A bodiless, persona less character?

[Sindyr]

Btw, Bret, your Gods idea is really cool, kudos to you for coming up with it!  I look forward with interest to see how it develops.

Between PLC's, Gods, and more, it seems that the evolutions of Capes is going strong.  I like that.

[Sindyr]

Great!  Don't make your arguments.  That's your prerogative.

Every time (every time) you bring this topic up, I will point out that you have never made any arguments for your beliefs.

You want to lament that I'm being unfair?  Go right ahead.  But don't claim that you haven't been warned.

Oh wait ... your whole sense of betrayal is based in the idea that you hadn't been warned, that this response came "out of the blue," rather than being exactly what I told you I'd do months ago.  So ... uh ... don't claim that again, I guess.

Tony, you debate with a lot of flair, and you are a very clever man.  I imagine that you could take either side of an argument and argue equally effectively for it.  You are most certainly a winner, and I think everyone who knows you knows that.  I understand why you play Capes the way you do and why your concept of Capes is as it is.

You are probably right, there probably was no betrayal - I was probably wrong when I began to feel that you were really engaging with me and listening to what I had to say in a way that had been lacking previously.  Consider that a mea culpa as well.

Know that tearing me down can never demonstrate *anything* that you believe is actually true.  You yourself have never made any cohesive or necessary arguments for your beliefs on this matter.  You may think that coercive non-consensual play is central to Capes and unavoidable, but you still have not shown that it is so.

Just wanted to point that out.

[Sydney Freedberg]

You may think that coercive non-consensual play is central to Capes and unavoidable, but you still have not shown that it is so.

Assuming that by the jargony and pejorative phrase "coercive non-consensual" you mean "one player can make things happen in the story that affect other players without their consent (except for consenting to play Capes in the first place), I'd respond:

"Central"? Yes, almost definitionally: the system's explicitly designed around that concept, so even if Tony hadn't ever written a word on the issue since he published the game, he would have "shown that it is so."

"Unavoidable"? No, I think everyone's agreed you can avoid it; most of us just think you'd be missing the point of the game, rather like (car analogies again!) buying an enormous SUV and using it only to go to the grocery store: Sure, you can do it, but if you never go off-road, there are actually many better vehicles for you. If you really want to avoid playing this way, there are probably many better games than Capes for you to play.

[Sindyr]

Assuming that by the jargony and pejorative phrase "coercive non-consensual" you mean "one player can make things happen in the story that affect other players without their consent (except for consenting to play Capes in the first place), I'd respond:

That's not what I mean.  I mean this (in a non pejorative way):

coercive: intended to manipulate or force, intended to *reduce* choices
non-consensual: without the permission of the target

Effectively, coercive non-consensual play is laying down the conflct "Doc Ock frightens Spiderman into wetting himself in a public and embarrsing way" and in so doing try to force (rather than entice) Spidey's player to engage the conflict and give up his resources in order to prevent a negative and unnacceptable (to him) outcome.  What can make this consensual however, is that some players have the reaction "bring it on" when this sort of play occurs.  But for the players that don't, this would be an example of coercive non-consensual play.

What makes one conflict coercive and another enticing?  I think any hard and fast black and white definition can be quibbled at and argued over - like what does or does not constitute porn, but like the judge said, "I know it when I see it."

I would imagine the conflicts that trade on the emotional weaknesses of a player to get them inolved in a conflict that they absolutely do not want to be part of the story but feel they must nevertheless address would be in the ballpark.

Note that the terms coercive and non-consensual are not pejorative terms, they are simply terms.

[Sydney Freedberg]

What can make this consensual however, is that some players have the reaction "bring it on" when this sort of play occurs.

Okay, but the Capes rules don't distinguish between "bring it on" and "please don't" -- players can make either statement all they want, but the game doesn't give either mechanical force. (N.B. lots of exceptions about Comics Code, spotlight characters, "not yet," and the conflict-veto rules). So if that distinction is critically important to you, you need to give it some game-mechanical authority, which means a different set of rules, which means a different game.

