I had a couple of ideas that I wanted to spitball off of some of the experienced players here.

One of my friends actually reads the forums WAY more than myself and told me about an idea that had come up about playing a superteam or duo as a single character. Now, I did not care for that idea myself, because the conflict inherent in such a tightly bound team is pretty much nullified by that. However, I did think of a way to present the idea that certain parings of characters work together.

My idea was that you have a pair of characters or a team and, if they are in the same team, then a player can introduce the Situation: Teamwork( Character A + Character B). This situation could have actions/powers which are all interdependant on the different characters in the team. It could even be interesting if the "team leader" player took this as their character to play during a scene where they weren't there to present the hard drilling and throurough teamwork that they have been trained in. Thoughts?

My second idea was centered around the idea of a Tick type character. Really any character with a delusional world view. I thought that, possibly, the best way to represent the type of detachment from reality and child like mindset that the Tick has would be to have a non-person character to represent that, sometimes, self-defeating portion of them. To use the Tick as an example, I would create a "location" and call it "The Tick's World" with actions like "Things are Black and White" (his view that heros are heros and villians are villians) or "Money Isn't Real" (his innate ability to never really grasp that things have a cost) or "Citizens Are Thankful" (his inabbility to see that, sometimes his help is not wanted).

In some cases the delusion could work for him and some cases it could work against him and often can take either side of a conflict. It could even be exemplared to him to give it a second free conflict (since things and locations get one for free). Thoughts on this one?

Hi there,

the recent thread 'Tiny Teams and Arch Villainy' ended up discussing the sort of situation that you describe in the first question. For a team or pair of characters, it's  perfectly workable to have each character represented as a Capes Character, but also have thier Team as a character on it's own. This could be either a positive thing for the team members (tricks, stunts they perform together, historical experiences that give them collective strength and unity) or could be a bad thing (arguments, reasons for distrust, situations that will spark problems). Depending on which way this was chosen it could either played for or against them. This is a very cool idea.

The second quesiton came up during the abortive Capes pbem game. One of the characters thier had electrical powers and had the neat exemplar that was something like (Jolts Addiction To Power). The exemplar was a non-person character that covered the characters desire for more electrical power and his inability to control his own powers when juiced up. Although it didn't really see action, it's something I'd definately use in a game again.

Both really nice ideas, and I think in both cases having the non-person character worded in such a way as to be either good or a bad thing would really help.

I'd like to also point out that Tick's World would be a shared Exemplar.  Arthur has an important relationship with it too ("Recurring Goal:  Live a normal life").  In fact, many of the best scenes from the Tick are simply Tick, Arthur and Tick's World playing against each other.

I'm the friend in question that reads the forums wwaayy too much, though Tony always seems to have a reply in a couple of hours of posting....wondering how much he reads them.  ;)

Stickman's response to the problem of being able to demonstrate rifts in the team with one character is dead on for me.  Once again I feel like I never give Capes enough credit for doing things.  It never honestly occured to me that the team could simply be used by someone else to resolve a "negative" conflict.  It makes perfect sense in hindsight though.  Capes seems to produce a lot of "holy shit" moments in these forums, from Kryponite as a character/enviorment, to doing entire teams as a character.  I almost feel like there needs to be a "Capes Primer" to teach everyone how they can do really cool things with just the base rules, kinda like what Ron does with Sorcerer with the supplemental books.

Tony, I absolutely agree! I am such a huge fan of the Tick comics because, for me, the Tick and the world he lives in shows both the absurdity of being a super hero in direct opposition to the realities of a world where they exist. The conflict between those opposed items are the source of a tight tension that supports the comedy and gives it a meaning beyond the funny.

I really want to actually play Capes, as does my friend that posted above, but we just have to get one of our friends to read enough of it to at least understand the terms. It took me a while just to get my mind around the idea that you are never rolling to win the conflict, only to win the right to tell how it ends, even if that goes against a character you control. Before I get them into that, I at least want them to get the concept of Conflicts, Inspirations, Debt and Story Tokens under their belt.

Mike Blank

Mike,

I wouldn't worry about getting the third guy to read the book at all.  If he's game to play, sit down and start playing.  Two nights ago I sat down with two of my friends who haven't even read page 1 of the book.  Use the click and locks to make characters.  Sit down at the table.  Throw the first Conflict out there and start.  Don't even explain anything first.  Do it as you get to it.  Trust me.  It works.

Ack... I just realized that I took this thread in a totally different direction from where it started.  Sorry for hijacking it.