I am pumped. For the first time I will be playing multiple sessions of Capes in a short-term campaign. My friend Jere is home from college from break, so while he's here me and his brother Josh are going to do a semi-regular game. The nice thing I realized last night when we were talking about when we'll play again is that you can easily pick up Capes and just run a scene or two if you can't play for hours.

We sat down to play and Jere suggested talking over some general concepts before we played and decide what kind of story we were going to tell. I was like, "Nah, I like seeing what happens, and Capes gives you such narrative power that you can easily steer the game towards what you want to see in play." We went with my preferences and I think things turned out fine, but maybe Josh and Jere can say whether they think things would have gone better if we had this pre-game talk.

Play was bumpy. We had all played before in a short one-shot, but I assumed that Josh and Jere remembered everything and then some. And I made some rules mistakes too. We should've done a quick rules brush-up before play, but we had the major concepts down and I felt like, after 4 scenes, we were a bit more adept.

We didn't really talk much about the game as it was being played, which I really need to do more. I think I told Jere at one point that the Thresher, a character he created, was really cool, and that he narrated the resolution of a conflict in a cool fashion, but I want to get more of the chatter rolling. I always find a game a lot more fun when we're talking about the game while we play it.

We need to work on our Conflict Creation finesse. I think we need to work on creating conflicts that everyone or at least one other person gives a damn about (in the last scene of the game we just ended the scene with two Conflicts on the table because it was getting late and nobody gave a crap about them) and creating Conflicts that are about more than our character "winning" ('Goal: Kill X' and 'Goal: Subdue X' are popular, but bland and sometimes irritating conflicts). And sometimes we set down Goals that we as players didn't really want.

Example:

Spider (female superhero with metal armor that has 8 long, metal claws built into it - think Invader Zim) is confronting the Matron Mother and a demon she summoned, the Thresher (this nasty spiky bladed thing). I created a Goal for Spider, "Kill the Thresher." After winning this, I realized that I, Bret, didn't want this to happen at all even though Spider might. The Thresher was really cool! So even though I had an explicitly stated Goal, I ended up Narrating a different outcome (she beat the crap out the Thresher and then showed it mercy). This was just an instance of me creating a Conflict and then after winning it realizing, "Wow! This is a horrible goal! It's not interesting at all!" A Goal I made later that was a lot better was "Goal: Turn the Thresher against Matron Mother." Now *that* was sexy.

This is something that I imagine will get better with play, and once we have more defined ideas about where we want the plot to go and how we want characters to develop.

Another thing that happened was Jere framed a scene and no Conflict emerged. It was by no means an unsuccessful Scene, but I was worried that maybe Jere felt like he wasted his turn.

This was also the first time that I really used Debt. Holy cow is that a great idea. You bribe the other players to let you win Conflicts that matter to your character.

Hopefully we'll play again tonight for at least a scene or two.

Bret wrote: This was also the first time that I really used Debt. Holy cow is that a great idea. You bribe the other players to let you win Conflicts that matter to your character.

Bret wrote: We sat down to play and Jere suggested talking over some general concepts before we played and decide what kind of story we were going to tell. I was like, "Nah, I like seeing what happens, and Capes gives you such narrative power that you can easily steer the game towards what you want to see in play." We went with my preferences and I think things turned out fine, but maybe Josh and Jere can say whether they think things would have gone better if we had this pre-game talk.

Bret wrote: I think I told Jere at one point that the Thresher, a character he created, was really cool, and that he narrated the resolution of a conflict in a cool fashion, but I want to get more of the chatter rolling...

Bret wrote: 'Goal: Kill X' and 'Goal: Subdue X' are popular, but bland and sometimes irritating conflicts....I created a Goal for Spider, "Kill the Thresher." After winning this, I realized that I, Bret, didn't want this to happen at all even though Spider might. The Thresher was really cool! So even though I had an explicitly stated Goal, I ended up Narrating a different outcome (she beat the crap out the Thresher and then showed it mercy). ....A Goal I made later that was a lot better was "Goal: Turn the Thresher against Matron Mother." Now *that* was sexy.

Sydney wrote:
Traditional RPGs are very good at resolving "I beat you up" or "I kill you" goals. In Capes, those are pretty useless, because (a) there's no rule that says you can't bring a "dead" character back to life on your next turn (happens in comic books all the time!) and (b) these goals just (try to) remove a character from the story -- they don't change the character, which means, ironically, they're not really a threat to anyone's idea of that character!

Bret,

Do you think there is a point where we talk about our games too much and play them too little?

I've been thinking about that quite a bit at my gaming table recently and wondered what you thought.

Sounds like you hit the perfect balance that night, though.  Sometimes its just in the air.

Judd,

That's an interesting question. It seems like without in-game events do drive the conversation, eventually it would begin to falter, but I can imagine that there could be games where the metagame discussion is so prevalent that the actually game progresses very slowly. This seems like an unlikely situation, though. Maybe someone else has Actual Play where this has occurred that they could bring up, but I don't.