[Sindyr]

Okay, but the Capes rules don't distinguish between "bring it on" and "please don't" -- players can make either statement all they want, but the game doesn't give either mechanical force. (N.B. lots of exceptions about Comics Code, spotlight characters, "not yet," and the conflict-veto rules). So if that distinction is critically important to you, you need to give it some game-mechanical authority, which means a different set of rules, which means a different game.

Again, I follow and agree with you, except at this point I would probably not ask any player to change their tactics for me.

I think one of the points under current discussion is not whether or not other people should be using these tactics.  Everyone is right when they say it is perfectly valid play under the Capes ruleset, and you are right in saying that forbidding it makes the game no longer Capes.

But,

1) Can *I* play effectively if I refuse to engage in that sort of play - i.e., if I refuse to intiate coercive tactics against those who I intuit would be hurt if I did, will I be at no disadvantage compared to those who do?  I think so - because most Capes players are of the "bring it on" variety and *like* that kind of play directed at the them, and for the others, there's enticement play (as opposed to coercive.)
2) Can I play effectively if I limit people's opportunity to coerce me, not through additional rules, but through a particular style of play valid under the existing rules.

I think the answer to both of the above is yes.  Within the existing Capes rules I can both refuse to coerce those who would have a serious problem with it and also myself refuse to be so coerced, and still be just as effective vis-a-vis conflicts and tokens, have just as an engaging and fulfilling game occur.

As another poster has pointed out, the proof *is* in the pudding, and until I can try this several times and under several circumstances with actual play, all I have are theories, and I will frankly admit that.  As soon as I have the oportunity to engage in actual play in this way, I will.  And I will report back.

In the meanwhile, I have no aversion to continued discussion, if anyone so wishes. 

My main purpose has been and continues to be not to present definitive proof of this concept (yet) but to get people thinking about some new ideas and to put some old ideas in a new light.

[Sydney Freedberg]

...at this point I would probably not ask any player to change their tactics for me....

Errr... I'm not asking anyone to change their tactics for me, either. (If you and I were playing together and your Kismet thing bored or irritated me, I might, but we're not). I'm suggesting you need to change your tactics for you, to get the most out of the game and to broaden your own range of abilities.

But, yeah, without actual pay, further discussion in the abstract is of diminishing value.

[Vaxalon]

Sindyr, I'll reiterate my offer to play with you over IRC.

[Hans]

Sindyr, I'll reiterate my offer to play with you over IRC.

Never tried it before, but willing as well.  In fact, more than willing!

[Sindyr]

Sindyr, I'll reiterate my offer to play with you over IRC.

You may not have seen my original response to that:

I am always willing to change my mind as I experience new facts.  I dont like to type much if I can avoid it, but I would be willing to play by Skype, Teamspeak, or Ventrillo.  Or in person in Mass, VT or NH.

I hate, hate typing in real time to talk to someone else. 

However, with the net being such as it is, shouldn't a Skype Conference call be even better?  Would you be willing to do that?  The only down side is needing a headset with a microphone, a $20 circuit city item if you don't already have one.

I figure we have the net - let's use it to do voice.  Is that doable for you, or anyone?

[Vaxalon]

Skype is fine.  I also have Ventrilo, and access to a server.

Let's do it this way...

Anyone interested, email me with times available, systems usable (Skype, Ventrilo, Teamspeak) and we'll set something up.

vaxalon@gmail.com

[Sindyr]

You just made my day. Woot!

Email is being sent.

[Tuxboy]

At the risk of dragging this back on topic I have a couple of major issues with the premise...

Quote from: Sindyr on July 19, 2006, 09:15:43 AM
a) It seems entirely valid within the written rules of Capes to create a non-persona-ed character sheet and character.

Agreed....apart from two major points:

1) As a bodiless, persona-less character I don't think you can justify giving the character Drives.

drive (n) - A strong motivating tendency or instinct related to self-preservation, reproduction, or aggression that prompts activity toward a particular end.

Without a persona Drives would be impossible...

2) As the character has no Drives then it can have no Debt generating powers.

b) PLC's (Persona-Less Characters) seem to allow me, and I would imagine others, to more easily disregard coercive play, making each conflict more of a choice of whether or not to get involved, and less of a manipulation.

