[Theory] What goes into a plot thread?

[TonyLB]

Now I hope that most of us understand that an actual plot is something that will be ripped to shred by the demonic bacchantes that are players in Capes.  If you make a beginning, middle and end ... and expect to progress from one to the next in a manner of your choosing ... then you're pretty likely to get screwed.

But as Chapter 8 points out, it is possible and profitable to sow the seeds of a story and let other people water them and bonsai-prune them into some bizarre shape of their own creation.  Chapter 8 is ... eh, it's okay.  But it was, of necessity, written before people (myself included) had a lot of experience in creating plot-seeds for Capes.  I'd like to get some discussion going about the techniques that have developed since publication.

The acme of my contributions (so far) is the rambling "Invasion from Earth Prime" scenario.  It combines several techniques to get people jump-started:

• Pre-generated characters
• Pre-generated first scenes
• Pre-generated networks of exemplar relationships
• Scene-specific Comics Code (note:  there is no way within the rules to accomplish this, and it is therefore not something that a lone player can try without group consensus ... prime for a convention game where one person is singled out for setup duty, however).

My experience so far is that you can establish quite a bit with these tools.  Some things, however, reliably attract more interest from players ... which is to say that those things work much better than others at drawing people to complete a pattern of which those elements are the starting points.

• Personal conflicts are better than global ones.  Romantic or sexual conflicts are better than merely personal ones.
• Characters that are incomplete as written are more attractive than those that are fully written.  Commando Jack is pretty much perfectly spelled out, from start to finish, in his document.  People don't like to play him.  Hellion's personality is more alluded to than actually described in her document, and there is never a single session where she isn't being played.
• A few words that get used often have more impact on people's thinking than a paragraph that they read once and then ignore (see, specifically, the speculation on how much impact the two words "Mephisto's Pantry" had on game tone).

What other techniques do you use?  Which ones work all the time?  Which ones only work occasionally, and do you know why?

[Sydney Freedberg]

Just to add to the objective for the thread: I don't think the goal is merely a better Chapter 8 with more examples -- i.e. the equivalent of a good "GM advice" chapter from other games -- or even a loose "pitch" proces like Prime Time Adventures; I think the goal is a procedure to prepare for and jumpstart play, along the lines of Dogs in the Vineyard town creation or the various things tried in Full Light, Full Steam and the playtest draft of Galactic. I'll ponder how the heck to do this in a bit, but I'm hoping for algorithms, not advice.

[TonyLB]

That would rock.  For a start, I'm interested in evidence.  From there I can conceive of going to a theory (what matters, how does input A translate to outcome B, etc.) and from there a technology.

Maybe those steps will go quickly, maybe they won't.  But I'd be quite stunned if we didn't have to pass through each of those steps.

[Matthew Glover]

Tony, I know you've written extensively about Invasion from Earth Prime in your AP posts, but are you planning on making the content available as well?  I'd specifically like to see the writeups for the characters you mention here.

The only sort of pre-game prep that I've done for Capes play has been for my ten-minute demos, so it's more than a little limited.  I'm reluctant to post any observations from that because with only one Page and no reactions, there's not enough time for any development to happen.

[TonyLB]

Tony, I know you've written extensively about Invasion from Earth Prime in your AP posts, but are you planning on making the content available as well?  I'd specifically like to see the writeups for the characters you mention here.

Yep.  Gonna write it up like old-time D&D modules, and sell it.  I'm mercenary that way.  Probably done in time for XMas.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Screw evidence! Screw theory! I will advance directly to technology! I will assemble my heavier-than-air flying machine and shove it fearlessly off the cliff to soar high into the air, piloted by my friend Bruno "No Death Benefits" Smithson because me crazy =! me stupid.

Err - what I meant was:

1. Come up with a hero you think is cool. No abilities, no drives, not yet, just a concept.
2. What does this hero care about intensely?
3. What other thing does this hero care about intensely? Do not worry about (2) and (3) being incompatible or even outright contradictory.
4. Come up with an adversary for the hero. The adversary cares about the hero's (2) intensely -- but, naturally, in a diametrically opposed way.
5. Come up with an ally for the hero. The ally cares about the hero's (3) intensely -- but in a subtly incompatible way.
6. Give the adversary and the ally each a second Thing They Care About intensely.
7. Continue ramifying the system as desired, creating an ally and an adversary for each ally and adversary, until you have enough principal characters. Do not make the system recursive (i.e. use a character you have already created for someone else's ally/enemy slot) until you have, uh, more than X characters. Yeah. My engine don't need no stinking governor.
8. Embody all these conflicted relationships in exemplars: If you have significant time to play and want a "loose" arrangement with more room to develop characters, each conflicted relationship will have two primary characters sharing an exemplar; if you have relatively little time to play and want a "tight" arrangement that thrusts principals quickly into conflict, make each principal at either end of a conflicted relationship the other's relevant Exemplar.
9. Assign all the principal characters relevant Drives based on the things they care about. No abilities yet!
10. Look at the mess you've created and figure out what kind of tone it implies: Are characters in opposition over Truth, Liberty, and Justice? Are they feuding over the throne? Are they all screwing each others' exes? Do something really, really clever with the Comics Code to enforce this tone! I don't know how! Bruno is flying, shut up!
11. Give all these characters abilities. If you are lazy, use the click and locks. If you are less lazy, customize abilities appropriately to suggest tone: e.g. if you are playing a gruesome, perverse horror game, the gadgeteer's "magnetic bolos" ranged attack could profitably be changed to be "wasps that lay eggs in your eyeballs."

[Hans]

That would rock.  For a start, I'm interested in evidence.  From there I can conceive of going to a theory (what matters, how does input A translate to outcome B, etc.) and from there a technology.

All I can offer is negative evidence; that is, evidence of what is NOT a good thing to do.  That evidence is pretty much summarized in my Capes in Missassauga: Forensic Report thread.  Your first point:

Personal conflicts are better than global ones.  Romantic or sexual conflicts are better than merely personal ones.

was truly borne out by our experience.

From other games (specifically Dust Devils) I can provide evidence that your second point:

Characters that are incomplete as written are more attractive than those that are fully written.

I have a scenario for Dust Devils (essentially a town with a bunch of characters all on collision courses with each other in one way or another), and my experience is that people gravitate to:
a) characters with room for customization
b) archetypal characters that have genre equivalents people can latch their imaginations on to.

For example; I've ran the scenario three times, and out of roughly 10 pregen characters someone ALWAYS plays the "gambler from out of town".  The gambler is DIFFERENT each time, but the gambler always gets played.