So: my first session of Capes Lite, kindly run by Vaxalon with some help from Lxndr. I do not own Capes itself.

* Vax ran his energy-blaster hero, Kozmik Ray

* I played the Incredible Hulk, since it's a pretty simple concept and I didn't want to get tripped up with nuance

* Lxndr played the seductive pimp-bot, Don 1

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This wasn't so much a story, exactly, as an attempt to figure out what the dice are all about, since I'm a newbie.

We had something where the Hulk wanted to destroy the Trump Tower in Manhattan to make way for more Bauhaus architecture, and then Kozmik Ray decided to stop him, and then Don 1 tried to win his legal rights from his creator, the diabolical Dr. Trump.

Somewhere along the line we retconned it so that Don 1 had paid Hulk to go on a rampage to destroy Trump's real estate holdings, but that was kind of thrown in there late in the session.

I had some trouble figuring out what I can roll, and when. I also had some difficulty figuring out some of the root concepts of Capes as a system.

Eventually the Hulk succeeded in demolishing the tower--the details don't matter much, but Trump got so irritated he refused to compromise with the pimp-bot's legal team. I won the goal to smash the tower, Lxndr lost the bid to become a free robot, and Vaxalon got some story tokens for failing to stop my rampage.

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What follows is my personal impression based on one hour of occasionally confusing play. It therefore should not carry much weight, and your own experiences will likely vary.

1. Capes has this in common with Donjon: the "shared imaginary space" (or game world, or whatever) is almost like a gas or a liquid: there's zero resistance players' participation, directorial stance, or whatever. This is clearly a result of the players assuming GM duties, but even so, it's kind of disorienting: what I can do isn't determined by anything even remotely resembling causality, but by the arbitrary formalism of the game system. (This may be true in most games, but with Capes it becomes especially apparent because the world is made out of tissue paper.)

1A. We destroyed the office building where Don1 and Donald Trump were having their negotiations. In theory this would influence said negotiations; in practice it didn't. I guess this would present difficulties, except as I note below:

2. I have trouble seeing why anyone would bother describing the "shared imaginary space" at all. (or, in a less extreme form: why do it at the end of each roll, rather than wait until the process concludes?) Clever or stupid manipulation of the imaginary world makes no difference; it could almost be dispensed with. You'll notice I didn't include any details of the imaginary world: that's because the imaginary world was utterly irrelevant, like a vestigial tail.

(This comment is a result of the deliberately artificial nature of this particular session. Obviously if you care about the characters, or their world, or the issues at stake, then the imaginary space matters quite a lot. But this wasn't the case in tonight's goofy one shot. I do not own a copy of Capes, so I can't say how well the rules foster player buy-in. Without such buy-in, however, it feels very hollow.)

3. Good character design is absolutely essential: not "good" in terms of mechanics, since in that respect one Capes character is virtually identical to the next, but good in terms of conceptual zing.

4. Without player buy-in, I was tempted to slap dice around at random. At one point late in the game, I rolled to interfere with Don 1's attempt to win his legal rights. The Hulk, as a character, was meant to be on Don 1's side, but I as a player made the choice to oppose Don 1 at random: I had an applicable score, so why not use it? Later I claimed that I simply wanted to make Trump a more powerful antagonist, but the real reason was simply to screw around and roll some dice.

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I had fun, and it's an interesting concept. But I came away thinking that if you don't care about the characters in a Narrativist game, there's no point in playing. I suspect this could make casual one-shots difficult for newcomers to enjoy.

Was this face-to-face, or IRC? I know folks had been talking about an IRC session.

It was IRC, but I don't think it matters to the issues James brings up.

Tony: Did you ever keep a copy of our brief 'Kung Fu' playtest on IRC? I forgot (first time on IRC and everything, sorry.) Because I really did feel that I was getting into the SIS. It wasn't 'immersive', because I was also trying to manipulate events with Director Stance, but I did feel, well... engaged.

James (or Fred): Did you keep a transcript of your session?

Because I'd really like to see a 'compare and contrast' of the two games; not because one's going to be better than the other (fun was had in both games, right?) but because it might illustrate why we're getting different things out of the game.

Fred: I was mostly trying to judge what "one hour of play" meant. One hour of FTF play is, quite frankly, a great deal more communicative than one hour of IRC play.

How many Pages did you get through?

We did, as I recall, three pages; each player was first once.

Doug Ruff wrote:
James (or Fred): Did you keep a transcript of your session?

Because I'd really like to see a 'compare and contrast' of the two games; not because one's going to be better than the other (fun was had in both games, right?) but because it might illustrate why we're getting different things out of the game.

I think we got through 3-4 pages. I can't quite remember what we accomplished in each one.

I wanted to try Capes because of a silly thread on RPGNet where people were insisting that it wasn't really an RPG, mainly because it wasn't similar enough to Dungeons & Dragons. I felt this was a ridiculous argument, but now that I've given it a shot, I think I can better articulate what they were trying to say:

Vincent Baker had this diagram, called How RPG Rules Work. In Capes, that bottom-most arrow, the one going from the "imaginary space" to the dice, doesn't seem to exist. Furthermore: the arrow going from the "imaginary space" to the players seems very, very weak--it depends entirely on the emotional investment of the players... and it only happens at the Stakes level.

Let me give my understanding of the Lumpley Principle: rules are a way to negotiate what happens in the "imaginary space." In Capes, it seems like this principle isn't at work: the only rules in place that affect the imagination are those that win Conflicts. Otherwise, you are free to change the imaginary space however you like. I'd argue that this devalues the imaginary space somewhat, at least for those of us dealing with "traditional gamer" habits.

At an early point in the session, the Hulk was thrown into the East River. I thought about narrating, "The Hulk digs down to the center of the Earth and blows up the entire planet, except for the three player-characters, the Trump Tower, and the law office." This is an asinine way to play, since presumably it would violate the social contract, but there's nothing really preventing me. Likewise, once I did that, another player could narrate, "Hey, my character restores everyone on Earth to life. Also, the Hulk is now a cross-dresser. Enjoy that purple tutu!"

The imaginary space in Capes seems to restrict which powers you can use... but only to the extent that you're willing to abide by (in our case) an unspoken social contract about how farfetched the group can get. (In the "Hulk in East River" example, I did nothing to affect the legal battle because any use of the Hulk's powers felt preposterous.)

I dunno. Obviously I don't have the actual rules, and we didn't get into exemplars and stuff. So maybe that will change over time. i had fun and hope to learn more soon though.

This kinda gets back to the thread in the Muse of Fire boards, just a few days ago, where I expressed some of the same sentiments, though perhaps not as succinctly.

