[Actual Play] Trenchcoats in LA, Session 1

[drnuncheon]

So we actually finally got started on our first long-term Capes game yesterday.  Rather than superheroes per se, it's more a supernatural mystery/character drama, sort of Angel meets Jim Butcher's Dresden Files.  (It originally came from my desire to play an intensely cheesy unapologetic trenchcoats-and-katanas game of Vampire, and slowly got more serious as we kept talking about it.) 

The three of us (Jeff, Mel, and John) had all played a single game of Capes Lite before, but this time we were going for the full monty. We got together for a late lunch around 2ish, played (with a break for dinner) until 9ish, and then watched some anime (Samurai 7) that John had brought with him.

Scene 1 (Jeff)
We open in a "bus graveyard" in LA, late at night. A figure flies across the parking garage at high speed, impacting a bus with enough force to shift it several inches and leave an upside-down imprint of a human body. It falls to the ground, coughs up some steaming blood, and says, "Well, that could have gone a little better. This is Damian DeVille. He is joined by Kate Clarke, who wrenches a handy driveshaft from a partially disassembled bus and advances on their opponent. They quickly realize that brute force is going to do them no good unless it is properly directed: Damian climbs ontot he roof of a bus and entraps the creature in a magic circle while Kate begins trying to collapse the roof on it.

They are joined by a mysterious figure who turns out to be none other than Joseph Talbot, the vampire who is responsible for Kate's current condition. His goal: to make the demon stop playing with his human. Meanwhile, Damian is trying desperately to figure out what the demon is going here, and he does as it lunges for him and makes a grab for the amulet he wears around his neck - a relic of his mother and the demonic cult she belonged to. Kate hip-checks Damian off of the bus, Joseph grabs the amulet and turns into mist, and the demon chases ineffectually after the mist allowing our heroes to escape.

Jeff's Comments
I toyed with the idea of opening the first scene sitting in a diner after the action, with the same quote, and throwing down "Event: Someone gets blamed", but I thought that might be a little rough what with all of us being new to the system. There were a lot of 6s rolled (especially on John's part as the big scaly demon), a lot of debt spent and staked, and very little of it came to me as Story Tokens because I was too invested in actually winning the conflicts that were out there.

Scene 2 (Mel)
An abandoned church, with bats, graffiti, a broken stained-glass window, and a faded cross on the rear wall where the crucifix used to hang. Damian has arrived to get his amulet back from Joseph, who is awaiting him along with one of his minions, Gabriel?. They banter back and forth a bit, Joseph turning his wiles on Damian to try to get him to open up, and then the vampire drops the bombshell that the amulet is not an amulet of Forcalor?, Damian's demonic parent, but instead one of a demon called Vriknu. Unfortunately, in trying to evade the vampire's questioning, Damian slips up and mentions the name Courtney - Kate's twin sister.

As he leaves, Gabriel fades from view and follows him to a storage unit, where he keeps occult paraphernalia that he took from his mother's cult and various other places. He locks the amulet securely away and picks up a battered leather-bound book. As soon as he is out of sight, Gabriel is on his cell phone...

Jeff's Comments
I was so certain Joseph was trying to seduce Damian that I almost dropped a preventative goal about it - but I figured Mel wouldn't go there. Too bad, she could have gotten some story tokens from me if she had - and she might have been able to split enough of my attention away from "Find out about Damian's background" to win it!

This is the scene where I busted out a second character to help me - and our first time with a non-person character. I dropped in Mystery, straight out of the Capes book, and used its checkable abilities to give me a much-needed boost without racking up more debt.

The entire second paragraph above was John's narration of "Find out what Damian does with the amulet", which was the final goal to be resolved in the scene. There's a lot of power in being in that slot, because there's absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop you - unless you can spend a Story Token for another action at that point? I'm not sure.

Scene 3 (John)
At the storage unit, Gabriel hangs up his phone and waits until a figure floats down out of the sky. This is the immortal sorceress Meredith?, who informs him, "I tried to speak to you on the summoning device, but it was not working properly." She begins to use her magic to open the lock.

Meanwhile, in the red-lit back of a nondescript van outside, the V Squad prepares to move in. They spill out of the back of the van, acrobatically flipping over the fence, and begin their slow motion power walk towards the rather bemused pair. The techie fires off a net made of saint's hair at Meredith, who is not inconvenienced in the slightest, and tries to wrap them all up in the chainlink fence. When that didn't work, she destroyed their high-tech equipment and flung them back over the fence, and she and Gabriel went inside to check out the storage units contents.

