Too much pressure! This pressure's got to stop! (Debt in ongoing Capes)

[Hans]

In the last session (the fourth) or our ongoing game, two of us (Liz and I) were playing our spotlight characters that had been in two of the three previous sessions.  In both of these sessions, we had used a lot of powers, and also lost a few conflicts that had been staked, so we were both starting the scene with one seriously overdrawn drive (7 debt on 3 strength). 

What I want to say is this...WOW is it hard to get rid of debt!  Here are the reasons why...

1) There just aren't that many conflicts on the table.  With only four players, our experience is that there are rarely more than four conflicts out at once, and you can't get involved in all of them, usually.

2) Remember you only lose debt when you WIN, losing only makes it worse.  So if you are trying to get rid of debt, you HAVE to be pretty freaking sure you are going to win.

3) Because of 1 and 2, its particularly hard to get debt off of a 1 drive strength drive, because that one debt token often does not provide enough oomph to actually win.  This is especially true if that drive is overdrawn; 3 debt on a strength 1 drive is worse than 5 debt on a strength 3 drive, because it will take two conflicts to bring it back to non-overdrawn status instead of 1.

4) In order to win, you often have to use abilities, and those abilities are GIVING YOU MORE FREAKING DEBT!  At least, they are once you have run out of check off abilities. 

5) And, remember, Capes is a role-playing game, with all this interesting story stuff going on that you want to try to control.  You are often faced with the tough decision of foregoing a cool bit of narration in your mind because you simply cannot afford to add another debt token to the sheet.  This is hard to do, very hard, because cool bits of narration are a big part of the fun.

This most recent session was fascinating, because Liz and I spent almost the whole game frantically trying to dump debt off our our characters, and not being very successful.  I ended up having 1 less total debt on my spotlight character at the end of the session (although it was now more spread out) while Liz now has her spotlight character overdrawn on about four drives.  This poor character is so overdrawn we were all talking about different "Angel to Archangel" type scenarios that could play out to allow her to coherently launder her spotlight through some experience into a new version with no debt. 

This leads me to several conclusions:

1) Play carefully with a character that gains debt, if that character is intended to be a long term cast member of the campaign.  This is not something you notice in a one shot type session, it only appears after a character has been played a few times.

2) There is a BIG advantage to having two characters in a scene, one that creates debt, and one that does not.  In the last session, I had two characters like this, and I was able to reduce my debt (although not by as much as I wanted to), while Liz did not, and her debt skyrocketed.  It was either watch her debt balance soar, or hardly participate at all in the session. 

3) The most important trait for a good Capes player is discipline.  That is, the iron strength of will to NOT do something when you can, because the long term consequences are too painful.  I am beginning to learn that just because you have an action available, that doesn't mean you should use it.

Also, one trick that we all hit upon during the course of the last session that helps somewhat in terms of gettin rid of debt (and which will be even easier now that I know that characters, not players, are allied).  I call it "Ganging up on yourself".  It requires you to have a character allied with the currently losing side of a conflict, and lets you clear out a fair amount of debt, AS LONG AS you have at least two check off abilities and the luck goes your way.

1) On your action, use your debt-laden character to roll AGAINST yourself.  Now that character is allied with the currently winning side. 

2) Stake as much debt as can on the winning side.  You can split dice if you want, although it is not a requirement.  You might want to in order to reduce the value of the inspirations the winner might get.

3) Now use your reaction to roll FOR your original side, thus allying your character with the original side again.

It is best to do this when it is obvious the goal is going to resolve, and when it is obvious that your side is going to lose.  What it does is ensure that while you are able to get rid of some of your debt, you still have a shot at getting story tokens from the other winners of the conflict.  However, don't do what I did while trying this trick; if you fail to switch back to your old side due to bad luck, just live with it.  Don't gain even more debt and/or spend story tokens to try to get back on the other side unless you are certain your net gain in resources/loss of debt will make it worth your while.

It also raises an interesting question; it seems entirely possible to have characters allied with both sides of a conflict...can you still get story tokens if this occurs?  I know you can't get your OWN debt back as story tokens, but what other peoples debt, when I have one character allied with the winners, and one with the losers?

[drnuncheon]

This is particularly interesting to me since we're (*finally!*) starting our own long-term Capes game this Saturday - with three players, so I expect to be in a similar boat.

Anyway, here are my suggestions:

1) There just aren't that many conflicts on the table.  With only four players, our experience is that there are rarely more than four conflicts out at once, and you can't get involved in all of them, usually.