I am coming to the conclusion that this is not a bug; this is a feature. The game assumes that if you play the way you describe, it's because you LIKE to play the way you describe. Capes is all about "Is that what you want? Sure! Here you go!" It's not the game's responsibility to tell you what you can and cannot have.

In a more conventional game, there's a GM there to say, "Whoa, sorry... you can't do that." or "You can do that, but..." or "Can you elaborate on that? How are you going to deal with this, and that, and the other?"

There's no GM here. Noone's going to hold your hand... if you want to drive the game into la-la-land, it'll happily drive right off the cliff, over the rainbow and through the woods. It's up to YOU, to keep the game within whatever bounds you care to keep it in. If there's a disagreement between the players about such things, then one of two things can happen:

1> Use the conflict mechanic to resolve the dispute. This is Tony's preferred manner of dealing with the problem. I have come to realize that in the vast majority of situations, he's right.

2> Use the social contract to resolve the dispute. I am *still* of the opinion that sometimes (exactly how often, I can't tell yet) players are better off stepping OUT of the game, and just talking about what they want out of the game.

Have you ever tried to sell anything on IRC? Ever played poker over the internet?

Because it strikes me that a huge part of Capes happens at the social level. Each player must act as the salesman for the creative agenda he wishes to push. A fair amount of strategy comes from judging the other players' reactions, a la poker.

Toss out non-linguistic communications and the ability of the players to create a shared imagination space is impaired. True for any game, but especially true for Capes.

That, and understanding how to "game the system" to push one's own agenda, which is I think a tricky thing for newbies to grasp.

Oh yeah, there's the fun of having cards, chips, and dice all over the table.

I think Capes on IRC would be very much improved if there were a 'bot that could handle the creation of conflicts, keeping track of dice, who is allied, who is staked, what kind of debt is staked, etc.

Unfortunately, I know ZIP about IRC dicebots.

Vaxalon wrote: The first line was "HULK SMASH UGLY TRUMP TOWER! MAKE ROOM FOR BAUHAUS!"

I'd totally agree that the game-world will never offer any resistance to player input. In fact, I would argue that is true of every roleplaying game ever created. The game-world is fiction. It doesn't do things on its own (not even passively). If anything offers resistance then it is the players offering that resistance, even if they appeal to the fictional game-world for their authority.

Example to (hopefully) make what I just said abundantly clear:

Player A: "I put the time machine into overdrive, to invert the space-time continuum and destroy the universe."
Player B: "You can't do that! The time machine has that safety device installed by the Eldermost Guardians, remember?"
Player A: "Oh yeah... lucky for the universe!"
Player B: "You don't get to be the Eldermost without learning a few tricks."

Can you explain that scenario in more detail, Tony?

I think some of us would be more comfortable, seeing how that works. I know you've covered this ground before... but I'm still foggy on it, and going back to the other thread hasn't helped.

Assume that Player B has three inspirations on the table, "Met with the Eldermost Guardians," all at 6, and a few story tokens.

Assume that Player A has just narrated (either as part of an action, a reaction, or a conflict resolution) something world-ending, not covered in the comics code. I don't understand how player A gets to interrupt Player B's narration with conflicts, inspirations, story tokens, whatever, to prevent the world-ending narration from ending up in the SIS.

Oh, no, they don't. The scenario I was envisioning was when Player A actually sets out "Goal: Destroy the space-time continuum."

If they've already destroyed the space-time continuum, and you didn't see it coming or try to prevent it then that's... y'know... done. Time for "Goal: Restore the Space-time continuum," or "Goal: Survive in atemporal space," or some similar way to accept the player's contribution and have fun working with the consequences.

What I am having trouble with (and some others, too, I think) is the "see it coming or try to prevent it" part.

Given how easy it is to put things into the SIS, without the formal barriers that GMed games, and games like Pantheon and Universalis, have, it seems to be impossible to see anything coming that isn't actually written on the conflict card.

Am I missing something? Is there some way to see this kind of play coming?

I suppose one could start every scene with an event that lists all the things a player wants to preserve in the scene, so that if ANOTHER player wants to kick over the sandbox, he has to win a conflict to do so.... but that puts the player who puts that event into play at something of a disadvantage. He has to spend a precious turn to do that, and if any resource in the game is more limited than any other, it's turns.

(This is all without resorting to the comics code, of course; setting up an appropriate comics code ahead of time can probably stop 99.9% of this problem, to whatever extent it actually happens.)

Fred, this sounds very similar to the worries you expressed in this thread.

Did you see such behavior in this instance of Actual Play?

Yes. We did...

My character (Kozmik Ray) threw the Hulk into the east river, and the Hulk's player, James, was a little miffed that he had no way to pre-empt that action. That was a minor example of what we're talking about.

When he realized that there was no barrier to placing things in the SIS, he considered having his character, essentially, destroy the Earth. The reason he didn't do it had nothing to do with the mechanics of the game (as I understand it), but he didn't want to violate an implicit social contract by "kicking over the sandbox". That would have been a major example of what we're talking about. What prevented it was not the game rules, as we had no comics code in play, nor any action another player could have taken, but simply the realization by James that he didn't want to play in an "asinine" way.

So you threw him into a river? I caught that bit earlier, but I assumed there had to be more to it. I register it as a "so what?" Nothing stops him from just jumping out of the river and continuing whatever he was doing. With, perhaps, "TAKE MORE THAN PUNY SEWAGE TO STOP HULK!"

So what was the real issue? Why did it make him miffed?

I'm not really sure; I suggested that he could just jump right out, but for some reason he took his time doing it.

I think there was a disconnect between my expectations of what was appropriate for an action, reaction, or resolution, and what James did; we both had internal censors on what we could or couldn't narrate for a particular action, and they weren't in synch.

The only formal mechanism for that kind of synchronization in Capes is the Comics Code, which we hadn't set up.

This is something of a diversion from my question upthread, though.

Vaxalon wrote: Given how easy it is to put things into the SIS, without the formal barriers that GMed games, and games like Pantheon and Universalis, have...

"I blow up the planet."
"No, that won't work."
"Why?"
"'Cause I'm the GM."
"Okay."

"I blow up the planet."
"No, that won't work."
"Why?"
"'Cause that would suck."
"Who died and made you GM?"
"You know I'll just narrate the planet back into existence on my turn anyway."
"Okay, okay."

Sydney Freedberg wrote:

Vaxalon wrote: Given how easy it is to put things into the SIS, without the formal barriers that GMed games, and games like Pantheon and Universalis, have...

Wait a sec. "Formal barriers"? In "GMed games"? ...

Once upon I time I got a bicycle. Like all cycles I had ridden, it had a pair of little wheels on the back, with the addition of one big wheel in between them, plus a chain drive and brakes. All these great new features! This thing was a big step up from a tricycle.

