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 leaner, and be easier to understand. Only time will tell.

But wait! In their discussions of how to keep players constantly involved, our paragons of creativity have proposed that decent, hard-working players should have a chance to play dastardly, accursed Villains! Will they be able to construct a system that encourages the sundry inanities and insanities of the villainous mind? Can they recreate the spiteful, dysfunctional mechanic of a villain group in action? Keep reading, and find out!

-----------

So the goal is to give the players (including/especially the Editor) the tools to make it easy to imitate the way that villains function in comic books. That means addressing at least some of these apparently nonsensical behaviors:

• Tying the hero into a death-trap and then walking away• Taking Exemplars hostage• Deliberately aligning your actions to attack the Drives of the heroes, even though that gives them an advantage• Gloating• Telling the hero your plan because "you won't live long enough to thwart me"

I have this feeling that the villain's goal (or at least intermediate goal) is to force the hero to Stake tokens. But I don't know why.

But the other possibility is that there's something like "counting coup" going on here... that when a villain gives the hero a sporting chance and beats them anyway it means... more... somehow.

So, I'll keep cogitating, but I could certainly use some help. This is a bit tricky to get the mind around even in the abstract, and that means it's going to be absolute murder for players (who have to deal with it in concrete immediacy), unless good tools are provided.

Just a thought -- this question is eluding more substantive analysis at the moment:

The answer has got to have something to do with villainous Debt -- with what they're trying to prove.

How? Maybe since their drives are the mirrors of the heroes', that means, for example, that they're trying to prove that the Truth does not set you free, so they want to tell you terrible truths and show you how helpless you are to change them; or they're trying to prove that Love is a weakness, so they kidnap the people you care about; or that Hope is an illusion, so they try to smash the things everyone cares most about.

Now the current system doesn't actually tie the specific Drive being staked all that strictly to what it's being staked on. Perhaps a little more definition in this department might serve both heroes and villains?

Hi Tony,

This latest set of rules is shaping up in to something exceptional. I think the players as villains idea is great. One question came up for me: who keeps the inspiration that a villain wins? Editor or player of the villain? If the player can earn inspiration this way, must he use it for the villain in future, or can he apply it to his hero? (And can hero inspiratoin be used on villain complications?)

I've got two other suggestions for your rules:

1) Maybe bringing an Exemplar into a scene ups the rewards of staking debt tokens.

2) After character creation, rearrange your rules so the reader encounters the rules in the order they will use them. The rules about Page One, starting a scene, who creates starting complications (and the physical act of placing a card with one die for each side etc.) and how many, etc. should come before explainations of the conflict system and narration.

Excelsior!

Alan wrote:
1) Maybe bringing an Exemplar into a scene ups the rewards of staking debt tokens.

2) After character creation, rearrange your rules so the reader encounters the rules in the order they will use them.

Alan! Welcome aboard!

I'm interested in your suggestion that Exemplars should accentuate the importance of Stakes. My experience so far has been that their presence does this even in the absence of any mechanic reinforcing it, but if we can figure out an elegant rule then that will make it even better. I don't have any ideas for an elegant rule yet, however.

On layout and sequence: I appreciate your suggestions, but I've just about concluded that there is no single layout that will please everybody. I'm sorry if that sounds dismissive of your concern, it's just that after having tried it in a dozen different orders (including three variants of the starting point you recommend), and having gotten strong negative feedback from somebody on every single way of ordering the rules, I'm a little burned out on the discussion.

So... to the thread! Have you guys got any ingenious ideas on how to encourage comic-villainous patterns of thought and behavior?

One of the insights that came up previously is that the villains don't want just to execute their evil schemes. They want to win an unspoken argument with the heroes.

The argument varies, but goes something like this: I'm an evil villain not because I am too weak to be good, but because good is a stupid/false/failed view of the world. I will now prove this to you (oh shining avatar of a philosophy that, if true, would shame and humble me deeply) by showing you in this specific, tangible situation how evil triumphs over good. The villains need to destroy the heroes in order to feel good about themselves.

But... but... we don't want to reward players for the outcome of successfully tearing down the heroes. That would make things a zero sum game, which isn't really all that much fun. We want to reward the villainous players for the process of trying to tear down the heroes.

Okay, here's a thought: Currently, in the system, when a Hero wins a Stake, the Debt Tokens on that Stake just "go away". This seems wasteful. What if the Editor distributes those Tokens to the players most responsible for drawing the hero into making the bet. They get to keep those Tokens and redeem them for valuable prizes (of some as yet un-invented type) in the game. But only when the hero wins the Complication.

Hiya,

Tony, if you get a chance, run a search on the word "dickweed" and you'll get a bunch of threads about playing villainous characters (intentional or unintentional on the character's part) constructively. Might be good reading, food for thought, etc.

Best,
Ron

Now there is a search I would not have constructed on my own. I'm off to read, thanks!

What if you put villain behavior in the hands of the players in the form of tropes? Each hero could have a few villain tropes that could be activated like any other. Stuff like "Taunts me with his master plan", "Kidnaps my loved ones", and "Forces me to watch the massacre of innocents."

As soon as villain behaviors are a player-tool, they will happen in play on a regular basis.

John Harper wrote: What if you put villain behavior in the hands of the players in the form of tropes? ...like "Taunts me with his master plan", "Kidnaps my loved ones", and "Forces me to watch the massacre of innocents."

Hi all,

Here's something I sent Tony by PM. I just realized how it could be relevant to Villains as well, so here it is.

I haven't playtested the game, so I'm only throwing out ideas.

If you think some incentive rules for Examplars (or villains!) might help, the simplest way would be to change the investment ratio of the drive related to the Exemplar that's present. ie: if you win, you get to dump additional debt directly from your character sheet; if you lose you get back triple (or +2) or whatever.

A villain designated as a hero's nemesis might also have some special relationship mechanic like what I suggest for examplars. The player might choose the nemesis's tropes.

Another way to think about it, would be to have an Examplar or Nemesis as a complication unto themselves that the hero player can enter into play. To lose the complication is to exacerbate the Exemplar relationship and staked debt tokens go into a pool for the Exemplar.

Regarding what to do with tokens eliminated by winning a complication: let them disapear. My intuitiion is that an additional rule here would be unnecessay complication.

I like the notion of writing these into Tropes. But I still feel like there needs to be a reward mechanic for the villains that doesn't connect to Victory Points. Something they can achieve while "losing".

I believe that if the villains are meant to be striving for victory (the way the heroes are) then we end up with a zero-sum game. The heroes can't win without the villains losing, and the villains can't win without the heroes losing.

When the hero manages to resolve his personal issues at the very last moment, and find the strength to defeat the bad-guy's plans, while the villain mumbles "Impossible! Nobody can be that strong!"... that is the sign of a terrific villain. They gave the hero exactly the right crucible.

If we can figure out a way to reward the player for playing a good villain in that style then we have a game where players can win as their heroes and also win while portraying villains, without contradiction.

EDIT: Whoops... cross-posted with Alan. Sorry!

Yeah, Tropes are only part of the solution.

I'm fuzzy-headed today, but:

If you have a great villain, you want that character to return and return and return -- even if you kill the first incarnation? Like the Joker for Batman, or Green Goblin & Hobgoblin for Spider-Man. So maybe the reward for really good villainy is not victory (victory is for heroes) but persistence. A great villain always loses but always comes back.

And I'm reminded of Universalis, where injuring a character means adding Traits to that character describing his/her injuries, which (because story importance = # of traits) actually makes it harder to kill them.

The obvious way to implement this mechanically is to reward villains with some kind of special resource that they cannot use on winning ordinary Complications, only on (a) getting away -- which is a sub-category of complications -- and (b) writing themselves into a new episode -- which is not a question that needs resolving for the heroes (if a player is there, his/her hero is in this issue) but which does for villains. But obvious does not always equal elegant.

Hi,

I've lurked this game a bit, but I haven't managed to organise a local play-test of it yet (but I want too, it looks damn fine!) So I haven't tested this idea in-game.

Villains are there as foils to the Heroes, yes? And Drives are about what is important to the Heroes? How about having a villain's Tropes linked to Drives?

For example, the evil Dr Hypnosis has Villainous Tropes relating to his powers of Mind-Control (Duty), Memory Erasure (Truth), and Despair Aura (Hope). He also prefers to strike at his foes through their closest friends (Love).

I don't know exactly what mechanic would be most appropriate for implementing these Tropes, but my instinct says that they should be applied against Heroes with Debt against a matching Drive, especially if overdrawn.

Anyway, hope this is useful. If I get someone to play this with me (my group is a bit disjointed at the moment, we're all working different shifts!) I'm assuming you'll want feedback?

Regards,

Doug

Doug: Heck yes I'll want to hear about it! I'm very excited by the prospect. Soon you will have a new version of the rules PDF, far more friendly on the eyes (even if the text is essentially unchanged). Watch this space!

