I had a session of Capes the other night which made me realize that Capes is like pizza -- even when it's bad, it's good.

Let me give the background. There were four players: myself, Dan, Mara, and Kristina. Dan and I have both played Capes at conventions with Tony, but that's the limit of our experience with the system. I've known Mara for years, as we've been in the same LARP crowd -- almost exclusively V:tM stuff. Krista has little or no experience with table-top RPGs.

So, I was all ready to whip out the cool "Iron Brain" set of related characters that Tony uses for conventions, but the rest of the players wanted to start from scratch. Okay, no problem, I thought. Now, this is where things went awry, in my mind. We come up with four characters, each with a different distinct "feel," ranging from weird/silly to dark and brooding. But, since there's no GM, there's no one to say, "Hey, great concepts guys, but they don't fit into this particular setting." Especially since there's no "setting" until you've started play.

Given the cast of characters, the session was very slapstick and funny. One of the Goals was to ruin a villain's public "evil" image by getting him in a ballerina outfit, or convincing the pulic that he wore at tutu, at least.

At the end of the night, we'd had a session which was enjoyable, but certainly not what I know from experience is possible with Capes. The other players, however, all seemed like they'd had a great session. One even told me that it was the "best gaming session" they'd had in quite a while.

Now, let me be clear: I had fun. There was a lot of laughing and socializing going on. In retrospect, we should have discussed exactly what sort of game we were all looking for, so we'd all be on the same page (no pun intended).

What's fascinating to me is that this was as "bad" as I can imagine a Capes session being, and it was still better than your average RPG session. Heck, it was good enough that we were hours into it without the three smokers calling for a break to grab a smoke. I don't know if this rings a bell for anyone, but it was a somewhat interesting point, so I thought I'd share it.

Your description of the dark & brooding characters being blended with the silly characters makes me think of the Teen Titans series that's running on Cartoon Network right now.  No real interesting thoughts to draw from that really, just the affermation in my brain that silly characters alongside dark characters still results in entertaining stories. 

It also brings to mind something that was floating about in my head while I was working last night.  I can't seem to think of a really good & proper phrase or word for it, but I think being spoiled by the increased fun level of indie games is pretty close to what I had in mind. 

I was thinking of it because of my L5R game writeup from GenCon.  The other three players were having fun (I assume).  Lisa and I were not. 

I also thought of my experience playtesting FH8.  So far, I really dislike my own game.  But Nik thinks it's the greatest thing he's ever played.

So what I'm thinking I'm seeing is players who are blown away by aspects of functional gaming in the same game as players who already expect those forms of functional gaming and are looking for more.

Like:
Player A:  Wow!  We have authority over our character and constantly make meaningful choices!  Yay!
Player B:  Yeah.  Too bad we haven't struck any serious emotional chords tonight.

Oh.  And the cigarette break thing?  Oh yeah, it immediately struck a bell.  I remember one group I was in where you could guage the interest in the session by the break times. 

-Eric

Me, I'll take a cigarette break when running a game. But when I ran In Utero I went for four hours without a smoke.

Save my lungs--make more games.

That sounds like a very cool session.  I am particularly interested to hear (I hope) what happens later, when people no longer view the empowerment of the rules as a huge novelty, but start to take it for granted.

I'm fascinated by this line:

Andrew wrote:
Given the cast of characters, the session was very slapstick and funny.

Eric wrote:
So what I'm thinking I'm seeing is players who are blown away by aspects of functional gaming in the same game as players who already expect those forms of functional gaming and are looking for mor

Like:
Player A:  Wow!  We have authority over our character and constantly make meaningful choices!  Yay!
Player B:  Yeah.  Too bad we haven't struck any serious emotional chords tonight.

TonyLB wrote:
I am particularly interested to hear (I hope) what happens later, when people no longer view the empowerment of the rules as a huge novelty, but start to take it for granted.

