Mechanics Questions and Tactics Question

[JMendes]

Hey, all, :)

Finally got to play Capes for the first time, and I must say, I enjoyed it immensely, but I came away from the table with a bunch of questions.

Mechanics stuff first:

1) Is there a rule on how the winner will award "negative" inspirations if multiple loosing players are involved?

2) Similarly, is there a rule on how a winning debt staker will award story tokens if multiple loosing players are involved, other than the "rule of one" for the creator of the goal?

3) If I split off a side, creating a three-sided goal, how are inspirations worked?

4) What happens when conflicting goals are on the table?

K, this last one needs an example. The scene was in a spaceship being chased by two USAF fighters and one player put down "Event: The spaceship crashes" (Yes, I realize this conflict should have been vetoed, but it wasn't.) Then, another player laid down "Goal: Evade the USAF fighters". All well and good, except, come end of the page, the Event was resolvable but the Goal wasn't, which means the goal sort of became moot. What we did was maintain the goal on the table, and the character owning the goal fled the crashing spaceship in a rocket pack, then managed to evade the fighters, but this is only because he won both goals. Is it just me or can't this become very weird very quicklly?

Now tactics stuff:

Keep in mind, we were playing without any extended rules and without any personalized rules, which means specifically, no spotlight characters.

What's keeping me from bank fraud?

Let's assume I have a story I want to tell. It stands to reason that I am all the more able to tell it when I own piles of Inspirations and Story Tokens. And, I gain Inspirations by winning conflicts and Story Tokens by loosing them. So, I want to be in as many conflicts as I possibly can, in either the winning side or the loosing side, it doesn't matter, because it's really win-win.

Eventually, I'll end up with a character so overdrawn it's ridiculous. But that's fine. I'll simply discard that character and make up another one and continue on with the process. Eventually, I'll have my pile, then I can come in with the one character I really do care about and just do whatever the hell I want, because with 20 Story Tokens and as many Inspirations, I'll be unstoppable.

And by the side of the road, some 10 overdrawn characters are left to lick their wounds with no player wanting to touch them with a long stick.

Thing is, this makes for weird game play. I have a story that I want to tell and I'm supposed to compete for it, but is the best way to compete to hold off for the first half the game then own the second half?

Or is there an effective counter-tactic for this (other than, yeah, I'll do the same and we'll duck it out, which just leads to boring, dull, uninteresting first half that no one cares about anyway... kinda like an NBA game...)

Cheers,
J.

[drnuncheon]

1) Is there a rule on how the winner will award "negative" inspirations if multiple loosing players are involved?

2) Similarly, is there a rule on how a winning debt staker will award story tokens if multiple loosing players are involved, other than the "rule of one" for the creator of the goal?

My copy of the PDF is elsewhere, but IIRC these are both the same guideline: Award them based on the quality of the opposition you got.  So if Player A and Player B were on the other side of the goal, and they were roughly equal in the amount of opposition they gave you, then you split the tokens roughly equally.  If one person did a lot more to try to prevent you from succeeding, you give the bulk to them.

3) If I split off a side, creating a three-sided goal, how are inspirations worked?

I'd say that they have to go to a person on the side you're matching with (no matching die from side A with one of yours and giving it to side B).  Otherwise, follow the same guidelines.

That means that 3-way conflicts will probably give a lot of "negative" inspirations to the losers.

4) What happens when conflicting goals are on the table?

K, this last one needs an example. The scene was in a spaceship being chased by two USAF fighters and one player put down "Event: The spaceship crashes" (Yes, I realize this conflict should have been vetoed, but it wasn't.)

Philosophically, I disagree.  (I even disagree with the "bomb" example in the rules.)  Events worded like that are so easy to twist that it'd be a shame to veto them.

For example, nowhere does it say that the saucer "crashes and is destroyed", or even "crashes and is disabled".  It could crash through a building - or even crash into one of the pursuing fighters - and stil keep flying!

Then, another player laid down "Goal: Evade the USAF fighters". All well and good, except, come end of the page, the Event was resolvable but the Goal wasn't, which means the goal sort of became moot. What we did was maintain the goal on the table, and the character owning the goal fled the crashing spaceship in a rocket pack, then managed to evade the fighters, but this is only because he won both goals. Is it just me or can't this become very weird very quicklly?

I'd say you handled it well.  It can certainly become a challenge, but that's part of the fun of the game.

And by the side of the road, some 10 overdrawn characters are left to lick their wounds with no player wanting to touch them with a long stick.