Then one day I got a new bicycle, except it had an obvious flaw -- it didn't have the two smaller wheels. It was quite obvious that this vehicle had a problem. If I stopped pedaling just so, it would fall over. I complained about this to my parents, but they seemed strangely unconvinced.

Of course, after I actually figured out how easy it was to ride a bicycle, I realized that training wheels aren't actually part of the design of a bicycle, and the removal of them allowed me to use the bicycle as intended.

Vaxalon wrote: This is something of a diversion from my question upthread, though.

TonyLB wrote: Really, it's not. I'm going to wait on James to answer why he was miffed by the action, and then I'll bet you dollars to donuts that I can show you why the question of "Why did he get unhappy with the narration?" isn't a diversion.

Something Like This Happened wrote: Me: "HULK SMASH UGLY BUILDING!"
Vax: Okay, that's your action. Now it's my turn! Kozmik Ray swoops down, taunts the Hulk, and then throws him into the East River! I roll a 5!
Me: Wait, I smack you out of the sky like the bug you are!
Vax: No, that already happened. You're at the bottom of the river. But you can react to that event, if you want to.
Me: Oh. Um. This game is weird.
Vax: You can narrate jumping right back out, if you want.
Me: (thinking, didn't type - No, he threw me in the river for a reason. It would be lame to just say, "Oh yeah? I jump out of the river right away, sopping wet." Sort of like the "no tag-backs" rule from playing tag as a kid: it wouldn't be sporting.)
Me: I can't think of any way to use my stuff right now. (Unspoken: ...that would be respectful to the SIS and the implicit social contract.) Pass.

Heh... "He threw me in the river for a reason." Yeah: So you could jump back out. There's a fine line between (a) respecting other people's contributions and (b) deciding you can't contribute as an equal partner. Well, actually, it's not a fine line. It's a huge, gigantic line. But you're on the wrong side of it.

Well, I would have to give out dollars to donuts. I was guessing that James was, in fact, miffed because being thrown in the East River somehow impinged upon what he personally wanted to be doing with the Hulk. Like "Hey, I'm not playing the Hulk to look like a god-damned idiot! What the hell's going on here?"

And I was warming up my whole speech that I give for "Define the Conflicts that protect what you, the player, care about," with a great example of "Goal: Make Hulk Look Foolish!" I was so excited, because I thought the example protected the player agenda ("Hulk can't look foolish until this Conflict is resolved") and meshed well with classic Hulk tendencies ("Puny man try to make Hulk look stupid? We see how smart pretty-boy look when Hulk bends him like pretzel!")

But it's just confusion, not actual disagreement. I sigh.

I'm curious about this line, though:

James_Nostack wrote: Making the players narrate what happens at each stage of the process seems undignified, because it's utterly inconsequential.

Actually, it doesn't affect the outcome of the conflict at all, directly or indirectly. The narration is an add-on at every stage except resolution.

Which is why he suggests saving up all the narration until the resolution.

Uh... your narration of tossing Hulk into the East River convinced James not to use any ability in response. How is that not an indirect effect?

Forgive me if I'm about to state something which is absolutely obvious to everyone involved:

Something that really threw me when I started to understand the rules is that Capes will let you do anything, absolutely anything in the SIS, unless:

- It violates the Comics Code, or
- It is part of a Goal or Event,

This is somewhat counter-intuitive at first: if I just want to smash a building up, the last thing I want to do is to declare it as a Goal or Event. I can just narrate that I smash the building up. There is no requirement for me to appeal to 'continuity' or 'sim' concerns unless these are enforced by social contract.

Most games don't have an explicit social contract to cover 'what makes sense in the SIS' because the rules implicitly enforce notions of what is 'realistic' within the game world. Capes doesn't do this, and I am beginning to find this fascinating.

Where this can become a more specific issue, is that the rules as they are written don't appear to respect character ownership. I don't just mean this in terms of who gets to play a character; I also mean this in terms of who gets to dictate what happens to a character during play.

In most games, no-one would be able to describe hurling another player character into a river without having to 'roll for it'; again, Capes doesn't set any limit on screwing with another character, unless it's part of a Goal or Event, or it breaches the Comics Code.

The obvious solution to this, is to recognise that the Comics Code is social contract, plain and simple, and that, for many groups, the Comics Code will need to contain quite a few rules, some of wich may have to be added during play once people realise they need them.

However, I suspect that the groups that would be most in need of an expanded Comics Code/social contract, would also be the least likely to recognise that need.

I'm not referring specifically to this Actual Play when I say that; from were I'm sitting, you're all perceptive about this sort of thing. But I will ask James & Fred: would this 'throwing Hulk in the river' issue have been prevented by having an addition to the Comics Code that said something along the lines of 'no narrating successful actions against another character without making it a conflict'?

It would have been prevented, but it also would have gotten in the way of play. Conflicts come out VERY slowly; you generally only want to put the most important ones out.

OK, how about an extension of the Veto Rules? If you narrate something you do to another payer's character, they get the right to make you declare it as a conflict, or find a different narration?

I'm not saying that any of these ideas are a perfect solution, by the way. I'm just trying to explore how much can be done to bring potential social contract issues into the open by making them part of the Comics Code.

By the way, I can see a very cool crossover with Uni here: using Story Tokens to make unilateral additions to the Code (just like Tenets in Uni). If someone else doesn't like the addition, they have to outbid you in Story Tokens to strike it off. (I think this has been touched on before, but I don't think it's been explicitly connected to Story Tokens yet.)

Story tokens are, also, a fairly scarce resource; you rarely have more than a few unless you've been playing for a long time.

Seriously, I think it's not something that the game system CAN address.

Nice observation Doug! I hadn't given that much consideration to the Comics Code. I had only thought of it in terms of color and gloating points. We just went with the 1950's code in the book for sake of getting started quickly, and things have worked really well.

I don't recall that Capes Light (old or new incarnations) has a Comics Code. Maybe a rudimentary one is needed.

Going back to the original post:

James_Nostack wrote: I had fun, and it's an interesting concept. But I came away thinking that if you don't care about the characters in a Narrativist game, there's no point in playing. I suspect this could make casual one-shots difficult for newcomers to enjoy.
...
3. Good character design is absolutely essential: not "good" in terms of mechanics, since in that respect one Capes character is virtually identical to the next, but good in terms of conceptual zing.

Okay, time for quotation ping-pong:

Tony wrote: Why is [player narration] inconsequential? Because it doesn't directly effect the outcome of the Conflict?

Vaxalon wrote: [Because] it doesn't affect the outcome of the conflict at all, directly or indirectly. The narration is an add-on at every stage except resolution.

Tony wrote: Your narration of tossing Hulk into the East River convinced James not to use any ability in response. How is that not an indirect effect?