2) Remember you only lose debt when you WIN, losing only makes it worse.  So if you are trying to get rid of debt, you HAVE to be pretty freaking sure you are going to win.

Right.  Since you and another player both have the same problem, my first instinct would be to lay down a Conflict which you and the other player are on the same side of.  Then both of you stake massive debt, dominate the conflict, and get rid of it all.

3) Because of 1 and 2, its particularly hard to get debt off of a 1 drive strength drive, because that one debt token often does not provide enough oomph to actually win.  This is especially true if that drive is overdrawn; 3 debt on a strength 1 drive is worse than 5 debt on a strength 3 drive, because it will take two conflicts to bring it back to non-overdrawn status instead of 1.

This is also a good place for teamwork.  Get that debt on the winning side of something!

4) In order to win, you often have to use abilities, and those abilities are GIVING YOU MORE FREAKING DEBT!  At least, they are once you have run out of check off abilities.

Presumably, if you've got that much debt, you've been losing conflicts (and thus getting Story tokens).  Now is the time to put them to work.  Bring in a secondary character - possibly even a non-person character - and use their check-off abilities to roll stuff up.
 

This most recent session was fascinating, because Liz and I spent almost the whole game frantically trying to dump debt off our our characters, and not being very successful.  I ended up having 1 less total debt on my spotlight character at the end of the session (although it was now more spread out) while Liz now has her spotlight character overdrawn on about four drives.  This poor character is so overdrawn we were all talking about different "Angel to Archangel" type scenarios that could play out to allow her to coherently launder her spotlight through some experience into a new version with no debt.

And waste all that debt?  Are you kidding?  Now is the chance for you to totally gang up on her! This is just begging for a scene with her character, a bunch of non-powered characters, and/or as many of her Exemplars as you can cram in.  With all of that Debt available to stake, she ought to be able to steamroller the non-powered characters.  She loses the Debt, you get the Story Tokens, everybody is happy.

J

[Andrew Cooper]

It's hard to get rid of Debt?  I've never found that to be true.  I'd love to be at the table with you and your overdrawn friend.  Someone lays down and Conflict that both of you Stake 3 debt on.  I'm then going to oppose you and LET you win.  Woohoo for me!  I get 6 story tokens!  If the other players aren't letting you win Conflicts with that much Debt staked on them, what's wrong with them?

[Hans]

And waste all that debt?  Are you kidding?  Now is the chance for you to totally gang up on her! This is just begging for a scene with her character, a bunch of non-powered characters, and/or as many of her Exemplars as you can cram in.  With all of that Debt available to stake, she ought to be able to steamroller the non-powered characters.  She loses the Debt, you get the Story Tokens, everybody is happy.

We shall see how it goes, because I am the scene framer next time.  However, if you gang up on her TOO much, she loses.  Remember, at the moment there is a good chance she will be rolling down as many as 3 dice at the beginning of a page.

Also, to date, we have yet to have a seen without everyone playing at least one powered chararcters.  However, in the long run, you could be right, and the imbalance will right itself.

[Hans]

It's hard to get rid of Debt?  I've never found that to be true.  I'd love to be at the table with you and your overdrawn friend.  Someone lays down and Conflict that both of you Stake 3 debt on.  I'm then going to oppose you and LET you win.  Woohoo for me!  I get 6 story tokens!  If the other players aren't letting you win Conflicts with that much Debt staked on them, what's wrong with them?

I think this is part of the problem...everybody is pretty darn invested in the conflicts we are putting out, and are fighting for them tooth and nail to win.   However, I see what you are saying, and it could be that the imbalance takes care of itself with time. 

I think some of the problem is that we are all just stepping into a new level of Capes play, and are learning as we go along how these things work.  However, one thing I have noticed so far is that every session, there seems to be at least one conflict where there ends up being like NINE debt on one side of the conflict.  Its just wild.  We are making debt so fast we are spending it like water and the tide is STILL rising.

[Eric Sedlacek]

How hard it is to get out of debt depends on how the groups plays the game.  I admit when someone is desperately overdrawn, as tempting as it is to vie for those story tokens, it is also tempting to ram that debt right back at them doubled.

1) There just aren't that many conflicts on the table.  With only four players, our experience is that there are rarely more than four conflicts out at once, and you can't get involved in all of them, usually.

