[Capes Fantasy] Good times with Orcs and fire...

[Andrew Cooper]

Lately with my role-playing group I've been somewhat dissatisfied with our gaming.  My thoughts were that the problem revolved around a real lack of investment in what was going on in the game.  Lack of investment in the Situation.  Lack of investment in the Characters.  Just a general sense of "ho-hum" about the whole affair.  It was bad enough that prep for the game was becoming too much of a chore for me to sit down and do, which of course led to an even worse lack of investment and more "ho-hum" attitude...  a vicious death spiral going on here.

We were playing D&D 3.5 and had had quite a bit of good success with the system in the past.  The problem was that the players were in a GM created Situation that I wasn't sure they really gave a shit about.  Of course, getting them to express in plain English what it was they really were interested in was like getting blood from a turnip.  Ask the question and I got lots of answers that boiled down to, "No, I'm really interested.  This is fine."  Start playing and everyone seemed to disengage.  No one had any cool ideas.  Everyone was just waiting around for the GM (me) to dump the next combat scene on them.  The system wasn't helping either.  While D&D does tactics and combat with flair and style, it didn't give me any clue about what kinds of things the players wanted to pursue in game.  There's no Keys or Traits or Kickers or ... well, anything.  The players weren't talking and that left me with nothing.

Then I had an epiphany.  Stop playing D&D (for a while or permenantly... not sure yet) and play a system that forces the players to communicate what they want and then makes them fight to get it.  Capes!  I'm immediately jazzed about them whole thing and that is an improvement already.  I wanted to stick with our Fantasy game so I made a few adjustments to the Comics Code, drew up some of the intitial characters and we played Fantasy Capes.  My idea was to start with the Situation that we currently had in our D&D campaign.  Then we sit down to play.  If the players aren't interested in the Situation, they have the power in Capes to resolve the whole thing in 5 minutes and then move on to something they did find interesting.  So, here's how it went...

The Players:

Andrew (me) - I'm 34 with a wife and 1 child.  I'm a big fan of "those wierd games".
Aaron - Somewhere in his mid-twenties.  Single.  The boyfriend of a friend of mine.  He's new to the group.
Fred - 25 years old.  Single.  He's been my friend for years.  He started role-playing with us about 2 years ago.
Trey - 32 yesars old.  Recently divorced with 2 kids.  We've been playing together since 1991.
Melissa - 18 years old.  Still in high-school.  She's been playing in the group for a couple of months now.
Seth - 20 years old.  College student.  He started playing with Trey and I when Fred did.

Out of this group, Fred and Trey had played Capes with me once before.  Fred was okay with the game but Trey wasn't a big fan.  Trey didn't like the fact that he had to think about more than just his character.  He wanted to have "his guy" and just play "his guy".  Too bad.  I'm always the GM (for some unknown reason) and since they put me in charge, we were playing Capes.

The Comics Code

Spotlight Characters will not die unless a unanimous vote of players indicates that it is a thematically appropriate time for them to die.

This is Fantasy.  No non-Fantasy elements.

No time travel.

No destroying the world.

Actual Play

I was the Scene starter for the first scene.  I set up the situation where we left off our last D&D session.  King Obould Many-Arrows had amassed a huge army of orcs and frost giants and moved it south out of the Spine of the World mountains towards Silverymoon, The Gem of the North.  A few days ago, his army had disappeared into the Moonwood and attempt to scout them out had resulted only in the scouts disappearing.  Given this, I set the first scene like such...

"It is early evening under the eves of the Moonwood and the Orcs are beginning to stir and break camp.  Obould, his son Urgrosh, Gerti Orelsdottir (the Frost Giant leader) and other leaders in the army gathered to discuss their plans."

At this point everyone chose characters.  Aaron quickly snapped up Obould while Fred decided to go with Urgrosh.  Trey picked Gerti and Melissa picked Vognute, a Fire Giant Sorcerer in the employ of Silverymoon.  Seth played Drizzt Do'Urden, which I thought was interesting since he hadn't read any of the novels and wasn't a fanboy.  I decided to play "Orc Warriors", ie the whole damn army.

Aaron concerned me a little bit when he threw down "Goal: Someone's arm gets stuck high up in a tree." during the first page.  I thought that leaned a little to the silly side.  Interestingly, it was the only silly sounding Conflict he created and in retrospect I think he was just testing the limits of the system to see what pushed back.  Nothing did.  The Conflict went onto the table.  It also proved to be one of the more hotly contested Conflicts as everyone seemed to have some idea of whose arm they wanted to see stuck in a tree.  Aaron later threw down "Event:  The Moonword rages in flames." and "Event: The Drow army arrives." which were much more in keeping with a serious theme and added to the narrative tension quite a bit.  I'm glad I didn't try to talk him out of his first Conflict.