...until someone realizes that those overdrawn characters are magnets for plots and starts playing them.  They've got all that debt to stake, and every point of debt is a potential story token...

Also, the winners of those contests are likely to be picking up some nice Inspirations, which will help them control the story.

J

[Hans]

1) Is there a rule on how the winner will award "negative" inspirations if multiple loosing players are involved?

2) Similarly, is there a rule on how a winning debt staker will award story tokens if multiple loosing players are involved, other than the "rule of one" for the creator of the goal?

There are no "rules" for this.  It is completely up to the awarding party. J mentions the quality of the opposition as a guideline, which works fine.  Personally, I tend to do it based on the "coolness" of narration, which is correlated with opposition, but not exactly the same thing.  If someone narrated something I thought was particularly creative and interesting, I will generally try to reward that.

3) If I split off a side, creating a three-sided goal, how are inspirations worked?

There was a thread on this issue that goes into it in some detail.

4) What happens when conflicting goals are on the table?

This one is a perenial favourite.  I asked virtually the same question here.  You can see how Tony answered it.

And by the side of the road, some 10 overdrawn characters are left to lick their wounds with no player wanting to touch them with a long stick.

Thing is, this makes for weird game play. I have a story that I want to tell and I'm supposed to compete for it, but is the best way to compete to hold off for the first half the game then own the second half?

I would argue that this is pretty much EXACTLY the way the "rogues gallery" of people like Batman, the Flash, Dick Tracy, etc. works.  Dr. Light, Flattop, The Scarecrow...what are they but overdrawn characters left to lick their wounds? :)

I don't know if there are any counter tactics, although I will suggest one...pay a story token, bring in one of those characters, drop ALL of that debt on a few conflicts, and make sure that the person who made those characters gets NONE of the resulting story tokens, and reap up some good inspirations.

[TonyLB]

The counter-tactic is not executed by the people who have an overdrawn character ... it is executed by the other players.

Try looking at it this way:  Debt tokens on other people are Story Tokens that you haven't yet gotten your hands on.  But they are yours by right.

What happens when somebody has a character loaded with ten points of Debt, and the scene ends?  That bastard just stole ten of your Story Tokens!  You gonna let him get away with that?

So if Sewer Yeti has just gotten the crap kicked out of him in open combat on the streets of Ring City, and he's carrying ten points of debt ... well, his player's fine with leaving it like that.  He worked his mojo with Sewer Yeti, and (unless it's a spotlight character of which he only has a few) he loses nothing if he never plays him again.  But every other player is motivated to persuade Sewer Yeti's player to burn some of that debt before shuffling the Gentle Garbage Giant off-scene.  So they should be plunking down conflicts that are worth winning:  "Sewer Yeti escapes to his secret lair in the waste reclamation plant," or "Dr. Zeitgeist realizes that Sewer Yeti is just a misunderstood creature, and repents his earlier violence" or stuff like that.

[Sindyr]

Tony, I do not understand your answer.

I play Sewer Yeti.  I get a lot of Story Tokens and become way overdrawn with debt.  At some point, I decide I have achieved my goal - say the acquisition of 10 story tokens.  I also have 15 debt.

How do you exract that debt from me?

After all, I am getting ready to permanently dump Yeti to never play him again.  I am not invested in him at all at this point - he has served his purpose and I am done with him. 

If anyone generates any more conflicts, it is unlikely that I will participate, as I have no more personal goals for this scene - I have what I set out to get.

And at the end of the scene, I will be laying down that character for good.

Assuming that Yeti is not a spotlight, I cannot comprehend any way for you to extract any of his massive debt as story tokens.  All you can really do is choose to play him yourself next scene, if you so desire.  But if you do that, odds are you will be focussing on clearing his debt - that is, giving story tokens away, not so much getting them.

So what is your plan?

[drnuncheon]

Assuming that Yeti is not a spotlight, I cannot comprehend any way for you to extract any of his massive debt as story tokens.  All you can really do is choose to play him yourself next scene, if you so desire.  But if you do that, odds are you will be focussing on clearing his debt - that is, giving story tokens away, not so much getting them.

Why would Tony focus on clearing his debt?  If Sewer Yeti is overdrawn, then he is more likely to lose any conflicts he is engaged in because he's turning dice down.  Losing conflicts gets you story tokens.

Someone on one of these threads basically used "debt monkey" as a strategy for one of their characters, I think (was it the time-travelling girl? Miranda?)