You can fix this yourself.  Declare more conflicts.  The number of conflicts is not a function of the number of players.  We've had a table full of conflicts with three players.  Again, it is a function of the habits of players.  

2) Remember you only lose debt when you WIN, losing only makes it worse.  So if you are trying to get rid of debt, you HAVE to be pretty freaking sure you are going to win.

If you want to draw your debt down and other people want story tokens, you are golden.  If they aren't cooperating, you have to distract them with conflicts they want to win.  That is a situation you can fix by declaring conflicts as mentioned above

3) Because of 1 and 2, its particularly hard to get debt off of a 1 drive strength drive, because that one debt token often does not provide enough oomph to actually win.  This is especially true if that drive is overdrawn; 3 debt on a strength 1 drive is worse than 5 debt on a strength 3 drive, because it will take two conflicts to bring it back to non-overdrawn status instead of 1.

Yes.  This is why people tend to overdraw on their high drives.  Even putting one debt into a level one drive is annoying because when you want to get rid of it, you can only stake one debt at a time and thus can't split dice.

4) In order to win, you often have to use abilities, and those abilities are GIVING YOU MORE FREAKING DEBT!  At least, they are once you have run out of check off abilities. 

Why aren't you spending a story token to introduce a click-only character into the scene?  They are the best protection from debt there is.  

5) And, remember, Capes is a role-playing game, with all this interesting story stuff going on that you want to try to control.  You are often faced with the tough decision of foregoing a cool bit of narration in your mind because you simply cannot afford to add another debt token to the sheet.  This is hard to do, very hard, because cool bits of narration are a big part of the fun.

Yeppers.  That's what makes it interesting...

1) Play carefully with a character that gains debt, if that character is intended to be a long term cast member of the campaign.  This is not something you notice in a one shot type session, it only appears after a character has been played a few times.

Yes.  Talk to Sydney about this one...

2) There is a BIG advantage to having two characters in a scene, one that creates debt, and one that does not.  In the last session, I had two characters like this, and I was able to reduce my debt (although not by as much as I wanted to), while Liz did not, and her debt skyrocketed.  It was either watch her debt balance soar, or hardly participate at all in the session. 

Yes, as per my answer above.  So you knew the answer already.  Were you just hoping for a different option?

3) The most important trait for a good Capes player is discipline.  That is, the iron strength of will to NOT do something when you can, because the long term consequences are too painful.  I am beginning to learn that just because you have an action available, that doesn't mean you should use it.

I would actually choose "resilience" as the number one trait.  An action you should not use at all is rare.  There are non-debt options for actions...like declaring those conflicts you don't seem to have enough of.

Also, one trick that we all hit upon during the course of the last session that helps somewhat in terms of gettin rid of debt (and which will be even easier now that I know that characters, not players, are allied).  I call it "Ganging up on yourself".  It requires you to have a character allied with the currently losing side of a conflict, and lets you clear out a fair amount of debt, AS LONG AS you have at least two check off abilities and the luck goes your way.
<Snip the details>

Yes, opposing yourself can be a way to get rid of debt, but there are obviously ways for it to go wrong as you note.  

It also raises an interesting question; it seems entirely possible to have characters allied with both sides of a conflict...can you still get story tokens if this occurs?  I know you can't get your OWN debt back as story tokens, but what other peoples debt, when I have one character allied with the winners, and one with the losers?

Yes, you can get story tokens from others in this manner.

[drnuncheon]

We shall see how it goes, because I am the scene framer next time.  However, if you gang up on her TOO much, she loses.  Remember, at the moment there is a good chance she will be rolling down as many as 3 dice at the beginning of a page.

Aha!  Here's the clever bit.  Let's say we have Liz, and then we have A, B, and C.  Each has a conflict laid down that they are fighting Liz on.

But there's nothing stopping A or B (or both) from helping Liz on her conflict with C.

J

[Eric Sedlacek]

I think this is part of the problem...everybody is pretty darn invested in the conflicts we are putting out, and are fighting for them tooth and nail to win.   However, I see what you are saying, and it could be that the imbalance takes care of itself with time. 

This seems like more evidence you need to get your conflict count up.  Not every one needs to be a world-beater.  Don't get me wrong, having plenty of conflicts that people want to win is good...very, very good.  But if those are not the only conflicts worth declaring.  When other people are slugging it out over the latest hot conflict, declare something less hot for you to dump debt onto.

