Here's a game we tried to play. You can find some speed bumps at [05] and towards the end, a collision that ended play for the night.

http://random.average-bear.com/Capes/SessionOne

You can see the conflicts in play when the game stopped here:

http://random.average-bear.com/Capes/GameSpace

I'll leave James (playing Warhawk) to explain his feelings in more detail.

System problems aside, how did you like the setup you had to play in? That looked like it was working pretty well, and it has the advantage of automatically creating a complete log of the game. Is it available for anyone to use?

System problems aside, the only reason I like IRC is that it means I can play when otherwise I can't.

IRC is slow. Ploddingly slow.

Pre-Play
Vax does not mention the week of pre-play discussion we had. Sometimes this was a little bit frustrating.

A key part of Capes consists of the development of a Comics Code, which is (fundamentally) a set of aesthetic principles concerning which kinds of narration are valid. Typically this might be stuff like, "No in-game sex" or "No superhuman can get killed without the player's consent," it's also important for establishing what kind of game you're running.

Vax really wanted to play a fairly straightforward superhero comic book type of thing--the sort of thing you might find in the Avengers or the Justice League cartoon. While I respect his desires, that didn't really very well for me. I guess I have a jaded appetite, but I can't have any serious emotional engagement with musclebound people wearing spandex and fighting other musclebound people. I wanted something... different.

One of the ideas that Lxndr and I cooked up in pre-play was sort of a dark, creepy place, based on movies like "Dark City," "Requiem for a Dream," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Donnie Darko," and "Butterfly Effect." Basically, these badly broken Philip K. Dick protagonists who are coping with way more emotional crises than anyone should ever have to face... and on top of everything else, they've developed strange abilities. This was really getting me excited!

So, we were trying to work out some genre expectations here and couldn't do it. If you're doing the "powers are extremely rare, destabilizing, and no one would ever wear spandex" thing, it's hard to square that with "powers are moderately rare, not destabilizing, and people definitely wear spandex."

Vax wanted to use his Dr. Trinity character and the Krakatoa setting we'd collaborated on. Since it didn't look like there was any way to come to an agreement on the Comics Code thing, I decided to go along. At the same time, I was feeling pretty darn frustrated that we hadn't been able to come to an agreement. The Trinity/Krakatoa stuff didn't interest me very much, but I felt maybe I could derive some enjoyment from inflicting carnage on the setting. I decided to play a character devoted to making Dr. Trinity's life miserable.

Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa
I should point out that if the Krakatoa setting didn't hold much of my interest, it's my own fault. We've been developing it through Lexicon, and about a third of the entries are mine. Which means that in addition to everyone else's neat ideas, I should at least be interested in my own.

But I wasn't. I think the Krakatoa stuff is a nifty spine for a conventional superhero setting, but "conventional superhero setting" isn't what interested me. And once the Krakatoa stuff got some inertia, I either didn't recognize the problem or was unable to dig my way out. So, that's my own fault.

Nonetheless by the time we agreed on the "invasion of Krakatoa" thing, I knew the setting wasn't doing it for me, and arguably I shouldn't have agreed to it in the first place--in which case we would not have been able to play the game. Vax wanted that kind of world; I didn't. Capes cannot run satisfactorily unless everyone buys into the Comics Code, and there was no way we could both do so.

"What is my motivation?"
I'm not entirely sure what went wrong, except that I am probably a terrible match for Capes. I want to feel that when I come up with a good idea, it matters. It can matter in pretty much any way: give me a mechanical bonus, make the imaginary world more engaging, or move the story along. But announcing a neat idea simply to announce it seems very shallow to me.

In this case my main motivation, at the player level, was simply to beat the living hell out of the Krakatoa setting and all it represented, without descending into game-busting silliness.

This wasn't much of a motivation. The argument about Fracture betraying Trinity only mattered to me in that it might set up a better invasion scenario, but that's a pretty weak attachment, and as the conflict went on, I gradually realized I didn't want to spend another hour playing it through. I basically wanted to give up, since the actual outcome of the conflict didn't matter to the SIS anyway, and just get to the blastin'.

