[Capes][DexCon] I don't save the people ... the people save me

[TonyLB]

The final Capes session of DexCon.  And I actually had past events from a charged and coherent previous session.  That meant that I could start the new folks in media res with elaborate details on how they got there.

I don't think I can possibly write up this game in a single post.  A lot of stuff happened that raised questions in my mind.  So this will set ground-work, and bring up one of the points that struck me.

Again, I am bad with names.  We had four players, and Bret was one of them.  I remember him because (a) I know him and (b) he's evil, as you shall see in later posts.

When we left off, Major Victory had just betrayed the revolution, and a whole bunch of people were being taken to the re-education camps.  We start the scene in those re-education camps.  I jumped in to play Hellion ("Lex Luthor with legs," a sexy master criminal with insufferable attitude) who had already carved out a little prisoner's empire within the camp, and other players took Gun Bunny, Major Victory and Glory Boy, carrying over from the previous session.

They weren't the same players (unless my memory's really failing me) they just really liked where the previous guys had left things, and so they picked it up and ran with it.

Our first big conflict was about whether or not Major Victory got to explain his actions from the previous session ... which, of course, meant that anybody who got to narrate it could make up the explanation.  That was hotly contested both by the people who wanted him shut up (particularly Gun Bunny) and those who wanted to hear the explanation from his own lips (Glory Boy) and, of course, the Major himself.

The guy playing Glory Boy mixed this liberally with populist action by laying down the "Major Victory places his trust in the common man" goal.  So the question of who he would explain himself to, and how, became linked with the question of whether he would believe in the people, whether they would believe in him.  Bret responded by creating a conflict about (roughly) whether Glory Boy still believed in the ideals of Lady Victory, and imperial America.

So, yeah, we were in a prison camp but we were fighting the major fight that would mean the success or failure of the revolution.  We were going to determine whether the people of earth would fight against their oppressors, and whether the good people who were unwittingly furthering that oppression would start to question the charismatic fascists in their own leadership.  Hearts and minds, and all that.

One thing that I found fascinating was that there was a huge discrepancy between the types of narration being used on different sides.  Glory Boy and Gun Bunny were heaving around the major super-powers ... massive property damage, throwing Major Victory down from near orbit to crash-land in a crater of his own impact, that kind of thing.

Major Victory, however, was not his normal boisterous self under Bret's care.  His moves were small, subtle.  Mechanically, of course, there's no difference, but the narrative difference was telling.  When he was twitching in the huge crater, Bret narrated "Major Victory grasps for something to pull up on, and all you see in the panel is that the calloused, strong hand of a working-class man reaches down and clasps his, pulling him to his feet."

That's not Bang! Smack! big narration ... and because of that, I think it delivered a much more potent wallop.  It's the little things that get freighted with massive symbolism.

This is the kind of thing that I'm starting to see experienced conflict-resolution people do a lot more as the months and years go on.  As they get accustomed to the idea that their impact isn't limited by their narration, they realize that they aren't obligated to make a big flashy light show if they don't want to.  Your Watchdog's victory over a demon horde can be because he calls on the power of God and shoots them down with a glowing, holy six-shooter ... but you aren't penalized if you decide that he wins the victory by looking them straight in the eye and smiling slightly.

That gives people the freedom to try very different narrative tacks.  I don't think subtle is better than unsubtle, but I very much do think that having a toolkit filled richly with options is better than having a toolkit with only a few.  People have more artistic tools, and I'm definitely feeling the impact in my role as audience.

That was the first (but not the last) time in this session that a lump of emotion rose in my throat.  I was all ready for Hellion to be a villain!  But the other players were ready to tromp that beautiful moment, to make it not be the pivotal moment, unless they were stopped and Bret just didn't have enough resources to stop them.  If I wanted that moment to be important I couldn't just be a bystander.  I had to step up and fight for it.

Me, personally, the player ... I had to help him.  The resources I had were an avowed villainess.  Apparently, I quickly discovered, she had a core of goodness somewhere way, deep down.  She came to Major Victory's aid, and together they roused the camp to revolt, and formed the core of a rebellion.

Integrity of the character?  Feh.  I'm pretty sure that character had integrity.  She just also had surprises.

And Glory Boy?  Rebuked on almost all counts.  He let a rebellion grow right under his nose because he was no longer sure who to trust.  He didn't believe in Major Victory, he didn't believe in Lady Victory, he didn't believe in himself.  He has a huge horkin' pile of debt.  That's the kind of character I bookmark in my mind for "This guy needs a later scene focussed on him."  Posts to follow.

[Andrew Cooper]

Did the Comics Code change in this session or was it the same as the previous?  Could the good guys actually start to win now?

[Bret Gillan]

Andrew,

If I recall correctly, there was no Comics Code at all in this whole scene which meant all bets were off.

[TonyLB]

Did the Comics Code change in this session or was it the same as the previous?  Could the good guys actually start to win now?

The comics code was now wide open.  There were no entries.  Anything could happen.  I specifically pointed out to people that they could kill heroes, take the fight back to Earth-Prime and could win the war.

[Bret Gillan]

I think part of my subtlety with use of character traits was my growing understanding that they are not so much skills and abilities like in other roleplaying games as character thematics that you're using to influence the narrative. Heat Ray vision isn't just a superpower for overcoming obstacles, it's used in a Scene to say, "Hey, this character is thematically wrapped up in this Conflict." So whether Major Victory is using his "improvise a weapon" ability to make a blaster to blast his way through Homocidal Brainiac's mind shield, or whether he's using it to create a flag to rally the common man around him, it's still just a way of saying, "This ability is important to this character and it's who he is."