Totally...but from the other player's perspective Who cares?, you have no resources as you have no Debt...you would essentially be a persona-less player with minimal impact on the game.

c) PLC's also give much wider lattitude for the scope of one's involvement.  By playing a PLC such as Kismet, I can partake of Spidey's struggle with Doc Ock, Ock's struggle with Spidey, or the experience of a third party.  I am not locked into one persona's perspective, giving me a much wider vantage point.

This is pretty much true of any character, its one of the joys of Capes.

Rolling on Spidey's "Bravery" I roll up the Conflict "MJ escapes the Green Goblin's clutches" narrating "MJ remembers all those times Spidey saved her against overwhelming odds and struggles to break free, distracting Green Goblin."

d) PLC's, by the very nature of Capes and it's meta-game seem more suited to Capes than PC's, and more of a pure evolution of the very Capes fundamental principles.

Couldn't disagree more...PLCs are not an evolution, they are just you discovering the NPC mechanic and misapplying it.

This is could be a huge leap forward in your understanding of the Capes ethos though if you take the principles of acting on other characters which you seem to like and accept that it happening to your characters in the same way would not be the end of the world...

[Sindyr]

1) As a bodiless, persona-less character I don't think you can justify giving the character Drives.

drive (n) - A strong motivating tendency or instinct related to self-preservation, reproduction, or aggression that prompts activity toward a particular end.

Without a persona Drives would be impossible...

I disagree completely.  Pick one of the two following reasons:

Could be the universal drives of Hope, Duty, etc - the impersonal and overarching drives of the cosmos being tuned into, eh?

All that's really required I think is that

(from the Capes rulebook)
"They may Stake Debt on any number of Conflicts that provoke the character to prove themself in the relevant moral Drive."
-and-
"But when they Stake Debt, it must be on a Conflict that is morally charged for that particular character and Drive."

Who decides if the Conflict is "morally charged" or if it "provokes the character to prove themself"?  The character's owner does.  And I don't think any other player can gainsay the owner.  I could simply say, "this character IS this collection of Powers, Styles, Attitudes, and Drives - in other words, this character sheet and the info contained within it, and no more besides what fancy is in my head.  I will let you know when a Conflict is morally charged or provocative from time to time for this character (sheet) by staking debt appropriately - if I stake debt, then you know it's morally charged for this character (sheet)."

It's an unusual approach, but not as far as I can see, an invalid one.

-or-

Instead of it being Persona-less per se, it is Persona-*light* - it only has enough Persona to justify having drives, but apart from that has no ego or other sentient aspects.  Consider the PLC not to be sentient but to be meta-sentient - a quality of being that affords the minimum neccesary to qualify for drives but does no more than that.

Now, since the PLC *does* have drives and debt, everything else falls into place.

c) PLC's also give much wider lattitude for the scope of one's involvement.  By playing a PLC such as Kismet, I can partake of Spidey's struggle with Doc Ock, Ock's struggle with Spidey, or the experience of a third party.  I am not locked into one persona's perspective, giving me a much wider vantage point.

This is pretty much true of any character, its one of the joys of Capes.

Rolling on Spidey's "Bravery" I roll up the Conflict "MJ escapes the Green Goblin's clutches" narrating "MJ remembers all those times Spidey saved her against overwhelming odds and struggles to break free, distracting Green Goblin."

Yes, but...

First and simplest, if I have Spidey's character sheet in hand, and I want to find some way to affect the fight that Catwoman and Dock Ock are having while Spidey is slumped unconscious, I am going to have to do more work to apply "Spidey-Sense" on the character sheet to help Catwoman win the conflict.  I am not saying I couldn't make it work, I am just saying it's simpler and more efficient for me to have a Kismet character sheet and simply use the ability "Good Prevails"
Second, by having 12 Spiderman abilities listed in front of me, and by trying to figure out how to use them to win conflicts, I will naturally be drawn into looking at things from Spiderman's perspective.  By having a character sheet based on a wider perspective, such as Kismet, Karma, Poetic Justice, or whatnot, I will instinctively and naturally be open to taking a wider view than only how things are affecting Spiderman.