They were interrupted in their cataloging by the V Squad van crashing through fence and door and into Gabriel. The fight continued, the van exploded, and Gabriel and Meredith left posthaste with the contents of the storage unit.

Jeff's Comments
The "B Squad" is what we always call the second-string villains that do unexpectedly poorly against the protagonists. After watching Blade 3, I created the "V Squad", with abilities like "Smartass comment", "Slo-mo power walk" and "Vehicular vampiricide". I didn't expect to get to use them this early, but it was fun watching the others get exasperated with their constant attempts to get in the way.

John brought in the Storage Unit as a location, with attitudes like Dark and Cramped, as well as several styles relating to occult paraphernalia.

This is the first time the schism rules were used.  Mel was the Page starter, so she and John got to claim both sides of "Inventory the Storage Unit" before I got a chance to do anything.  I split off a third side and actually gained control, keeping it from resolving that page.

Scene 4 (Jeff)
Back at the headquarters, Renier St. Croix and Kate arrive to find Damian snoozing over a book. Renier asks him how the meeting with Joseph went, making Kate suspicious - what meeting? And Damian's nervousness didn't help much, either. He manages to distract her, and then the phone rings.

"Mr. DeVille? This is Mark Smith, at Stor-4-U. There was a slight accident with your storage unit last night. A runaway van broke through the fence and collided with the unit."

Damian: "..."

"And then exploded. Everything was destroyed."

Damian: "..."

"You can have your $100 security deposit back..."

Jeff's Comments
Mel really should have pushed me harder on "Keep Kate from finding out I slipped up and mentioned Courtney to Joseph". If Damian keeps getting away with his "little white lies" he's going to get worse...
John's call from the Stor-4-U manager was the comedic highlight of the evening. I have no clue how he's going to actually use the massive 5-point inspiration from that, though.

Scene 5 (Mel)
As the trio heads down to check out what's left of the storage unit, Kate's sister Courtney arrives. Of course she wants to know what her sister and her weird friends are up to, and of course they don't want to tell her. Damian compliments Courtney in his own sardonic way and Renier announces that they are going for breakfast at someplace called "Greasy Joe's Meat Palace". She declines to accompany them.

Jeff's Comments
These last two scenes were relatively low-key and served mostly as inspiration generators. I kept waiting for Mel to use both Clarke sisters to double-team me on the "Impress Courtney in a mundane way" goal, especially since I don't really have that many checkable abilities. Of course, I was being a dumbass at the time, and not thinking about ways I could have used the magic traits without actually using magic in-game. "This would be so easy if I just used a little magic...no, I want her to like me for me, not because she's charmed." I'll be better prepared next time.

Overall
It's really interesting to watch things develop.  At first, everyone thought that Gabriel was just a loyal flunky of Joseph's - but after breaking into and absconding with the contents of Damian's storage unit, now we're not so sure.  (And why did he call Meredith instead of his boss?  Hmm.) 

Damian feels like he's constantly surfing on the edge of disaster, which is perfect for someone who "wants to be John Constantine when he grows up".  I have a feeling I'll continue to play him pretty close to the overdrawn line.  (I can see Tony licking his chops already, and he's not even in this game.)

Frankly, I don't want to wait until next Saturday to play again, but I don't think I'm going to have a choice.

J

[Hans]

7 hours/5 scenes.  WOW!  We can't seem to get through more than 1 in four hours!  However, we have 4-5 people, not three, so that might make a lot of difference.   

Our wiki has been very helpful for our game, but then again we are part of a larger group and want to make sure others could come in any time if they want to. 

Sounds like you had some fun!

[drnuncheon]

7 hours/5 scenes.  WOW!  We can't seem to get through more than 1 in four hours!  However, we have 4-5 people, not three, so that might make a lot of difference.

When you consider that each person is an additional chance to both throw down conflicts and react to every roll, that doesn't surprise me!

The first scene was the longest one by far - the last two especially were very short, despite the fact that two free Exemplar events hit the table as soon as Courtney showed up.  I'm thinking there may have been too many goals out at once, because I think each of us claimed one side of a goal and was unopposed.