Doug Ruff wrote: If I just want to smash a building up, the last thing I want to do is to declare it as a Goal or Event. I can just narrate that I smash the building up. There is no requirement for me to appeal to 'continuity' or 'sim' concerns unless these are enforced by social contract.

Umm, it just seems to be simulationist exploration going wrong in a narrativist system.

what I can do isn't determined by anything even remotely resembling causality, but by the arbitrary formalism of the game system. (This may be true in most games, but with Capes it becomes especially apparent because the world is made out of tissue paper.)

Without player buy-in, I was tempted to slap dice around at random. At one point late in the game, I rolled to interfere with Don 1's attempt to win his legal rights. The Hulk, as a character, was meant to be on Don 1's side, but I as a player made the choice to oppose Don 1 at random: I had an applicable score, so why not use it? Later I claimed that I simply wanted to make Trump a more powerful antagonist, but the real reason was simply to screw around and roll some dice.

Vaxalon wrote: I'm not really sure; I suggested that he could just jump right out, but for some reason he took his time doing it.

Noon wrote: Are you supposed to be exploring what your PC can do in capes? Or exploring causality?

James_Nostack wrote: Weird! It's like you can only play if you're out for blood!

This game is like a loaded gun.

Don't play with it; only take it out if you mean business.

James_Nostack wrote: As I mentioned in my very first post: this totally changes if I'm invested in the story/character/world/situation/whatever you want to call it.

This is a pretty interesting thread.

Tony. What do you perceive the purpose of the narration to be? Given that its a requirement for players to do it, but that it has zero mechanically enforceable effects, what is the design intention for making it a requirement? Perhaps illuminating the thought process behind the design will point out ways to better describe the act of narration in the game to avoid these effects. On the surface, without playing, I have to concur with the notion that omnipotence renders even the most dramatic narrations trivial. Given that, there must be some reason to allow them at all let alone require them. Zeroing in on what that reason is might get right to the heart of the matter.



On a related note. What would the effect be of allowing spontaneous Conflict creation as a reaction to another player's narration. For instance:

"I throw the Hulk into the east river" leads to
"No you don't I"m making that a conflict" leads to there now being a conflict "Hulk gets thrown into the east river"

On the surface that would seem to give some mechanism of constraint to the narration. Players would then be motivated to self police their narration to avoid saying something that would motivate the other player to turn it into a Conflict rather than allow it to happen.


I am concerned about the effect of unrestricted narration. I'm not sure that having the only check on really stupid narration being the threat of even stupider narration is an effective game rule. The very first thing many gamers do when they get a new system is try to break it...not try to understand the underlying genius...they try to break it. If even people who are trying hard to appreciate Capes run afoul of unrestricted narration, I can only imagine what less generous critics will do with it. I'd hate to see this issue get all the attention and blind people to how really cool the actual mechanics are. From a marketing perspective, having to constantly explain to people that "its not a bug its a feature" generally doesn't help sales.


I think maybe you need something to help players define where the boundary for acceptable narration is. Whether this is an actual mechanical reinforcer (like the reaction Conflict idea) or just a very clearly lasered in discussion of what narration rights entail and how to use them I don't know...but it seems clear that leaving the issue open to individual group interpretation is asking for less than ideal interpretations.

This has diverged hugely from the Actual Play involved. I'm splitting to here.

Vaxalon wrote: Actually, it doesn't affect the outcome of the conflict at all, directly or indirectly. The narration is an add-on at every stage except resolution.

Which is why he suggests saving up all the narration until the resolution.

Noon wrote: Umm, it just seems to be simulationist exploration going wrong in a narrativist system.
...
I just get this super hero sounding speach in my head when I read this observation: "MUST...PRESERVE...CAUSALITY! MUST...NOT...JUMP OUT OF RIVER STRAIGHT AWAY! CAUSE AND EFFECT...MUST...BE...MAINTAINED!!!"

James, would you say you were trying to explore the game world?

TonyLB wrote: There you go! I knew we'd end up on the same page eventually. Yes, you can only play if you're out for blood.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "make a player care," (emphasis mine) in this context. Perhaps a brief example of how another game does it?

What Capes does is to magnify small episodes of caring into larger ones, and to get everyone in the game involved in helping each other care. Here are a few of the more obvious methods the game uses for that.

Creating Conflicts: If you do care about something, that something becomes central to the events of the SiS. This magnifies any issue you're conscious of.

Debt: As you accumulate debt you are more and more empowered to care about a conflict. Your caring has game-mechanical consequences.

Story Tokens: If you care enough to want to achieve something against opposition then you care enough to want Story Tokens to help make it happen. How do you get them? Make other people care. It's infectious that way.

James_Nostack wrote: Tony: let me repeat a question I asked up-thread: does Capes do anything in particular to make a player care about the heroes/world/situation, or (as in most RPG's) is that simply assumed?

Exemplars don't exist in the lite rules.

(not only that, in the main rules, each character can have one exemplar for his own; if a player wants more, he has to get another ... hold on, wait... this deserves another topic.)

No, we didn't create exemplars, really.

Chances are, they wouldn't have come into play, because all of the scenes we have played so far have been "first" scenes, that is, scenes for introducing our spotlight characters.

Vaxalon wrote: Exemplars don't exist in the lite rules.

I agree that a lack of exemplars is important, but it's a symptom of a larger problem.

Caring about what goes on on the table is paramount. You can do without exemplars, if your character cares about what's going on... cares deeply. There's no room for any character in a scene who doesn't have a REASON to be there.

Valamir wrote: On a related note. What would the effect be of allowing spontaneous Conflict creation as a reaction to another player's narration. For instance:

"I throw the Hulk into the east river" leads to
"No you don't I"m making that a conflict" leads to there now being a conflict "Hulk gets thrown into the east river"

Miskatonic wrote:
"I throw the Hulk into the east river" leads to
"No you don't I"m making that a conflict" leads to there now being a conflict "Hulk gets thrown into the east river"

Vaxalon wrote: No, it doesn't work that way. There's only two places where someone can say, "No you don't" in Capes.

Miskatonic wrote:
Really? This is not my interpretation of the rules. The way I have read it, you are free to narrate anything you want in free narration mode, but so am I. So I'm totally free to negate anything you just narrated. The only thing preventing me from saying "No, you don't" in free narration is I can't contradict the narrated outcome of a resolved Conflict.

You can UNDO anything, but you can only PREVENT someone from putting something into the SIS using the "veto" rule for conflicts. This occurs at every level of the rules.

1> Scene framing

If I frame a scene on the bridge of the Space Cruiser Potemkin, you can't say, "Wait, didn't we destroy the Space Cruiser Potemkin three scenes ago?"

