[Capes][DexCon] Owning your tragedy

[TonyLB]

More actual play from the DexCon Capes extravaganza.  This is still in that third session, and occurred directly after Fighting about what we're fighting about.

I'm going to dump a huge amount of detail here, but the overall notion is this:  We had a sad, sad, tragic story on all sides.  Much misery.  It was awesome.  Skip past the indented stuff if you just want my analysis.

So we were all on the edge of overwhelming the Earth Prime defenses and ... screw that.  Next scene was set somewhere else entirely, and it's ... Glory Boy!  Remember him!  We broke his psyche back in

I don't save the people ... the people save me and Phredd (motivated, I suspect, both by the idea that he wanted to explore where Glory Boy stood after that and the fact that he had a big pile of debt on the character which would act as a penalty to his final score, and he wanted to work it off.

He wanted to know what other characters from Earth Prime he could go to for guidance and ... well, there's Doc Cross.  Victor Cross (Prime) was a scientific genius and an ideological hero ... so naturally he ended up in rebellion against Lady Victory's imperialist agenda.  Cross was also trying to take care of a young Jenny Swift, a superheroine orphaned by Empire America forces.  But, as we will see, Doc Cross did not (perhaps could not) give her what she needed.

Glory Boy knew these two only as the enemy, but now that he, himself, was doubting the party line he sought them out for help.

But Doc Cross was seeking out help himself:  Victor Cross (not-Prime) was a scientific genius and a dyed-in-the-wool villain.  His villainous escapades had damaged him so much that our world's Cross had become the Iron Brain ... a brain in a cybernetic combat-jar.  Doc Cross had crossed dimensions in order to consult with his alter-ego.  The Iron Brain had to face the vision of all that he had lost ... his youth, his body, his passion.  Bitterness abounded.

Bret wowed me with his conflict, because it was so ingeniously obvious:  "Trick Doc Cross into switching bodies with the Iron Brain."  Of course.  How could it be otherwise?

Dave grabbed an exemplar conflict and ran with it:  "Jenny Swift takes a step toward the dark side."  Yoinks.  He also targetted Phredd with a romantic goal against Glory Boy ... which, y'know ... distracting!

Phredd hammered me on a third front with "Doc Cross comes to trust Glory Boy."  Which, yeah, I suppose that would make for good story but my gut reaction was "Given their history that should not be easy."

Suffice to say that I did not want any of these goals to go through.  Personally, I wanted Cross to remain skeptical of both Glory Boy and the Iron Brain, while keeping Jenny Swift on the straight and narrow.

All I managed was to stave off Jenny's slide to evil for a round.  I lost both of the other conflicts.  So Doc Cross became convinced of Glory Boy's sincerity ... Glory Boy said "I've come to realize that what Lady Victory is doing is wrong!" and ... man, yeah.  That won Cross over.  He'd been preaching that to unresponsive oppressors for, what, decades?  To have Lady Victory's own sidekick finally get it?  That tugs at the heart-strings.

And in that moment, Iron Brain hit him with the brain-switch ray.  So just when Cross and Glory Boy make a connection, he's robbed of it and the Iron Brain starts using that genuine human feeling to corrupt the poor boy.  Oh man!

There is nothing in the Capes rules that forbid me from, for instance, having Doc Cross immediately transfer his brain again, into a cloned body, and basically set everything right.  Not a thing.  There was, in short, nothing to make that strategy stick if I didn't choose that.  But my experience with the game is that it gets better if you own your losses ... not merely "accepting" them, but actively engaging with them and making them part of the strength that you, personally, bring to the game.  You can be the judge of how that worked out.

Next page I played "Goal:  Convince somebody that the brain switch has taken place."  That guaranteed that (given the time left in our session) for the rest of the game Cross wouldn't be able to alert anyone to Iron Brain's perfidy, but I could push hard against that barrier, and make my efforts felt mechanically.  Thing was ... I had only memories of most of my powers.

It's amazing how forlorn that makes your narrations.  I immediately narrated that Doc Cross didn't even know how to maneuver the body he now found himself in.  As he scrambled on the ground helplessly, he called out "What I wouldn't give for my own stunning physique" (in order to access his own powers).  Most of his rolls worked out that way ... What I wouldn't give for my own body back!

