Previous Topics

10/6/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Not Complications -- Events!
Last night, discussing a problematic Complication ("Victoria West's Friendship") Eric said something like this: "Look, by declaring this Complication we've established that West will make a show of her appreciation.…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, TheCzech, Doug Ruff, Sydney Freedberg, LordSmerf, efindel.

10/5/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Non-conflict mechanics
[url=http://www.museoffire.com/Games/Capes%20Sept%2017.pdf]Capes[/url] presents everything that can be done game-mechanically as a series of conflicts between two or more sides. This forces people to scene-frame right to the juicy conflicts, but that's…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Doug Ruff, Sydney Freedberg.

10/3/2004 TonyLB: Earliest I've ever had conflict in a game
Danny's running a short game set in the Stargate: SG-1 universe, a month from now. He's recruited me and a bunch of the folks who play in another game I…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Ravien, Matt Wilson, clehrich, hanschristianandersen, Noon, Alan.

10/1/2004 TonyLB: [TFOS] Years gone by....
I'm interested to see if there are insights that Forge-think can bring to roleplaying stories from (in this case) more than a decade ago. I've got several stories from a…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, bcook1971, Ben Lehman, Vaxalon.

9/29/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Speeding character design
Capes is a superhero game with very broad abilities. Your Powers or Tropes can be pretty much anything that can happen. "God answers my prayers" is just as legitimate as…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Sydney Freedberg, Doug Ruff, WhiteRat, efindel, John Harper, Vaxalon.

9/29/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Spandex Soap-opera
So I had the first session of my face-to-face Capes campaign last night. Some good stuff and some bad stuff. The good stuff: Once characters were created, they quickly lined…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf.

9/29/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Getting whooped but good
Played Capes over IRC again on monday. I've posted a transcript again, mostly because it's easy. Fun, unexpected session. Our heroes got trounced. Seriously, it is hard to describe the…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Ron Edwards, LordSmerf, Noon.

9/23/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Story Tokens: Limits needed?
Well, Capes is still in progress, but I can definitely see daylight at the end of the tunnel. I'm getting a face-to-face campaign set up, writing up a quick-entry scenario…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, GregS, Sydney Freedberg, LordSmerf.

9/21/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] "Outrun the pain"
Greatest in-character line (by far, IMHO) of a very satisfying game of IRC Capes last night. Anyone who is convinced that giving players narrative authority will lead to them favoring…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Ron Edwards, LordSmerf.

9/20/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Strategy Search
Okay, I'm trying something a bit new. Here is a new Strategy Page for Capes. This is a very small file. Just go ahead and download it. Here are the…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, Doug Ruff, LordSmerf.

9/18/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Scene Goals
Okay, as promised, I have written up my best guess at an Example of Play for the Scene Goal rules that Doug recommended here. I'll be interested to hear whether…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, Doug Ruff, Sydney Freedberg, LordSmerf.

9/16/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Setting the Scene, Complications
[quote="Sydney Freedberg"]... suggest that someone can kick another character off their "side" if either party thinks their goals are incongruent -- which implies a goal-setting phase -- which implies something…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, Sydney Freedberg, Doug Ruff, John Harper.

9/15/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Unresolved Complications
The current text of Capes is here. The system represents situations as a set of Complications. Heroes and villains can place Stakes on these Complications, to represent their moral investment…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Doug Ruff, Sydney Freedberg.

9/14/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Debt or Resource?
[quote="LordSmerf"][quote="Doug Ruff"][... snip]Re: Drives and staking thereof, At the moment, the players have to place Debt against their Drives to use a power, and can then stake this Debt. Why…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Doug Ruff, Sydney Freedberg.

9/14/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Conversation is combat
Had another Capes session tonight, this time over IRC. I've posted an in-character transcript and an interlaced transcript with both IC and OOC comments. The experience of play itself was…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Doug Ruff, LordSmerf.

9/12/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Skater X and letting go
Had an impromptu playtest last night, which meant I had about five minutes to prepare villains and plot. Turns out not to have mattered much. Two players, Danny and Seth.…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Ron Edwards, Sydney Freedberg, Bill_White.

9/8/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Players and Villains
Welcome back, true believers, to design of Capes: Superhero Storytelling! When last we left our intrepid designers, they had created a system that looks like it will run faster, stay…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, Sydney Freedberg, Alan, Ron Edwards, John Harper, Doug Ruff, LordSmerf, Bill_White.

9/7/2004 TonyLB: [Amber] The Trap of Self-Sufficiency
The ongoing, possibly-doomed, experiment in Amber Narrativism continues! When last we joined our persistent playing group, they had finally sidestepped the tangled ways in which the game mechanic itself undercuts…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, inthisstyle, Vaxalon, Blankshield, Grover, Marco, Ron Edwards, Lisa Padol, jdagna.

8/25/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Mutants and Snitfits
I playtested Capes again last night. Details of how the rules worked out can be found in a much longer post here. What I found fascinating in terms of the…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Ron Edwards.

8/25/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Super Speed
I ran another Capes playtest tonight, solo with my friend Jennifer, to test out whether the new dice balancing had achieved its goal, and how the sequence of Complications to…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, Mark D. Eddy, LordSmerf, statisticaltomfoolery, Sydney Freedberg.

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Subsequent Topics

10/8/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Bluffing
As Events have made players reactions to various outcomes more transparent, I've realized something: There are Events that everybody accepts will not occur a certain way, even if the rules…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, daMoose_Neo, LordSmerf, Doug Ruff.