But when I facetiously proposed, "Event: invasion of Krakatoa succeeds," and no one vetoed, I realized that I could get what I wanted without any resistance at all. My one purpose, which was to work out some sublimated frustrations, got taken away from me.

In a sense, I won my goal as a player--but it didn't mean a damn thing to me.

Does Capes deliver?
In the endless Capes threads that have graced the Forge lately, the defense of Capes's "resistance is futile" approach is that allowing another person to riff on your ideas can come up with some neat stuff.

This is true. The last thing we wrote involved my character breaking Vax's character's spine and hurling him to the bottom of the ocean; Vax wanted the guy to come back a year later with a techno-spine and allies from the lost continent of Mu. This is fun.

But--it isn't always. When Vax thought he had surprised us by showing up in the conversation, I had (what I felt to be) a fun idea--he hadn't surprised us, but holographic representations of us: Dr. Trinity, the big brainy guy, was just a fool! Except, of course, he wasn't fooled. I shouldn't have spent that time and energy to come up with a little joke like that: it's only funny if it matters. I could have hit him with a coconut cream pie just as easily. Making up something that entertains me is great; having it be undone trivially, on a whim, stinks.

I can't shake the feeling that for me personally, the situation at the end of this session would be an AWESOME situation and immensely entertaining in just about any other system. But in Capes, it feels utterly hollow and pointless to me. This, perhaps, is the curse of Capes--because you can narrate anything, it's easy to have wacky far out situations, but by the same token none of them matter.

a) That was an amazing read. Stuff like this makes me think it is possible to directly analyse material in the Big Model.

b) I'd be interested to hear when James become disinterested: pre [05], at it, or some time after. Was he invested in the game up till that point?

Hix - no, the thing with this session was, due to the system's inability to support differing agendas in the the Comics Code, my interest wasn't particularly high to begin with. The incident at 05--the holographic generator stuff--would have been crushing if I'd been new to Capes, but instead it simply confirmed that (for me) Capes totally removes all incentive for people like me.

As I mentioned in my previous post: the setting didn't grab my heartstrings, the conflict was a means to an end that had lasted too long, and then the only thing I wanted to do--mess up Krakatoa--was achieved by fiat.

(Random comments follow)

Capes is very much like Tom & Jerry: the Roleplaying Game, in that players get to do all kinds of screwed-up devious stuff to each other, and then the other one simply bounces back unharmed. The reward consists in enjoying the momentary gag for its own sake.

One of Tony's arguments is that if you have creative input on a situation or scenario, you must automatically also have emotional buy-in. This example of play works as a counter-example. To use an analogy: I have heard of restaurants where the customer can create his own omlette, but that doesn't matter to me because I hate omlettes: the fact that I've spent energy making the best omlette I can, doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy it.

As Vaxalon mentioned in another thread: in order to play Capes you have to care about winning a Conflict, but not care about the character, setting, or color used to win it. I appear to be unable to do this.

Hello James,

I think your setting ideas sound really cool. It could be a problem justifying Capes’ “Power is fun, but do you deserve it”, where you usually use your powers and then justify it by acting morally instead of acting morally and then using your powers. But that could be me, and the settings might work just fine.

As Vaxalon mentioned in another thread: in order to play Capes you have to care about winning a Conflict, but not care about the character, setting, or color used to win it. I appear to be unable to do this.

But when I facetiously proposed, "Event: invasion of Krakatoa succeeds," and no one vetoed, I realized that I could get what I wanted without any resistance at all. My one purpose, which was to work out some sublimated frustrations, got taken away from me.

Jonas Karlsson wrote:

But when I facetiously proposed, "Event: invasion of Krakatoa succeeds," and no one vetoed, I realized that I could get what I wanted without any resistance at all. My one purpose, which was to work out some sublimated frustrations, got taken away from me.

Perhaps the invasion was something the others wanted as well, or didn’t think was interesting enough to spend resources on? The other players are of course better than me when judging that.

