Retooling Drives & Exemplars

[Josh Roby]

I'm gearing up for my Fantasy-flavored Capes game this summer, and we're looking at Drives and Exemplars.  I want to fiddle with them.

Now, Drives serve two purposes: (a) they store Debt and (b) they create a rough Relationship map through Exemplars.  Theoretically they also (c) bend conflicts towards their particular flavor, but in my experience, the Drives are so broad that this doesn't really occur much.

I am thinking about reworking Drives and Exemplars into straight Relationships.  Said Relationships would store Debt just like Drives already do, and they'd have both a target (Father) and a disposition (Prove I'm a Man).  So really, I'm cutting out the middle man of "Justice" and going straight to "King Leopold the Just."  The Debt from that Relationship could be staked whenever the target or the disposition was related to the conflict.  I don't think any of that will be a problem -- if anything, it will make the game a little more personal and deal with specific people more than abstract ideals, and that's what I'm after.

However, here's the step that I'm lots less sure about: I don't want five relationships with nine points split between them.  I favor a solution more like two relationships (with one of them shared with another character, as with exemplars) with five points split between them.  Then I want to layer in a character development mechanic where resolving a relationship allows you to do a couple things (change the target and increase the value by one, change the disposition and increase the value by one, change nothing and create a new one-point relationship) that would allow the character to manipulate the relationship map and gradually increase their ability to store Debt.  So wet-behind-the-ears characters can hold only so much debt, and more experienced heroes can hold and weild more debt.  This, I totally recognize, could monkeywrench the entire economy.  Do the hallowed minds here see any glaring pitfalls just waiting to wreak havoc?

[Eric Sedlacek]

I don't think there is any way to tell for sure without writing it the mod and testing it.  The advancement thing in particular is totally uncharted territory.

[Uhlrik]

I'm honestly not keen on adding a "develop over time" aspect to Capes characters' power-level (which holding Debt explicitly is a big part of). It goes counter to many of the game's assumptions.

[Josh Roby]

Such as, Uhlrik?  I'd be very interested to hear your concerns in specific.

[Uhlrik]

Such as, Uhlrik?

I think the most obvious one would be that the Capes system is not in the least bit concerned with mechanics for showing a character becoming more powerful over time, either in narrative or literal sense. A character's powerlevel could literally jump from beggar on the street to sole management of the universe itself over the course of a session, but it would not grant that character's palyer any more narrative control over the story. In Capes mechanical terms, Hawkeye and Galactus are equivalent in game effect, with their comparative objective power level being of minimal (if any) concern.

Granting characters increased access to Debt as time goes on is increasing their narrative power level as tools for controlling the story, tying it somewhat to their objective power-levels (IE their experience and connection to other people) via their access to Debt. It's stacking the narrative deck in favor of characters because they've been in the game longer. I don't think that's kosher.

It's one thing to hobble bit-players like Indifferentiated-Drive supporting cast members by limiting their Debt at their creator's option (which is the decision they're making when they decide not to differentiate them) or to make UnPowered folks. I don't think it's fine to increase the raw number of power points available without being Overdrawn to characters just for winning Conflicts. Juggling stats on their sheet yet leaving the same totals would be fine, or even changing the names of Abilities. That still leaves narrative parity with other protagonist-grade characters. Your scheme doesn't.

Plus, it comes off as a thinly-disguised experience point system. Capes neither needs nor should have such an animal.

[Josh Roby]

I don't think it's fine to increase the raw number of power points available without being Overdrawn to characters just for winning Conflicts.

Here's a point that may not have been clear -- it's perfectly possible to "resolve a relationship" by losing a conflict, though.  If I've got "Dad: Prove I'm a Man" as a relationship under this schema, and I set up some sort of conflict like Win Dad's Respect and I lose that conflict, then the relationship can be resolved, just in a way that I don't especially want -- it's proven that I'm not a Man.  And so then I can retool the target, disposition, or create a new relationship entirely.  So, as in the rest of Capes, the other players can totally hose me, and I can get rewarded for getting hosed.

...the Capes system is not in the least bit concerned with mechanics for showing a character becoming more powerful over time... It's stacking the narrative deck in favor of characters because they've been in the game longer. I don't think that's kosher.

Couple things about this.  Firstly, this sort of set up works for most situations and character arcs in superhero comics, and it's a very apt set up in that context.  I'm not arguing with that at all.  However, I'm trying to shanghai the system and carry it off into different territory, where it's perfectly in-genre for characters to be more effective because they've been around longer.  Basically, resolving conflicts makes you more of a main character; not resolving conflicts makes you more of a secondary character.