2> Hero choosing

If I choose to play Gunga Tin, the Metal Mongol, you can't say, "Hey, wait, I created that character for ME to play." (unless the 'spotlight character' house rule is in effect)

3> Taking actions or reactions

If I am rolling on a conflict, and I narrate, "Gunga Tin smashes his fist down, crushing Captain Eo into the deck plates," you can't say, "Captain Eo is insubstantial, you can't just punch him." The only thing you can do is add some new narration that invalidates the action when you react or take your own action. The same is true of narration that goes along with reactions.

4> Resolving conflicts

If I win a conflict, and start narrating it, what I say goes. There's really no limit to what I can do with it. Examples have already been described elsethread for how this can be abused. (Tony says it's not abuse, but I disagree)

So as I said, there are only two places where you can STOP something from going into the SIS after it has been spoken.

Let's fork discussion of the "No you can't" topic to here

Vaxalon wrote: I agree that a lack of exemplars is important, but it's a symptom of a larger problem.

Caring about what goes on on the table is paramount. You can do without exemplars, if your character cares about what's going on... cares deeply. There's no room for any character in a scene who doesn't have a REASON to be there.

My 2c: Exemplars are not necessary to the game, they just add something.

Of course you have to care about characters and the story they tell. Stories (in general) where one doesn't care about the characters are inherently sucky.

In play, I have noticed that characters whose existence in a scene cannot be justified to the other players just sort of sit off to the side and whither in terms of achieving their goals.

Caring is perhaps not the right work. You have to make your characters sellable, either in terms of "We'll let this guy win his goals; we want to know where his story is going." or "No, this guy must not be allowed to attain his goals at any (Story Token) cost."

Perhaps, during the phase where people are framing in their characters, it would be good to ask (not require) how the character relates to the scene... so that if the other players aren't interested, they can let the currently framing-in player know, "Hey, we're probably not going to be very interested in your character." That way he can adjust if he wants to.

For the record, there's another game that did this "unrestricted narration" thing, and people got freaked out about it then, too. The game is Wushu, by Dan Bayn.

Check out these threads to see a very similar discussion on this very topic:

Wushu Stuff
Wushu, hard work, but rewarding
Wushu and Fortune at the End

I am a big fan of this game design element (the so-called "Narrative Truth" mechanic). I rant a bit in these threads about why I think it's cool. Those rants apply to Capes, too.

There's a baseline philosophy in Capes that I think is being overlooked.

Universalis assumes that everyone's contributions are sacred. Thus, you can always protect your vision of the SIS with the Challenge mechanic. If you care about a certain aspect of the SIS, you can defend it -- as long as you're willing to spend the coins.

Capes assumes that no contribution is sacred. You can't easily defend your vision of the SIS, but must instead be always open to the changes created by others. This is by design.

I'm seeing a lot of posts where people seem to be saying "Capes doesn't work like Uni, and I don't like that! I want to defend my vision!" The answer is simple: Play Universalis. It's a great game, and it supports that underlying philosophy. Uni does supers really well, too.

Capes is a different animal entirely. It asks something different of its players. And that something can be loads of fun. Turning Capes into Uni is not the answer. Playing Capes requires (to some degree) that the players embrace the philosophy of a very fluid SIS and virtually no authority of vision. This is, IMO, the whole point of the game.

Maybe that's not your cup of tea. That's cool. But the Capes way sure ain't broken. Not by a long shot.

What if we like 95% of what Capes is, and only 50% of what Universalis is?

"Since I don't want you to go the last 5% with Capes, I want you to go back to Universalis and push it the 50% of the way to where you want to go."

Hey John...you make excellent points, except where you suggest its been overlooked. I don't think that point has been overlooked at all. In fact, its been specifically discussed and acknowledged several times. I even pointed out this very difference between Capes and Uni over a week ago in this post where I said the difference made me want to play Capes more to see how it works.

I'm a big fan of experimenting with system, so I give Tony full marks for pushing the envelope on player control farther than its been done.

But that doesn't mean that every boundary pushing experimental mechanic that gets tried winds up being effective. I admit to being skeptical that this level of complete mutability in the SIS with nearly zero ability to defend it is actually functional for more than a very narrow group of players. I eager look forward to playing it...but I'm not sure I'd like it.

I suspect that Capes will get a lot of play because its very cool. But I also suspect that almost all of that play will involve some degree of additional protection being granted to the SIS... That may be done formally with a Goal In Goal Out type mechanic like Vax has proposed, or Reaction Conflicts like I proposed, or informally with just a really strong upfront agreement that ridiculous extremeism won't be tolerated.

But I don't see very many people (even those who are big into non traditional RPGs) being willing to tolerate the level of chaos and anarchy that zero SIS protection entails. I give HUGE props for trying it...and HUGE respect for making it as functional as it is...but beyond treating it as an interesting experiment...it just doesn't sound very fun to me. If anything I say can be overturned with zero effort by anyone else and almost any time...I suspect (and I keep using that word intentionally) that I'll soon lose interest in saying anything...because taken to the extreme...everything anyone says effectively becomes valueless because it costs nothing to get and costs nothing to take away.

Oh, I didn't mean to say: "Do not modify Capes." If you like 95% percent of it, by all means tweak it the rest of the way so your group has fun. A thousand times yes!

If some folks want to add some stuff on to the game to make it more in-line with their own preferences, that's super-cool. But doing that is not a condemnation of the core game. It doesn't mean that the core game doesn't work the way it's intended to. It just means that the play experience that the core game delivers is not the play experience you want.

So, go. Tweak. Enjoy.

Ralph: I guess I missed those bits where my point had already been discussed. I see now that it has not been overlooked at all.

I'm still hearing a very strong, "This isn't what I like, so I don't think it will work for other people." Which is a generalization that I couldn't disagree with more. What is revolutionary and boundary-pushing for some is ordinary and easy for others. I certainly believe that the Capes approach may fall outside your comfort zone. But as a general indicator of "what gamers want" or especially "what makes for fun gaming" I don't think that will suffice.

(Your comments like "very narrow group of players" and "I don't see very many people being willing" are big flashing neon signs to me. I don't think either of us are in a position to say what the size and composition of the Capes-playing market is like. When you say stuff like that, it makes me squint and go, "Um, yeah. Whatever." Your misgivings are valid in their own right. They don't have to represent some larger, and frankly, made-up, group.)

And if you still want to convince me that Capes doesn't deliver on what it promises, I'm all ears. I don't consider that discussion closed at all. I just happen to think that it delivers in spades. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

I find that people are far more often thrown by the fear of narration gone haywire than they are the actuality of it. As, indeed, seems to have been the case in this Actual Play thread: Hulk being thrown into the river was okay, but it made it clear that narration could go further than normal... that's unknown territory, and people want all manner of assurances before they enter it.