TonyLB wrote: Why was this?  It sounds like you had roughly equal proportions of people who wanted slapstick, and people who didn't.  Why did one side win so decisively?

Interesting.  I'm getting flashes of Batman in the slapstick '80s Justice League.  So was the serious character the one they were trying to force into a tutu?  Was that a conflict?

TonyLB wrote:
That sounds like a very cool session.  I am particularly interested to hear (I hope) what happens later, when people no longer view

Andrew wrote:
Given the cast of characters, the session was very slapstick and funny.

Why was this?  It sounds like you had roughly equal proportions of people who wanted slapstick, and people who didn't.  Why did one side win so decisively?

TonyLB wrote:
So was the serious character the one they were trying to force into a tutu?  Was that a conflict?

TheCzech wrote:
I do think that comedy can derail a serious tone while the reverse is less likely.

TheCzech wrote:
I do think that comedy can derail a serious tone while the reverse is less likely.

TonyLB wrote:
That makes a lot of intuitive sense.  I wonder why that is, though... it's not as if comedy has a privileged position in mechanics.  But I agree that people are much likelier to inject comedy into a serious situation than they are to inject serious roleplay into a comedic game.  So, in the gaming psyche, one tends to win out over the other.

Is it because comedy involves not making yourself vulnerable to other players, whereas a serious tone usually involves that sort of vulnerability, putting your own feelings and beliefs up for group judgment?  If I'm in a game whose comedic tone conveys (to me, personally) that other players are treating the game-fiction in a shallow or reckless manner then I'm not going to trust that I can spill my guts on the table and have them handled with respect.

TonyLB wrote: That makes a lot of intuitive sense.  I wonder why that is, though... it's not as if comedy has a privileged position in mechanics.

Joshua wrote:
I think you're dealing with human dynamics, not anything to do with your game.  As someone pointed out, it takes one clown to make a scene into a comedy.  Contrariwise, the only way to make a comedy into a drama is to hurt the clown -- make the consequences of his actions stick, give him something that actually makes him feel rather than simply react.  And nobody likes to hurt clowns (well, most people).

TonyLB wrote:
That makes a lot of intuitive sense.  I wonder why that is, though... it's not as if comedy has a privileged position in mechanics.  But I agree that people are much likelier to inject comedy into a serious situation than they are to inject serious roleplay into a comedic game.  So, in the gaming psyche, one tends to win out over the other.

Is it because comedy involves not making yourself vulnerable to other players, whereas a serious tone usually involves that sort of vulnerability, putting your own feelings and beliefs up for group judgment?  If I'm in a game whose comedic tone conveys (to me, personally) that other players are treating the game-fiction in a shallow or reckless manner then I'm not going to trust that I can spill my guts on the table and have them handled with respect.

TheCzech wrote:
This can be a powerful tool for drama.  I can't help but think of the movie Seven Samurai, where the clownish character ends up being the most poignant and tragic of them all.

T wrote:
Still, the question remains, what is the proper strategy for encouraging seriousness in a game of Capes?

T wrote:
Here is a scenario for you.  Say I am playing Captain Darkity Dark of Darkness.  He's serious.  He's brooding.  He has issues.  So someone introduces "Goal: Captain D prances around in a pink tutu."  My instinct is to make sure I win that conflict, perhaps spending some debt to do so, after all, I want to maintain Captain D's seriousness.

Well, you can always take the fight back to them:

"Goal:  Jester's lack of seriousness leads directly to the death of thousands of civilians."
"Goal:  Jester says or does something that anyone else finds remotely funny." (Preventative)
"Goal:  Reveal the tragic backstory behind Jester's whimsical exterior."
"Goal:  Jester is committed to an asylum and locked away."

There's all sorts of stuff that has a decent chance of engaging anyone who is interested in more than silliness for silliness's sake.  You just have to be willing to challenge their right to freely make jokes, as directly and forcefully as they're challenging your right to be serious.  But, because of all the human dynamics cited previously, people are often unwilling to challenge the right of others to freely make jokes.