Since I was teaching half the group how to play, it was a little slow.  We didn't get all the way through the first scene.  Part of that was explaining rules as they came up.  Part of it was the number of players.  Six players in Capes is much slower than 3 or 4.  The other factor was the number of Conflicts being created.  We resolved 4 and still had 4 on the table. In my experience 8 is a lot of Conflicts for 1 scene.

I did notice that Conflicts come up more often when characters have Exemplars and they are used in play.  Free Conflicts!  We had 3 characters that had free Conflicts available and 2 were used.  After all, why not?  They're free.  So, "Goal: Urgrosh impresses his father." and "Event: Something important gets destroyed." hit the table early.  Free Conflicts make for a game a bit more crowded with 3x5 cards.  That's a good thing in my estimation.

When we left, Vognute had captured Obould and spirited him away and had destroyed the Orcish armory in the process.  Drizzt was fighting hard not to be captured himself.  Obould had set the Moonwood on fire in a rage before being captured.  Gerti had rebelled against Obould and the Orcs.  Urgrosh had been impressive in his defense of his father, even though he failed.  Finally, the Drow army was approaching swiftly, though none of the characters knew it.

Assessment

It was another good Capes game.  Lots of interesting stuff happened and I was pleased. Thanks Tony for making a game that is fun every time we play it.  Some times are more fun than other but I have yet to play a session that wasn't a good time.  I'd say that is a sign of a well-designed game.

Aaron, Melissa and Seth enjoyed the game quite a bit and seemed eager to continue.  Fred I don't have quite as good a read on and I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and talk it over with him.  Trey still doesn't care for it, I don't think.  If nothing else, I've found 3 people who will play this game (and perhaps other Indie games) with me on a regular basis.  Hoo-ah!

Also, Capes seems to work just fine to me for genres other than Supers.

[Andrew Morris]

Too bad.  I'm always the GM (for some unknown reason) and since they put me in charge, we were playing Capes.

I'm laughing and applauding at the same time.

Glad to see that Capes worked out for a non-supers game. How did you assign Debt? Did you use class abilities in place of powers, or something else?

[Andrew Cooper]

Andrew,

Since we aren't through with the 1st scene yet, I hadn't explained Drives in detail at this point.  I just had them take Debt to 1 pool.  If they get over 5 debt, they're Overdrawn.  However, I have been thinking about it a good bit and the Drives match up just as nicely for heroes and villains in heroic fantasy as they do in Supers.  So, I don't expect to change things there.  As far as Abilities, Styles and Personality, I just looked at what the character was like and the things it could do and did the Free Form character generation.  There's not really all that much difference between fantasy and Supers, I discovered.  I mean, you're playing a 15 foot tall guy who can teleport and shoot fire out of his fingertips... are you playing a Fire-Giant Sorcerer or some Superhero?  Setting and color are essentially the only differences that I can see.

[dunlaing]

So, what sorts of abilities earned Debt instead of being crossed off? Was it only Magical abilities, or would a 10th level Fighter have Whirlwind Attack as a Debt-earning ability?

Also, since you went into the game as a sort-of GM, did you find that you were being expected to have more of a role in adjudication of people's narrations than the other players? Or was there any effect stemming from your role as either ex-GM or pseudo-GM?

[Vaettyr]

Could you post some of the characters that were used in the game. I'm going to be trying a similar approach to sell Capes to some friends (they're just not wild about super-heroes), and I'd love to see some of the details about how someone else handled it.

I'm also curious about the Comics code and how it's going to work out for long-term play. Maybe we'll get Tony to chime in with some suggestions, but it seems to me that if this game continues and the players get a handle on the system, they're going to start trying to do the things on the comic code to get the story tokens for gloating. It could be that if all the players are on the same page, you don't really need anything but maybe the first thing in your code.

[Andrew Cooper]

Dunlaing (Do you have a real name?),

It'd probably be easier to just copy a couple of characters here.