Secondly, while this does have an effect on player power, it's a weird kind of effect.  The spread of numbers on the abilities and the number of available abilities do not change (rewriting abilities between scenes is a-ok by me), so in any given scene and any given page, you can still Act and React.  The character is exactly as effective as it's always been.  The thing that changes is that there is a broader range of kinds of conflicts that the player can denote as significant (by staking debt), and the player of a main character can make a given conflict more significant than somebody who's playing a secondary character.  Now, is that equable between players?  No.  But neither is Tony sitting behind his giant pile of story tokens and me with only three.  Additionally, while it's not equal between players, it does fit the sensibilities of big-ass epic fantasy, which is what I'm trying to get at.

Thirdly, there's nothing that says you can't make a new big bad with more than "starting" relationships.  Maybe you can buy more with story tokens or something.  I dunno, I'm not there yet.

And lastly, if somebody else is playing one of their main characters that they've worked up to the heights of powerful relationships, you've got a great incentive to play against them -- think of all the debt they'll be slinging around, and the story tokens that you can earn off of them.

Plus, it comes off as a thinly-disguised experience point system. Capes neither needs nor should have such an animal.

Superheroes don't need such an animal, very true.  Superman, Batman, and Spiderman (and any other -man) are pretty much just as cool as they've always been.  Because, among other things, they represent serial franchises.  If too much changes -- like the characters -- then the comic quickly becomes a very different beast, and people stop buying.

I don't think the same holds true for other genres which are not founded off of those serial franchises.  How much would it suck to play Merry and Pippin and not be able to become heroes that can go back and reclaim the Shire?  The end of Return of the King would be much different, and much less entertaining, if they came back and threw apples at the badguys and were easily frightened.

Am I making sense?  Are you buying any of this? :)

[Josh Roby]

Crap.  This:

Basically, resolving conflicts makes you more of a main character; not resolving conflicts makes you more of a secondary character.

should say this:

Basically, resolving relationships makes you more of a main character; not resolving relationships makes you more of a secondary character.

[drnuncheon]

Would it be harder to resolve a relationship than it would be to resolve a conflict?  I suspect if all it took was winning a conflict, people would rack up the advancements far too quickly - and it wouldn't be satisfying in a narrative sense either, because every issue would be resolved in the same scene it first showed up in.

I would suggest that it take several conflicts to resolve a relationship.  It could be a set number (equal to the level of the relationship, perhaps?), or it could work another way.  Off the top of my head, spending Inspirations gained from the Relationship conflict would make logical sense.  Maybe you'd need to spend a number of level 6 inspirations equal to the level of the relationship.  That would probably tend to give you very internally focused PCs, as they'd be more encouraged to use actions to build up their inspirations than a normal Capes character.  I'm not sure what long-term effect that would have.

J

[Josh Roby]

Hey, Jeff!

My gut says to not stipulate how many conflicts are required to resolve a relationship, but that's about all I'm going on, here.  It seems that, with so many other reasons to start different conflicts, there's a natural disincentive to just power through tons of relationship-centered conflicts.  If nothing else, you probably don't have the resources for it.  However, I may be very wrong.  I'll have to ponder it.

Here's a thought, though: relationships are resolved at the close of scenes, not by the conflicts within them.  Dunno about that one, though -- I'll ponder on it, too.

[Uhlrik]

I don't think it's fine to increase the raw number of power points available without being Overdrawn to characters just for winning Conflicts.

Here's a point that may not have been clear -- it's perfectly possible to "resolve a relationship" by losing a conflict, though.  If I've got "Dad: Prove I'm a Man" as a relationship under this schema, and I set up some sort of conflict like Win Dad's Respect and I lose that conflict, then the relationship can be resolved, just in a way that I don't especially want -- it's proven that I'm not a Man.  And so then I can retool the target, disposition, or create a new relationship entirely.  So, as in the rest of Capes, the other players can totally hose me, and I can get rewarded for getting hosed.

I'm not sold on it. Basically, whether you win or lose the conflict, you still get to add more points to your sheet? If that's what you mean, then I don't care for it at all in the long term. In the short space of a few Pages a character should be able to drastically increase how much Debt they can carry around, and with minimal effort. Also, you're misusing the term Resolve in a Capes context. In Capes rules parlance, unless I'm mistaken, the Resolving player is the one that won the conflict. That may have thrown me off your meaning a bit.