I've seen the reverse happen to; comedy games in which the tone has come right down becasue someone has just had gone too far or  maybe the humour has turned to pathos. So basically it cuts both ways.

In my experience people crack jokes not just to relieve tension, but its a fun, healthly and creative endevor which has an immediate payoff.

Those have a good chance of shifting someone who's made the choice to go the silly route lightly, but for someone who insists on a silly tone, they can take a page from Carlin and keep the comic tone going. 

Thousands of civilians dying?  Cosby's Noah's Ark routine.

Noone gets his joke?  Johnny Carson made his comedy career out of getting big laughs out of getting no laughs.

Tragic backstory?  Homey the Clown.

Locked away in an asylum?  Animaniacs.

In short, EVERYTHING is funny, if you're sharp enough and on the ball. 

By "those" I mean the tactics Tony proposed on the previous page.

::sigh:: Edit, we miss you...

TheCzech wrote:
This can be a powerful tool for drama.  I can't help but think of the movie Seven Samurai, where the clownish character ends up being the most poignant and tragic of them all.

TonyLB wrote:
Well, you can always take the fight back to them:

"Goal:  Jester's lack of seriousness leads directly to the death of thousands of civilians."
"Goal:  Jester says or does something that anyone else finds remotely funny." (Preventative)
"Goal:  Reveal the tragic backstory behind Jester's whimsical exterior."
"Goal:  Jester is committed to an asylum and locked away."

Vaxalon wrote:
In short, EVERYTHING is funny, if you're sharp enough and on the ball. 

Any tone can be supported if the players agree to it, tacitly or overtly.  My point is that you can't use the Capes rules to MAKE someone take a different tone, any more than you can make them do ANYTHING in Capes.

Well, sure. No rules ever make anyone do anything, even if the "rules" in question are laws. But the Capes rules sure make you fight for it, if it's important to you, or abondon it right fast, if it's not.

In terms of tone, I'm not sure you're right, but I'd have to actually play a game where that was true.

How can you make me fight to maintain a comic tone, if I'm sharp and on the ball, in Capes?

Yes, but I'm not sure you can make anyone do anything in any game.  I could play DitV as a comedy despite your best efforts to make it serious.  I could do this with any game I can think of if I don't mind being a thoughtless ass.  The point is that some games have a tone built into them and by agreeing to play you agree implicitly to go along with that.  Other games, Capes included, don't have a built in tone or have a set of possibilities.  With these games you need to work out what kind of game you're looking for up front or have some method for negotiation.  Capes has the Comics Code which lists out things you cannot do.  In Universalis you use tokens to negiotiate up front the kind of game you are playing.  In something like GURPS, you simply pick a genre and setting and discuss it among the other players.

If one player's vision of the game is so different from the rest of the group that it is disruptive, you just don't play that particular game with them.  Just like any other game.

Solid answer, Andrew.

Fred, being "sharp and on the ball" to subvert attempts to insert drama is one way of fighting to defend a comic tone.

Andrew:  Do you have some sense of what was driving people to inject humor?  People have put forth a lot of hypotheticals about why it happens generally, but you're the guy with Actual Play under your belt.

Hmm. One player started off with the humor right away, and that was (I believe) because that was how she interpreted the game. The second saw this and jumped in on it because she thought it looked like fun. The third and fourth players just seemed to go along with the flow. Again, being the "fourth" player, this is just my interpretation.

The comment that humor makes you less vulnerable sounds pretty reasonable to me. It was a bunch of people I knew, but who didn't all know each other, so they might not have been comfortable putting themselves out there emotionally. One of the players actually didn't start playing with the rest of the group, instead observing until she felt comfortable jumping in.

Andrew wrote: Hmm. One player started off with the humor right away, and that was (I believe) because that was how she interpreted the game.