J

[TonyLB]

How do you exract that debt from me?

Quite correct.  If you don't care about anything then I can't extract debt from you.

[JMendes]

Hey, :)

Quite correct.  If you don't care about anything then I can't extract debt from you.

Let me be quite specific. Here's me, as a player, caring about a bunch of things, and quite clearly having a story that I want to tell.

Only, I'm so done with this specific character. In other words, I care, just not through this character.

So, the question is, does it make sense for me, as a player, to just play with don't-care-characters or so-called debt monkeys until I have accumulated enough resources that I'll be able to tell the story I want to tell, practically unhindered.

Because, here's the thing: there's two rewards for conflicts, and they're Story Tokens and Inspirations, and they're both for the Player. There's only one punishment, namely double debt, and it's for the character. And that means players can "exploit" (as opposed to "explore") characters, keeping the good stuff for themselves, then burying the irrelevance off to the side.

I'm asking, is this a Good Thing, or is this a game-breaking thing that I'm allowed to do by the rules but makes no sense in game-play?*

Cheers,
J.

(*) A friend of mine uses the following analogy. I don't get some of these questions. They're akin to someone asking "What's to stop the GM from dropping an asteroid on the party in a D&D game?" Nothing. But he doesn't do it, because that's not the point. So what if the rules don't stop you from (say) introducing opposing goals? You don't do it anyway, because it breaks the game, and that's not the point. Above, that's what I meant by game-breaking.

[Zamiel]

Only, I'm so done with this specific character. In other words, I care, just not through this character.

So, the question is, does it make sense for me, as a player, to just play with don't-care-characters or so-called debt monkeys until I have accumulated enough resources that I'll be able to tell the story I want to tell, practically unhindered.

Somebody will,  because you've just left a character lying around just loaded with goodies for someone else to pick up, perhaps in the next Scene, and bust out all those Debt-y resource goodness you just farmed for them.

Sewer Yeti just left the Scene, trailing lots of successful Conflicts won, and turning down dice left and right toward the end. He's positively charged to bursting with potential energy, and I'm going to pick him up for the next Scene and start using all that. Maybe I use one of the very Story Tokens you gave me from the Yeti's rampage my hero, Deadly Turbo, couldn't stop, and bring Yeti in as my backstop, powering up Conflicts between Turbo and the Yeti, both under my command. Not only that, I'm using that juicy pile of Debt to start tossing in Conflicts you want to win because they specifically target events and facts you established last Scene with all of Sewer Yeti's Debt!

If the other Players haven't forced you to burn Debt on things by the end of a Scene, then assuredly, someone'll remember its all lying around and Sewer Yeti'll be someone's henchman, throwing his narrative weight behind someone else's story.

Because, here's the thing: there's two rewards for conflicts, and they're Story Tokens and Inspirations, and they're both for the Player. There's only one punishment, namely double debt, and it's for the character. And that means players can "exploit" (as opposed to "explore") characters, keeping the good stuff for themselves, then burying the irrelevance off to the side.

I'm asking, is this a Good Thing, or is this a game-breaking thing that I'm allowed to do by the rules but makes no sense in game-play?*

It fails to break the game because of one simple fact:

Yes, you can farm Resources for a while in order to take the reins of the story for a while, but you have to expend Resources to do it, and the more others want to take them away from you again, the more expensive they make it for you to maintain. Your Resources, Inspirations and Story Tokens alike, are limited and they are going to run out on you even before Lady Luck does. That is patently by design, I think it's safe to say. Its not game-breaking.

If Lady Luck decides to spit on you as well, it won't matter how much you farmed with Yeti, you'll be out of Resources before the first Conflict of the next Scene resolves, because you'll be trying to roll up 1s and getting 1s, and burning Inspirations to boost them up ... and then having to burn Debt to split and try for more when the dice come up crap.

Why, no, I have no experience with that, why do you ask?

[TonyLB]

I'm asking, is this a Good Thing, or is this a game-breaking thing that I'm allowed to do by the rules but makes no sense in game-play?*

I use that tactic in some situations, and not in others.  It's a strategy which has arguments pro and con.

Pro:  As you've mentioned, if you get your Story Tokens off of the character you don't care about, then shuffle them off-stage, you gain a relative advantage over the other players, and that's a Good Thing.