Actually, that was the way I was going too. James left "invasion" undefined enough that there were all sorts of nifty tidbits and ways to go about it, depending on who got control (and man, I can see that turning into a three-way rumble as we all fight over exactly what sort of invasion it might be).

Heck, James, it was Vax's turn, and his Event. He proposed the invasion starting, so he was obviously heading in that direction. You just offered a counter-offer that upped the timeline a bit. He could've said "no, this is my turn, either veto the event, or accept it. I won't budge!" But he saw the possibilities in your counter-offer, so he said "okay, I'll use my turn to propose your modification to the event I proposed, especially since it's better than letting you handle it in free narration."

That said, James, Trinity only managed to meet you in the Lost Dreams Lagoon because, well, after your roll, he was still in control of the conflict (i.e., he got an And Then...). If you'd managed to roll the sides such that your/our side was advantageous, no "And Then..." would've occurred, and you would've gotten away with leaving.

It's worth keeping in mind whether or not there'll be an "And Then..." when you narrate something, because if you're losing the conflict, there will almost always be an "And Then..."

Here are my theories on how far you can push genre in Capes:

• SIS must be something that could be portrayed in a comic book.
• There need to be people with powers.
• People with powers need to be driven by some kind of moral framework.

The setting here is cool, but seems a little off regarding that last requirement. In Capes, moral greyness is left to the mundanes.

For what it's worth, the "ranting" in the log is actually very useful to me as a reader. Taking a little time to express your reactions at the moment goes a long way.

I wanted to keep the ranting short, but not eliminate it. It was important to note when there were problems, but then move along so we could get the scene done.

As it happens, we didn't complete it anyways.

James_Nostack wrote: Since it didn't look like there was any way to come to an agreement on the Comics Code thing, I decided to go along.

Can you elaborate on that, Sydney?

Are you saying that early on, you could have, say, an Event or something that says, "Superheroes don't wear spandex"?

Vaxalon wrote: Are you saying that early on, you could have, say, an Event or something that says, "Superheroes don't wear spandex"?

Sydney Freedberg wrote: Obviously what seems cool to me in reading was frustrating to you in play, though.

I don't think it's fair to say that Capes is Tom and Jerry: The Role Playing Game. In my experience playing Capes, that hasn't happened. It looked to me like you started the game with that hypothesis, and were choosing your narration to achieve that point. In Capes, you have to care about winning conflicts, but you also need to care about the character, setting, and color. If you ignore the SIS, or don't care about it, there's no point to playing at all.

edit: Some people can't have fun playing football - is that a failure in the game, or a failure in the people. Sounds like a false dichotomy to me. I don't enjoy football - that doesn't mean football is flawed, nor does it mean I am.

Actually, I totally think the costume one would make sense.

You wouldn't do "Event: Superheroes don't wear spandex", unless there was consensus around the table on that and what people wanted to debate was why, or who asserts it, or something else.

But I could certainly imagine two leather-clad commando-types and a spunky kid in spandex, duking it out verbally over "Event: Someone is judged the most fashionable" or "Goal: My costume is accepted as perfectly legitimate superhero garb."

What you're doing in that is building the world, and its attitudes toward the leather/spandex divide, right there in the context that makes it relevant.

Grover, can you elaborate on that thought, with specific reference to the events at [05]?

Tony, that implies that the result of that conflict has lasting impact on the SIS. Haven't we already established that it doesn't?

Vaxalon wrote: Tony, that implies that the result of that conflict has lasting impact on the SIS. Haven't we already established that it doesn't?

I think having lasting impact would be a terrible shame. And unrealistic, to boot! The fashion world is changeable. Last month's oh-so-chic leather and kevlar can be supplanted by next month's spandex and lycra faster than a runway model can peel out of a latex cat-suit.

Or, to put it in more character-personal terms: Let's suppose that Dark Walker and Scourge convince young Zip to wear some kevlar and a helmet. He thinks it looks dorky, but he concedes that bullets are bad. So what does he do? He goes around to all the super-science outfits in town, looking for a material that looks like spandex, but protects like kevlar. In a little while he comes back with a redesigned uniform, and makes his argument all over again. What's more, he argues that they should wear colorful mega-mesh as well. He's had matching uniforms tailored.