Hmm. Maybe I should remind them that they can spend Story Tokens for extra claims - although I didn't think that scene had a lot of debt invested, so it might not have been worth it.
   

Our wiki has been very helpful for our game, but then again we are part of a larger group and want to make sure others could come in any time if they want to.

Yeah - did I link the wiki?  If not:  http://drnuncheon.game-host.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Capes.HomePage

J

[drnuncheon]

Questions that arose during the session:

1) Inspirations - only the claimant gets positive inspirations, right?  So even if you've split off three dice and dominated the conflict, if your "ally" claims the conflcit and resolves, he's going to get everything?

2) Ending a page/scene - when's the last chance to spend a token for an extra action? If there are two claimed goals on the table, and they get resolved at the end of a page, can someone then spend a story token to throw down another goal (and keep the scene alive)?  From page 18, it looks like you have to spend the story tokens before goals are resolved.

The AP example would be at the end of Scene 2.  Let's say I object to John narrating that Damian left the amulet in the storage unit.  (I didn't, but say I did.)  In the middle of play that wouldn't be an issue - I could just narrate going back and getting it (and/or dropping goal: Damian leaves the amulet as a preventative).  When it's done as part of the resolution of the scene, though, there's no stopping it.

Of course, I could open up a scene with Damian toying with the real amulet - the one that was taken being a fake that he had dropped off as a trap or to mislead the people trying to get it - I'm just wondering if there's a way to do that mechanically as well.

[drnuncheon]

OH! And one more:

Is the Scene Starter also always the first Page Starter for that scene, or do the two positions rotate completely independently of each other?

Just in case that's not very clear: A, B, and C are playing.  A starts out the game as Scene Starter and Page Starter both.  Page Starter passes to B, C, back to A, and to B again before the scene resolves.

When they pick up the next scene, is B both the Scene Starter and Page Starter, or is B the Scene Starter and C the Page Starter?

J

[Eric Sedlacek]

Is the Scene Starter also always the first Page Starter for that scene, or do the two positions rotate completely independently of each other?

That one I can answer.  The scene starter is the first page starter.

[De Reel]

I would say the difference between
A : closing a scene - opening a scene in the same setting
and
B : not closing the scene and going on with it
is formal. It is an excellent example of when to take a break. But maybe I should be doing this, take a break ?

If, for instance, it is impossible to continue (at least, one side states so, "in the interest of the game") and the players (the other side, usually) argue about what is the interest of the game, it is modern practice that the next player to play writes his move on a sheet of paper which is sealed in an enveloppe (formally, in front of everybody's eyes). So the break is granted AND "the interest of the game", whatever this may mean, is well guarded.

Now, I don't know if this could be used in the case, because I don't know how badly a break was needed. In my opinion it should be granted on physical evidence such as sweating, blushing, spilling what's in your glass.

[Matthew Glover]

I would say the difference between
A : closing a scene - opening a scene in the same setting
and
B : not closing the scene and going on with it
is formal. It is an excellent example of when to take a break. But maybe I should be doing this, take a break ?

If, for instance, it is impossible to continue (at least, one side states so, "in the interest of the game") and the players (the other side, usually) argue about what is the interest of the game, it is modern practice that the next player to play writes his move on a sheet of paper which is sealed in an enveloppe (formally, in front of everybody's eyes). So the break is granted AND "the interest of the game", whatever this may mean, is well guarded.

Now, I don't know if this could be used in the case, because I don't know how badly a break was needed. In my opinion it should be granted on physical evidence such as sweating, blushing, spilling what's in your glass.

I have no idea what you're saying here.  Capes has pretty well-defined rules on when and how a Scene ends, as well as rules for how the following scene is defined.  Are you familiar with these rules? 

I don't know what you mean when you say things like "impossible to continue" in the context of Capes.  Are you suggesting that a player refuses to take his turn?  What kind of break are you talking about?  The only break I've seen mentioned in this thread is Jeff noting that they stopped play to eat dinner, and I'm betting that everybody was in agreement over that.

And what is this "modern practice" of writing a "move" on paper and sealing it?  What game are you talking about?  You're driving me crazy, man.  I'm not trying to be offensive or anything, but reading your posts makes me feel like there are bees swarming behind my eyes.

One other thing.  Why are we resurrecting a thread that's over a month old?  Common practice is to create a new thread and to link to the old one.

Matthew