Couple things about this.  Firstly, this sort of set up works for most situations and character arcs in superhero comics, and it's a very apt set up in that context.  I'm not arguing with that at all.  However, I'm trying to shanghai the system and carry it off into different territory, where it's perfectly in-genre for characters to be more effective because they've been around longer.  Basically, resolving conflicts makes you more of a main character; not resolving conflicts makes you more of a secondary character.

Characters can in-game be more effective without becoming more narratively important on a metagame level. Let's briefly examine the case of Luke Skywalker from Star Wars IV to VI. In absolute, objective terms he's definitely a lot more effective. In terms of his narrative importance, he's not. He's equally the protagonist and his successes and failures drive the story equally most of the way through. That's more what the Capes mechanics are designed for. They're about metagame, not the objective level.

Am I making sense?  Are you buying any of this? :)

Yup, but I'm not buying.

[Uhlrik]

I'd argue that the LotR charactes Merry and Pippin don't have more  dots of Relationships/Drives at the end than they did at the start.

I'd argue that their Powers, Styles and probably even Attitudes changed in order or switched values a bunch of times along the way instead. For example, where they might have had something like "ignorant of the wider world" or whatever as a Style early on, they most definitely don't by the time they return to the Shire. You don't need an experience-point like mechanic to cover their increasing objective effectiveness. Just shuffle Abilities around.

Now, I suppose they might well get more Exemplars as time goes on however. That doesn't add more points to anything, just creates more potential Free Conflicts and more connectedness to other characters.

[Josh Roby]

Yeah, Resolving a Relationship is probably a bad choice of words.  Call it... hell, addressing a relationship.  It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with any specific conflict.  I'm warming to the idea that it has more to do with scenes than individual conflicts.

Let's briefly examine the case of Luke Skywalker from Star Wars IV to VI. In absolute, objective terms he's definitely a lot more effective. In terms of his narrative importance, he's not. He's equally the protagonist and his successes and failures drive the story equally most of the way through.

"But I wanted to go to Tashi Station to get some power converters!" and the guy brooding over his dead father and mentors while the rest of the galaxy celebrates -- those guys are of equal narrative importance?  I don't think so.  Luke is nobody when he walks onto the screen, and stays nobody (a whiney nobody) for some time.  He isn't the clearly a protagonist, any more than Beru or Tarkin are clearly not protagonists, until about halfway through the first movie.

I'd argue that the LotR charactes Merry and Pippin don't have more dots of Relationships/Drives at the end than they did at the start.  I'd argue that their Powers, Styles and probably even Attitudes changed in order or switched values a bunch of times along the way instead.

You're right, I mangled this one.  Increasing Drives doesn't increase character abilities; it increases the controlling player's ability to make things significant.  Which I think is mirrored in LotR, and not in serial franchise works.  Merry and Pippin initially join Frodo basically for kicks and innocent loyalty.  Then they go through hell, pledge their services to kings, and come back to retake the shire from evil men.  Their abilities, objective or no, is irrelevant, here.  Their "players," though, have gone from barely investing in the story to directing what is and is not important to the story.  Contrast the impact that Merry and Pippin have in determining what is and is not important with, I dunno, Gladriel.  Gladriel is still far more powerful in terms of what she can do in the story, but her player doesn't do much in channeling the narrative from outside the story.  Merry and Pippin, though, are calling the shots.  Is that any clearer?

[Uhlrik]

Yeah, Resolving a Relationship is probably a bad choice of words.  Call it... hell, addressing a relationship.  It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with any specific conflict.  I'm warming to the idea that it has more to do with scenes than individual conflicts.

"But I wanted to go to Tashi Station to get some power converters!" and the guy brooding over his dead father and mentors while the rest of the galaxy celebrates -- those guys are of equal narrative importance?  I don't think so.  Luke is nobody when he walks onto the screen, and stays nobody (a whiney nobody) for some time.  He isn't the clearly a protagonist, any more than Beru or Tarkin are clearly not protagonists, until about halfway through the first movie.