Con:  It is hard to convince other players that you care about the character when you don't.  Most people won't go to the effort.  They'll let other players know that they don't care.  Now here's the thing:  Other players are likely to pay attention to the characters being played with passion ... which is, in this instance, not you.  So even if you make a perfect attack on somebody, which forces them to stake debt ... you may not see those as story tokens.  Instead, you may find yourself scooped by another player who comes in as your "ally", provides passionate, interesting opposition, and captures the attention of the eventual winner.


Before I got much further on discussing how those things balance in different situations in the game, let me just check:  Does that "con" make sense to everyone?  Do I need to explain it further?

[Hans]

Con:  It is hard to convince other players that you care about the character when you don't.  Most people won't go to the effort.  They'll let other players know that they don't care.  Now here's the thing:  Other players are likely to pay attention to the characters being played with passion ... which is, in this instance, not you.  So even if you make a perfect attack on somebody, which forces them to stake debt ... you may not see those as story tokens.  Instead, you may find yourself scooped by another player who comes in as your "ally", provides passionate, interesting opposition, and captures the attention of the eventual winner.

Before I got much further on discussing how those things balance in different situations in the game, let me just check:  Does that "con" make sense to everyone?  Do I need to explain it further?

I think this is VERY important, and makes perfect sense.  In my own game, so far, we as players are just beginning to realize that the debt staker has control of who gets the story tokens!  Up until now, we have generally played on a "fairness" principle.  That is, if I staked three debt, and there are three people on the losing side, I give them one ST each.  But we are beginning to realize that is probably not the optimal way to play.  And what you say is the reason why.  When its obvious a person is just in a conflict for the resources...why reward them?  Players in Capes are like Pavlov's dogs.  If you positively reinforce resource seeking behaviour that is NOT tied to interesting story, then that is what you will get. 

I actually have an example of this.  There was a conflict the other day, where one person was on one side of the conflict, and several people had staked a HUGE pile of debt on the other.  I, being a resource-hungry fiend, decided to ally with the one guy's side, because it was obvious a lot of story tokens were coming that way.  However, frankly, this was pretty darn obvious on my part.  What did happen?  I ended up with some story tokens, and cackled gleefully.  What should have happened?  The people on the other side should have given me a 1 pt inspiration as a parting gift, and handed that pile of story tokens to the other player that had REALLY been fighting for the conflict.  It would have served me right.

[Sindyr]

4) What happens when conflicting goals are on the table?

K, this last one needs an example. The scene was in a spaceship being chased by two USAF fighters and one player put down "Event: The spaceship crashes" (Yes, I realize this conflict should have been vetoed, but it wasn't.) Then, another player laid down "Goal: Evade the USAF fighters". All well and good, except, come end of the page, the Event was resolvable but the Goal wasn't, which means the goal sort of became moot. What we did was maintain the goal on the table, and the character owning the goal fled the crashing spaceship in a rocket pack, then managed to evade the fighters, but this is only because he won both goals. Is it just me or can't this become very weird very quicklly?

The party line around these parts is that there is no such thing as conflicting goals - that was is perceived to be conflicting goals is simply a challenge to get creative.

Now, I find that simplistic, unhelpful, and a non-answer myself - perhaps you do too.  And I don't have any great answers myself. 

Let's create a thought example:  An event is played : Jane is pregnant.  Sometime later a goal is played: Jane is a virgin.  Assuming no virgin births, and no last minute impregnations, the event is known to be going to happen.  Therefore that Event constricts in what way the goal can be resolved and narrated - specifically that Jane is *not* a virgin. However, people can still compete over *how* to narrate that.

Now if someone claims, controls, and tries to resolve the event, I think it makes sense for someone at the table to invoke the Not Yet rule, even though we know that Jane cannot be a virgin given the even on the table, to narrate the resolution of the event de facto accomplishes the resolution of the goal - there for, given those two conflicts, I think that the event cannot be resolved before the goal, in this case.  Maybe in your game you can make the event gloated instead, in such or circumstance, or maybe you just flat out say that the Not Yet rules forbids the resolution of any conflicts that materially control the outcome of other conflicts.

Of course, I can imagine an even trickier combo.  A goal: There is milk in the red glass.  Another goal: There is wine in the red glass.  Assuming that there is only one red glass, and that no one has mixed wine and milk, and assuming that both goals are referring to the same moment in time - all of which may be implied in the spirit in which the goals were written - then what do we do?

In fact, if someone writes Goal:X and later someone else tries to write Goal:Y, where Y is mutually incompatible with X, what happens?