That's exactly what should happen. Artistic disputes should only vanish when they're actually settled between the players. Sometimes that happens in one Conflict (when it becomes clear who cares about it more). It's a shame, but some issues just don't have any more staying power than that. But sometimes the issue survives countless short-term resolutions, and that's really cool. Losing a Conflict doesn't mean you have to give up on the issue. It means you lost today. Tomorrow is another day.

EDIT: To link back to Actual Play: Why would ripping Doc Trinity's spine out be the last time we see him? Wouldn't that be a crying shame? Better to have to fight that same fight over and over again, throughout the decades. That's cool.

And in the meantime, until it's resolved, Dark Walker and Zip keep having Conflicts over "spandex or not" and walk away with Inspirations that help define them as characters: "I refused to wear spandex no matter what" and "convinced Dark Walker to wear a bright color" and on and on. The ongoing struggle provides character definition, plus resurces.

Not if he IMMEDIATELY reappears as if nothing happened. That would be NOT cool. At least, to me.

I had planned to leave him there for the time being, because I had little choice.... I could either leave him there and play using some other strategies that I'd rather not go into at the moment, or bring him right back out (since the scene isn't over) to keep playing.

The difference in taste on this topic gets back to my point over in "Capes Mindset" on the MoF forum.

The thing that made me feel you were deliberately trying to break the system was this narration :

"You know what? I haven't got all night for this invasion." Warhawk decides to cut to the chase, shreds Trinity's armor in half, breaks his spine in six places, and, racing across the Pacific at supersonic speeds, hurls the body into the depths of the Marinaras Trench.

I don't believe that you guys felt that this was not a significant alteration to the SIS. I think you felt that it was significant, but since there is nothing in the rules to stop you from making it, you were going to go ahead and do that, just to show how broken the system was.

It would be fine narration for the conclusion of Goal: Warhawk beats down Dr. Trinity. If you try, it's even possible to accomodate it, and come up with something cool (cyber-spines, undersea allies, etc). But that narration is not primarily directed at persuading Fracture to betray Dr. Trinity.

Grover, if you had been me (that is, playing Doctor Trinity) in that situation, what would you have done?

I would have said 'Quit being silly'.

Hmm - it occurs to me that, in D&D, if someone is being disruptive in the game, you have tools in the rules to fight against that disruption. You don't have to settle any Social Contract issues out of the game, because you have in-game resources to draw on. Would you say that your problem with Capes is that there is no way to deal with disruptive players other than to stop the game, and work it out at a Social Contract level?

It is important to note that the player doesn't have to be TRYING to be disruptive, in order to disrupt.

The logs show two examples of that very clearly.

In the latter, James is TRYING to be disruptive. At [05], however, I am NOT trying to be disruptive. In both cases, however, the other player's play was disrupted.

To answer your question, yes. As I have said several times, one of the unusual things about Capes (which can be more or less of a problem depending on what kind of player you are) is that there is no formal mechanism for dealing with disruptions like these.

You're referring to the situation where James came up with the hologram tactic, and you negated it by narrating that it didn't work?

I see two different ways to address that problem. One is sort of a cop-out - Capes doesn't have a mechanism for tactical play on the part of the players, so he was simply expecting something that the system couldn't deliver. Another way to look at it is to say that your narration didn't adequately address the coolness of his tactic - that you should've come up with a reason why it failed, instead of just saying that it did (and it was, after all, doomed to failure because he didn't control the conflict). If I had come up with a cool tactic like that, I might ask for a more explicit explanation of how it had been negated ('I have infra-red cameras', 'I planted a tracer on Fracture', something like that).

A question for James: What kind of narration would you have liked to see for Dr. Trinity's AND THEN for the hologram trick?

A third way of looking at it: Maybe James didn't offer Fred anything that made him interested in validating the hologram tactic as an important and ongoing part of the SIS, so he didn't.