Drizzt Do'Urden
Drow Ranger

Abilities Twinkle and Icingdeath (two magic scimitars) 1, Track anything anywhere 2, Inhuman reflexes 3
Styles Attack from many directions at once. 4, Speed over strength 5, Big black Panther 3, Loyalty before safety 2, That looks like fun. 1
Personality Loyal 3, Reckless 4, Introspective 1, Lighthearted 2
Exemplars
Catti Bri   (Love)  Goal: Drizzt isn't over-protective.
Artemis Entreri (Truth)  Goal: Prove that heart is more important than skill.

Urgrosh
Orc Warrior Prince

Abilities Expert Axman 3, Tough as Nails 1, Not smart enough to be confused. 2
Styles CHARGE! 1, If it moves, smash it. 3, Are you sure we shouldn't just attack? 2, My axe solves most problems. 4
Personality Mean 3, Ambitious 2, Simple-minded 1, Tenatious 5, Chaotic 4
Exemplars
Obould Many-arrows  (Love)  Urgrosh impresses his father, Obould.

I do think people sort of looked to me to take the lead in the game.  I overcame that by not playing an actual character and then not squashing any idea they came up with.  After the first page or two they got the point that they didn't need my approval to do stuff.

Vaettyr,

I hope that they try to do some of the stuff on the Comics Code.  A cult that tries to destroy the world seems like a grand idea.  I just don't particularly want them to actually succeed.  I want the people playing the villains to try to be really bad.  I just made the Comics Code so that they could do that with a safety net.

[Sydney Freedberg]

I've always thought this kind of setting would be a natural -- and nice genre-supporting Comics Code, by the way. Go Gaerik!

Not smart enough to be confused. 2

Ha! I love that.

So, what sorts of abilities earned Debt instead of being crossed off? Was it only Magical abilities, or would a 10th level Fighter have Whirlwind Attack as a Debt-earning ability?

Anything you do will work in Capes as long as you remember what "Debt" is: it's a kind of moral tension -- maybe a literal, physical tension; maybe a psychological tension in the character; maybe just a dramatic tension in the structure of the story itself even though the character may be content as a claim -- that gives the enDebted character more power to do more cool things, at the (fairly small) risk of getting Overdrawn and sabotaging themselves. The best guideline for is not whether an ability is supernatural or superhuman or whatever (although that works nicely for both D&D fantasy and superheroes), but how intensely the character cares about the ability,

Or, to kick down the fourth wall, the question that really matters is how intensely you the real person playing the game care about it: If you make an ability debt-generating instead of a click-off-once, you can use it a lot more in the game, and you need to use it a lot more (because Debt is essential to your character doing cool stuff), and both its use and its Debt will start driving the story, so you'd better be jazzed about it.

[dunlaing]

Dunlaing (Do you have a real name?)

yep, it's Bill Dowling. Dunlaing is the original Irish spelling of Dowling, so it's a "real" name, but I get what you're asking.

So, for Drizzt, he had "Twinkle and Icingdeath (two magic scimitars) 1, Track anything anywhere 2, Inhuman reflexes 3" as Debt-generating abilities? And 3 of "Attack from many directions at once. 4, Speed over strength 5, Big black Panther 3, Loyalty before safety 2, That looks like fun. 1"? Ok.

It's interesting to me what abilities are Debt-generating since in default Capes, it's pretty much all powers (except for the Shootist and Martial Artist) in order to support the theme of "do I deserve my powers." Deciding what abilities can generate Debt in a fantasy setting implies the theme of your fantasy setting. Do you know what the theme is?

[Andrew Cooper]

Bill,

It's not significantly different from a Capes Supers game.  Think about it like this.  Every Ability I gave the spotlight characters that generated Debt are essentially Powers.  Not everyone can do them and they set the characters apart from the masses.  "Inhuman Reflexes (3)" isn't any different for Drizzt than it would be for Spiderman.  Almost no one is as fast as Drizzt and it is important to who and what he is.   "Twinkle and Icingdeath (1)"  isn't significantly different from "Razor Claws (1)" for Wolverine or "Iron Fists (1)" for Ironman.  Magical swords are rare and Drizzt has two.  They help define him as a character and give him abilities beyond normal ken.

So, the theme is pretty much, "I've got abilities that set me apart, do I deserve them."

[Andrew Morris]

Andrew, what happens when the Comics Code would have been violated? Do characters still Gloat, or do they Critical Failure, or something more genre-appropriate?

[Andrew Cooper]

Andrew,

Mechanically, they Gloat.  We're just going to narrate it in a genre appropriate way.  Of course, sometimes the maniacal Arch-Mage laughing at the hapless heroes isn't much different from Supers.  It'll more depend on the situation than anything else.  But mechanically, the reward is the same.