I've seen arguments disrupt and overwhelm a game, but I think that's different from what you're talking about which - what we would typically think of as healthy metagame discussion taking over a game, whereas the arguing is generally just a breakdown of the social situation.

Bret wrote:
I've seen arguments disrupt and overwhelm a game, but I think that's different from what you're talking about which - what we would typically think of as healthy metagame discussion taking over a game, whereas the arguing is generally just a breakdown of the social situation.

I find it unlikely that it would happen since metagame discussion emerges from gameplay, so in a situation where gameplay is being smothered by discussion eventually the discussion would dwindle.

It seems like it would be self-correcting.

Bret wrote:
I find it unlikely that it would happen since metagame discussion emerges from gameplay, so in a situation where gameplay is being smothered by discussion eventually the discussion would dwindle.

It seems like it would be self-correcting.

Or, quite possibly, if the discussion never dwindles then you have discovered that your group isn't really a gaming group:  they're an RPG Theory group, and they just didn't know it.

Oh, and "Turn minion X against master Y" has never yet failed me as a goal.  I'm glad you had fun with it.  Everybody loves that one, win or lose, whatever way the sides break out.  "Seduce mistreated sidekick (and is there any other kind?) to the side of evil" is the same thing, just morality-flipped.  I always keep an eye out for these in convention games, they're such reliable winners.

Out of interest, which side was Thresher on?  Loyal to Mother Matron, rolling on her side?  Or fighting for his own freedom?  Or something else?

It was pointed out to me last night that Matron Mother was not actually the name of the villain, it was Mother Magdalene. Matron Mother is some sort of Drow position, which is weird because I never played D&D.

Anyhow, Thresher was on Mother Magdalene's side initially - we haven't totally worked out their story yet, but we have this vague sense that he's a demon she summoned, and there was this weird maternal relationship between them. After Thresher had killed all the Jamaican gang members Mother Magdalene was petting him and cooing. Spider then corrupted that, and he fled as Mother Magdalene saw a better tool for her purposes - Spider.

I'm actually interested in pursuing a weird love triangle plot with Spider, Thresher, and Mother Magdalene. Hopefully I can develop that the next time we play.

On behalf of the viewing public, let me be the first to say:  "Eeeeeeuuuuuughggggggh!  That's ... that's just icky on every conceivable level!"

And also, "Yes, you should totally do that."

I just wanted to jump in here and post my thoughts on the game.  I'm Jere as Bret calls me. 

I agree with Bret on most of what he's posted, here so far.  I think that our rustiness will go away and we'll begin to really build off of each other once we get things going.  This first session was just us feeling out the system again, and getting a feel for the three way group dynamic.  This is I think the first game in which just the three of us have played.  Usually we have at least one more player.  Still, by the end of the first session I think we were all working with the system much more smoothly.

As for the conflict issue, this was a bit of a revelation for me.  When I first came to the table I was very much in the mode of thinking purely in the physical sense when it comes to conflict.  It took a bit to realize that oftentimes this can fall flat.  I think that in the future I'll be more mindful of this and strive to create some more interesting conflicts. 

One confusion I find that I have with this game is that it seems very hard to determine in what order we should be resolving goals.  For example at one point I had a goal down for the Thresher that was "Protect Mother Magdelena."  In the same turn Bret had a goal down for Spider that was "Turn the Thresher against Mother Magdelena."  We both resolved those goals in our favor during the same turn.  I'm unsure of how these goals can both resolve favorably for the person who won the conflict, as they seem to run counter to one another.  In the end, I had the Thresher just walk away from the fighting that was taking place between Spider and Mother Magdelena.  The was pretty cool in some ways, but it was not the original intent I had for the Thresher's actions. 

I guess my question is,  how can you resolve two conflicting goals that are achieved in the same turn?  I can think of more extreme examples where you could really get into a tight spot narratively.

Jeremiah wrote: at one point I had a goal down for the Thresher that was "Protect Mother Magdelena."  In the same turn Bret had a goal down for Spider that was "Turn the Thresher against Mother Magdelena."  We both resolved those goals in our favor during the same turn....I guess my question is,  how can you resolve two conflicting goals that are achieved in the same turn? 

See, I take things from so much more of a simple angle than Sydney.  We have just learned that Thresher is no longer a person who is on Mother Magdalene's side.  At the same time we learn that he still is a person who wants to protect her.

It's hard to protect somebody at the same time you fight against them.  That's cool.  He wants to defeat her, but he doesn't want her to be hurt.  Man, that's just a whole heap of tragedy waiting to happen.

It is also worth mentioning that one thing we have discovered in our campaign of Capes is that there really is no such thing as incompatable goals.  Okay, sure there is in theory, but in practice the ones you think are in conflict really aren't.  There is always a way to narrate both.  In fact, when two goals that appear to work at cross purposes resolve, that is when you get some of your best moments.