First-time Capes: Rocking!

[Joel P. Shempert]

I played Capes for the first time on New Year's Eve! It was awesome! I love it and can't wait to play again!

OK, actually I played Capes Lite, but believe me when I tell you I will be acquiring the full version as soon as possible. I've been wanting to try out even the lite version for months, but haven't been able toget a toehold with my group, our regular play time being at a premium. My opportunity came on New Years, when a few of the guys I roleplay with were throwing a big game party called Nerding Up the New Year, with lots of Smash Bros, Guitar Hero, rounds of Munchkin, etc. I printed up the Capes Lite rules, cut out a wad of Click-n-locks, assembled all the doodads like pencils, dice, and poker chips, and showed up ready to rock.

After a fun game of Munchkin (I won!), I said, "So, I've got this cool Superhero game, characters are grab-and-play, there's elegant rules that you learn as you go." I hit up several partygoers and got a lot of nibbles, ending up with five others to play. Actually, I had to turn away a couple of players. As it is, Six proved a bit unwieldy, but not unworkable.

So anyway: we had a blast! people really dug the click-n-locks, and the rules as they unfolded produced a lot of "hey, cool!' as did the narrations they inspired. I had at least two people tell me "you HAVE to buy the full game!" before we'd even completed the first Page. The only real rough spot was the group size; this tended to slow things down a lot, and I accidentally stepped on a couple of toes since some players had wanted to play another game later and the Capes game went past midnight and edged it out. The folks in question were cool about it though, and were like "hey, it's OK, this game was really fun!" So I'm thinking they considered it worth the tradeoff. And really, looking back, I wouldn't want to part with the input of any of the participants. All six of us and our characters combined to produce this really cool Conflict Alchemy that had everyone buzzing.

The players and their characters are as follows. The first two are guys I barely know; the others are regular gaming buddies:

Mitch: Greycloud, Corporate Destroyer
Hotshot Shootist, villain

Connor: Killbot, Heroic Killer Robot
Psychotic Loner Robot, sort-of-hero (protector of the Scientists, at least)

Cranston: Snidely McGee (in essence Snidely Whiplash)
Older but Wiser Mind Reader, villain

Sheldon: the Earth Twins, Planet Protectors
Crusader Masters of Natural Force, heroes

Adam: Solomon, Scientist
Puppet Master Gadgeteer, ambiguous motivation

Yours Truly: Hellfire, Revenge-driven Madman
Ex-Victim Godling, arch-villain

Notable events:

1) I opened up with the raid on Nova Labs and the first goal: "Kill Hostages." I narrated alarm claxons sounding and blast doors slamming down--then Hellfire melting through the doors and striding in, flanked by his two henchemen. He ranted about the "Sins of the Fathers" and herded the scientists into a corner.

2) The two other villains gamely assisted me in imperilling the scientists at first, but they quickly left me stranded. On Cranston's turn, he slapped down the goal "Steal the Insightful Stone" citing this as the cunning Snidely's true motive in raiding the lab. He still assisted Hellfire somewhat, but his attention was split by his new objective. And Mitch turned on me at the opening of Page 2, laying down "Save Solomon," as Greycloud had determined that the inventor could be of use to him, and was worth pissing off Hellfire.

3) The cool stunt of the evening award goes to Mitch: He used "Trick Shot" to narrate targeting Snidely with a ricochet shot that creates a bullet web as it ricochets like 200 times before hitting. But he rolled a 1! So he reacted with Thrill Junky: "Ah, but that's not the finishing touch! For the final ricochet I leap into the air and bounce it off the steel plate in my face!" So cool! And y'know, it would've been pretty sweet if he'd made up the plate just then, but it's double cool that he had already introduced the steel plate in earlier narration.

4) I totally ruled over the "Kill Hostages" goal, and got to narrate the mass of scientists (save Solomon) burned to skeletons in righteous fire, the stragglers picked off by blaster fire from their own guards. It was glorious.

5) We had two new goals come out then: First, Killbot, who'd been struggling to protect his creators, snapped ("the green light in his head turns to read as he pronounces his new objective: KILL ALL ENEMIES."), and went on a berzerk rampage. Meanwhile, spurred by a remark from the Earth Twins ("Nova Labs protects the planet! We'll never let you destroy it!") I threw out "Show the Earth Twins the Dark Truth of Nova Labs," grinning with malicous glee. Why kill heroes when you can corrupt and disillusion them?

I poured everything into that goal from then on, pretty well ignoring "Kill Enemies": Hellfire doesn't care if he lives or dies, so long as revenge is enacted or at least the truth revealed. I spent two story tokens in the final page to generate debt, split and roll up, then roll up again. No use. I rolled crap, and just couldn't quite beat the opposing side. . .thus Killbot obliterated Hellfire's body as he pleaded with the Twins. . .AND the twins looked down at the spot on the ground that was his remains, shrugged, said "we don't believe you" (or was it "We don't care"?), and walked away. Damn, that was cold. Aaaand cut.

Observations:

1) As I said, 6-player Caples was rather slow. . .but there was an interesting side effect:  6's tended to come up a lot. The ubiquity of 6's really got people engaged with staking and splitting, so that's a good thing. Also, it occurs to me that even as "slow" as things were, we still got a lot more done than we would in the same time for a traditional session of that player size. And everyone was engaged all the time, so cool!

