This is the second session that I've run for the local university gaming group. The first session is detailed in [Capes] Breaking the rules.

This session saw the introduction of a new player. He plays with the group regularly and is involved in organizing White Wolf LARP games. He is currently organizing for the WOD 2.0 LARPs early next year.

First, I want to discuss his actions and reactions to the game. It was his first session with Capes and we whipped up a character relatively quickly. Exemplar integration with two established players worked out pretty well. This was also the first time I have seen three characters sharing a single Exemplar in Capes. This virtually ensures lots of screen time for that Exemplar.

After it was over I did my standard "What did you like, what did you dislike?" survey. I will provide his comments and then try to provide the context in which they were made. First, he was displeased with the "ease of combat" (paraphrase, heavy on interpretation). He set up an Event "Carl finds some information and is attacked" which he later revealed had been created in order to get everyone involved in combat. Melissa the Mighty simply rolled up a single die on the conflict. With almost no opposition she basically narrated: "I beat all the bad guys up." There was no struggle, no Challenge (in the Gamist sense) to her victory. She loved it, I loved it, the player for Blake Skiffington, III loved it. The new guy, not so much. He was also displeased with the fact that the characters wouldn't necessarily be doing the same thing. Almost a sense of "we're a party, we need to stick together." He pointed out after the game that this was a second motive for his "Carl gets attacked" Event, since Carl was an Exemplar for every character in the scene he was hoping that this would get everyone together, it didn't. In fact it was just taken out of play since no one really wanted to fight over it.

One observation that the new guy made that really made a lot of sense and got me thinking was this: The characters are not really compatible. They're not really even from the same genre. Skiffington is pretty much a pure pulp character while Melissa is much more of a four color costumed super character. It is interesting to see the ways in which the interact, but since their Abilities are so different they can't really work together very well. Personally this is interesting to me, and somewhat disturbing. I'm just not sure what to do about it, or if anything even should be done about it.

Now, the other two players really had fun. They are starting to figure out the power of creating Events and Goals and there was this pretty cool flurry of Story Token spending at the very end of the scene. There was a Goal: "Uncle Taft gets away with it." On one side we had Uncle Taft, on the other we had: Sgt. Hanson, Carl (played by the new guy), and Melissa. We had three dice against Uncle Taft's one die showing a six. We had a 3 and a 2. I rolled the two up to a five, but it got reacted back down to a 3 so we were tied. Then Taft's player spent a Story Token to introduce Taft's Lawyer. The Lawyer tossed in a new die on that side (using my crazy modifications to Tony's rules). Then we had a flurry of Story Tokens spent back and forth as one side would get control of the Goal, but then the other side wanted to get in one more action. In the end the Heroes lost by a single point as the last available character used a reaction to roll up a bad roll, and we came up just short. It was pretty cool. I think that there were something close to six Story Tokens spent in that one Page, and all on that Conflict.

So, my final analysis. I think I've run into a player who simply doesn't play the way I do. He doesn't look for the same things I do. In fact, we may be almost totally incompatible in terms of play. He's a cool guy, and we can discuss comic books all day, but it may be that we can't play RPGs together. It was very interesting, and I feel that I learned quite a bit from the experience.

Oh, and I had fun playing Capes. That seems to happen a lot.

Thomas

Strangely enough, I think I know just what this guy is thinking, because I have recently experienced exactly the same set of feelings. I may have it dead wrong, but I'm going to float this as a theory and see whether you think it's what he's experiencing.

In the Ensemble Game I played Man-Shark in the first combat just to "help the story". Give the players someone to beat on and get them doing teamish sort of stuff. He wasn't characterized much beyond "Grrr... I'm half man, half shark... Grrr...." The other players had no interest in Man-Shark. They had no interest in the Events he created, and brushed them aside with minor effort. They made up some other stuff that was much more fun, and went crazy over that.

And while most of me was sitting there going "That was such a cool session! Oh the things they did with the rules!" there was definitely a part of me that was sulking. And that part basically said this:

• I did everything right! I was the selfless servant of the story.
• They did everything wrong! They were selfish, and just did whatever was fun for them.
• Yet the rules assured that they had both more fun and more influence over the story than I did.
• That totally sucks. I should be rewarded for my noble sacrifice.

Capes is not a game that rewards noble sacrifice. It rewards gleeful enjoyment of your character, and selfish manipulation of the story and rules.

If your new player is trapped in the notion that helping the story has got to be about the fun you'll forego rather than the fun you have then he's going to create Conflicts that are boring, to him and to others. Nobody's going to throw resources at his Conflicts if even he's not interested in them. So he's going to continue getting shafted by the rules until he loosens up and starts treating the game as something he can be greedy about.

On the angle of Melissa and Skiffington having different styles... I think that's probably true. You might want to remind the players that they don't have to play those characters in every scene. If Melissa isn't going to be interested in interrogating low-lifes on the docks then maybe the player should play someone else for that scene. A low-life, for instance.

If they only bring the characters together in a scene when they want to then they'll make up their own ways to make it fun. Then it's not a chore, and it's certainly not your chore.

Tony,

Your points about noble sacrifice may be on the mark here, I'm not sure at all. I think it may have been more a case of the player seeking the familiar: Party play, combat focus, working together...

However, your self-sacrifice thing has really galvanized my thinking on GMs in RPGs in general, essay forthcoming. Thanks for that. Oh, and thanks for Capes...

Thomas