I'm not seeing precisely how you mean to tie Tropes to Drives... though I like the concept of Tropes causing Villains to accrue Debt. We had an idea a while back that villains shouldn't take Debt for Powers, but rather should hemorrhage information, and this might be a chance to get back to that without removing villainous Debt altogether.


Sydney: Yeah... yeaaaaaaah.....

What you're offering as a reward mechanic to the players is not merely the ability to decide that a villain pops up again. It's the ability to decide what happens in the next game. Saying "obviously Magnetron the living generator couldn't be held by some puny federal super-prison!" is just a special case (albeit a popular one) of insisting that a particular element be written into the next game.

So somebody who does a terrific job as their hero (as shown by their high Temporary Drive scores) should get to request situations for themselves and their Exemplars.

Somebody who does a terrific job as a villain (as shown by... haven't figured it out yet... maybe still how many Hero-Debt tokens they accumulate) should get to request the presence of certain villains or types of villains. Maybe they even get to create a villain for the next session.

Somebody who does a good job in the Letters Column gets to ask one geeky question that must be answered by the story of the next game. The "Stay Tuned, True Believers!" question.

Quick thought: Perhaps the reward system could give players power over what kind of Complications get introduced, especially at the beginning of an issue (which so far is fairly undefined GM-fiat)?

TonyLB wrote:
I'm not seeing precisely how you mean to tie Tropes to Drives... though I like the concept of Tropes causing Villains to accrue Debt. We had an idea a while back that villains shouldn't take Debt for Powers, but rather should hemorrhage information, and this might be a chance to get back to that without removing villainous Debt altogether.

Hmmm. I see what you're trying to accomplish here, but perhaps the simpler mechanic would be to allow the villain to introduce a new Complication (e.g. "captive hamster") somehow?

Sydney, you're absolutely right - I need to do some re-reading and pause for thought.

Perhaps it's better to explain what I'm trying to achieve in terms of the concept, rather than the mechanics.

In the comics, heroes often have their own 'nemesis' villain. In the current mechanics, the players can take these villains as Exemplars for their Drives, even. I think that many of the best villains have a deep personal connection to the heroes.

I think that Tropes are the best route towards establishing this connection and using it in actual play, without adding another mechanic. If the Trope can describe a particular feature of the Villain that undermines the Hero's capabilities (for example, the Villain and the Hero are related; the Villain has a device that weakens the Hero; the Villain is dating the Hero's sister) then it can be used to attack a Hero where it really hurts - in the Drives.

However, I'm unsure how this would fit into the mechanic proper. Like I said, I need to re-read the rules and maybe do some 'solo' playtesting.

Regards,

Doug

I am liking Sydney's suggestion regarding Villain recurrance based on playing villains well... Grooving on that:

I believe what we really want is a system that rewards players for making the Villains interesting/narratively powerful. This means that we have a Metagame mechanic... Two ideas present themselves:

1. Award some kind of meta-resource to the players who play villains well that let them influence the story, perhaps they can get free rerolls, perhaps they can activate a second Effect in one turn, perhaps they get to reduce the bonus provided by an Inspiration, whatever. Give players and advantage for their Heroes if they play the Villains well.

2. Provide some sort of advantage to the specific Villain who is well played. Possibly some mechanic that forces heroes to Stake... I am still unsure that forced Stakes are a good idea, but at the moment it is all i can think of...

Thomas

Well, the way I see it you can either reward the players directly (by giving them more story control, for instance, as discussed above) or reward the players through their characters.

So far I'm leaning toward rewarding the players directly (since the causality of villainous excellence translating into heroic advantage is... convoluted, and the competitive angle of villainous advantage is tricky). I could be convinced otherwise, but I'm not convinced yet. There's a lot of stuff that can reward the players without ever directly touching a character.

For instance, Sydney's idea of letting the players define some of the Villainous Complications for the next story sounds like a richly useful one. I'd go one step further and say that they get to define the Complications, but that the Editor gets to choose where and when those Complications get played. He could have a pack of 3x5 cards with the player Complications on them, as well as a bunch with Complications he's thought up, and pull them out (or write up whole new ones) as appropriate. Get some use out of the physicality of the props.

Perhaps there should be multiple rewards? I was thinking that it would be cool for a reward that allows you to declare a Villain to be present in a scene (just as you can declare your own Hero to be present) before Complications are declared. This would be a more subtle kind of story direction:

"Wow, you played The Adder to perfection! Here have a [whatever]. Ok, let's set up the next scene."
"Man, it sure was fun playing The Adder, in fact let's do it again! Here have this [whatever] back and put The Adder in the next scene."
[scene plays]
"Dang man, The Adder is getting really cool! Have another [whatever]. Ok, next scene, you want The Adder back in play?"
"Actually, i really want to see the Quantam Kumquat again. I thought he was really cool. Have this [whatever]."
"Done. Quantam Kumquat it is."

Does that make sense?

Thomas

Thomas's idea is a good one. It means adding a new mechanic for introducing story elements, but
(a) Story Elements = Complications, Inspirations, and Major Character presence in a scene; Tony's defined what each of these is, but the rules are at present actually a little fuzzy on just how to introduce how many of each, especially at game-start -- so maybe we need such a mechanic.
(b) as Tony said, the alternative to a story-presence mechanic is an in-game effectiveness mechanic, and making villains more likely to win is precisely what we don't want: We want to reward them for losing well.

It's a solid notion, and I'm going to adopt it. Let me see if I can formalize it a little bit. The goal here is that if people take issue with a specific implementation, we find out quickly, so that we can identify what issues practically restrict the idea that we all like in theory.

Getting Story Tokens

• Debt Tokens (poker chips, candies, whatever they are) placed on a certain area of the hero worksheet become Story Tokens.• The Editor has a Budget of N Story Tokens each scene for his own use (where N has to be playtested out).• Each other player gets one Story Token to start the session.• When a player (hero or villain) wins a Stake, he may choose to give the Debt Tokens to the other player who most directly drew him into placing the bet in the first place. The other player then gets these Tokens as Story Tokens.• The Editor may give out Story Tokens at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.• Players may give their Story Tokens to another player for any reason.

Prominence

• When establishing a new Scene, a player may spend Story Tokens to give a character (hero or otherwise) Prominence.• Each character has a minimum Prominence (established when? changed how frequently?)• Heroes and minions will have 1, arch-villains would have much more (how much needs to be play-tested).• You may not spend less than the minimum Prominence on a character (though several players can pool their tokens to get to the minimum, if needed).• Any character with Prominence is somehow present in the scene. Exemplars should have values that vary from story to story.• When there is a question of which of two actions will be adjudicated first, the character with higher Prominence has priority.• When there is a question of who gets to act for a character, the player who put the most Story Tokens into that characters Prominence has priority.• To bring in a character that isn't part of the story as established so far you must spend two Story Tokens for each point of Prominence.

After the story

• The Letter Column is an excellent opportunity for players to earn Story Tokens from their fellows for good questions and answers.• At the end of a session players may spend two Story Tokens to create a Complication that the Editor must include in the next story. They may do this many times.• At the end of a session players may spend five Story Tokens to ask an open ended question that the Editor must address (though not necessarily answer) in the next story.• At the end of a session one player may spend five Story Tokens to declare some other player the Page One Hero for the next story.• Players may not carry Story Tokens from one session to the next.

I haven't read PrimeTime Adventures yet, but I get the feeling that I'm copying some of their vibe here.

What do people think?

Follow-up thought: Perhaps the Victory Target for the scene is simply the number of Story Tokens spent?

I like the basics. I think that it will pretty much be pure playtesting to see if this works. Nothing is throwing up any flags though...

I am not sure about Victory Target being number of Story Tokens spent. On the surface i like it, but potentially it could get slightly out of hand.

Thomas

In which direction? Victory Targets too high?

More in the: what if no one spends any Story Points? Or, if Story Points are required to have a character in scened the possibility exists of no one having any (not having been given any in previous scenes). And there is the possibility of a scene being blown out of proportion. So i guess the danger is volatility, it is difficult to predict exactly what will happen, so until this gets playtested we do not know what it will look like.

Thomas

Fair enough. I could easily imagine situations where a player doesn't have any Story Tokens, and therefore has to sit back and Villain for a while. Frankly, that strikes me as a benefit of the system, as much as a problem.

But you make a good point that if all of the heroes run out of Story Tokens then you get an all-villain scene, and then how exactly do any of the folks playing villains get more Story Tokens to get their heroes back in the game? A puzzle, indeed...

TonyLB wrote: But you make a good point that if all of the heroes run out of Story Tokens then you get an all-villain scene, and then how exactly do any of the folks playing villains get more Story Tokens to get their heroes back in the game? A puzzle, indeed...