Ah, but you see, even early on it's still Luke's story, even if his mind and the conflicts he's directly involved in are much "smaller". "Goal: Convince R2 to tell me who the girl is" is every bit as important in a mechanical Capes sense as "Goal: Convince Jabba to release the prisoners" or "Goal: Defend the generator from the AT-ATs". It's never Beru's story (she's an UnPowered chracter at best), and Tarkin is probably an Undifferentiated villain because we never really get much about his motivations or are supposed to care much about what he cares about (unlike Vader). Luke cares about his conflicts, and we're supposed to care too, whether he's a whiney farmboy or not. In this system, there's no mechanical difference between a farmboy and a Jedi Knight if they both have to deal with the moral ramifications and consequences of their actions which are what Debt is largely about. Your argument confuses a difference of scale with a difference of metagame narrative importance. They're functionally the more or less the same in the mechanical system we have.

You're right, I mangled this one.  Increasing Drives doesn't increase character abilities; it increases the controlling player's ability to make things significant.  Which I think is mirrored in LotR, and not in serial franchise works.  Merry and Pippin initially join Frodo basically for kicks and innocent loyalty.  Then they go through hell, pledge their services to kings, and come back to retake the shire from evil men.  Their abilities, objective or no, is irrelevant, here.  Their "players," though, have gone from barely investing in the story to directing what is and is not important to the story.  Contrast the impact that Merry and Pippin have in determining what is and is not important with, I dunno, Gladriel.  Gladriel is still far more powerful in terms of what she can do in the story, but her player doesn't do much in channeling the narrative from outside the story.  Merry and Pippin, though, are calling the shots.  Is that any clearer?

Sure, but that's more a function of how often they're getting played and the people that are playing them (this scene... a character's player can easily change from scene to scene) being more invested in them and thus being interested enough and aware enough fo the Conflicts that they face (plus choosing meaty conflicts for them to deal with), gaining and spending Debt than how much actual Debt they can store on their sheets.

Basically, I see it this way: Their sheets at the beginning have exactly as many points distributed on them at the end, including Drives, as they do at the beginning. They've definitely got more Exemplars (say, Eowyn for example...), but that doesn't mean they've got more points. When they first show up, the players in the game haven't gotten to know them that well so they haven't become emotionally invested enough in them to provide big, compelling Conflicts for them yet... they figure out waht makes these guys tick as the story progresses and the players start caring about their success or failure... hence being more willing to use their Powers to Resolve Conflicts (and be on the losing side) and caring enough about them to use what Debt they have to help in the process. I don't think we need room for more Debt on the sheets to make that happen.

Not to mention your strategy crippling the very, very cool Overdrawn mechanic as time goes on. I'd argue that, towards the end of a major story, there would if anything be more potential to be Overdrawn thanks to all the Powers a character's had to use along the way, all the tough choices they've faced et cetera rather than less because (in your system) the character's got more room for Debt. Being Overdrawn creates all sorts of cool narrative situations. Near the end of LotR, Frodo's waaaaay overdrawn and his self-doubt, gnawing fears and the like have left him wide open to the Ring's manipulations. It causes him to have to roll down his side of Gollum's "Goal: Steal the Ring" and Gollum capitalizes on it... then of course the "Event: somebody falls towards the lava" conflict comes round time for Resolution...

[Uhlrik]

Bah. I'm a moron apparently. Not sure how to edit my prior messed-up) post. I'll try to just redo it better.

"But I wanted to go to Tashi Station to get some power converters!" and the guy brooding over his dead father and mentors while the rest of the galaxy celebrates -- those guys are of equal narrative importance?  I don't think so.  Luke is nobody when he walks onto the screen, and stays nobody (a whiney nobody) for some time.  He isn't the clearly a protagonist, any more than Beru or Tarkin are clearly not protagonists, until about halfway through the first movie.

Ah, but you see, even early on it's still Luke's story, even if his mind and the conflicts he's directly involved in are much "smaller". "Goal: Convince R2 to tell me who the girl is" is every bit as important in a mechanical Capes sense as "Goal: Convince Jabba to release the prisoners" or "Goal: Defend the generator from the AT-ATs". It's never Beru's story (she's an UnPowered chracter at best), and Tarkin is probably an Undifferentiated villain because we never really get much about his motivations or are supposed to care much about what he cares about (unlike Vader). Luke cares about his conflicts, and we're supposed to care too, whether he's a whiney farmboy or not. In this system, there's no mechanical difference between a farmboy and a Jedi Knight if they both have to deal with the moral ramifications and consequences of their actions which are what Debt is largely about. Your argument confuses a difference of scale with a difference of metagame narrative importance. They're functionally the more or less the same in the mechanical system we have.