2) Second, I was surprised by the amount of resistance to Capes' very non-trad RPG mechanics; that is to say, none. I had three of my D&D and BESM playing buddies at the table, plus two looking on, and the other two guys had some grounding in trad RPGs as well. . .and not one person went "Hey, where's the hit points?" or "how much damage do my repulsor rays do?" or "whaddya mean, no GM?" Everything went down smooth as silk.

In fact, the players didn't hesitate to wield their newfound narrative/mechanical power with impunity. Like Cranston slapping doen his goal to steal the stone: he didn't think twice about making up setting and tying his character into it. Not even so much as a "can I do that?" Everyone else was pretty free with it too, but Cranston gets extra props in my book for being the first person to go for it, on his first turn in fact, and with a new and surprising goal no less! Way to go for it!

3) I think I can attribute some of the success of the endeavor to pure exuberance and confidence on my part: I was all like, "here's a game that's really fun!" in contrast with my gut instinct, which was to approach more like "well, there's this game, and it's kind of like the RPGs you know, but also different, you might like it, but I dunno, maybe not. . ." I just said "hey guys, let's try THIS!" And they said "sure!" I can only imagine what it would've been like if I'd come on all apologetic-like. Yay for self-confidence!

4) One thing that was a bit ambiguous in the way mechanics relate to narration. it was a bit unclear whether one should roll a die then narrate the result, or announce the ability and narrate its use, THEN roll. Under my direction, we sort of tended toward the latter, which created the incongruity of "I execute the awesome maneuver of awesomeness!" followed by a roll of, say, 1. On reflection, I'd probably go the other way, but scanning the Capes Lite printout, it doesn't actually say anything about narrating actions and reactions. It instructs you to narrate the goal creation at the start, but on rolling a conflict up or down, it's strangely silent. That I can see. Tony, if I'm missing a key bit of text, by all means please point it out.

5) There was plenty of comic relief around the table, from the Killbot (a Futurama reference) to Snidely's moustache-twirling, to the Earth Twins' ambiguously gay duo-ness. It all went down pretty smooth; it got a lot of genuine laughs, including from me; nobody was trying to write Watchmen or anything, and the web of motivations and betrayals wasn't really impeded by the comedy. In particular, I was surprised/relieved by Cranston's play; Snidely was a ridiculous cartoon, sure, but he wasn't above, say, mind controlling the High-tech guards and having them fire on their own Scientists! Cranston tends to play the "Joke character who never does anything of consequence," so seeing the "Joke character who is nonetheless a pivotol actor in events" was a welcome change.

And Hellfire may have been "serious," but I was chewing the scenery so hard it left bite marks, so I can't really throw stones. :) It'd be nice to play a more serious game of capes, but hey, this was a pickup game at a rolicking New Years' party, and I've heard that new players often need a session or two to "get the sillies out," when faced with all that narrative freedom, anyway.

6) And one more minor observation: I had passed out scotch tape to affix the click'n'locks to their backing, and when I went to retrieve them afterwards, I discovered that several players had taped the whole thing down to the table itself. I thought it was a neat effect, making the "character sheet" more like a control panel than a document. Make of that what you will.



So in all, Capes is wicked fun to play, and the Lite document is a perfect way to introduce the game and demonstrate its awesome-y awesomeness. I most assuredly WILL be buying the foll game, and soon! I'm sure I'm not making any observations about the game that haven't been made before, but here's my experience for what it's worth. Thanks for reading.

Peace,
-Joel

[Andrew Morris]

That's awesome, Joel. I've found that six players seems to be just over the practical line for Capes. I haven't looked closely at the Capes Lite rules, but I assume there's less rolling and such, so that's probably why six was just workable.

[Larry L.]

Joel,

That rocks. Your post makes me happy.

[TonyLB]

The two other villains gamely assisted me in imperilling the scientists at first, but they quickly left me stranded.

Oh man ... isn't that always the way?

Under my direction, we sort of tended toward the latter, which created the incongruity of "I execute the awesome maneuver of awesomeness!" followed by a roll of, say, 1. On reflection, I'd probably go the other way, but scanning the Capes Lite printout, it doesn't actually say anything about narrating actions and reactions.

Aw man!  I forgot to put the "And Then" rule into the Capes Lite handout!  Now I gotta go revise it.  Good catch!

The "And Then" rule is this:  You always get to narrate your awesome awesomeness, and then if you aren't in charge of the conflict, the person who is in charge of the conflict (or someone on that side, anyway) gets to narrate what happens next.

So you can use your Ricochet Shot, and it's awesome, and the bullet goes all over the place ... and then the arch-villain slaps sticks a hostage in the way, and your hero has to dive between the hostage and his own bullet, and now he has a sucking chest wound.

The general idea is to put no bars in the way of people doing their cool stuff, just let people trump it with even cooler stuff.

[Joel P. Shempert]

You know, I HAVE seen that rule. . .in the Capes Flash demo. In fact, I think it's the Flash Demo (Which is a piece of brilliance, by the way) that eneabled me to subconsciously fill in things like narrating the use of powers to roll up or down a conflict. I do hope when you revise you'll also include the basic information, "And when you use your power/ability and roll the die, you narrate what your character's doing." Because it doesn't say that at all. Just wanting to be clear.

All in all, this is an interesting case study for that ol' principle that players will instinctively fill in the gaps in a text's instructions to make the game playable, and assume that their fill-ins are simply "how the game is played." 'Cause that's exactly what I did.

Peace,
-Joel