I like. Small quibbles:

TonyLB wrote: When a player (hero or villain) wins a Stake, he may choose to give the Debt Tokens to the other player who most directly drew him into placing the bet in the first place. The other player then gets these Tokens as Story Tokens. [emphasis added]

TonyLB wrote: When there is a question of who gets to act for a character, the player who put the most Story Tokens into that characters Prominence has priority.

TonyLB wrote: At the end of a session players may spend two Story Tokens to create a Complication that the Editor must include in the next story. They may do this many times.

Re: Not giving away Debt Tokens. You're right, I should have phrased that "they must either give the tokens away to another player or return them to the Editor."

Re: "My Guy". Yeah, I think I might have to draw the line at letting people take over other players's heroes. But it is, deliberately, meant to let them duke it out over who controls the villains, and who controls Exemplars and such-like. So much easier than arguing without rules to resolve it. You don't want Peggy Sue in the narrative hands of Kill-crazy player Jake? Well, how much is it worth to you?

Re: Complications at the end of the story. This is deliberate. It's to give the poor beleaguered Editor time to think about how to craft a story around the Complications.

Say the players insist that they want "Active Volcano", "Oxygen is running out", "Who is the baby's father?" and "Make it to the church on time" as Complications.

I don't know about you, but I would want a good solid week between sessions to figure out how to fit all of those into a coherent story. I'm sure that there are a dozen really good ways to work all of these together (please, if you've thought of the perfect way just PM me... I know it's tempting, but don't clog the thread). At the same time, there are thousands upon thousands of ways to do it horribly wrong. Giving the Editor some time where he/she isn't under pressure to perform, and can explore alternatives in the hypothetical, sounds to me like a very good thing.

Side-note: I've got the new, printer-friendly, eye-friendly beta version of Capes online. It's almost identical in text to the previous version, and it's almost 2MB in size, which is obviously a hassle, but I like to think that the eye candy is worth the download.

I don't see any overlap with Primetime Adventures, Tony. There's considerable overlap with my own Danger Patrol, though. Particularly with this system of player rewards. A key reward system in DP is the creation of Elements by the players, which can be locations, situations, villains, items, etc. Less like Universalis, more like HeroQuest traits. (link goes to old DP thread)

Of course, they're recorded on 3x5 cards and put into a pile that the GM and players can draw from.

I consider this kind of overlap a good thing. It means that we're probably on to something good.

TonyLB wrote: Re: Complications at the end of the story. This is deliberate. It's to give the poor beleaguered Editor time to think...

TonyLB wrote: I've got the new, printer-friendly, eye-friendly beta version of Capes online. ... the eye candy is worth the download.

I really like the new, visually attractive, version of the rules. The only comment i have is that while it is very pretty, it is incredibly "busy" as well. There is just a lot on the page. Not that that is necessarily bad, just that it can get distracting.

Thomas

Yeah, I see what you mean. Thanks for the comment, it gets really hard for me to see the rules at the macro level, for all the fiddling around at micro.

Next revision I'll try to spread things out a little more comfortably, and give some of the ideas time to lounge about, maybe even kick their feet up in Examples.


Been thinking about Prominence, and the question of whether a hero can "get into" a scene. To recap, if it costs Story Tokens for a hero to get into a scene, you can easily end up with a scene where no hero chooses to (or is able to) show up. What if you threw a war and nobody came?

I adore the concept of a villains-only scene, in theory. They're such a big deal in comic books, after all (along with hero-only scenes).

The problem, however, is that the rules are heavily slanted toward conflict between two clearly defined sides. Now a villains-only scene should still have plenty of conflict, but it gets harder to identify the sides. They emerge from the nature of events, and I don't yet have rules for that.

That's a question I've known I had to get back around to ever since one of my early playtests (when two heroes wanted to rescue a particular Exemplar, but were arguing vehemently about which one got to rescue her).

So here's a proposed rule for many-sided battles:

• The Passion effect is changed so that people have to split the die as evenly as possible.• Passion can either let you add a communal die on your "side" or add a die of your own, creating another side entirely. Once you have a side you may only split your own side's dice.• Passion can also be used to join two sides back into one.• Victory Points are awarded equal to the sum of every side that didn't win.• Inspiration bonus is now calculated by taking your highest die and subtracting the highest die controlled by anyone else... if the difference is one or less no Inspiration is given.• In one-sided scenes, a Complication starts off with only one die.• Increasing this singleton die means (in story terms) increasing the tension in the scene, not achieving any particular result.• Complications with Singelton dice that are resolved add no VPs.• Using Passion to split the die means the tension explodes into open conflict. Please note that this is the only way to generate VPs in an all-villain scene.• All-hero scenes do not rely upon the same mechanic (although tensions can, indeed, explode) because the Editor is presumed to be playing powers, attitudes and tropes off of the environment (I'll be writing up character sheets for "This is easy... too easy", "Murphy's Law" and other intangibles when I write up sample sheets for the next revision).

I think that in addition to handling a long-standing hole in the rules this creates a good way to handle the all-villain scene. How does it sound to you guys?


EDIT: People should be able to add characters midway through a scene, so that a scene of Captain Glitter in his secret identity talking with his bowling buddies (running on singleton dice) can suddenly be interrupted by the appearance of Crimson Smudge, and villain-dice get added to cards all around. Or maybe not. It's a thought, anyway... haven't figured out whether it's a good one.

TonyLB wrote: ...a villains-only scene should still have plenty of conflict, but it gets harder to identify the sides...That's a question I've known I had to get back around to ever since one of my early playtests (when two heroes wanted to rescue a particular Exemplar, but were arguing vehemently about which one got to rescue her). So here's a proposed rule for many-sided battles....

TonyLB wrote: I adore the concept of a villains-only scene, in theory. They're such a big deal in comic books, after all (along with hero-only scenes).

The problem, however, is that the rules are heavily slanted toward conflict between two clearly defined sides. Now a villains-only scene should still have plenty of conflict, but it gets harder to identify the sides. They emerge from the nature of events, and I don't yet have rules for that.

"Reroll an opponents die" is one die. So yeah, you've got to choose which die, which implies choosing which side.

As to what the Passion-split gets above and beyond just letting people add dice, I'll point some things out, though I don't know whether they're enough to justify the added complexity:

• If you just add dice then a defector has no immediate impact on "team victory".• If you split dice then a defector immediately reduces the effectiveness of the folks from whom he split. He may, indeed, lose them control of the Complication.• Tying splits to Debt thorough Passion helps to highlight the underlying reasons for the schism.• Tying splits to Debt also solves the question of how villain-only scenes generate Story Tokens: Folks must spend Debt to get VPs, which means that there are bets to be won and distributed to other players as Story Tokens.

And... that's all I can think of.

EDIT: Cross-posted with Doug who has written more than I can respond to just at the moment. Have to go cook dinner, and then I'm off to (of all things) an impromptu Capes playtest.

Doug Ruff wrote: ... Let's say the die rolls a '5' - the cat escapes from the goons' car....Dr Malevolent now has to marshal extra forces to regain control over the Complication and find the cat....

Okay, I have a thought on this, but not enough time to really explicate. So, take it or leave it.

What if Murphy's Law is a character?

Indeed, what if "Archvillain's Lament" is a character, with Attitudes like "You are surrounded by incompetent fools" and "Nobody understand your grand vision" and powers like "A tiny flaw with critical consequences"?

Sydney Freedberg wrote: a supervillain sending out his evil minions to put "LOST: Tabby" posters up all over the neighborhood

Wow, Doug, you post an awful lot of good ideas at once!

I was assuming that Murphy would, in fact, be less powerful if it was a character. I think that letting every complication roll is too powerful. But that has to do with my notions on how turns should be made shorter, which I'll get to separately, later in this post.


Regarding "gloatingly revealing plans", I totally agree. I've been trying to figure out a mechanic that lets people do that sort of thing without the rules system specifically having a "Gloating Rule, subsection b". I've tried fitting it in many places (Tropes, Effects, Stakes, Inspirations, etc., etc.) But here's another place to try to fit it in: What happens, in the narrative, when you set a Complication to be Resolving?

For instance, to use the Spiderman movie climax, Green Goblin beats Spiderman to within an inch of his life and then gloats about how Spiderman's defeat will seal Mary Janes fate. Perhaps some sort of such declaration ("This is what my victory means!") is what you do (in the story) in order to set a Complication Resolving (in the game).


I see what you're saying about a top-down approach to creating Complications from a planned Story Goal. It makes for a strong coherence, and lets players keep on track with the story that's been decided. But I'm designing Capes to do a bottom-up construction of the Story specifically from the Complications that people find interesting. So I don't think the Story Goal is a real good fit for this game.

I'll point to my playtest last night as an example of how bottom-up storytelling centers the plot on what the players prove they are actually interested in.


In terms of how the rules performed in the playtest: Play is now much, MUCH faster. I'd estimate that each individual action is resolved about ten times faster than it used to be. On a per-action basis I am totally content with the speed of resolving things now.