I'm quite interested to know whether Fred found the hologram thing interesting at the time... I don't know whether that's a question he can really answer, though. Time and memory cloud everything, and by now I'm sure he's thought of many ways that he could have made it interesting.

At the time? Since Doctor Trinity was (temporarily) in charge of the conflict, I wanted to use the opportunity to show that Doctor Trinity was really JUST THAT SMART. As long as he was on top of things, he was predicting what everyone around him would do, and reacting to it before they'd even done it.

His highest-ranked ability, after all, is "Prepared for every contingency". It's what he IS. I was taking the opportunity to make him someone who's very frustrating to fight against, because no matter what you do, he's thought of it first.

It didn't really matter to me what tactic was used.

Jonas Karlsson wrote: I’ll state something obvious, please don’t hate me for it: Caring about character, setting and colour doesn’t mean they’ll have to be your way. Caring could mean that you help someone else realize their goals with their characters. If you see them trying to project a certain attitude through their character, help them or try to put obstacles in their way. Any way, they will be more interested in the conflicts or narrations you make.

Lxndr wrote: That said, James, Trinity only managed to meet you in the Lost Dreams Lagoon because, well, after your roll, he was still in control of the conflict (i.e., he got an And Then...). If you'd managed to roll the sides such that your/our side was advantageous, no "And Then..." would've occurred, and you would've gotten away with leaving.

Grover wrote: I see two different ways to address that problem. One is sort of a cop-out - Capes doesn't have a mechanism for tactical play on the part of the players, so he was simply expecting something that the system couldn't deliver. Another way to look at it is to say that your narration didn't adequately address the coolness of his tactic - that you should've come up with a reason why it failed, instead of just saying that it did (and it was, after all, doomed to failure because he didn't control the conflict). If I had come up with a cool tactic like that, I might ask for a more explicit explanation of how it had been negated ('I have infra-red cameras', 'I planted a tracer on Fracture', something like that).

Vaxalon wrote: His highest-ranked ability, after all, is "Prepared for every contingency". It's what he IS. I was taking the opportunity to make him someone who's very frustrating to fight against, because no matter what you do, he's thought of it first.

It didn't really matter to me what tactic was used.

Grover wrote: I see two different ways to address that problem. One is sort of a cop-out - Capes doesn't have a mechanism for tactical play on the part of the players, so he was simply expecting something that the system couldn't deliver. Another way to look at it is to say that your narration didn't adequately address the coolness of his tactic - that you should've come up with a reason why it failed, instead of just saying that it did (and it was, after all, doomed to failure because he didn't control the conflict). If I had come up with a cool tactic like that, I might ask for a more explicit explanation of how it had been negated ('I have infra-red cameras', 'I planted a tracer on Fracture', something like that).

A question for James: What kind of narration would you have liked to see for Dr. Trinity's AND THEN for the hologram trick?

TonyLB wrote:
So, Fred, suppose James had narrated something that built on all of the cues that you were giving in this regard, validating how in-control Doc Trinity was, but turning it against you: "See, Fracture, he's never trusted you... whatever claims he makes about his little paradise here, it's a police state of one!", for instance.

Do you think you'd have had Doc Trinity deny that? Would you have narrated something that undercut the importance of that statement, or let it stand, or would you have elaborated on it (increasing its subjective importance)?

[12] <Trinity> "I'm curious, Fracture... just what is it that could tempt you to betray me? That's one thing you've been skilled enough to keep from me, I admit."

So Capes looks to me like enforced improv acting. You must be willing to accept the offers that other people give you, and the rules in fact specifically prevent you from refusing them. You can only roll with them.

Hrm... I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like I'm blaming the victim. First off, I'm very sorry that you had a bad time with the game, James. That stinks. I feel responsible, of course. I wish I could retroactively make the experience better for you.

Now, in case you ever want to play again (or if someone else wants to play, and is reading this thread), I'd like to point out Fred was nicely pointing the way toward not having your narration immediately narrated away: Make it interesting to him as well as to yourself.