That's why in Andrew Morris's Sin City Capes game I took "smoke a cigarette" as a superpower. It wasn't going to win him any fights. I just wanted my character to smoke cigarettes and have it be his "thing."

Now, here's an issue I took away from the table that I want to bring up, though maybe it deserves its own thread. One thing I really enjoy in games is having the other players care about my character and sympathize with them. This cannot coexist with Capes, or if it can it turns into a form of competitive manipulation. When you weighed in to have Hellion support Major Glorys "trust the common man" goal, you said something like, "This is a really stupid thing to do." Basically, I had appealed to you emotionally, my appeal worked, and it made you less able to be competitive in that instance - you came in on my side when it didn't make sense for you to do so. On the other hand, Fred (the player of Glory Boy) was looking for every opportunity to make Major Glory look like an ass, and I could tell that Fred the player disliked Major Glory despite my appeals. I think it led to some really, really cool story, but in a way it turned me off as a player. And maybe that's just because I didn't know Fred and took it (inaccurately) as some kind of social critique against me.

And this is not a criticism of Capes. I just wonder if maybe these kind of emotional appeals are somewhere "to the side" of Capes as the rules themselves seem to make them less meaningful and/or effective.

A nitpicky subnote: I was the one who introduced "Major Victory places his trust in the common man" on the table. ;)

[Bret Gillan]

Addendum: I should have elaborated something - I think Fred's rejection of every other character at the table as sympathetic made him more competitive and made us engage him more as "antagonist" and is what led to him winning that session.

[Nathan P.]

This is the kind of thing that I'm starting to see experienced conflict-resolution people do a lot more as the months and years go on.  As they get accustomed to the idea that their impact isn't limited by their narration, they realize that they aren't obligated to make a big flashy light show if they don't want to.  Your Watchdog's victory over a demon horde can be because he calls on the power of God and shoots them down with a glowing, holy six-shooter ... but you aren't penalized if you decide that he wins the victory by looking them straight in the eye and smiling slightly.

That gives people the freedom to try very different narrative tacks.  I don't think subtle is better than unsubtle, but I very much do think that having a toolkit filled richly with options is better than having a toolkit with only a few.  People have more artistic tools, and I'm definitely feeling the impact in my role as audience.

Yah, I've definitly been noticing this as well, in a general sense. I know that, personally, when I narrate things I tend to think about how best to connect A (the starting point of the conflict) to B (the result generated by the conflict resolution), with "best" being totally dependent on the game, the other people, my take on my character, the story thus far, and so on. But it's easier for me to make those connections now than it was a year ago.

I would also point towards our Polaris game. Dave (I think? So bad with names) I think had, generally, a harder time narrating stuff then you, me and Shawn, even though he was excited to play the game.

It's incredibly cool that narrating is a skill that improves with practice. I mean, think of the stereotypical dysfunctional DMs - of course they're good at narrating interesting scenes. They're the only ones in their groups that have been doing it!

[TonyLB]

Addendum: I should have elaborated something - I think Fred's rejection of every other character at the table as sympathetic made him more competitive and made us engage him more as "antagonist" and is what led to him winning that session.

I think you're quite right about that.  I was willing to give you a by on proving that Major Victory really was that good a leader, that he really was that much of a symbol of the common man.

But it's not just a selfless "I'll let you have what you want."  If anything, it is terribly selfish of me.  I wanted MV to be that symbol.  If I forced you to prove it then you might fail.  I didn't want to go there.  Fred (thank God somebody's better with names than I am) was willing to take that risk.  He was only willing to let you declare MV that symbol if you paid your dues for it.  And that made it (at least to me) more powerful when you (and I) did.

Now the question of why he did it is a really interesting one.  I, personally, didn't get any sense that he was dissatisfied with having lost that conflict ... albeit, the consolation price of story tokens might mask that.

I guess I'm wondering ... was there anything in particular about the way he was providing antagonism that convinced you that he was doing it because he didn't sympathize with the characters?

[phredd]

Phredd here.

Bret's right in that I had a visceral dislike for Major Victory.  Bret I liked just fine, but MV's character just happens to push a lot of my buttons about what patriotism is in our current political climate.  So I went after him hammer and tongs to start out with.

But Bret's play with MV did slowly win me over, and I was actually looking forward to MV coming back from his exile to reconcile with Glory Boy and was disappointed that we didn't make it to that scene.

[DocMMedia]

I played Gun Bunny and (later) Jenny Swift in this session. (It's Dave, by the way). I was pretty much the least experienced at the table...and I was totally amazed by the Bret's and Phredd's choices, both for goals/events and the narratives. From my side of things, Gun Bunny helped move the plot along...but the really interesting stuff was happening with MV and Glory Boy. I just wanted to be part of that. Which was part of the reason Jenny caught my eye in the later scene. I'm a big fan of the internal struggle...and seeing that played out so well between MV and Glory Boy...I couldn't resist. Then Jenny's "dark turn" was really my big motivation for the entire last scene. It was great building up the tension and then, once the goal was resolved, narrating this sinister side of the character that, for me, gave depth and heightened moral tension for the story. It seemed like Jenny was taken for granted as a schoolgirl caricature...but the dark turn revealed a hidden depth. What I hadn't expected from the session was this huge, meaningful engagement with morality and the implications of hero decisions. It was frickin' awesome.