On a per-turn basis, however, it still needs tweaking. There were simply too many actions in a given turn. People would tap an Attitude, a couple Tropes and then every single one of their Powers. Even when each of those only took thirty seconds, start to finish, that meant about ten to fifteen minutes per turn.

The problem with turns composing a lotta-lotta actions is that it becomes very rare to Resolve a complication. Generally one (or perhaps two) Complications were resolved to reach the whole Victory Target for the scene. Which meant very little "resolve and replace".

The constant resolution and replacement of small Complications is what makes the system encourage an evolving conflict. It also gives you more scope for choosing what you're interested in (since it means more Stakes resolved per unit of action). So I'd like to bring down the number of actions taken in a single turn.

There was also a goodly helping of chaos, because there were no rules for "When do I act, when do I sit back and listen?" To smack down both of these problems (as well as to make Story Tokens really count) I'm thinking of the following:

• Characters get one action (Attitude or Power) per "go around" the table. So Character A acts, then Character B, then Character C.• If you've introduced or been assigned more than one character that means you (as a player) get more than one action per go-round.• Tropes may be done at any time (to reroll a die that's just been rolled).• Turns are made of multiple go-rounds. Each turn, each character gets a number of actions equal to their Prominence.• When all of the characters of Prominence 1 or greater (i.e. all of the present characters) have gone around once, for instance, then all of the characters of Prominence 2 or greater go around again, then all with 3 or greater, etc.• This means that higher prominence characters get their extra actions after all of the lower prominence characters.

To get back to the very top of this post, if these rules go into effect then the average arch-villain in a villains-only scene is only going to be rolling two or three dice per turn. Three complications rolling against him each turn is a fairly substantial advantage (since he's running out of expendable resources and Murphy's Law isn't). This is obviously a bit of a change from before, when the same villain could (and very well might) roll five or six times each turn. But I'll admit that I still like the simplicity of just rerolling Complications a lot. Do you see a way to balance it?

Ok, a couple of things:

-Your recent playtest has convinced me that dice splitting and side switching must happen.
-I still like the idea that you get dice equal to your Stake, literally. You do not get to roll a die of your own unless you are Staked in a Complication.
-The above implies that Complications can not be formed without a Stake, which gets us back to players generating all Complications. Perhaps with a limit of no more Complications than there are Major Players. This has the advantage that all Complications are important to someone since they all require a point of Debt to start up. Now, you can still roll down your opponent's die, even if you are not Staked, you just can not win on your own.
-You mentioned that you feel that too few Complications are required to win a scene. Possible solution: All Complications are always resolving, each Complication you win is 1 VP regardless of anything else. Combined with forced Stakes this means that you should not have too many "sucky" Complications. This will also make Inspirations very powerful since they can be plowed into a Complication that is already resolving. There is a risk that the game will run too fast and that you can build up a "runaway train" effect. That would need some testing. On the other hand, it would mean that you have to win more Complications to claim victory, but the need to reduce your opponent's Inspirations would still give you a reason to fight in a losing battle.

Additionally, i still feel that non-combat scenes are not yet optimized. Unfortunately i do not really have any great ideas about them...

Thomas

Actually, the recent playtest has brought me a lot closer to the idea that your dice should equal your Stake. Not all the way, but perhaps you can convince me.

Effects, as a whole, seemed to be doing a lot more to hinder the game than to drive it. The only one people really needed was Passion, and it could just as easily work the way you describe.

So I'm thinking of dumping Effects entirely, and saying that you can always split dice, so long as you have no more dice on your side than you have Debt Tokens Staked.

Now it is a short but (I think) important step from that to saying that there are no freebie dice... that to roll a die you need to add a Stake to the Complication.

I have a hard time getting my intuitive concerns into words, but I think it boils down to this: "Sucky" Complications have an important place in the system. They are the low-pressure playground where people can have fun with the system without needing to address Premise 24/7.

As an example, in our first conflict on the recent playtest, gang members were stealing a mystic whoozits from a local museum. There was a "Beautiful Things" Complication which I put in, to represent all of the Ming Vases and such on the battlefield.

I noted that Seth made a few attempts to save the art, then got a huge smile on his face and said "Forget it. I've got a robbery to stop here. I'll let it all get destroyed. Heck, I'll help." He vividly described and enjoyed the property damage that was done (in large part) due to his characters lack of concern. He kept reminding me that things were getting destroyed every time he fired his sonic cannon.

In short, he enjoyed asserting his right not to care.

The "one die per stake" is incredibly more elegant than the current rule. You'll get no argument from me on that whatsoever. But it doesn't as strongly support and represent the players right to participate without caring.

But like I said, I'm open to persuasion. I really do like the elegance.

Perhaps some limit such that you can only roll your "free" die using Powers, but not Attitudes, or perhaps you can only roll 3's or lower... Basically you can still roll your opponent down, but you can not roll your own up very well/often... That is a pretty fragmentary, but i see what you are saying, but i feel that the limit based on Debt Staked is so elegant and so appropriate that it just has to be worked in... But that's just me...

Thomas

TonyLB wrote: Effects, as a whole, seemed to be doing a lot more to hinder the game than to drive it....Now it is a short but (I think) important step from that to saying that there are no freebie dice... that to roll a die you need to add a Stake to the Complication.

I wanted to interject something that may be at this point an unwarranted digression, since I see that the conversation has turned to a slightly different issue than the original question in this thread, which had to do with how to appropriately reward (and thereby motivate) players for good villainous play. But let me throw it out here anyway, since I've been following the development of Capes with a great deal of interest and have been wishing that I had something to contribute.

I finally had a chance to make up a couple of characters, and as I was doing that it occurred to me that each element of the character description has a textual parallel in the comic book: Capes "Powers" are comic-book powers (i.e., the typical defining element for a superhero: "he's got the proportionate speed and agility of a spider," "he's super-strong and invulnerable," "she's got a magic lasso."), "Attitudes" are sort of like comic-book "speech balloons" ("Must...keep...going"; "Oh no! I can't let anyone see me like this!") and Tropes are (if you squint) like sound effects (but also like catchphrases and recurring "figures" or images: "Snikt!" "It's clobbering time!" "Look! Up in the sky!"). This is what Tony intended, and it works nicely.

So maybe players who do a good job with villains could receive other comic book textual element analogs, like (wait for it) editorial captions.

Think about it...it's a way of giving out scene-framing and other GM-like powers in a limited sort of way (which I get the sense is what Tony is after). A player with a caption might be allowed to add it to a frame before it's been described; more powerful captions might have game effects like letting a player introduce his hero to the scene, and so forth.



Meanwhile... [sets up a mini-scene somewhere else];
Earlier... [ditto, and also moves it somewhen else]
Suddenly... [forces a surprise entrance or occurrence]
TO BE CONTINUED! [sets up a cliffhanger by ending the scene]
* As seen in issue #X [requires a reference to an earlier game-session]



Similarly, a player could be given "Layout" authority, like "Splash Page" and (even better) "Two-Page Spread," each of which might have some funky mechanical effect that I can't imagine right now; something to do with shuffling complications around, perhaps. Note that I have no idea what that means.

I realize this is a different tack than that implied by the notion of "Prominence," but I'm not sure how helpful that mechanic would be; sure, it adds structure to scene-setting, but it's another damn thing to keep track of every time. Of course, I haven't done any playtesting, so my opinion is admittedly not terribly well-informed.

But as I understand it, the players start the game by establishing what's going on on page one after the Editor has given them a hint about what's going to happen with the cover. So Capes already ties the Editor to comic-book conventions (no pun intended). So maybe formalizing the Editor's scene-framing authority by grounding it in comic-book conventions as well is a good way of using the mechanics to reinforce the genre.

Then, by letting players partake of that authority by giving them specific sorts of captions ("You want a 'Meanwhile, back at the Citadel...' or an 'As seen in Issue #1', Joe?"), the feel of a comic book is pressed into service as a player-rewarding game-mechanic.

In any event, I'm taken with this little game and I hope I get the chance to play it for real soon.

Bill

I certainly have a soft spot for flashbacks and "meanwhile, elsewhere" scenes. I'd been planning to write up rules for how to call for them when creating a new scene, but the possibility of breaking to them in the middle of a combat is intriguing.

I must admit that, just having decided to remove Effects and their laundry-list of special case rules, I'm more in the market for a single rule with many powerful interpretations than I am for a mass of individual rules that each only do one thing. I'm trying to figure out a rule that would do that for this idea, but I haven't got anything yet... maybe later.

TonyLB wrote: I'm more in the market for a single rule with many powerful interpretations than I am for a mass of individual rules that each only do one thing... .