Through all of this, we intercut with scenes of Iron Brain taking advantage of the unwitting Glory Boy.  I mean ... the poor kid!  And Jenny Swift, trying to make a human connection with him ... with anyone!

The bit that particularly primed the pump, to me, was when Iron Brain tried to be all nice and paternal to Jenny Swift, thinking that would be how Doc Cross would act, and Dave reacted with immense surprise.  Suddenly we found out that Jenny Swift had never known simple kindness from Doc Cross.  Which was cool to know!  It didn't mean he was a bad person, just ... I mean, their situation was hard.  We all agreed that he could be a good person and a crummy surrogate father, all at the same time.

So Doc Cross somehow managed to crawl into a jet in order to pursue all the other folks (who had "departed the building" using their own super abilities).  Bret reacted my goal back down, saying that before Iron Brain had switched bodies he had sabotaged his own body.  So, suddenly, Doc Cross was moments away from dying in a robot body that was doing its level best to kill its new occupant.  And, of course, the jet had been sabotaged.  Crash, sploosh!  Into the Pacific ocean, and down toward the depths.

I kept on trying.  Get a radio signal out?  No go.  Launch some kind of flare?  Not happening.

So, I'm ready to throw in the towel.  Some times your character just gets kicked to the curb.  He was going to die in the depths of the ocean, without accomplishing his last, desperate, goal of at least telling someone what had happened.

Phredd said "You know, I think Glory Boy has super hearing," picked up a die and rolled my side of the conflict up to be winning.  And it all came together.

Doc Cross dies in the depths of the ocean.  The robot body fails, the plane collapses, massive pressure ... all conspire to erase him.  To the last he is trying to get word out, more concerned with others than with himself.  He is utterly convinced that he has failed.

Glory Boy, with super-hearing, hears the end of that whole struggle ... while having a conversation with Doc Cross's body.  He learns what has happened while keeping up a poker face to stop the Iron Brain from know what he knows.

Dave won both conflicts with Jenny, showing that Jenny had successfully distracted Glory Boy with her feminine wiles, and also that she is sliding to the dark side.  Dave reveals, in flash-back, that Jenny knew that the Iron Brain switched bodies with Doc Cross.

Folks will testify that I teared up at that.  I mean, yeah, he was a bad father, but he deserved better than that.  Not that I thought it was dramatically wrong ... oh hell no!  It explained the whole "Distract Glory Boy" thing, it fitted together perfectly.  Just ... I wanted a happier story for all of them.[/list]

Now one of the conplaints that I hear about Capes (like, a lot) is that it rewards people who let their characters suffer.  Lots of people say to me "You're rewarding people for not caring about their characters."  I say that's ignorance speaking.  It assumes that when you willingly engage in a character's suffering it can only be because you don't care about that character. 

I would argue (and I think this AP supports) that sometimes you engage in, and collude in, a character's suffering precisely because you love the character.  You stick with the story because you would rather be hurt than abandon the integrity of the character and the fiction you've created.

When you suffer without being disempowered, when you accept misery as part of the story (part of life) and embrace it ... well, being hurt still hurts, a lot ... but like an athlete who relishes the pain of muscles screaming at their limits and lungs rasping for air, I find that when a story wrings tears from me and has me shaking with emotion I feel great.  Not content, just as the athlete is not comfortable ... sad, very sad, but also glad and proud to have exercised my very human capacity for sympathy and sadness.

The more of such stories I play, the more I want the possibility in my play.  It makes my happy stories joyful (because they could have been sad) and my sad stories glorious.

[Ricky Donato]

Tony, I've really enjoyed this series of AP posts about Capes. It sounds like a really interesting system. However, I have very little experience with superhero comic books. Do you think I would be able to enjoy playing Capes anyway?

[TonyLB]

Tony, I've really enjoyed this series of AP posts about Capes. It sounds like a really interesting system. However, I have very little experience with superhero comic books. Do you think I would be able to enjoy playing Capes anyway?

I'll field that in private message, 'kay?

[Nathan P.]

I would argue (and I think this AP supports) that sometimes you engage in, and collude in, a character's suffering precisely because you love the character.  You stick with the story because you would rather be hurt than abandon the integrity of the character and the fiction you've created.

I totally agree, and this is what I observed over the course of my games of carry. Specifically, once people get into their characters, they will deliberately and consciously engage in a course of action that causes misery, pain or death for the rest of the squad, even though they KNOW it will come back to haunt them, because of their engagement with their characters Burdens.

