildly and chaotically.  This is part of the burning-in period that you mentioned.  People get weirded out by having a lot of freedom to go in whatever direction they want.  They go all over the place just because they can.  After a while, they realize that going in every which way isn't really very fun, isn't really very satisfying, and isn't at all a good way to earn Story Tokens.  They settle down and work together to roleplay a story.

You indicated that it didn't feel like a roleplaying game, more like a "strategic competitive resource game" with a rpg dressing, etc.   Again, I'd say that this is because people weren't investing in their characters or in the story.  This is a feedback loop.  I think this is probably why people weren't bothering to narrate their ability use well (or at all), and using abilities in ways that were narratively  obnoxious.  Nobody was putting any work into creating a cohesive storyline, so nobody felt any impetus to maintain the cohesiveness by adding positively to the story.

Some particular bits that I want to address specifically:

The 2 villains found that staking and splitting debt seemed to be not as useful.  We tried that, but had a couple of unlucky rolls - which leads me to my first comment.

Unlucky rolls seem to have far too significant effect.

If both villains try to roll up a dice and suck out, and the other side has already been claimed, then that's it, baby.
Perhaps a house rule that no conflict can be claimed for its first two pages.

If you'd all had more Story Tokens to spend on extra actions, do you think this would have been less of a problem?

Even worse are when someone rolls a six - and certain people were having some luck there. It got frustrating.

We villains staked a lot of debt on one particular conflict and were defeated, getting back double our debt and becoming WAY overdrawn.

Did you get many Story Tokens for it?

During this scene, I wrote up a goal: Lucky Charm saves "Catwoman-mimic" from embarrassing herself - thinking that this would involve the player of that character.  I rolled a few times, and got me a six on my side of the conflict.  Then I waited, planning to let her have the victory without a fight once she staked and split.  But she never did, although others were doing that with other goals on the table.  So I shrugged, claimed my side, and walked away with a decent inspiration - but my winning this goal seemed to upset the player, despite my initial hands off period.

This sounds really weird.  You drop this conflict, spend several actions to roll up to a six, she doesn't touch the opposing side, then gets upset when it resolves in your favor?  Did she have the debt and Story Tokens necessary to roll up her side higher than your six?  Was she intimidated because in Scene 1 she saw villains staking and splitting and still losing?  Also, is this the person that had a bad experience and will not play again?  I'd really like to see that split off into another thread and addressed in detail.  One thing I rabidly want to avoid is somebody playing and hating Capes.  In my D&D-centric environment, one person spreading bad vibes could completely kill my chances of spreading indie games.

Perhaps when the player put out the goal "So-and-so destroys City Hall" I should have told him that City Hall was not the scene.  What wound up happening is that people got more and more creative and the logic got more and more tenuous how their characters abilities could be used on goals on the table that weren't really physically close to them.

Also, it was noted that everyone was using the thinnest of excuses in finding ways to use the abilities we had left - trying to find some way to apply "surveillance" for example to escape a headlock.  Several times people played the ability and had to be prodded into adding any narration at all.

Were people having fun with this?  In my experience, sometimes players will do something that actually decreases their enjoyment of the game just because the rules allow them to do it.  Was there any inquiry as to why someone was putting down a conflict that didn't seem germane to the scene?  Or why someone was reluctant to narrate the use of their ability?

Likewise some players narrated stuff, but did not take any actions on their turn, such as writing conflicts or using abilities - but this made sense as several of them did not have any abilities left, especially in the first scene.

I think this may actually be against the rules.  I don't think you get to narrate unless you use an ability or create a conflict.

A few of them found the Capes rules cumbersome and overly complex

This is pretty common, I wouldn't worry about it.

Oh, we did decide to employ inspiration combining under the rule that 2 insps combine into 1 insps 1 higher than the highest Insp used - max of level 5.  A lot of people had level 1 Insps and they seemed useless.  In any case, this house rule did not seem to cause any problems.

I figured that it would work okay, but I'm curious about how you handled the narrative aspects of this?  Did you drop the lower Insp and just bump the higher one?

[Animation]

One thing I rabidly want to avoid is somebody playing and hating Capes.  In my D&D-centric environment, one person spreading bad vibes could completely kill my chances of spreading indie games.

Well Capes is a big step in some ways. It seems like it pays off on stuff you dont know you want. However for it to pay off it has to pay off as a gestalt. I picture 5 guys making a house of cards using marbles. Dont you all have to kinda work to keep it up? Normally, people prefer throwing marbles. :)

Maybe to get people to work together to build stuff with slippery marbles, you need to try something in-between the two. Maybe playing catch with marbles first is a good idea. Instead of playing Capes without mentioning all the stuff you dont dare mention too soon, what about that other stack of Indie games you showed me? Maybe if everybody player DonJon first, where they get used to dealing with "I can get stuff I want" and then maybe mix in the WatchDog one where they get used to storytelling in a serious environment. Then maybe port WatchDog (or whatever it was called) to a Sci-Fi setting so you can keep the serious tones and the religion but mix in Sci Fi and a few fantastic abilities (Powers). In fact, maybe something inspired by Dune (where religion and science are big, a serious tone exists, but Powers also exist).