-and-

What kind of blows my mind, in a very good way, is that by playing Kismet I am essentially playing *myself*, my godlike ability as a player to reach into the world of the narration and affect it, helping that which I want to support, combating that which I want to curtail.  Heck, all you really have to do is come up with 12 abilities that represent the kind of effect you want to have on the story, "Poetic Justice", "Fate take a hand", "the Good prevail", etc and there you go, you have made a character which is you, the player's, proxy within the narrative world.

Ultimately, by playing the purely narrative force instead of sheeting up a character as a focus, you are declaring that your primary interest is not in any one character overall - although you may be interested is Spidey's story today - but in the story itself.  You are taking a GM stance as opposed to a PC stance.  And I think this is a good thing, because at the end of the day, playing Capes is not like playing a PC, as Capes does not support player ownership/authority over slected PC's, no instead it *is* like being a GM.  And by playing this narrative force, you are strongly embracing that role.

-and-

Put another way, let's say I am involved in a story in which spiderman strives and fails to save the life of an innocent.

If my character sheet is Spiderman, then I take it personally.  I am bummed, angry, frustrated, and toxic.  The game's fun has evaporated, replacing it with a very real desire (not acted on, of course) to harm the players physically, to do violance upon them for what they have done to me.  This is not a good place to be, not a place I want to risk arriving at.

But if my character sheet is Kismet, even if I having been *playing* Spiderman narratively exactly the same, when Spiderman fails to save the innocent person, I do *not* take it personally.  I am bummed on Spiderman's *behalf*, but from my current point of view, the point of view of Kismet, all things will eventually work out for the best, taking the long view.  Spiderman's failure is simply one knot on one thread in the entire fabric of the tapestry, and that failure may lead to an even greater order of magnitude of goodness and triumph.

Now, if I am playing Spiderman's character sheet, I cannot take that more impartial view, I guess cause I feel like by choosing to link the character sheet to the character Spiderman I am choosing to link Spiderman to *me*.  But by playing Kismet's character sheet, I don't feel Spiderman as being *me* any more than I feel Doc Ock to be *me*.  They are both threads in the tapestry, and its the overall design of the whole thing that I am interested in.  And I am not even striving toward a particular design, I am striving toward making whatever design emerges the best, most coherent, and pure design that I can.

Spiderman fails either way, but the *meaning* of that failure and it's immanent emotive effect completely changes depending on which I embrace - Kismet's sheet or Spidey's.  And that to me, is one of the keys (though not IMO the most significant key) in the difference between playing Kismet and Spidey.

The goal of playing Capes (for me) ultimately is to have a positive, meaningful, and fun experience.  This seems far more likely when I play Kismet.  To me, that is a very real and essential difference.  Playing a persona-less cosmic force simply feels different from playing a persona-based character, and as the product of a narrative experience is feeling, that to me seem as objective as one can get.

This is could be a huge leap forward in your understanding of the Capes ethos though if you take the principles of acting on other characters which you seem to like and accept that it happening to your characters in the same way would not be the end of the world...

...which is made all the easier by playing a PLC. :)

[Tuxboy]

*LOL*

The dictionary definition of drive blows the first reason out of the water, to have

A strong motivating tendency or instinct related to self-preservation, reproduction, or aggression that prompts activity toward a particular end.

you must have a self to preserve which presupposes a body or at least a persona.

And as for the second, with a persona, or even a persona-lite you can be interacted with and therefore have conflicts directed toward you which destroys the rest of your argument.

Either there is no persona and no debt generating powers or there is a persona (even a lite one) that possesses powers and can be interacted with.

For the record I do like the concept of  amorphous conceptional "personifications" such as Blind Luck, Serendipity, Law of the Jungle etc, but using them as untouchable characters just doesn't make sense and pretzels the rules...munchkinism at its worst. Besides you'll miss out on fun conflicts like:

Goal: "Chaos Theory makes a mockery of Kismet"

or

Goal: "Fortune's wheels turn and Kismet favours Hobgoblin's escape"

None of this will stop you ignoring Conflicts directed toward you that you don't like but using faulty rules justifications as "proofs"...come on now surely you can do better than that *L*