Folks don't seem to get those jitters when I'm playing with them. I attribute that to the fact that I, myself, heartlessly stomp all over causality and realism in the interest of a better experience of play. People see it happening, and see why it's nothing to fear.

I'd like to ask Fred and James: Where was most of the narration in your game, relative to the comfort zone of traditional roleplaying? Skip over the exceptional cases that you've already mentioned, and give me the rough feel of the game as a whole: Were you narrating for each others characters much? How much did you define the world to suit your own creative agenda (e.g. "Kosmic Ray punches Hulk. The crowd cheers and holds up a banner 'We love you RAY!'")? Did you play around with time, space, coincidence, history?

I know that you only had three pages worth of play, but I'm interested to know if a general tenor emerged.

The feel of it, for me, was like a tightrope walk, with a candle burning through on one side, and a big ol' lumber saw just under my feet... the "Kozmik Ray throws the Hulk into the East River" bit was very early on, and I knew that it had strained something, I wasn't sure what... so I was very wary of going too far. I could feel the bonds of social contract tightening around me, and I was afraid to push too far, for fear that I would break them.... and I knew that social contract, being the very last barrier between game and argument, was not something I wanted to push against freely...

So I restrained myself. I tried to keep my narration within the bounds that WOULD have been there, had the system had any. I tried to imagine what Kozmik Ray's limitations, powerwise, would be, and play within them. I tried to take my cues from the other players actions, and not try to do anything more outrageous than they were.

I've never been in a game that depends so heavily on the social contract for controlling the flow of the game.

I may go into metaphor buildup here, but I think it's the "An armed society is a polite society" philosophy... we all know that we can narratively blow each other's heads off, so we were careful not to go too far. The bit about considering having the Hulk destroy the Earth, and then deciding not to, is, I think, an example of how heavily the social contract played into our decision making.

That's what it felt like for me. I can't say that anyone else had the same feeling. It was very odd, and there were definitely places where it was uncomfortable.

As I have said, I have played GMless games before (Baron Munchausen, Pantheon) and heard of others (Universalis) and none of them make such heavy use of the social contract.

But that was JUST THIS SESSION.

I had another session, face to face, that was a lot more fun. It was among friends, all of us knew that it would be hard to make problems, and in those circumstances, it was more comfortable... but we still played it fairly traditional, with very little in the way of causality or character ownership violations.

Edit: Removed my post that was in danger of going too far off topic.

I should probably clarify.


I agree with Tony that there's a big difference between what appears to be implicit within the rulebook, and what is true in actual play, because the rulebook isn't the whole system. People bring all kinds of preconceptions to the table when they play.

Social preconceptions like politeness, respect, honesty, and good sportsmanship.

Dramatic preconceptions like continuity.

Gaming preconceptions like character ownership.

As long as these preconceptions are in fairly good accord between the players, the game works.... it works wonderfully.

When those preconceptions fall out of phase, however, the game shakes me out of my "game head".

TonyLB wrote: Folks don't seem to get those jitters when I'm playing with them. I attribute that to the fact that I, myself, heartlessly stomp all over causality and realism in the interest of a better experience of play. People see it happening, and see why it's nothing to fear.

I did do that at your house, actually. As I said, I always do it. I'm surprised you didn't notice. Maybe it's because I did it without any sign of fear or hesitation.

For example, our first scene was set (by me) in "The smoking ruins of Washington D.C." I narrated the destruction of the U.S. Capitol, and the utter defeat of its armed forces, in free narration, and nobody batted an eyelash.

And then when heroes rose up to stop me I narrated things like "I encase you in metal and fling you across town." That was my standard bit: I assume that I've already defeated you, and all that remains is to mete out your humiliation. Is it realistic, given the capabilities of the characters involved? I don't know or care.

Sydney dumped his character's personalty, because he thought it would be more interesting to have Gun Bunny switch sides. Remember how cool that was? Do you see how it has absolutely no relationship to "cause and effect"?

Remember what you did in the second scene? "I push a button and a trap door opens under the feet of your character, Tony. He falls to his death." And how did I respond to that? I gave a great big smile, and I waved my hands in a pathetic little pantomime of free-falling doom. I thought your unilateral description of my character's death was hilarious, and a very useful contribution to the fun we were all having.

I mean... your character was decapitated, for pete's sake. And we all promptly agreed that an alien warlord of his caliber would obviously have a backup brain, for just such emergencies.

I don't mean to hector with all these examples... it's just that in a few hours of play, you were exposed to far more violations of politeness, restraint, realism and causality than most people experience in a whole campaign. I really could go on and on.

How did it feel? Bad? Scary? Or just plain fun, done a different way?

Okay, I've been following this Capes thing very closely because I'm interested in the game. I'm going to ask a question below that might be a stupid question and could very easily be taken as snide. I'm prefacing the question by saying that snideness is not my intent. I'm genuinely interested in getting "inside" Tony's head as a designer and understanding the "whys and wherefores" of his design decisions. Now that this little disclaimer is out of the way...

If anyone can narrate the effects of a Conflict away with no effort whatsoever, why does Capes have Conflicts at all? Why isn't the whole System simply freeform? What is there in the System that makes me want to engage in a Conflict? I understand about Story Tokens and some of the "rewards" for winning Conflicts but do these rewards actually have some sort of lasting effect that makes it worth my while to get them? I'm just not understanding why there is a Conflict system at all if Free Narration is so powerful in the game and would really like to hear the reasoning behind it.

Good question. I hope you don't mind if I split off a separate thread for it.

TonyLB wrote: I did do that at your house, actually. As I said, I always do it. I'm surprised you didn't notice. Maybe it's because I did it without any sign of fear or hesitation.

...

How did it feel? Bad? Scary? Or just plain fun, done a different way?

Was the issue expertise or confidence? Yes, a "confident expert" will change the atmosphere of the table, but do you think a "confident neophyte" would do the same?

I really have no idea what the answer to that question is for Capes. It's a question that I myself literally cannot answer through Actual Play. Any game I play in has an expert at the table.

But the first time I GMed Dogs in the Vineyard, it worked like a charm, even though I only half-understood the system and totally flubbed many of the rules. Having seen the system work (even when I didn't understand it) I was able to project serene confidence that the system would work, and could be relied upon.

TonyLB wrote: Was the issue expertise or confidence? Yes, a "confident expert" will change the atmosphere of the table, but do you think a "confident neophyte" would do the same?

TonyLB wrote: Sydney dumped his character's personalty, because he thought it would be more interesting to have Gun Bunny switch sides.

Gaerik wrote: If anyone can narrate the effects of a Conflict away with no effort whatsoever, why does Capes have Conflicts at all? Why isn't the whole System simply freeform?

