I'm coming to believe that you have to be in the right mindset to enjoy Capes.

1> You have to be up for competition and heavy-duty player-versus-player play. You also have to be willing to let other people have what they want sometimes.

Failure of this element results in dislocation from the conflict rules.

2> You have to be pretty firmly wedded to Director stance, because if you identify too closely with a character, the game falls apart. At the same time, you have to care ENOUGH about your character that you are willing to fight for him.

Failure of this element results in thing like "king bystander" and over-engagement with the conflict rules and too little emphasis on narration.

Capes is a tightrope.

<mutter> Win some, lose some... debt management vs. story tokens. Director stance, but with character engagement... affecting conflicts in order to harvest resources... </mutter>

Say! Doesn't what you said boil down to "Capes works best when you seek out the reward mechanisms built into the rules"? I mean, that would be true, but hardly a revelation. It's like saying "Monopoly is a tightrope: You have to buy properties, but you don't want to run out of money." To which I would say "Yes," but also "Duh!"

There's a problem with that analogy, Tony. Capes has an SIS. The main thrust of an rpg is to contribute to and manipulate that imaginary space. In Monopoly the full extent of game play is present in the props; board, cards, pieces, etc. I can manipulate the SIS in Capes to fit my vision without using the conflict rules.

In Monopoly the equivalent of the hole I see in Capes would be like buying a property, but when someone else lands on that space they get to buy it too. You've got to hand the property over to them, and hope you land on it again so that you can buy it back. But wait! What's the purpose of owning the property if you're probably not going to collect any rent from it?

That's currently how I feel about Capes.

-Chris

Sure.

The reward mechanism in Monopoly is straightforward. The more value in properties you own, the better you're doing. You only need to keep enough cash on hand to cover rent on whatever you're likely to land on in the next turn or two.

Playing monopoly is like walking along a mountain; you can only fall in one direction, really, failing to successfully predict future expenditures when buying properties.

The rewards mechanisms in Capes are far more complex. You have to consider not only what you want, but what other people want; not only story tokens, but also inspirations, and debt. The balancing act between these is far more complex.

So yeah, you can boil it down to "Capes works best when you seek out the reward mechanisms built into the rules" but by doing so you boil out my point.

Okay, so what's your point?

My point is that the mindset that works for Capes has more requirements than most games do, and they have to be balanced more carefully against each other.

I think this is the root of why a lot of people aren't "getting it".

Um... so "The rules are subtle, and I don't immediately understand all the strategies they can imply"? Or did you mean something else?

So far this still seems to be "Yes and Duh!" territory to me.

No, I'm not talking about strategies, really.

I'm talking about mindset... a combination of what you know (director stance, etc) what you feel (competiveness, cooperativeness) and everything else in your head. Capes is more sensitive to those things than other RPGs are, I think.

Okay then, I'm confused. How about we move through it one step at a time?

The things you are talking about (the way you position your character, the level of competition you apply) all have an impact on what you gain in terms of resources. Do you agree or disagree?

Certainly, I agree.... though I'm not sure you're on the right track.

Some people have a problem with director stance. It's a pretty wild idea for some people, and if a person can't manage it, he'll have trouble with Capes. It's not rewarded.

On the other hand, people like me can get very detached from their characters. I've been a gamemaster so much that I tend to become a little distant from them, because I know that generally speaking they're going to take the hard end of things when they go up against the PC's. That attitude will also cause problems in Capes. It's not rewarded.

Some people have a problem with competitive RPGs like Capes, Pantheon, and Baron Munchausen. They play RPG's to get away from competitiveness, and they shy away from that aspect. If someone like that tries to play Capes, he'll have trouble. That behavior isn't rewarded.

Some people play RPG's TOO competitively... they always want their character to be the best at everything. Now this is bad play in most games, but in Capes it presents even greater difficulties. It's not rewarded.

All together, you've got four classes of people, some common some not, which will have a problem with Capes.

Yep! You've got it exactly right. That's by design.

I think having the flexibility to view those "styles" as the tools they are, and being able to apply them in balance, is a skill. The four groups of people you are describing simply don't have that skill... they are stuck in one mode or another.

If they don't have that skill then they're going to be routinely out-performed by people who do. That's their incentive to stretch a little bit, and learn how to do things that don't come easily to them.

Fred, I agree with... hmmm... 3/8 of what you've said. Let me just go through your four categories, because in almost every case I think people are indeed incentivized, through the reward system, to get out of those mindsets and into the Capes mentality, meaning there's a positive feedback system to help you stay on that tightrope:

Vaxalon wrote: Some people have a problem with director stance. It's a pretty wild idea for some people, and if a person can't manage it, he'll have trouble with Capes. It's not rewarded.

people like me can get very detached from their characters. I've been a gamemaster so much that I tend to become a little distant from them, because I know that generally speaking they're going to take the hard end of things when they go up against the PC's. That attitude will also cause problems in Capes. It's not rewarded.

Some people ...play RPG's to get away from competitiveness, and they shy away from that aspect. If someone like that tries to play Capes, he'll have trouble. That behavior isn't rewarded.