Maybe after some iterations of other stuff, you can get players (like me) realizing they might sometimes want something else.

Maybe another idea is to have players port over a character from ANY game they've ever played in any setting, as well as a couple exemplars from that setting. Then you could try running a universe-hopping time-hopping multiverse style game, only you wont have to use Rifts or GURPS. :) If players brought in characters they already care about, but clone and seperate them from their original campaign, maybe they can get behind the characters enough to want to make a story. Then again, maybe that would be too wild a setting to get people to calm down. Still, maybe getting people to port over characters might get them interested. I dunno.

Lewis

[Sindyr]

Also, the two scenes did not seem to have anything in common - like two completely separate comic books.

Did anyone, in particular the person that narrated the beginning of the second scene, try and make a connection between the two scenes or was the whole thing left up in the air?

The fact that none of the characters from the first scene appear in the second would also increase that feeling of a disconnect.

Nope - the person who narrated the 2nd scene did not try to make a connection.  And since none of the characters were the same, that didn't help.

During this scene, I wrote up a goal: Lucky Charm saves "Catwoman-mimic" from embarrassing herself - thinking that this would involve the player of that character.  I rolled a few times, and got me a six on my side of the conflict.  Then I waited, planning to let her have the victory without a fight once she staked and split.  But she never did, although others were doing that with other goals on the table.  So I shrugged, claimed my side, and walked away with a decent inspiration - but my winning this goal seemed to upset the player, despite my initial hands off period.

Did the player articulate why they were upset? Was it the loss of the conflict or what was narrated that caused the reaction? Did they not understand that this could be claimed? If it bothered them that much why didn't they roll against it?

They were not being communicative - they were putting a good face on it and trying to be a good sport, but obviously unhappy.  So I can't answer some of those questions.

[Sindyr]

Out of interest, who brought Passion to the table, and what was it about?

You talk about a lot of other stuff, but I can't twig out the answer to that question from your post.

We brought to the table a desire to play a superhero rpg and the capes rules, open minds, and enthusiasm to find a new way to do it.

Is more than that required?

[Sindyr]

Out of interest, who brought Passion to the table, and what was it about?

Very good point...

Did you try and drive a plot along and involve the others? Or did everyone just wait for someone else to make the first move?

In as much as one person at a table of 5 with all having equal GM power, yes, I did try.

[Sindyr]

Some particular bits that I want to address specifically:

The 2 villains found that staking and splitting debt seemed to be not as useful.  We tried that, but had a couple of unlucky rolls - which leads me to my first comment.

Unlucky rolls seem to have far too significant effect.

If both villains try to roll up a dice and suck out, and the other side has already been claimed, then that's it, baby.
Perhaps a house rule that no conflict can be claimed for its first two pages.

If you'd all had more Story Tokens to spend on extra actions, do you think this would have been less of a problem?

Perhaps - part of the issue is I think that two of the 5 characters were mortals and could not create token attractive goals I think. On the other hand, this may just be growing pains - once we figure out how to play this may not be a big issue.

Even worse are when someone rolls a six - and certain people were having some luck there. It got frustrating.

We villains staked a lot of debt on one particular conflict and were defeated, getting back double our debt and becoming WAY overdrawn.

Did you get many Story Tokens for it?

I got like one I think - but got 4-6 debt - but that conflict was one one which we oversplit as a test - but even so we had two villains trying hard to keep a goal from happening, they got lucky and got a six, we split our dice but neither of us had story tokens so each of us tried to roll up our side on the action on our turn, but I rolled a one and so did he, so thats that.

A complex thought - instead of rolling a six sider roll 3 six sided dice and take the middle one.

This yields (mid 3d6):

number   to hit   or better
1   7.41%   100.00%
2   18.52%   92.59%
3   24.07%   74.07%
4   24.07%   50.00%
5   18.52%   25.93%
6   7.41%   7.41%

So you have a 7% chance of rolling a 1 or a 6, and 48% of the time you will roll a 3 or a 4,

instead of the normal 1d6:

number   to hit   or better
1   0.17%   1.00%
2   0.17%   0.83%
3   0.17%   0.67%
4   0.17%   0.50%
5   0.17%   0.33%
6   0.17%   0.17%

So you have a 17% chance of rolling a 1 or a 6, and 33% of the time you will roll a 3 or a 4,

Ultimately 3d6 take middle will be more strongly clustered and will help smooth out freak luck - is this good?  Even if it is good, is Capes complicated enough without adding this variant?