The joy of playing a character who faces suffering is there for me, I think, because there is a sense of accomplishment in facing that suffering and taking all that comes, even (or especially) if the character can't handle it.

[DocMMedia]

I think the notion of character suffering is about creating a good and interesting narrative. Conflict and the possibility of bad happenings is what creates engaging drama and, in many respects, empathy for the characters. I think the danger of role playing in general (in regard to engaging, emotionally charges narratives) is that the danger is posed with no real threat of dire consequences. Typically, RPGs along the lines of D&D and such, have death of characters as a distinct possibility...but the death is final (without resurrections spells) and there ends the interesting story of the character. The beauty of Capes is that it allows for the exploration of bad stuff because of the underlying assumption that these people/heroes will live through it all. How will they cope with all the stuff they've had to contend with? Now that's an engaging story. The thing I found really awesome about this AP was that even when the Comic Code was suspended and a character (Doc Cross) actually died, it was tremendously meaningful for the story and a moving experience to play through. If Doc Cross had simply died at the bottom of the ocean, that's sad...but perhaps not that compelling. But to have Glory Boy hear him and we know that someone in the game world knows the truth...that's really moving. Further still, for Doc Cross to die with his last thoughts dwelling on the notion that no one knows what really happened to him...that's really tragic. I left the table wanting more.

[Bret Gillan]

See now, I've always enjoyed stories where my characters suffer, and in a lot of my early play experiences I actually bumped into a reverse sort of problem. I wanted my characters to suffer, to die tragically, or to sacrifice themselves and GMs wouldn't let me. NPCs would intervene, players at the table would argue about how "pointless" my character sacrificing himself to try to fend off the demon for just a few more seconds while his friends escaped was, etc. etc. What I want to know is why is bad things happening to your character something to be avoided in the first place? I've always felt, like you've discovered Tony, that adversity and tragedy makes characters and the story stronger rather than hurts them.

And I think you're bumping into a question that interests me: why don't gamers like bad things happening to their characters?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Bret, all these experiences are of other people (be they GMs or fellow-players) being afraid that hurting your character will hurt you, even when you say "c'mon! Hit me!" -- correct? That makes me think that what's systematically lacking is a safe space for the creative equivalent of roughhousing, clearly defined by permissions and prohibitions. Most contact sports define these very well; so do most parents ("Don't hit your brother with the chair leg.... Yes, the bean bag is okay."); but the only social activities that seem to do a decent job of simultaneously providing encouragement and safe, clear limits to a potentially dangerous activity are double-entendre-driven party games. RPGs, by contrast, have traditionally blurred the boundaries by insisting that you do everything in-character and that good roleplaying equates to immersive self-identification.

[TonyLB]

And I think you're bumping into a question that interests me: why don't gamers like bad things happening to their characters?

Well, I am totally saddened by movies and TV shows and books where sad things happen to characters I like.  I know that it's important and thematic, and I feel that it's powerful, but ... it's sad!  I can't react to that in a detached "Ah!  An important dramatic element," sorta way.

So, for instance, when I came to the end of the last episode of Angel, my eyes and throat were raw, and I was sopping with tears (You don't like Angel?  Not the point.  Permit me my personal sacred ground.)  In my heart I totally, 100%, wanted them to have a happy ending.  In my head I totally, 100%, knew that they needed to suffer, and suffer badly.

Part of what I come to an RPG for is to be able to follow my heart, but be sufficiently constrained that I end up satisfying my head as well.  I want to try to save the characters, but have something "outside" stop me.  I want to be confident that my attempts to make everyone happy will not result in a boring story where everyone's happy.

[phredd]

The ultimate outcome of this session was excellent.  Jenny Swift not only turned to the dark side, she played the deciding hand in the death of Doc Cross.  Without her, the Iron Brain would have been double teamed by Glory Boy and by Doc Cross.  But Jenny's persistant pursuit of Glory Boy's affection provided the necessary distraction that kept him from rescuing the Doc.  Glory Boy may know what the Iron Brain did, but he was clueless about Jenny's role.

And Glory boy was left at the end of the scene realizing that he now had no allies left in the battle against Lady Victory and super-powered oppression.  That is, except for Jenny...

What a great setup for the next scene (that didn't happen)!