Also declare conflicts you couldn't care less about but another (preferably debt-laden) player will want to win.  Instant story token farm.  Once the other players see how lucrative it can be, maybe they will start doing the same...to your benefit.

[Hans]

This seems like more evidence you need to get your conflict count up.  Not every one needs to be a world-beater.  Don't get me wrong, having plenty of conflicts that people want to win is good...very, very good.  But if those are not the only conflicts worth declaring.  When other people are slugging it out over the latest hot conflict, declare something less hot for you to dump debt onto.

Also declare conflicts you couldn't care less about but another (preferably debt-laden) player will want to win.  Instant story token farm.  Once the other players see how lucrative it can be, maybe they will start doing the same...to your benefit.

I agree with you 100% that playing more conflicts is an option.  Pragmatically, what we have found is that our scenes are going slow enough as it is; this has nothing to do with strategy, and everything to do with looking at the clock and saying "My GOD!, I want to keep playing, but I have to WORK tomorrow!"  Round about 10 PM at night, the idea of laying new conflicts and going to a new page starts to dim.  That doesn't mean it isn't good strategy, it just means it might not always be an available strategy based on the circumstances.

On the non-powered characters, I had figured that out...but frankly I burned through those abilities so fast it was crazy. I still ended up falling back on the powered abilities by the end of the scene (it was a LONG scene).

I wanted to make it clear that I don't think any of this is a problem with Capes.  I posted this mostly to elicit exactly the feedback I have received from more experienced players.  I figured we were not playing optimally, and I've already gleaned a few hints.

[TonyLB]

All the things Eric said, plus this:  Long scenes dump debt into the global economy.  This often (but not always) translates into more debt on your character, but it certainly translates into more debt on somebody's character.  Short scenes draw debt out of the global economy.

If everybody is drowning in debt then those characters need to participate in scenes of just two or three pages, so they don't get forced to rely on their powers as much.  If just you are drowning in debt, however, you've got a different problem.

[Sydney Freedberg]

And  you can say, "hey, guys, I wanna do a short scene with my guy talking to his family so I can dump his excess Debt, look at all the lovely Story Tokens for you," only to find the other players grin evilly and shove massive conflicts in your face and your character ends up having to shoot his wayward teenage son with a frickin' dart gun while his wife walks out on him, dammit, and it's all their fault, damn them, why couldn't they just take the damn story tokens and let me win?.

Err...

[looking around nervously to see if anyone noticed outburst]

So, yeah, getting out of overdraw = hard.

[Eric Sedlacek]

So, yeah, getting out of overdraw = hard.

Sydney is perhaps...er...not exactly your ideal role model for debt elimination.

Seriously, mileage varies.  I've had big piles of debt melt away on one hand and I've seen characters who just seem born to suffer on the other.  It can be hard to control which result you get since the reaction the other players have toward the character plays such a big role.

I understand the end of session deadline, and I know Tony and Sydney do too.  We've had quite a number of single-scene sessions. 

One more note.  Long-term play with the same players also helps.  You learn what sorts of things they jump on and what sorts of things they tend to ignore.

[Hans]

All the things Eric said, plus this:  Long scenes dump debt into the global economy.  This often (but not always) translates into more debt on your character, but it certainly translates into more debt on somebody's character.  Short scenes draw debt out of the global economy.

So far we haven't had anything BUT long scenes (one scene per ~4 hour session), and at least two characters (mine and Liz's spotlights) have been in 3 of four of those long scenes.  By this measure, the amount of debt piled up is probably pretty reasonable given what you say above.

This makes me think that the next scene (I'm the next starter) might not be a major knock down drag out fight between the Contagion and our newly formed military/civilian task force.  I might try to frame it as small as possible, maybe just a quiet (hopefully) conversation between the two debt ridden characters.  Hmmm....

And  you can say, "hey, guys, I wanna do a short scene with my guy talking to his family so I can dump his excess Debt, look at all the lovely Story Tokens for you," only to find the other players grin evilly and shove massive conflicts in your face and your character ends up having to shoot his wayward teenage son with a frickin' dart gun while his wife walks out on him, dammit, and it's all their fault, damn them, why couldn't they just take the damn story tokens and let me win?.

*steps away from Sydney carefully, looking for an exit...*

One more note.  Long-term play with the same players also helps.  You learn what sorts of things they jump on and what sorts of things they tend to ignore.

We are heading into our fifth session next week, with the same group, and I am starting to get a feel for people.  I'm sure it will improve over time.