You flatly didn't do that: Fred clearly established a direction for Doc Trinity, and you didn't parse it. He would have had to completely reverse what he was projecting for the character in order to find anything interesting in your hologram narration. That's a lot to expect of him when the easy "Narrate a way around it" option is right to hand.

Some games set the balance differently: They force players to endure more stuff that bores them, in order to allow them to experience less rejection of their own input. Capes is set all the way to one side of this scale: You get instant rejection of anything people can't find a use for. On the other hand, you never have to tolerate anything boring.

Yep.

It's either fun or infuriating.

Could someone point me at some successful IRC games of Capes? I'm still stuck on the idea the things Capes emphasizes are really poorly suited for IRC.

So far we haven't been able to get a group together with three people who think Capes is, at its fundamental level, cool.

James_Nostack wrote: this would have been an ENORMOUSLY
satisfying session of Mutants & Masterminds or free-form!

Rules clarification split to Muse of Fire forum.

Well, I think Capes is, at a fundamental level, cool, and all these discussions have been making me want to play more. Can we get some more people?

Right now, I'm available MTWF. Thursdays are taken, with Mike Holmes' HQ game. I'm fairly certain that Lxndr is available the same days, though I can't be certain.

Do you feel the use of the Lexicon to develop the SIS outside of Capes is helpful or hindering? It seems like a cool project on its own, but I have this suspicion that it might be a burden on Capes gameplay, since there's nothing in Capes to reward a player for adhering to it. (The "reward" otherwise being that you have had a chance to "buy in" to establish whichever bits about the world via the conflict system.)

Which items in your Comics Code were in use this session?

Mostly, I guess I'm a bit confused by why James and Alexander decided to go along with Fred's wishes for these setup things. As seen, Capes gives you free reign to demonstrate your resentment of anything you think is crap.

I, too, am curious specifically how James sees that M&M or free-form would have yielded a more rewarding experience.

The lexicon is an experiment that's ongoing. It's more to create a "seed bank" that people can draw on than to put bars in place to limit things. Almost nothing in the Lexicon came up during play.

We had not agreed to any comics code at all for this session.

Sydney Freedberg wrote:

James_Nostack wrote: this would have been an ENORMOUSLY
satisfying session of Mutants & Masterminds or free-form!

Interesting. Can you elaborate why? From what little I know of M&M, it's very far from free-form, so if you can figure out what appeals to you which those two very different things share but which Capes doesn't, we might be onto something.

I'm interested to know: What do you think would have happened if you started at the same starting point, with the same players, and ran under M&M? Under freeform?

Do you think you would have got the same sequence of events, just mediated in another system? Or do you think you would have gotten a completely different story?

For what it's worth, I think the latter.

Well, if we had been playing M&M, there would have been a gamemaster.

If we had been playing freeform, we probably would have been playing under one of the "consent" rules. Here's an example:

http://www.ekkaia.org/rpg/orp/guide.php wrote:
-Character Interaction: Avoid "unblockable" and "forced" actions. If you are playing a character who is attacking or otherwise chasing another character, give them ways to avoid capture. Try to give the other player breathing room. The same goes for playing the defensive character: there should be few (if any) forced actions. Forced actions are, in effect, writing the other player's character without their consent. This is known as power-playing/power-gaming, and is generally not appreciated. The only time forcing actions is acceptable is with the consent of the other player. This can occur when their character is obviously under your character's complete control, or their character is willing to let yours do just about anything. Still, it is best to be avoided. Once again, please try to avoid power-play, as it tends to make RP less fun for those being around a power-gamer.

Yeah, but that's talking about process. Which is fine, and important, but not what I was asking about. Do you think that, if you changed the process in that way, it would have had the same results?

Because if you don't, then saying "Man, I loved those results... I should have just gotten them through a more palatable process!" seems to be missing the point.

I think it's probably impossible to get exactly the same results from a different process. I should have made it clear that was what I was saying.

I should make it clear that we didn't like all of the results. It wouldn't have been a problem, by definition, if we had liked everything that happened.