Some people play RPG's TOO competitively... they always want their character to be the best at everything. Now this is bad play in most games, but in Capes it presents even greater difficulties. It's not rewarded.

C. Edwards wrote: There's a problem with that analogy, Tony. Capes has an SIS. The main thrust of an rpg is to contribute to and manipulate that imaginary space. In Monopoly the full extent of game play is present in the props; board, cards, pieces, etc. I can manipulate the SIS in Capes to fit my vision without using the conflict rules.

[SNIP]

-Chris

I have to admit to being one of those 'don't like to compete' guys, and I still think Capes is the best thing I've played in a long while.

The key to that particualr can o' worms is to remember that you're not going to actively compete agains the other players, you're going to give them something to test themselves against. It's a subtle difference, but I found once I started thinking that way I could do all sorts of things to my buddies knowing that I wasn't out to ruin their good times (the Gloating rule rocks!) but rather to get me some sweet, sweet story tokens by having them prove thier characters worth in situations I helped make more fun.

Sounds to me like Capes would be a good game for a group composed entirely of people used to being in a traditional GM role, and bad for those used to being in a traditional player role (assuming each of those people LIKED those roles).

It does strike me as weird, and perhaps part of the difficulty, that Capes has some incredibly Gamist mechanics for how you determine who narrates, etc. but the rewards for success in those mechanics are entirely transitory and present-focused in a very Story Now kind of way. I may have won this conflict over this particular thing by being clever and having an appropriate strategy, but the reward was not that I actually accomplished something which will be meaningful in the long term, but that for those few seconds I was at the top and got my way.

Actually, to clarify:

Gamism is all about achieving a certain state of the SIS and feeling awesome about it. In Capes, It looks as though there are two ways to achieve anything in the SIS: The tough, competetive, fun, interactive way, and the way which just wins. That sorta divides the whole Gamist part of the rules in two - there's this giant framework for competing and looking awesome, but to achieve a certain state of the SIS, the path of least resistance (and thus the 'better' choice from a tactical point of view) is to free narrate and ignore the competeing. Either way, you're in trouble from that perspective - on the one hand, you did the stupid thing and risked losing and/or expended resources you didn't have to, but on the other hand you didn't look awesome doing it.

If I was playing D&D, and I had a mage character who could cast two spells, one of which was a giant tactical battle of wills with the target and one of which just killed them, which would I cast? Hard to say, but there's a reason why that choice isn't there (or that each spell would have different restrictions and such).

Sydney Freedberg wrote:

Vaxalon wrote: Some people have a problem with director stance. It's a pretty wild idea for some people, and if a person can't manage it, he'll have trouble with Capes. It's not rewarded.

Director stance hard - absolutely. I struggled with it in the Capes playtests.
But director stance not rewarded in Capes -- really?

Sydney Freedberg wrote:

people like me can get very detached from their characters. ... That attitude will also cause problems in Capes. It's not rewarded.

Getting detached from your characters -- absolutely, that can happen in Capes, where the "disposable Undifferentiated-debt bad guy" is a common tactic.
Not rewarded -- really? Being detached enough to sacrifice characters gets you Story Tokens. Now, if you mean that overcoming your detachment is not rewarded, perhaps more of an issue there, although I suspect if you don't care enough then it's hard to make other people care and thus pay you Story Tokens to lose.

Sydney Freedberg wrote:
The Brawler. He just wants to fight, all the time, over anything, so he can win and prove he's better. I think we can stipulate that Capes is actually perfect for this guy?

Sydney Freedberg wrote:
On the upside, since the whole rulebook and all the tangible rewards (the "cues" in Vincent-speak) are about getting into Conflict, there are lots of pointers towards the more fun way to play, even for the Ninja Turtle.

Mechanically, you can't prove anything in Capes, but is it really too much to ask the players to respect the SIS? For example, if it's been established that Captain Stupendous is amazingly strong, don't narrate that Dr. Brain casually beats him in an arm wrestling match. It's true that there's nothing in the mechanics to stop you, but I don't see what you could propose as a rule to enforce that kind of respect, without moving the game towards Champions.

And I do understand that players can have misunderstandings about what they consider to be an important fact in the SIS, but it seems clear to me that if only one player considers it important, then it should go their way, and if both players care a lot about it, then it'll make an excellent conflict.

Every other RPG in the world has some means by which the group can validate contributions to the SIS before they go in.

In the Capes games I've been a part of, I've seen validation happening, it was just at the social level, and not the mechanical level. People proposed modifications to narrations as people gave them, either to make it cooler, or to fix something they had a problem with. I don't think a mechanical validation system would work - like Sydney pointed out there are problems with rewarding people for either producing unacceptable narrations, or finding exception with narrations.

I think the weird thing about Capes is that there are no tactics: if you think of a nifty tactical trick for your hero to do, it won't have a nifty effect on the game mechanics - the only validation you can receive for a trick is from the other players (incidently I think this occured in the Actual Play post you made - Warhawk came up with a cool narration for the conflict, and Dr Trinity didn't come back with an equally cool counter-move, but just negated Warhawk's move.) This is further complicated by the fact that if you come up with a neat tactical trick for your hero, and you don't control the conflict, your trick won't work - regardless of how cool it is. So from this perspective, Capes is very hostile to Gamist play.