I have an idea! I know, i know, everyone is shocked. All Complications start with a single "neutral" die on them. This die can be rolled by anyone. Once it reaches six the Complication Resolves unless there is a second die. More dice come from Staking, so basically no one can control a Complication without Stakes, you can spend on one, and try to get it resolved and replaced, but you can not Control it. If a "neutral" Complication resolves it provides no Inspiration and is replaced by the Editor.

What this boils down to is:
-New Complications start with a single neutral die.
-Anyone can roll that die (abiding by all the same restriction of rolling other dice).
-No one controls a neutral Complication so you always get to narrate your Final Frame.
-Neutral Complications resolve if they are valued at 6 at the beginning and end of a turn.
-Neutral Complications provide no Victory Points.
-Staking on a Complication lets you place your own die on the Complication. The neutral side never resolves if there is a Staked die in play. This means that being the only one Staked will provide eventual victory.
-Complications only Resolve in your favor if you have a higher die value showing than anyone else. If the highest die is neutral and anyone has Staked the Complication does not Resolve. This means that the neutral die can be used to delay, but not defeat.

How does that sound. Looking at it it reads a little cumbersome. On the other hand, the idea seems simple in my mind, and it could possibly solve the Stake for dice and still have incidental stuff...

Thomas

Oh, no question. I like the idea. I'm just revving up the old mental engines, and hoping that everyone else is doing the same.

We had a really fun discussion of Inspirations and flashbacks, back in the day... Gawd, a month and a half ago. Have to get this system finished, or I'll become an old man fumbling with my dice. Heh.

EDIT: Crossposted with Thomas.

Thomas, I grasp what you are saying in terms of the game (i.e. the dice and the 3x5 cards). I do not grasp what it would imply for the story.

If you have a neutral Bystanders Complication, and it resolves neutral, how would that be described?

Good question. The Editor describes the ultimate outcome (which will be tied to whatever replaces the Complication. What does this mean? It means that neither the Heroes nor the Villains really went out of their way to mess with the Bystanders. Sure you get to describe things by Frames when you roll neutral dice, but the outcome is the Editors, and moreover it shows a lack of concern.

In fact, i would be tempted to say (shooting from the hip here) that neutral Complications do not Resolve so much as fade to the background. In comics you will see bystanders, but they take care of themselves. The Bystanders are neither slaughtered, nor do they escape, they just fade out of focus. They are not important to the conflict at hand.

One of the big advantages to this is that things will fade out (have almost no effect on the Story) if no Player cares enough to Stake on it. I think that this is a good thing.

Thomas

Nod, nod. I see what you mean.

My initial thought was "There isn't really any difference between the Bystanders saving themselves and the hero saving them," but that's just poppycock (love that word). The difference is huge. Mechanically it's the difference between working off some debt and getting an Inspiration or... not. Story-wise it's a question of whether the hero takes responsibility for the situation.

Ah... and it actually makes it more possible for the players to decide what they care about or don't care about. I've noticed that there is never, ever, a single Bystander Complication that the heroes don't go gonzo-crazy trying to control. Because they feel the genre obligates them to. But with this rule they can control it or not, and they're not having the whole "toasted orphan" effect looming over them if they decide they'd rather duke it out than play shepherd to a bunch of bawling civilians.

AND (as my eyes start to glint and I start speaking more rapidly and forcefully) this makes it scary when the villain Stake on a Complication, but not instantly scary, because the neutral die can provide a nice little buffer.

But... heh... okay, first off I'm really liking this now that you've explained it. A lot. It is very elegant and simple (even if describing the differences between the current system and this one is complicated), and I see a lot of potential flexibility. Particularly, it might do a lot to solve all-villain or all-hero play and non-conflict scenes.

Now let's make it address the following points:

• A hero raising the neutral die from 2 to 5 (say) needs to have different consequences than a villain doing the same thing. Not sure how, but this is critical. The heroes need to be able to "fight the villains" in the Complication without investing Debt. It's the right to play without caring again.• For non-conflict play (and generally) I feel like there should be some way that a Complication can resolve Neutrally even when someone is Staked on it. Peter Parker wanting to talk to Mary Jane but not quite able to summon the nerve is an example of the sort of story element I'm looking to represent.

Crikey, take the evening off and this thread explodes!

Tony, thanks for the PM, villain creation makes more sense now. Must have a chat with you about villainous Drives sometime, but I don't want to add another topic to this thread!

Re: Complications resolving. I'm not convinced that Complications should default to 'neutral' resolution if the heroes & villains don't act. Otherwise they sorta cease to be complications, right?

IMHO, complications should be announced with a 'this is what will happen if you don't do something'. It could be as horrific as 'the orphans will burn' or as banal as 'The opportunity to talk to Mary Jane passes.'

And yes, bystanders are a tough Complication. I'd rate them as Duty 3. You see, I think that complications should directly reference Drives.

We've already got Debt staked on complications, and the debt is assigned to individual Drives, so, some suggestions:

* Every Complication has a Drive and a Rating. For example, 'Orphans in Danger' is Duty 3, 'Dr. Malevolent's cat is ill' is Love 1. Higher rating complications cost more resources (Inspiration Points?) to play. For example, a villain needs at least 3 Inspiration points to threaten those kids.

* The maximum number of dice on each side of a Complication is equal to its rating. So 3 dice for the orphans, 1 die for Mr Fluffydeath the cat.

* In the case of the orphans, the 3 dice are ordered (die 1, die 2, die 3). If your Duty drive is only 1, you can only roll the first die. This effectively replaces the passion mechanic.

* If you use a power to affect a complication, you must place your debt against the related Drive. Dr. Malvolent must place Debt against Love if he is using a power to help Mr. Fluffydeath; the heroes must indebt their Duty to save the orphans.

* This debt is automatically staked; heroes can go overboard with their powers, but if they lose the Complication, they are in trouble!

* Editor can 'Murphy' any single die each turn. This should always be rolled against the side who is controlling the complication.

By the way, this thread is getting quite complicated now. Would it be worth splitting it? I'm thinking that we could have separate threads for Villain Creation and mechanics, Complication resolution, Story mechanics (prominence, editorial captions).

Anyway, this game gets cooler every time - can't wait for the next installment!

Regards

Doug

I've PMed Clinton to ask whether it's an appropriate time to set up a Capes Forum. If and when that comes through then I'll certainly have a bunch of threads to quote-split into it from this single thread. In the meantime, though, I'd rather not clutter up Indie Game Design too much.


Now... I could be misreading this, but it feels like we have a division of Thomas encouraging bottom-up story, Doug encouraging top-down story, and me in the middle saying "I want both!"

So here's what I want from each.

Editor defined and driven Complications draw players in. In playtest I have observed that players start out reluctant to Stake debt. Then they get excited to be "fighting the villains". As they achieve things, and see that they can exert a lot of control over the flow of events, they loosen up and get excited about Staking debt. Without an Editor-controlled structure that they can bounce off of I feel that folks would stall at that initial stage of reluctance.

Player defined and driven Stakes let the players tell their heroes story. To take the Bystanders Example, I've seen a lot of Bystanders in a few games I've run. I've seen people stake a lot of different drives on Bystanders (Duty, Love and Hope, specifically). And it makes for a very different story, depending on what they stake. If they stake Duty then they start narrating things like "This is my job, this is what I do, make sure supervillains don't destroy mid-town... it's my gift, my curse". It tends to make the hero lonely. If they stake Hope then they start describing the fearful faces, the children cheering when the hero wins the day, and generally linking the hero to crowd reaction. It makes the hero a vital part (indeed, almost a pawn) of the community. And that huge thematic difference is just from what Drive they choose to Stake off of.

The current system balances and encourages these things, but imperfectly. It draws people in using the unstaked Complications, then encourages them to turn that initial excitement into their own personal story by giving them control of what they Stake on it. But there's some awkwardness.

Doug, you've got some solid recommendations that can help provide Editor-driven Adventure structure for the players to bounce off of, if we can figure out how to do it without sacrificing player-driven Moral story. Thomas, you've got solid recommendations for helping player-driven Moral story if we can figure out how to do it without sacrificing Editor-driven Adventure structure.

So if I seem to be cherry-picking, taking just an element here or there rather than accepting the entire coherent viewpoints that you're espousing, that's why.

This is quick and dirty, hopefully i can expand upon this later...

The Editor has Adventure Story control, as things stand, through a couple of methods:

1. The Editor creates the Villains, not the players. This means that the Editor has influence over the story since he is the one who decides what is important to the antagonists, what Drives them.
2. The Editor frames scenes. Yes, using Inspirations you can make some changes, but if the Editor frames a scene in the bank, you do not get to act as if the scene takes place at that romantic restaurant.
3. Per my proposal (in its current confused state) the Editor also gets to replace neutral Complications that no one Stakes on. This means that the Editor will probably continue to contribute Complications to play throughout the scene. Hopefully a couple of these Complications will be interesting enough for either a Hero or a Villain to grab hold of them.

There is a lot more to consider, i just wanted to point out where i see the Editor having Control as things stand...