I think there are two ways to handle this, aside from the vague and unhelpful "get creative" that you normally hear as an answer to this issue:
1) Disallow conflicts to be played when they presume within in them specific resolutions of already existing conflicts.
2) If somehow two conflicts (A and B) are on the table, and the resolution of one(A) would somehow invalidate or prematurely resolve the other(B), then either the conflict that is newer gets invalidated and thrown out (whatever that entails) or conflict still in play (B) is immediately resolve or thrown out, whatever that entails.

Now tactics stuff:

Keep in mind, we were playing without any extended rules and without any personalized rules, which means specifically, no spotlight characters.

What's keeping me from bank fraud?

As I understand Capes, this isn't fraud.  It's your pay for spending time telling a story that entertains and engages your fellow players.  Whenever you engage other players to get involved in the conflicts you create, and then you let them win, you get paid in story tokens.

Ultimately, to oversimplify:  You get paid in story tokens for helping other people tell the stories they want to tell.  You pay them story tokens to tell the stories *you* want to tell.

So if you get a character that gets loaded up on debt and you never play him again, that's fine.  The likelihood if you got story tokens out of playing him is that you have provided much fun for the other players.  Whether or not you even play that character again is up to you.  Plus, even if you choose never to play him again, someone else might.

In any case, you don't have to worry, im(h)o, that you have committed any kind of wrong.  If you received story tokens, then other people were winning conflicts that they cared about.  The only thing you should be worried about is sometime getting to win some conflicts yourself and having the other players make some fun for *you* - for which you will pay them tokens...

And so the cycle of Capes continues... ;)

[Matthew Glover]

An event is played : Jane is pregnant.

Sometime later a goal is played: Jane is a virgin.

A goal: There is milk in the red glass.

Another goal: There is wine in the red glass.

Firstly, what the heck kind of conflicts are those?  Do you get stuff like that at your table?  A goal is something that somebody is trying to accomplish.  An event is something that is going to happen.  These things that you're suggesting aren't really goals or events in any way that I can understand. 

How about Event: Jane discovers she is pregnant and Goal: Prove Jane is a virgin? I'm guessing that this is what you meant.  These are not conflicting.  You can prove that Jane is a virgin and then Jane can discover that she is pregnant (narrating implantation by aliens, divine intervention, or even the old fashioned method).  Jane can discover she is pregnant and then you can prove that she's a virgin (either answering the "how the hell did that happen?" question or leaving it open ended).  These are not contradictory.

Assuming that there is only one red glass, and that no one has mixed wine and milk, and assuming that both goals are referring to the same moment in time - all of which may be implied in the spirit in which the goals were written - then what do we do?

Why are we making these assumptions?  Where does this come from?

Every time somebody brings up the Conflicting Conflicts issue, they do it with weirdly constructed goals and events.  The answer is always a variation on this:

This will never come up unless you purposefully set out do it, and even then it's really difficult to construct Conflicts that genuinely can not be narrated in any order of resolution.  Even if you manage it, why would you want to do that?  What do you accomplish by doing it?

[TonyLB]

Now, see, with all this immaculate conception and milk-into-wine stuff you guys are tempting me to use Capes to play ass-kicking apostles in a Judea oppressed by goose-stepping Roman fascists.

[Sindyr]

Firstly, what the heck kind of conflicts are those?  Do you get stuff like that at your table?  A goal is something that somebody is trying to accomplish.  An event is something that is going to happen.  These things that you're suggesting aren't really goals or events in any way that I can understand.

quote]Why are we making these assumptions?  Where does this come from?

Every time somebody brings up the Conflicting Conflicts issue, they do it with weirdly constructed goals and events.  The answer is always a variation on this:

This will never come up unless you purposefully set out do it, and even then it's really difficult to construct Conflicts that genuinely can not be narrated in any order of resolution.  Even if you manage it, why would you want to do that?  What do you accomplish by doing it?

I think the question being asked is "what do you do if 2 conflicts truly contradict with each other" - and I agree, this probably happens rarely.

Still, it's a fascinating question with no simple answers.

The assumption being made is that you don't use the sleight of hand (aliens, divine intervention, etc) you were proposing - or the conflicts wouldn't be truly contradictory.

For example, what if people are using Capes to play a gritty, no aliens, no divine miracles, no superpower (flight, x-ray vision, etc) completely realistic game?  Apart from the question of why are they using Capes (which is not relevant to the question) who do they reconcile conflicts that are by their nature truly contradictory?

There is no good answer for that, of course, only a few ideas of indeterminate worth.

Lucky that, as I mentioned, this does not come up often.