So no, I really don't think James is saying, "Man, what great results... why couldn't we have done this with M&M?"

Instead, I think what James is getting at is, "You know, if we had been using M&M (with a gamemaster) or FFRP (with a consent rule) these distasteful results probably wouldn't have happened, and we would have kept the good stuff, and it would have been better."

When I've played Capes I've had situations and series of events that would probably not have happened weren't it for Capes' mechanics. I can give one example that immediately springs to mind.

I played Chronos I and Chronos II, a future self of Chronos I, both from the future. Another player had created the young female Indian journalist/blogger Janet, who had left her tribe to try life in the big city. Since she was one of the few women the right age, the future of the tribe kind of depended on her. Now enters the lesbian heroine Defiance, controlled by another player, who selects Janet as her Love exemplar. The players agree to add the free event "Janet has a moment of confidence" (as in trusting someone, not as in believing in yourself).

Ok, the scene was at the not-so-secret headquarters of our heroes. Janet had somehow found out the location and arrived for an interview. Chronos I didn't like that at all, but Defiance was interested in Janet and wanted to show her around. The player of Janet added the free event and people started rolling it up and down. The thing was, I really needed to get rid of some debt on Duty so I started spending it on a side of the conflict with the motivation that it was Chronos' duty towards his mission from the future that made him want to tell Janet the right things.

After lots of rolling with three sides to the conflict and more characters than that involved, there were more characters and conflicts in the scene than this, I managed to resolve it. I described how Chronos II time-jumped to arrange stuff for a dinner and managed to convince Janet to share it, while Chronos I distracted Defiance and the others in another room. Chronos II used the dinner as an excuse to inform Janet of things to come, and of his mission to present time, in a way that set up some things to use in sessions to come. Whether his predictions are right or wrong remains to be seen, and depend a lot on if the other players think they're cool.

My point is that it was obvious that the player of Janet and Defiance, and the rest of us, thought that the free event with the moment of confidence would be between those two. I can only speak for myself, but had we freeformed I would have let them have their moment in order to not block the intentions of the players. Now I intervened with all I had, with lots of interesting twists and turns when Chronos and Defiance tried to secure Janet's attention, which created something we wouldn't have dreamed up otherwise. That was the Capes' system at it's best, according to me.

That's wonderful! I've had plenty of moments like that myself, in Capes.

But it's not moments like that, that you look at the system for ways to improve it.

I think I'm beginning to get a grasp on the problem, even if I have no idea for a solution yet. Tell me if I'm making sense.

The Capes system has no provisions for permanently adding something to the SIS. In M&M the rule-mechanics take care of it. In freeform, there are informal rules which prevent players from messing with each other too much. But in Capes players are explicitly encouraged to mess with each other, but there is no rules-base to prevent that from getting out of hand. This means that you cannot do what the rules encourage you to do, because no matter what you come up with, the other players can negate it on their turn.

I think this may be a problem of presentation. When I've played Capes, I've definitely felt obligated to come up with stuff that makes sense in the SIS. I have avoided using abilities that I couldn't justify (even to the point of losing conflicts), and I've never used free narration to narrate a significant event. That doesn't mean I haven't been competing with the other players. I've used every tool the system gives to try to win conflicts, I've created new conflicts with the specific intention of distracting another player, and I've argued conflicts that I didn't really care about just to get Story Tokens.

James, if you can stomach playing Capes again, try competing for Inspirations and Story Tokens as hard as you can, but treat narrating as if you were playing freeform (i.e. don't narrate without the consent of the other players unless you've won a conflict which specifically allows it).

So let me make sure I have this right, James:

• You intentionally sabotaged the game (via free narration) to prove a point.
• You put forth a creative agenda which you were not interested in getting, and in fact became disheartened when you got it.
• You accepted the entire premise of gameplay begrudgingly, having not gotten what you wanted in the beginning.

I'm not misrepresenting your statements there, right?