Thomas

No question. My concern is that the Editor's Adventure structure ceases to be a benefit to the players if it doesn't give them immediate opportunities to go out and control the world.

So I'm still hung up on the question: How is a hero moving a neutral die from 2 to 5 different from a villain doing the same? I wish I had a good answer to that, because I think the rest will fall into place very nicely.

I believe that mechanically there is no difference, but that narratively there is a huge difference. Remember, you get to narrate those Frames. That means that ideas will be generated, and "cool stuff" will happen. Perhaps a clause that the Editor controls the neutral die, so that if it is highest, the Editor controls the Complication...? That would give the Editor Final Frame authority. Basically this seems to put the Editor on very similar footing in terms of narrative control as the rest of the players. I can see that being a bad thing or a good thing, or some combination of the two... I will have to think about it a little more...

Thomas

It seems to me that you've returned to the idea that players should be forced to Stake debt if they want to achieve any mechanical Control in a Complication. They get some narrative control without Staking, but no mechanical advantage.

Am I missing something?

TonyLB wrote: So I'm still hung up on the question: How is a hero moving a neutral die from 2 to 5 different from a villain doing the same? I wish I had a good answer to that, because I think the rest will fall into place very nicely.

Yes, that is basically what i am getting at. I would state it as: you have narrative and mechanical contribution on neutral Complications. The reason being that you can utilize a neutral die to delay your opponent who is Staked from resolving the Complication. You have no outright control, but you can utilize the Complication to forward your narrative and mechanical goals. Of course having your own die on a Complication changes things significantly, you suddenly have oppurtunities to change things and to influence the long-term development of the story through Inspirations.

EDIT: Crossposted with Doug. And on a first read through, i think his idea has some merit...

Thomas

*Desperately juggling ideas*

Thomas: as I understand this (which may not be how it's meant to be understood!) any 'neutral die' could be manipulated using some version of the 'Story Point' system, in the absence of actual character presence.

Suggestion 1: If a Hero or Villain uses Story Points to physically enter a scene, they can sieze control of the neutral die (which may allow them to add dice if they have enough relevant Drive/Stake/whatever to place.

Suggestion 2: If the situation starts with both heroes and villains present, then it is up to the GM to decide whether there is any external factor powerful enough to merit an extra neutral die (or dice) which will act as its own 'side' and have its own outcome.

BTW: just read the latest Actual Play thread...cool. I've already been wondering about 'Dark Heroes' with mixed Heroic and Villainous Drives. Which leads me to:

Suggestion 3: If a hero 'runs out' of a drive (either by going Overdrawn, or by losing all tokens in the variant I suggested earlier) then they run the risk of moving over to the dark side. If Justice fails, then maybe Vengeance is the only solution. Lost Love turns into Envy or Spite.

This has the huge story advantage that Villains can attempt to 'turn' the players by defeating their moral foundations through conflict! And the Heroes can attempt to 'turn' the Villains! IMHO this is another classic comic plot.

Anyway, I've dropped enough bombs for now, I'm going to stand back and assess the impact. Will try to drop by later this evening.

Regards,

Doug

Hmmm. I'm beginning to remember observing a rather protracted constitutional debate in the King's College, Cambridge (UK) student government. Someone had proposed to count votes on any given issue as "For," "Against," or "Abstain," with the motion carrying if there were more votes "For" than "Against." But that means that "Abstain" votes don't count, someone else said -- you're disenfranchising people who vote "Abstain."

And amazingly enough, the procedure finally adopted allowed "Abstain" to win. Which meant that the motion was neither defeated nor passed... which meant endless confusion.

I don't mean to rain on this particular parade too hard, but having a neutral die that both sides can affect (as opposed to just the editor acting as Murphy's Law) is starting to resemble a voting procedure in which "Abstain" becomes a force of its own. If a character can roll up the neutral die and the player can narrate an outcome that helps his side -- even if only by delaying the other side's victory -- then the neutral die isn't neutral. (Maybe, given its weakness and ability to be used by other side, it should be renamed "the treacherous eunuch die.")

In short, I'm beginning to think the neutral die is a needless complication (no pun intended). Either you roll up your own die to help your control of a Complication, or you roll down your opponent's die to hurt their control. A "neutral" die that either side can use to stymie the other but not to achieve positive results strikes me as muddying the issues. If we're having this much back-and-forth over what it means, how are new players going to understand it?

EDIT: Crossposted with Doug. Whose point about heroic and villainous drives

Doug Ruff wrote: Villains can attempt to 'turn' the players by defeating their moral foundations through conflict! And the Heroes can attempt to 'turn' the Villains! IMHO this is another classic comic plot.

Ok. Some interesting points Sydney. Here is the major purpose of the neutral die: it provides a stituation in which you can not significantly effect the outcome of the narrative without Staking Debt. Basically, there is no such thing as a free die. You want to win a Complication? Stake on it. The neutral die provides a poll of sorts. If no one Stakes, then it is pretty clear that this Complication deals with something that is of relatively low priority to the players.

Basically the idea is that anyone who Stakes on a Complication can win it (and the ensuing Inspiration) as well as having the ability to control it which provides Final Frame rights. One thing that might be interesting is that you do not "Roll Up" or "Roll Down" on neutral dice, all neutral rolls are "Wild". I think that there are some significant advantages to using the neutral dice system. There are of course disadvantages, but i believe they are outweighed.

Sydney, to address your specific analogy i would say that this is a vote for or against, there are no abstensions. This is a guage of interest: "Is gathering or hiding Information important to the players?" No Stakes? Clearly not important... One side Stakes? Someone finds it cool... Tons of Stakes? This is clearly something that the players want to deal with. Additionally, you are forgetting that the Editor is his own side, this is basically a system in which control devolves to the Editor if you do not chose to address it so that he can (hopefully) provide something of more interest to the players.

Thomas

LordSmerf wrote: If no one Stakes, then it is pretty clear that this Complication deals with something that is of relatively low priority to the players.

Sydney Freedberg wrote: EDIT: Crossposted with Doug. Whose point about heroic and villainous drives

Doug Ruff wrote: Villains can attempt to 'turn' the players by defeating their moral foundations through conflict! And the Heroes can attempt to 'turn' the Villains! IMHO this is another classic comic plot.

is an excellent one. Earlier threads struggled with a mechanic, unsuccessfully, but I think it's very much worth revisiting.

Eeeek, I've just check preview and this is a double crosspost - the following is intended as a response to Thomas' 'neutral die' explanation.


Hmmm, interesting... I don't see the 'neutral die' in the same way - to me the neutral die represents external factors (including Murphy), it gets away from every scene being about Hero vs. Villain conflict.

Superman is a good example of this. Often, he's in his secret identity as Clark Kent. Some of his complications aren't going to involve Villains (at least to start off with). They are going to involve his relationships with normal people. At some point in the story, a Villain's agenda is going to start messing with Clark's 'day job', and this is usually connected to the Complications he had before the Villain came along.

Imaginary (I think) example: Clark needs a good story for the next weekend Edition of the paper (Complication under current rules, I prefer to call this an Agenda or Goal.) Lois has been acting pretty strange recently, and won't tell him what's up (Complication.) Jimmy (is this his name?) the office Junior hasn't turned up for the last two days ('Find out what has happened to Jimmy' Agenda.)

OK, you know that there's a bad guy at the end of this story, but he hasn't shown up yet. Maybe Lois is being blackmailed by Luthor and doesn't want to 'fess up about it. Maybe Jimmy's been kidnapped by another supervillain. Both of these could make the story that Clark needs. But until the presence of a Villain is revealed, who is he rolling against?

(And this is why I like the idea of spending Prominence or Story Points to introduce a character. Imagine Superman is attempting to resolve the 'Find Jimmy' Agenda. Just as he gains control, someone spends 3 Story Points to introduce a major Villain. In the story, Superman is investigating an abandoned warehouse, when suddenly the lights come on... it's a trap!)


Another use for neutral dice is as a 'ticking bomb'. If the Heroes don't something fast, bad things will happen. GM can bump up a die if the deadline is known. For a real big bang, what about 5 dice, and the GM rolls up the lowest each round? This requires the team to act real fast to control the complication and make it resolve in their favour!

I do agree with Thomas that Heroes must be encouraged to Stake, but I'd prefer this to be an integral cost of using a Power, rather than an extra mechanic.

BTW, I also hope that we're beginning to 'meet in the middle' regarding bottom-up and top-down approach. I think the main issue is mechanics; there are loads of cool ideas, but we can't use them all without grinding the game to a halt.

Regards,

Doug

Can I point out that in the above example Lois Lane is probably a character under the control of the Editor, and therefore all of her spectacular attitudes and tropes (custom-made to work against Clark Kent's comparatively weak social skills) are contributing to Villainous victory?

Now in later scenes she might well show up on the heroic side. Exemplars have a tendency to fence-sit in that way. But I was talking about this particular scene.