I think the primary source of competition in Capes is for control of the SIS. But this is odd, because anyone can narrate anything into it. On the other hand, if you narrate something stupid or corny into it, you're ruining the prize you're trying to win. So really, you want to narrate your ideas in a way that preserves the integrity of the space as a whole. So maybe it would be better to say that the source of competition is control over a cool SIS. If you don't properly underline significant events (by making them Conflicts) you're screwing with the SIS, and making it more pointless and uninteresting. If you narrate something contrary to something previously established without giving a good justification, again you're destroying the integrity of the SIS. While you can still insert your ideas, it's no longer something which is worth controlling.

Steve

Grover wrote: I think the primary source of competition in Capes is for control of the SIS. But this is odd, because anyone can narrate anything into it. On the other hand, if you narrate something stupid or corny into it, you're ruining the prize you're trying to win. So really, you want to narrate your ideas in a way that preserves the integrity of the space as a whole.

Fred and others,

I don’t know if it’s the only game, but I agree with the last sentence in your post. If someone wants to put something permanently in the SiS, they’ll have to phrase so that no one objects. Or perhaps the others don’t like it, but they should think it’s so cool that they don’t change it just because they can.

I would say that one way of enjoying Capes is by adopting a rule from impro theatre:

“Say yes.”

This is very important if someone does something that you instinctively don’t like. You have to judge peoples’ contributions as favourably as possible, and not cut them off as soon as you can. The comics code is very good for removing things that surely will ruin peoples’ game, but everything else is fair game.

Everyone agrees that the discussion is not jackass players, but people who try to do their best but sometimes do something you don’t like. Capes is just a game, and if everyone adopt the “Say yes” attitude above I can’t really see anything that can enter the SiS and ruin their evening.

Jonas Karlsson wrote:
I would say that one way of enjoying Capes is by adopting a rule from impro theatre:

“Say yes.”

I've got it.

Capes is a sport.

Fred's etc. recent IRC play log:

# [13] <James> Tony has said repeatedly that I should not care one whit about the SIS, or your enjoyment, or compromise on any ideas that don't interest me.
# [14] <Lxndr> I'm happy to struggle with you every step of the way, James, to give this game a thorough workover.
# [14] <James> In other words, if I come across as a jerk here, I'm not trying to be pathological--I like both of you, I'm just playing the game as its creator insists it should be played.

It's hard to know what good sportsmanship IS when you're playing Calvinball...

Fred, are you implying that Capes is calvinball? Or are you just making a non-sequiter observation out of the blue?

I'm saying that it's LIKE Calvinball, in that the boundaries can shift around remarkably fluidly, compared to other games of the same broad category.

Capes:Champions::Calvinball:Football

And I'm not saying that sportsmanship is impossible in Capes... I'm saying that it's HARD.

Really? That's fascinating. I always thought it worked by a few basic principles:

• Obey the rules
• Accept any legitimate application of the rules without complaint
• Congratulate other players when they do well, even when it's to your detriment
• Accept such congratulations humbly when they are your due
• Remember that the experience of playing the game is more important than the goal of winning the game

Do you find those guidelines harder to follow in Capes than in other games?

Yes.

The second one... "Accept any legitimate application of the rules without complaint" is probably the hardest one.

What is "legitimate" is not always clear to me. Moreso than other games.

What is "without complaint" is not always clear to me. Moreso than other games.

(I'd say that "without complaint" is too narrow. "With grace" I think is more appropriate, because going over to the sidelines and throwing a bench out into the field isn't a 'complaint' per se but it certainly isn't good sportsmanship)

Can you give a specific example of a situation where what is a legitimate use of the rules is unclear to you?

Sure.

Immediately undoing something, in narration, that someone has just accomplished via a goal.

(sorry to keep harping on this, but it's a big crawsticker for me)

It's certainly an application of the rules... the system allows you to do it. Is it "legitimate"? Is it good sportsmanship?

To me, it comes across as snarky and unsportsmanlike, but nothing in the rules of sportsmanship or the rules of the game forbids it.

The two questions there (what is legitimate? What is graceful?) go together. I know that it would be easier for you to answer the first and ignore the second, but to me they're closely related, when it comes to Capes.

Immediately undoing something, in narration, that someone has just accomplished via a goal.
...
It's certainly an application of the rules... the system allows you to do it. Is it "legitimate"? Is it good sportsmanship?

There is no question at all about whether such action is a legitimate use of the rule. It is. You know that.

Whether it's poor sportsmanship? That's trickier. Is that player "congratulating other players when they do well, even when it's to their detriment"? That probably depends (as Larry says) on context and what they offer.

But unsportsmanlike actions can still be legitimate under the rules. If you complain about a legitimate use of the rules, it doesn't matter whether the other person was being unsportsmanlike. You definitely are.

It occurs to me that Capes is like an unmoderated Wiki. The only contribution to the SIS that sticks is one that has buy-in from the other players at the table. Since everyone has free narration (an unlimited ability to overwrite other people's contributions), unless you can sell your ideas to the other folks at the table, it goes away.