Okay,

How were the problems with this gameplay the responsibility of anyone but yourself? Are these problems which should be solved by game design?*

This is completely the "player is a dick" situation which everyone who perceives a problem with Capes has repeatedly assured me we are not talking about. I'm assuredly not implying you're a jerk; I'm merely pointing out that by your own admission you were assuming a dysfunctional posture to break the game. So I don't think this is a legitimate example of how a "good faith" effort to Step On Up can ruin the game.

Are we saying Capes would be better if it had a mechanism for assigning the authority to smack down a player that is spoiling his own fun? (Not sarcasm there, I think it's a valid question. In GMed games it's handled by the GM, and freeform games aren't, AFAIK, truly competitive.)

Perhaps the "competitive" nature of Capes needs to be clarified?

*The word "should" used here deliberately.

Do you REALLY think that James was spoiling his own fun at [05]?

I could be reading this incorrectly:

[01] <Warhawk> (But I want to show something about Capes as a system)

I felt like he wasn't ranting at us so much as into the logs. As such, I felt that it was better handled by actually making a post than by putting it in the log. We already knew what he had to say.

I think you're misreading the situation Larry. While it is true that things might have been better if they hadn't compromised on the initial setup, I don't believe that James is trying to express a problem with the setup. When he was disheartened by his victory, it was not because he was pursuing a goal he was uninterested in - he was pursuing a goal he thought he valued, only to discover that when he achieved it, it no longer interested him.

I think the problem that he ran into is that he was trying to compete at a level Capes doesn't support. I think it might be useful to emphasize that while players are expected to compete at the mechanical level (for inspirations and Story Tokens) they need to cooperate at the level of generating narration.

James: Were you disheartened that you achieved your goal, or disheartened that nobody tried to stop you?

I see a lot of similarities between the (clearly failed) strategy that you pursued to try to get attention in Capes, and a very functional strategy that can be employed in Illusionist play: If you believe that a nominal decision point can (in fact) only go one way (e.g. Doc Trinity cannot be eviscerated and dumped in the Atlantic) then you can get a lot of attention by trying to push the decision the other way, because it forces people to oppose you.

It looks to me as if you were dead certain that people would be lining up to stop Warhawk from invading Krakatoa and killing Doc Trinity. Then, when nobody felt obliged to worry about your threat to turn the game-world upside down, you felt that the whole thing had been wasted effort. What do you think? Right or wrong?

Miskatonic wrote: So let me make sure I have this right, James:

• You intentionally sabotaged the game (via free narration) to prove a point.
• You put forth a creative agenda which you were not interested in getting, and in fact became disheartened when you got it.
• You accepted the entire premise of gameplay begrudgingly, having not gotten what you wanted in the beginning.

I'm not misrepresenting your statements there, right?

James_Nostack wrote: 2. My agenda was to wreack havoc on Krakatoa, which I was quite interested in. It was, however, the only thing about the setting I could possibly imagine myself, as a player, caring about. Upon its completion, the game fell apart for me. There was nowhere else to go. [...]
So, at the meta-game level, people need to be clear on what kind of genre they're telling--unless you are totally indifferent to your audience (which seems to be what Tony advises). So--there needs to be a way that everyone can buy into the story at hand. If they have not bought in fully, they're likely to (perhaps unwittingly) introduce elements that make other players (not necessarily their characters) unhappy.

Sorry. I'm just a generally agreeable guy. :)

Okay, let me step back and try again:

• I take back the sabotage bit. But you did know that your narration would not describe a circumstance leading to resolution of the conflict that Fred controlled (due to And Then), right?
• You interpreted the acceptance of the Event as meaning there was nothing left to fight about. Has subsequent commentary from Fred and Alexander in this thread shown how this was not actually the case?
• You were content to play the Krakatoa setting, but your threshold for disinterest was much lower than it might otherwise have been.


Basically, I'm getting that you want your narration, if it is especially clever, to have an impact on the mechanics. Whereas in Capes, narration is merely to describe the effects the mechanics are having on the SIS, or for scene-setting color.

Is this a more reasonable reading?

Why do you bring in the comment about genre expectations? I don't see anything that violates genre standards in this example.