During this scene, I wrote up a goal: Lucky Charm saves "Catwoman-mimic" from embarrassing herself - thinking that this would involve the player of that character.  I rolled a few times, and got me a six on my side of the conflict.  Then I waited, planning to let her have the victory without a fight once she staked and split.  But she never did, although others were doing that with other goals on the table.  So I shrugged, claimed my side, and walked away with a decent inspiration - but my winning this goal seemed to upset the player, despite my initial hands off period.

This sounds really weird.  You drop this conflict, spend several actions to roll up to a six, she doesn't touch the opposing side, then gets upset when it resolves in your favor?  Did she have the debt and Story Tokens necessary to roll up her side higher than your six?  Was she intimidated because in Scene 1 she saw villains staking and splitting and still losing?  Also, is this the person that had a bad experience and will not play again?  I'd really like to see that split off into another thread and addressed in detail.  One thing I rabidly want to avoid is somebody playing and hating Capes.  In my D&D-centric environment, one person spreading bad vibes could completely kill my chances of spreading indie games.

I purposefully refrained from claiming my side of that conflict to give her a chance to generate debt and stake it - she never did.  I think not everyone got that debt is a tool that must be used somewhat frequently - that you WANT debt - at least some - to be able to win conflicts.  And yes, this is that person - I don't think she either grokked the competitive nature of the game or perhaps she did and didn't like it.

Perhaps it would be useful for newbies like we were to say directly, "Now Debbie, I have rolled up a six.  If you want to win the right to narrate the outcome of this goal, as I think you do, you will need to either get lucky, or better yet, get some debt, use that debt to split your die into 2, and then roll them up so that your total is higher. Make sense?"

Perhaps when the player put out the goal "So-and-so destroys City Hall" I should have told him that City Hall was not the scene.  What wound up happening is that people got more and more creative and the logic got more and more tenuous how their characters abilities could be used on goals on the table that weren't really physically close to them.

Also, it was noted that everyone was using the thinnest of excuses in finding ways to use the abilities we had left - trying to find some way to apply "surveillance" for example to escape a headlock.  Several times people played the ability and had to be prodded into adding any narration at all.

Were people having fun with this?  In my experience, sometimes players will do something that actually decreases their enjoyment of the game just because the rules allow them to do it.  Was there any inquiry as to why someone was putting down a conflict that didn't seem germane to the scene?  Or why someone was reluctant to narrate the use of their ability?

We all found waiting for other people not fun.  Example - turn passes to Fred, and now we all wait as he figures out what Conflict to write.  He takes a min or two, and people get bored and we lose the thread of the action.

Or turn passes to Fred, he looks at the Conflicts on the table, and spend a minute or two how he can use Charming to impact the scene in such a way to let him roll on Destroy Mind Control Device.

Seemed to be a lot of waiting we were doing.

Likewise some players narrated stuff, but did not take any actions on their turn, such as writing conflicts or using abilities - but this made sense as several of them did not have any abilities left, especially in the first scene.

I think this may actually be against the rules.  I don't think you get to narrate unless you use an ability or create a conflict.

I can't say - but maybe denying letting people who do not write a conflict or use an ability any chance at narration may speed things up.  On the other hand, people who were not using abilities or had none left cause they were mortal still seemed to be able to add to the story with their narration even if they couldn't affect the dice.

Oh, we did decide to employ inspiration combining under the rule that 2 insps combine into 1 insps 1 higher than the highest Insp used - max of level 5.  A lot of people had level 1 Insps and they seemed useless.  In any case, this house rule did not seem to cause any problems.

I figured that it would work okay, but I'm curious about how you handled the narrative aspects of this?  Did you drop the lower Insp and just bump the higher one?

We did drop the lower Insp and bump the higher, but we also did not worry about narrative justification for using Insps - too much else was going on to be overly retentive about them.  We let people use Insps as freely as Tokens in that Insps were used as generic Insps given to players to be used any way narratively they wished.

[TonyLB]

I got like one I think - but got 4-6 debt - but that conflict was one one which we oversplit as a test - but even so we had two villains trying hard to keep a goal from happening, they got lucky and got a six, we split our dice but neither of us had story tokens so each of us tried to roll up our side on the action on our turn, but I rolled a one and so did he, so thats that.

Six times?

Your action, your reaction, his reaction ... then his action, his reaction, your reaction.  Six rolls available, if you wanted them.

You got ones on all of those?  Shit man, that is bad luck.  Still and all, sometimes the dice just tell you it's your day to get kicked to the curb.