Sydney Freedberg wrote: I had my hero switch sides as the direct result of Tony's villain winning a (hard fought) conflict to influence her. So the conflict mechanics definitely mattered. In fact, I made a fundamental decision about what "My Guy" do on the basis of another player successfully using those mechanics against me...

[Scratches head]

Okay, Fred, I see your point about the mechanics. But: binding or not, they mattered to me.

That's right; it had to do with the social contract, not the mechanics.

Do you see why I say that Capes depends more on the social contract than other games do?

Sydney,

Just out of curiosity... if the mechanics made the effects of the Conflict binding (at least until another Conflict) how do you think it would have affected how you felt about the situation? Would you have felt irritated at being forced by the System? Would it have made any difference at all?

To Fred:

Sure, social contract -- in terms of "the behaviours the real human beings playing the game agree to stick to, whether or not formally called for in the written rules" -- is fundamental. But it's fundamental to every roleplaying game; that's what the Lumpley Principle is about.

But is Capes is more dependent on informal social expectations, unmediated and unaided by formal rules, than most RPGs? Hmmmmmm. Compared to the traditional "GM is God" paradigm, I'd say "no." After all, no participant is encouraged by the rules to hide die rolls and cheat when he or she feels it's in the best interest of his/her personal conception of the story.

Capes is definitely dependent on those informal social expectations in different ways than traditional RPGs. Is it more or less dependent? I honestly don't know.


To Gaerik:

A very interesting question. I suspect I play most of the time on the principle "if something significant has been specified as the result of a Conflict, don't undo it without another Conflict" --- which is not in fact written in the rules, as you point out. Should it be written down, as opposed to left up to informal social contract? Perhaps. Or it might be too limiting.

Tony, your take?

Well, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I'll express an opinion and then ask whether you agree.

In my opinion, the constraints created by situation aren't that motivating. The opportunities created by situation are what gets players energized. But playing into the constraints of the past can be the key to grasping the opportunities of the future. If you know where another players wants things to go then you can follow along and use their energy to help your own agenda. Does that mean you're selflessly honoring their investment, or just recognizing it and using it to your own ends?

So, Sydney: When you decided to have Gun-Bunny switch sides, was it to honor the past, or sieze the future, or both? You wrote both "Okay, you invested heavily in winning this one," and "You've opened up neat new story possibilities and left yourself open to me getting you back with interest later." That makes it hard for me to really get a read on what you're thinking.

Aha.

Tony, your having invested heavily in the past was important only in that it didn't make me feel as if my character was being arbitrarily jerked around by fiat (e.g. GM-fiat): I'd had a chance to fight for another outcome, Tony had fought harder, I had lost, it was fair.

Far more important were the future possibilities of running with the outcome you'd narrated. If they hadn't been cool, I'd have been sorely tempted to undo them in narration at the next opportunity (and probably face a followup conflict with you well-stocked with inspirations from the last one, admittedly). But they were cool, so I went with them.

Thaaaaaat's interesting. I already knew that salesmanship -- getting the other players to say "ooh, cool" -- was crucial to profiting from defeat in Capes: If the conflict doesn't engage other players, then they won't invest Debt in winning it, and you won't get Story Tokens when you lose. But I hadn't quite realized that salesmanship is equally critical to making a victory stick: If the outcome you narrate doesn't engage other players, they have the power to narrate it into irrelevance -- either explicitly, or worse yet, by just ignoring it.

[EDIT: This is not a bug. This is a feature! You can be effective only if you're interesting.]

Maybe it's this aspect of Capes, where one's skill at social interaction and playing "social contracts lawyer" has a stronger than normal effect on the game, is what's bothering me.

Understood, but it's a lot more functional than having the social contract wrangling be channeled into "but I should get a +4 for attacking from upwind!" or "the book says these are warrior people, they could never be ambushed like that!" (Paraphrasing an old Tony post here). In Capes, the real issues are right out there on the table: "I just don't want X to happen, so I'm going to make it a Goal and prevent you from just narrating it" or "Gee, nobody's interested in my story idea, I can tell because there's no Debt staked on it."

So again -- different, yes; stronger/weaker than normal, I'm not so sure.

The thing is, creating a conflict to prevent something from happening is a very temporary measure.

Let's say, for example, that you want to push the game into a post-apocalyptic setting. You want to have a nuclear war in the game. I don't. I like civilization.

In order to prevent it, I play "Goal: Start a nuclear war." We fight it out, and you claim the winning side, and I the losing side. There's only ONE tactic that will prevent the nuclear war from happening, and that's to keep the goal on the table, and keep it in my control, but NOT claim it, so that it stays from page to page to page.... and as long as it's there, the scene can't end. My only tactic is basically to filibuster.

I really HATE people who filibuster a game. It really grinds my stones.

Edit: And this assumes that only you and I are interested! If you have staked debt, then if I don't claim the losing side, someone else will, if only to get their hands on those story tokens.

You, on the other hand, want to get it OFF the table as soon as possible, win or lose, because whether you win or lose doesn't matter, only that the goal is gone, and now you're free to narrate yourself your nuclear war. If you win, cool, you get inspirations, if you lose, that's cool too, you get debt and story tokens.

And if there's more than one of this kind of issue at stake? Forget it. I'll never be able to defend them all. There's just not enough opportunities to play new conflicts to prevent them all. [Edit: You say that the real issues are on the table, but that's not necessarily so. I may not have had the chance to get them all out there yet.]

It's a combination of issues.

Capes is a resolution system for deciding the outcomes of goals. It gives no weight to the specific outcomes of a resolution beyond the limited effect of Inspiration. Also, it can behoove one to to skip stating a goal and just narrate the outcome one desires without using the resolution system.

Characters have no differentiation in the SIS in terms of areas of influence. It doesn't particularly matter what's on my character sheet for the most part because I can narrate my Magician tossing the Hulk through several large buildings. There's nothing resembling niche protection, not even based solely upon Color.

There's no system in place, beyond the suggestions in the Comics Code, for resolving disputes between players are helping to keep them on the same page in regards to the imagined content.

So all we really get is the goal resolution system which, while interesting and fun in its own right, leaves every other possible aspect of play relying purely on Social Contract. What tools does Capes give a player that make it functionally different than free form play with coin flipping to resolve disputes?

-Chris

This is getting somewhere.

In my play experience, we've spent a lot of time "rules lawyering." (Really, social contract lawyering, I suppose.) Except the sorts of things that were debated weren't mechanical minutae, they were substantive narrative elements. We played at a game store, and some of our "heated arguments" were unusual enough to draw some confused glances from the regulars. Damn, I wish I could remember an example, it seemed a little absurd at the time. (But absurd in a good way.)

Also, our game had a decent amount of kibbutzing anytime a player wasn't particularly confident that what he was narrating was cool (interesting).