10/13/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] New uses for Story Tokens
A few changes I tested out in last nights face-to-face play session have really gotten the Debt/Story Token/Inspiration economy running at full steam. Here they are:If the player(s) who win…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Doug Ruff, Gamskee.

10/17/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Recycling Events
Back in Social Resolution Mechanics we gave the idea of session-long Complications (Issues) a really thorough working over, and reluctantly concluded that we couldn't see a straightforward way to…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, Doug Ruff, LordSmerf.

10/18/2004 TonyLB: No-Myth junky cries out for help
As I look back over the patterns of games I have run, one thing leaps out at me. I don't prep story lines. At all. Now, I do prep. I…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, eef, anonymouse, Adrienne, Ron Edwards, inky, clehrich, dredd_funk, Valamir, jdagna, Walt Freitag, Cemendur, contracycle.

10/20/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Conclusion of 4-session Playtest
The Big Playtest of Capes finished up last night. Wacky, wacky stuff. I had originally had ambitions to do a "villain of the week" each week, starting with an attack…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Sydney Freedberg.

10/20/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Polishing
This thread in reference to Capes. An earlier revision is available for perusal, as well as development threads here, here, here, here, here and here. The Big Playtest has completed.…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Sydney Freedberg, Doug Ruff, efindel.

10/27/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Tropes or no Tropes
In the Polishing thread, Frankly, since chain-reactions of "no, I trope that" was such a big part of the fun in playtest -- and such a powerful form…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, Sydney Freedberg, LordSmerf, Doug Ruff, Eamon, efindel.

10/30/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Thread Index
Capes, a superhero game with heart, is an ongoing, almost completed, project in "Game Design Theater in the Round". From nigh on its earliest beginnings the game has developed right…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB.

10/30/2004 TonyLB: Functional Roles and Narr
In "GM is God"... I'm all for taking some of the duties off of a GM and see Narr games like Sorcerer and its deriviatives as putting some of the…
In RPG Theory
Participants: TonyLB, timfire, Noon, Scripty, M. J. Young.

11/2/2004 TonyLB: Social Contract and upset players (Split)
In GM is God, The socalled "social contract" is an agreement on what to do and how to do it. When someone shouts out about injustice or malpractise the…
In RPG Theory
Participants: TonyLB, Tomas HVM.

11/11/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Losing Control
So I've had the pleasure of playing in two Capes playtests in two days. The first (hereafter "Chambarra Capes") was on IRC with Doug (hi Doug!) The second (hereafter "Ensemble…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Sydney Freedberg, Vaxalon, Doug Ruff, TheCzech.

12/1/2004 TonyLB: [Dreamation 2005] Logistics of Explosion
We've got quite the crew of people showing up for Dreamation, to take up Double Exposure's offer of hosting an Indie RPG Explosion. There are, naturally, a whole host of…
In Conventions
Participants: TonyLB, John Wick, Tav_Behemoth, Jared A. Sorensen, Michael S. Miller.

12/2/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] The Serial Aesthetic
We ran our third session of face to face Capes playtest last night. Former sessions are recorded here. By previous agreement, we had decided to only run three sessions. And…
In Actual Play
Participants: TonyLB, Sydney Freedberg, Doug Ruff.

12/13/2004 TonyLB: [Capes] Cover for critique
Finally finished the draft cover for Capes (barring a few little additions and modifications I know still need to be done in the title-bar). And I am now absolutely too…
In Publishing
Participants: TonyLB, Sydney Freedberg, Tobias, timfire, GaryTP, Andrew Morris, John Harper, jdagna, Shreyas Sampat, Jack Aidley.

1/14/2005 TonyLB: [Capes] Free "Capes Lite" PDF for review
At the new Capes Website, I've put up a lite version of the rules, along with an in-built story idea and the resources to run it. I could really use…
In Indie Game Design
Participants: TonyLB, bcook1971, Bill Masek, James_Nostack, Andrew Morris, xenopulse, Gamskee, Stickman, Nathan P., hyphz, timfire.

1/16/2005 TonyLB: [Capes] Promoting at Dreamtion 2005
Okay, I've got my big print debut coming up at the Indie Games Explosion, in Dreamation 2005. Naturally I'm as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking…
In Conventions
Participants: TonyLB.

1/19/2005 TonyLB: Nearing the finish line
This thread is for news regarding Capes, superhero roleplaying game. And the first news is that the books are printed and in the mail to me. The PDF is soon…
In Muse of Fire Games
Participants: TonyLB, Ben Lehman, Andrew Morris, Matt Wilson, xenopulse, Yokiboy, Grover, Mike Holmes, Bob Goat, Tony Irwin.

1/21/2005 TonyLB: RPI Printing Good Experience
By contrast with Luke's experience with Express Media, I just had a spectacular start-to-finish printing experience with RPI Printing. I was referred to them in this post and went with…
In Publishing
Participants: TonyLB, LordSmerf, Matt Wilson, Tav_Behemoth, Michael S. Miller, Thor, inthisstyle, GregS.

1/24/2005 TonyLB: More Downloads
I've updated the CapesLite demo-rules to include the type of "show the game" pictures of dice and cards that help out so much in the main rules. I'm hopeful that…
In Muse of Fire Games
Participants: TonyLB, Yokiboy, lumpley, inthisstyle, Andrew Morris.

1/24/2005 TonyLB: How to bribe players
I'm very big on above-the-board bribes. So here's my thinking: A vibrant community, here on this forum, is a huge selling point for the game. I ought to make sure…
In Muse of Fire Games
Participants: TonyLB.

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