The way I currently play (i.e. the way the Skater X playtest was done) the Editor controls characters for whoever or whatever is opposing the heroes currently. I had a Dean of the Humanities school as a villain... he had powers like "This is going on your permanent record" and "The Stare". He was a worthy opponent.

I have the distinct feeling that this has been a blindspot in my describing the game, though. I've gotten across the impression (quite unintentionally) that all the Editor's characters have to be spandex-clad megalomaniacs.

Heck, here's a sheet of example "villains" I worked up this morning (mostly for Thomas, in case the players skip the tracks this evening). It probably does a better job showing what I'm thinking than I'm going to manage.

I'd like to particularly point out Bartender (middle of the right-hand column). I have this image of my tortured hero, Gray Ghost, in a scene with complications like "I did the right thing" and "There was no other choice", and his actions would be using his attitudes and tropes to try to convince himself of these things, while the bartenders actions would be using his attitudes and tropes (and bartender powers!) to undercut Gray Ghost's convenient rationalizations.

TonyLB wrote: The way I currently play (i.e. the way the Skater X playtest was done) the Editor controls characters for whoever or whatever is opposing the heroes currently. I had a Dean of the Humanities school as a villain... he had powers like "This is going on your permanent record" and "The Stare". He was a worthy opponent.

My bad. "The villainous side" comprises everyone opposing the heroes.

I shied away from that phrasing, because it's the wrong phrasing, and it embarrassed me. But no, it's not just the Editor. Players can and will control characters in opposition to the heroes.

There's a No-Prize waiting for whoever thinks up the right way to describe what we're currently calling "Heroic VPs and Villainous VPs". Right now this is just misleading, as I'm coming to realize.

Oh, and another one for whoever can think of the right word to replace "Tropes" (since Tropes are no longer just issues of style, they have a specific role in saving you from bad rolls, which their name does not convey).

Ah, I hadn't fully realised this. And it makes a real difference to the game - guess I've been operating from a different paradigm.

As I need to do some serious catching up, some questions for the designer:

1) I notice the example 'villains' don't have Drives listed. Is this the difference between a 'villain' and a more significant Villain?

2) Are there any 'big Villains' as well, lurking behind the scenes? How do these get brought into the session?

3) How does a villain use powers if they have no Drives to place Debt against?

4) Does this mean that every complication requires opposition in the form of a 'villain' with Powers, Attitudes and Tropes?

The last of these questions is the one with the biggest issue attached. I'm not too keen on the idea of having to 'stat up' opposition for every complication, this is why I suggested the idea of complications resolving themselves. (I think this was a precursor to the 'Murphy' or 'neutral die' discussions.)

IMHO, this may also be the reason for some of the speed issues. I would certainly find this an obstacle when a complication resolved and was replaced with a new complication - unless the story follows a predetermined path (to which I say 'yuk!')

I may be missing the point here, but I'm thinking the Powers/Attitudes/Tropes thing may be a bit overused right now.

It also upsets my inner Gamist to think that my superhero isn't any more powerful than the bartender serving him a drink... although I appreciate that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it seems to undermine the 'heroes are special' theme.

(Heh, score me two points in the 'Ego' Drive.)

Regards,

Doug

EDIT: the cross-posting curse strikes again. For Tropes, how about Stunts, or Knacks? And maybe the VP thing isn't a heroic vs. villainous thing, but just the difference between victory and defeat.... or between making a difference, and not making one.

See you later, I'm logging off for a bit.

I wouldn't assign a villain character per Complication. But I find the game works better with an equal power level of villains and heroes in a scene. The easy way to do that is an equal number of equally built villains (though there are other ways, which I haven't written up or tested).

FWIW, the entire Skater X scenario ran with four villains (Black Demon Gang, their super-powered boss, Dean of Humanities and Skater X). I just reused them for all they were worth... the Gang, for instance, showed up later at the skate park, looking to cheat their way to victory in an attempt to salve their damaged pride after their earlier defeat.

But yeah, it takes prep time. I'm trying to cut that down by getting these example sheets out, so that when the players go off on their own fun tangents you can grab something close to what you need and modify it on the fly.

The example "villains" are neat -- kinda mindbending in their abstraction occasionally, but neat: I laughed out loud when I saw the Tropes for "Ambush" and proceeded to read them to my (non-gamer) wife.

And [pet peeve] I think abstractions-as-adversaries undercuts the need for a "neutral die." [/pet peeve]

But you're right, "villain"/"villainous side"/"villainous VPs" is no longer the term. "Opposition" is a bit bland. The Christian term for what we're talking about here is "the world" -- as in "the world, the flesh, and the Devil" -- but that may be a bit obscure.

Hi again,

I was going to post this in the most recent Actual Play thread for Capes, but I realised that I was really going on about mechanics again, so I'm going to post it here instead.

(here is that other thread, by the way. And thank y'all for releasing the extra character and opponent writeups.)

One thing that wasn't clear to me before, but is clear from the thread, is that all of the 'supporting cast' are mechanically equal to the Heroes and Villains. The lawyer example (Dorian) illustrates this. He's got Powers, Attitudes and Tropes (and Drives), and at the same level as any hero or villain on the 'roster.'

I have a bit of a problem buying into this (but wouldn't mind being persuaded.) My main problem is that, if an 'Extra' can do whatever a Hero can do, why have Heroes?

I know that there is an implicit 'power scale'. Dorian the lawyer isn't able to break the laws of physics or brush aside certain-death situations. But what if he uses his 'Legal knowledge - 3' Power to threaten a Villain with an injunction? Would this have the same end effect as a 'Hyperbeam Plasma Cannon - 3' Power?

I feel that this is a bit of a Catch-22 question. If the powers are functionally equivalent, Heroes aren't special. If they aren't, then the Heroes may not balance with each other or the Villains.

(I'm wondering whether my approach here is a bit too Sim, but I don't want to open up a GNS debate on top of everything else!)

Can anyone help me get over my mild aversion to this style of play?

Regards,

Doug

Doug,

This may help (or not). You are right: there is not a mechanical difference between heroes and everyone else. And looking at things from an effectiveness stand point (what can i do that mundanes can not?) indicates that you are no more effective than anyone else. So how do we work this out? Social Contract: the story is not about the mundanes, it is about the Heroes. While mechanically there is nothing all that special about the heroes, by playing you are stating your willingness to buy into the idea that narratively your heroes have extraordinary abilities. So while the mechanics allow the lawyer to stop the Villain with a Level 3 Injunction power just as easily as you could stop him with your Level 3 Hyperbeam Plasma Cannon power, the lawyer will not stop the Villain with his Legal Knowledge power. Not because the rules disallow such things, but because the story is not about the lawyer.

And while i can see where it might be problematic, i see this as a huge advantage to the system. What if i want to abstract the system out a bit? I want to adress the Premise (Power is fun, but do you deserve it?) with a slightly different emphasis: my game is about genius scientists. They have "Powers" like Expert hacking skills, and Needs no sleep. Or what if i want a hero who stops villains with legal injunctions? I like Capes because it is so incredibly flexible, even if you decide to step away from the Superheros thing...

Though there might be some consideration for un-Powered (in the Capes mechanical sense) characters who do not have Drives to accrue Debt into... Dorian might have been one of those if such rules were worked up.

Oh, one other thing: whether we go with the idea of a neutral die or not i believe that it is important (read: really, really important) that there is some way in which the environment can oppose people (without a character being involved). For instance, Ratman wants to pick the lock on a door... Do we just assume he succeeds? That works. Hmm... Perhaps i need to think on this some more.

Thomas

As the Prominence/Actions-per-turn system has increasingly erased the trivial differences between Powers and Attitudes, and leaving only the fundamental ones, I've been mulling this topic quite a bit.

How do you represent mundane skills? You call them a "Skill" and instead of accruing Debt they Block like Attitudes.

Or, to go even further into G.U.M.my territory (Grand Unified Mechanic)... abilities are classified mechanically by two factors:

• Do they Block, or do they generate Debt?• Are they "activate with an action-turn" or "activate in response to a bad roll"?

And that, really, is all that matters to the system.

I can envision super-powered Tropes like Invulnerability costing Debt Tokens and not Blocking. I can imagine NPCs with all skills who could never generate moral debt. I can imagine madmen whose attitudes are so extreme that they constantly create moral quandaries just by talking, and because their Attitudes never block you just can't shut them up.

I don't know how much of this one wants to dump onto starting players in terms of choices... the current "3/4/5 across Powers/Attitudes/Tropes" works quite nicely for most heroes. But for NPCs and for advanced heroes perhaps the more general, more challenging character creation is in order.

TonyLB wrote: Or, to go even further into G.U.M.my territory (Grand Unified Mechanic)... abilities are classified mechanically by two factors:

• Do they Block, or do they generate Debt?• Are they "activate with an action-turn" or "activate in response to a bad roll"?