You're right, I mangled this one.  Increasing Drives doesn't increase character abilities; it increases the controlling player's ability to make things significant.  Which I think is mirrored in LotR, and not in serial franchise works.  Merry and Pippin initially join Frodo basically for kicks and innocent loyalty.  Then they go through hell, pledge their services to kings, and come back to retake the shire from evil men.  Their abilities, objective or no, is irrelevant, here.  Their "players," though, have gone from barely investing in the story to directing what is and is not important to the story.  Contrast the impact that Merry and Pippin have in determining what is and is not important with, I dunno, Gladriel.  Gladriel is still far more powerful in terms of what she can do in the story, but her player doesn't do much in channeling the narrative from outside the story.  Merry and Pippin, though, are calling the shots.  Is that any clearer?

Sure, but that's more a function of how often they're getting played and the people that are playing them (this scene... a character's player can easily change from scene to scene) being more invested in them and thus being interested enough and aware enough fo the Conflicts that they face (plus choosing meaty conflicts for them to deal with), gaining and spending Debt than how much actual Debt they can store on their sheets.

Basically, I see it this way: Their sheets at the beginning have exactly as many points distributed on them at the end, including Drives, as they do at the beginning. They've definitely got more Exemplars (say, Eowyn for example...), but that doesn't mean they've got more points. When they first show up, the players in the game haven't gotten to know them that well so they haven't become emotionally invested enough in them to provide big, compelling Conflicts for them yet... they figure out waht makes these guys tick as the story progresses and the players start caring about their success or failure... hence being more willing to use their Powers to Resolve Conflicts (and be on the losing side) and caring enough about them to use what Debt they have to help in the process. I don't think we need room for more Debt on the sheets to make that happen.

Not to mention your strategy crippling the very, very cool Overdrawn mechanic as time goes on. I'd argue that, towards the end of a major story, there would if anything be more potential to be Overdrawn thanks to all the Powers a character's had to use along the way, all the tough choices they've faced et cetera rather than less because (in your system) the character's got more room for Debt. Being Overdrawn creates all sorts of cool narrative situations. Near the end of LotR, Frodo's waaaaay overdrawn and his self-doubt, gnawing fears and the like have left him wide open to the Ring's manipulations. It causes him to have to roll down his side of Gollum's "Goal: Steal the Ring" and Gollum capitalizes on it... then of course the "Event: somebody falls towards the lava" conflict comes round time for Resolution...

[Eric Sedlacek]

Secondly, while this does have an effect on player power, it's a weird kind of effect.  The spread of numbers on the abilities and the number of available abilities do not change (rewriting abilities between scenes is a-ok by me), so in any given scene and any given page, you can still Act and React.  The character is exactly as effective as it's always been.  The thing that changes is that there is a broader range of kinds of conflicts that the player can denote as significant (by staking debt), and the player of a main character can make a given conflict more significant than somebody who's playing a secondary character.  Now, is that equable between players?  No.  But neither is Tony sitting behind his giant pile of story tokens and me with only three.  Additionally, while it's not equal between players, it does fit the sensibilities of big-ass epic fantasy, which is what I'm trying to get at.

Debt has a dirty little secret.  Hopefully Tony will not be too mad at me for speaking this secret in public, but here it is.  The penalty for being overdrawn on debt is, at best, a slap on the wrist.  You roll down a die on a conflict or three.  BFD.  In fact, if you resolve conflicts quickly, as often happens, you may never roll anything down at all.  The truth is that playing an overdrawn character is only a problem if you decide it is.

So an increase in debt caps is not necessarily much of a difference in and of itself.  I suspect that the potential for trouble, if any exists, lies in the ability to stake larger amounts of debt on one conflict.  Will you get to the point where people are staking dozens of points of debt on a single conflict?  If so, will this improve the play experience, be a burden to play, or neither?  I don't know the answer.

Also, I'm still fuzzy on what is really gained by this mechanic.  I understand that the desire is for a more epic fantasy feel but I don't see how we get that.  What is more epic about increased debt caps?

Am I making sense?  Are you buying any of this? :)

It is an interesting idea.  I'm not sold, but I'm not categorically against it.    Most suggested mods I have seen for Capes are either trying to fix something that isn't broken or trying to make players do something they could do already if they actually wanted to.   This isn't either of those.  It's an attempt to legtimately do something slightly different.  I'm curious to see where the idea goes.