Okay, let's say I want nuclear holocaust. I mean, who wouldn't?

I try to do it, and you block me. I've just learned something about my future opportunities: You think that if I blow up the world, you won't find that fun. If you don't find it fun, I won't profit from it, win or lose.

So tell me, why would I try again? Only if I were either (a) convinced that I know what you'll like better than you do or (b) I want it so much that I don't care if I lose tons of resources because you dislike it so much.

Honestly, I think both of those are valid reasons to override your disagreement, if I really feel them. What do you think?


EDIT: I find it immensely amusing that I'm taking complaints on one board that the system totally destroys the ability to freeform roleplay by giving too much power to the rules, and on another board that the system totally destroys the ability to use the rules by giving too much power to freeform roleplay.

Wow. I go out for lunch and the discussion leaps ahead.

But I just want to go backto

Vaxalon wrote: creating a conflict to prevent something from happening is a very temporary measure.... if there's more than one of this kind of issue at stake? Forget it. I'll never be able to defend them all.

I think that when the "goal in, goal out" mechanic has been worked out (it'll probably take some playtesting) it'll go a distance in that direction.

TonyLB wrote: Okay, let's say I want nuclear holocaust. I mean, who wouldn't?

I try to do it, and you block me. I've just learned something about my future opportunities: You think that if I blow up the world, you won't find that fun. If you don't find it fun, I won't profit from it, win or lose.

TonyLB wrote: Okay, let's say I want nuclear holocaust. I mean, who wouldn't?

I try to do it, and you block me. I've just learned something about my future opportunities: You think that if I blow up the world, you won't find that fun. If you don't find it fun, I won't profit from it, win or lose.

So tell me, why would I try again? Only if I were either (a) convinced that I know what you'll like better than you do or (b) I want it so much that I don't care if I lose tons of resources because you dislike it so much.

Honestly, I think both of those are valid reasons to override your disagreement, if I really feel them. What do you think?

Vaxalon wrote: What do you think would happen to a game, if I were to play this way?

What John said.

Yeah, the "bystander king" (or the "throw the ball out of bounds king") could happen. In theory. But, dude: Actual Play. I know Capes is new, so there's not been much time for people to break it, but has anyone ever seen "bystander king"? Until we do, I'm not gonna worry very hard about his being theoretically possible.

Playing roleplaying games boils down, often, to one thing; making meaningful contributions to the SIS.

The word "meaningful" is important here.

What is meaningful is different, for different people.

Robin Laws breaks them down into six types (the seventh being one where participating in the game is NOT, in fact, based on making contributions to the SIS).

Powergamer: I want to see my character get more powerful.
Buttkicker: I want vicarious blood thrill.
Specialist: I want to be a ninja/witch/whatever.
Storyteller: I want to see drama unfold.
Tactician: I want to puzzle my way through difficult encounters
Method Actor: I want to think the way my character thinks.

Social: I want to hang out with my buddies, and they like roleplaying games.

I've already stated why Capes is a problem for Powergamers.

Capes is good for buttkickers. You can get tons and tons of gore, if you want. Thing is, though, you gotta lose to be effective... and that's something of a turnoff for buttkickers. They don't mind losing occasionally, but getting beat down on a regular basis is going to make them dissatisfied.

Specialists are very well off in Capes. Any specialty you want, it's there. Go for it!

Storytellers are going to have a tough time. Since they don't have complete control over what their character says or does, it's hard for them to engineer a story for their characters... they have to get buy-in from the other players, which they're not used to having to get. Let's assume, though, that once they get the idea, it'll work for them.

Tacticians are going to LOVE Capes, when they first see it, but for some the interest will wane once they realize that they can't really maneuver for advantage. In addition to being a powergamer, I also do tactician sometimes; "Bystander King" is an attempt to engage that part of my gamer interest. While that kind of play might accomplish MY goals, it might get me asked to leave the table.

Method Actors will hate Capes, because they aren't alone in their characters heads. Even if "Spotlight Characters" is in force, other people are going to be narrating things he does or says, and that is pretty much assuredly not going to be 100% in line with what HE thinks his characters will be thinking.

Social gamers will like Capes, but then they like anything that you can just sit down and play.

So tallying up:

Yay for the specialists, most storytellers, some buttkickers and some tacticians. Social gamers you can ignore, because, well, what ELSE can you do? They'll find another mode sooner or later.

Having seen Tony play only once, this is a guess, but I believe that Tony's strongest preferences lie in storyteller and tactician.

Everyone else will have to either shift the game to enable the style of play they like (most aren't willing to do this, though I am), suppress their preferences and play a different style (not everyone is capable of this, I know I'm not) or just not play.

Now take your favorite game. Look at the six main styles of play, and check them off; see how many of them the game (as written) can reasonably accomodate, and which it actively supports.

I would say that Dungeons and Dragons, given a reasonable play group, accomodates all six, and actively supports powergamer, buttkicker, specialist and tactician.

Sydney Freedberg wrote: What John said.
Actual Play. I know Capes is new, so there's not been much time for people to break it, but has anyone ever seen "bystander king"? Until we do, I'm not gonna worry very hard about his being theoretically possible.

Okay, a question specifically for Fred. Remember the session that started this thread? The one with the Hulk and the East River, and Kosmic Ray and all that?

Given all the discussions that have happened since: Do you see the events of the game in the same way as when you started? Or has this changed what you think happened, and why?

Yes, my opinion of that play session has changed.

Here's what I've learned...

It was fun... That's pretty hard to change retroactively, isn't it?

But I don't really want to play Kozmik Ray anymore. He's had his time in the sun, now he's boring. He can't grow in capes, he can't accumulate anything interesting on him... next time I'll play someone else.

Okay. Do you still feel (in retrospect) that you were in imminent danger of the game falling apart if people narrated too far?

No, not imminent, but eventual.

Oooh... cagey.

Eventually, how and why?

Okay, first let's talk about what "falling apart" means.

I'm not talking about people shouting at each other over the game table.

I'm talking more along the lines of alienating someone so that they don't want to come back. That's what happens, generally speaking, when you go too far.

I still feel that without a little more authority in the game, at some point someone's going to narrate something that another player is going to find gamebreaking.

I came real close to that point when the person playing the Hulk narrated knocking over a series of buildings like dominoes in order to get at Trump Tower. I bulled through it for the sake of finishing the game, but my enjoyment level took a dip at that point. It was all so absurd.

Vaxalon wrote: I still feel that without a little more authority in the game, at some point someone's going to narrate something that another player is going to find gamebreaking... I came real close to that point when the person playing the Hulk narrated knocking over a series of buildings like dominoes in order to get at Trump Tower... It was all so absurd.

I agree. I am willing to put this one to rest.