And that, really, is all that matters to the system.

You absolutely could do that, but I think that breaking the inherent connection between superpowers and Debt undercuts the addressing of Premise.

EDIT: For player heroes specifically. NPCs... they'll always be addressing Premise in their relationship to the player heroes, so I'm less worried about them.

Wow, lots more ideas!

Thomas: I like the way the current mechanics balance between all the Heroes and Villains, I also agree this this makes genre-shifting painless. It's just the Hero/'normal' difference that bugs me.

I agree that having 'Powers' as a 'supers' only category would go a long way towards resolving this. It would also allow 'secret identity' rules - if you are in your secret identity you can't use Powers unless you can narrate a way of using them secretly.

Tony/Thomas: yes, I can see unification here. How about we just have Traits? A 'normal' trait allows you to do something, a 'super' trait allows you to do it better. I'd also suggest that the numbers don't even have to be 3/4/5...

The risk here is that we end up with too many different rolling mechanisms, as an attempt to Simulate each power or trait. Perhaps it's time to look at the basic die-rolling mechanics again.

So far, current or proposed rules have included:

- 'Bumping' a die
- 'Rolling up' and 'Rolling down'
- Levels of Power etc, that limit which numbers can be re-rolled
- Multiple dice
- Neutral or 'Murphy' dice
- Debt
- Staking
- 'Blocking' an ability, either as a cost or as an attack (Massive Overkill).
- Inspiration (bonus from previous conflicts)
- Prominence (IIRC, as a possible limit to the number of actions available per turn)

Can anyone think of some more? I'm thinking we should get all the building blocks in one pile, and then see if we can turn them into a 'pretty'.

If this is too much of a step backwards for everyone, then please shout at me about it!

Cheers,

Doug

The "Pretty" version I'm currently working on writing up goes like this:

• At the beginning of a turn you go around the table, each character may (if their player so chooses) "claim" one Complication their side controls. The player physically pulls the 3x5 card in front of the character sheet.
• When it comes to your turn, you may claim a Complication already claimed by one of your team-mates if your Prominence is higher.
• The middle of the Turn is broken down into action-rounds.
• In the first action-round you go around the table (starting with the Editor, going clockwise... or whatever) Every character takes one (1) action (using an ability that is pre-scripted in the character to cost an Action-Turn to activate).
• Anyone can interrupt these actions at any time with an appropriate reaction (using an ability that is pre-scripted in the character to only act reactively). They can then only reroll the die that was just rolled.
• For either actions or reactions, if the thing they used is superheroic then they take a Debt Token.
• If it's not superheroic then they block it.
• For round N (where N>1), you do the same thing, but only characters with Prominence N or higher get to act.
• When you've done rounds equal to the highest Prominence present the middle of the turn is over.
• At the end of the turn, anyone who has a 3x5 card claimed, and whose side still controls it, Resolves and replaces it.
• The person who claimed the Complication automatically gets the Inspiration generated. Even if somebody else was instrumental in winning the Complication, they are the ones who claimed it... if their comrades didn't want them taking it there were a dozen and three ways to prevent them during the Action-turns just past.

I think this makes the sequence of play much cleaner. You do your bit, then you look to your left and watch the next guy do his bit.


Re: "Normals". I like the idea of Skills (blocking version of Powers) for normals, because it means that the normals are equally likely to beat the heroes in small scenes, but that they'll run out of stamina in long scenes (where the heroes can call upon Powers time after time). It means that the heroic victory is a direct game-mechanical consequence of their moral depth, rather than their exposure to cosmic rays.

Doug Ruff wrote: [... 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 not make this a single process? If the player starts with a counter for each point in their Drives, and they have to 'stake' a counter every time they use a power, you avoid this initial hesitancy.

This requires a complete reversal, counters are now good to have. If a character runs out of tokens for a Drive, then they have to go 'overdrawn' to use this Drive to use a power then they literally lost their sense of Hope, Justice etc. as this Drive has 'failed them' in previous conflicts.

I think this is a more natural way of approaching the issue, it feels more 'right' to me but it would have a major knock-on effect for the rest of the mechanics. What do the rest of you think?

Regards,

Doug

If using a Power and Staking a Debt are the same action then the players cannot just play around with their powers without Staking Debt.

This is a deal-breaker for me, plain and simple.

I've tried to explain why here, here and here. If there's still confusion about why I feel that way I guess I could try explaining it again.

But I'm more interested to know why you guys feel that the choice of when and how to Stake, or whether to Stake at all, should be constrained. Can you explain in a way that doesn't assume that only Staked Complications are important?

For what it's worth, there is still the opportunity to go into Debt using this variant - and I think it allows the 'turning' rules I was keen on earlier.

If you've got no tokens against a Drive, but you need to use it, you can still 'overdraw' and gain a token. If you succeed, you get the token back as a 'freebie' but don't get any other bonuses.

If you lose, a Crisis of Faith ensues. This gives some mechanical penalty to the character, and this penalty remains until a 'Crisis Scene' has been played out (maybe this is where the bartender and lawyer 'antagonists' come into the game!)

The Crisis Scene cannot be initiated until the present conflict is wound up (all complications resolved)

During the Crisis Scene no superpowers can be used. If the Hero 'defeats' the scene, they get the whole of their Drive replenished. If not, they lose the Drive, and it is replaced with a 'Dark' Drive (e.g. Justice -> Vengeance).

The joy (I think) of this is that the Hero never has to go overdrawn and precipitate a Crisis, but they are likely to want to for Narrative reasons (either for the Crisis Scene itself, or because they care enough about another conflict to go Overdrawn.)

Of course, the only way to return the Dark Drive back to a heroic drive is to make the Dark Drive go overdrawn - the other Heroes can 'challenge' their backsliding colleague (this could by any appropriate means, from counselling to clobberin').

Any takers?

Regards,

Doug

EDIT: Yet another crosspost - I wasn't trying to ignore Tony's plea for Powers being separate form Staking. But what if the G.U.M. allowed for powers to be used without expending tokens? If a token was only spent (and therefore Staked) when the complication was important, thereby giving a bonus? Just a thought...

TonyLB wrote: If using a Power and Staking a Debt are the same action then the players cannot just play around with their powers without Staking Debt.

[...snip...]

But I'm more interested to know why you guys feel that the choice of when and how to Stake, or whether to Stake at all, should be constrained. Can you explain in a way that doesn't assume that only Staked Complications are important?

So... you can either be morally invested or use your superpowers? But doing one takes away from doing the other?

Tony,

Re: Staking.

I'll address this in a separate post rather than edit again.

I don't think that Staking is in itself a necessary function of the game, it's the Drives themselves that are important.

However, it serves a useful narrative purpose, in that it allows a way of measuring the 'morale' of a character. Successful Staking makes a character more effective; losing can leave them heavily Overdrawn.

It also allows a character to say 'this is important to me, for personal reasons.'

What I don't like about staking is that there is no requirement for consistency. I can stake three tokens on rescuing a child 'because I believe in their future' (Hope) but I can refuse to stake anything the next time a child is in danger. Do Heroes suffer from 'compassion fatigue?'

In this way, exemplars work a lot better than Drives. They are much more personal. Perhaps Drives should be more like Spiritual attributes in TRoS?

Example of a 'personalised' set of Drives.

Duty - to people who cannot fight for themselves
Hope - to be accepted by society for what I am
Love - the girl who doesn't notice me
Justice - bullies must be sttod up to
Truth - what is the origin of my powers?

This Hero is going to 'Stake' (push their limits) for bystanders (Duty) but maybe not for other supers (who can stick up for themselves). He may not be pumped up about following a mook back to his hideout (Truth), but what if the hideout is also a lab similar to the one where he was 'created'?

Regards,

Doug

PS Arrrgh, more cross-posting!!!! I'm just going to post this and then catch up, sorry.

For pete's sake.

New topics and new threads, people. Sorry Tony, do it my way, 'K?

Best,
Ron

Maybe if I'm quick I can avoid cross-posting AGAIN.

Thomas,

Re: staking for extra dice. I like the way you can 'push' with your Drives this way. However, this could get a bit 'munchkin' if you stake heavily and are not contested.

How about this variant: the winner of a complication gets ll the tokens staked on it. If no-one stakes against me, I just get my tokens back. If I'm staked against, the risk is greater, but so are the rewards.

This also makes staking a 'zero-sum' game. If you add the Crisis rules, it also means that the only way to increase the total number of tokens in the game is to trigger a Crisis!

Doug

EDIT: I can't believe I just cross-posted RON. (Sorry, Ron!) I agree that we need new topics. Tony, do you want to do the honours?

Sorry, Ron. I was holding off on splitting things too much, because I've PMed Clinton about the possibility of creating a Forum, and I haven't heard from him. I don't want to clutter Indie Game Design with a dozen Capes threads.