Looking at the comics, many of them are teams - the X-men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, etc.  And while they do go up against villain teams, its common for them to fight a single powerful foe - like Dr. Doom.

In the Capes system, four heroes against one villain will kick his ass very easily.

In the Fantastic Four universe, when the FF go up against Dr. Doom, even when he has no henchmen or other aids around, it is a pretty even match.

The first question I want to ask is what does everyone think of the idea of playing the Fantastic Four as a single character, instead of as four.

However, the real question I want to ask is how do you have an especially powerful villain that requires a team of heroes to defeat? One which is as powerful as story driving as four normal Capes heroes?

Hello Again,

If I may offer a slight shift in concept.  From reading your posts, I think one of the things you are getting hung up on is the idea that this character or that character "should be" this way or that way BEFORE the game begins.  It's the idea that you create a villain and YOU decide before play even begins, "This guys, tough, this guy should require the entire Fantastic Four to beat him."  This is next to impossible in Capes.  Instead, you play that villain with all your heart and soul, and MAYBE it turns out, "Holy crap. this dude is a bad ass, who requires an entire team!" and maybe it turns out that he's a wennie wanna-be villain.

Believe me, I had this villain called Reverend Eden.  I was all set for him to be this earth shattering hell fire and brimstone villain.  But I failed to play him well.  He got bowled over by heroes and even his own henchman across only a few scenes where he failed to so much as establish a base of operations, yet alone bring about the apocalypse.  Oh, well. 

You play Capes when you are willing to allow the play itself to reveal things to you about the characters.  You have to leave your preconceptions of what "should happen" at the door.  That's just totally incompatible with Capes design.

With that said, the way for a single a villain to become that unstoppable force is Debt and Story Tokens.  It turns out that Debt is a GOOD THING.  Even when you're overdrawn, in play, the impact is minimal.  Amass Debt.  Amass Story Tokens by picking your battles carefully.  Then bring the full weight of that down on the other players.

Jesse

I take your point - I guess your answer is that in Capes, you simply can't create a Villain that is four times more powerful than a Hero.

That while in other rpg's you can design a villain that requires 4 Heroes to beat, in Capes, everything else being equal (all players are equally smart, equally cunning, have equal debt and story tokens to start with, etc) 2 Heroes will most always beat 1 Villain and there is not in Capes any way around that.

So I guess you simply can't have a Villain that (all other things being equal) a single Hero *doesn't* have an even chance of beating.

Well, it's good to know that even a cool game like Capes has some stories that other games tell better - even if Capes is becoming my favorite overall. :)

Sindyr wrote:
Well, it's good to know that even a cool game like Capes has some stories that other games tell better - even if Capes is becoming my favorite overall. :)

I think we are fundamentally saying the same thing, in different ways.

Thanks for helping me out with this.

Sindyr wrote:
Looking at the comics, many of them are teams - the X-men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, etc.  And while they do go up against villain teams, its common for them to fight a single powerful foe - like Dr. Doom.

In the Capes system, four heroes against one villain will kick his ass very easily.

In the Fantastic Four universe, when the FF go up against Dr. Doom, even when he has no henchmen or other aids around, it is a pretty even match.

The first question I want to ask is what does everyone think of the idea of playing the Fantastic Four as a single character, instead of as four.

However, the real question I want to ask is how do you have an especially powerful villain that requires a team of heroes to defeat? One which is as powerful as story driving as four normal Capes heroes?

I love your ideas!  Especially #2, but the others ones too.  Thanks!

jburneko wrote:
If you're trying to create a *specific story arc* or a *specific kind* of story in advance of play itself, you will fail, regardless of what the details of that arc or kind of story is.

Hans wrote:
2) have the villain on multiple character sheets.  For example, "Dr. Doom", plus the non-person characters "Dr. Doom's Armor" and "Dr. Doom's Advanced Technology".  Someone would have to pay story tokens for the extra sheets, or you could also have these sheets under the control of different players.

Here's the real trick to playing a good villain in Capes:

Set the heroes against each other.

Drop a Story Token to throw down a conflict that they both care more about winning than stopping you.  Something like "Event: Reed Richards apologizes."  Bam!  You've got a mad fight between the heroes for control over that, and you can waltz off with "Goal: Dr. Doom conquers Latvia" easily.

yrs--
--Ben

Sindyr wrote:
How about a character on multiple Character Sheets:
Dr. Doom's Cunning (12 Abilties)
Dr. Doom's Resources (12 Abilties)
Dr. Doom's Powers (12 Abilties)
Dr. Doom's Luck (12 Abilties)

Thank you Hans - and Ben, interesting strategy.  I hope I soon am able to actually play the game and start trying things like that out.

Capes has a lot of balancing factors that keep conflicts from becoming too one-sided.  If I am Doctor Doom against four players each playing one of the Fantastic Four, I will likely lose any conflict they want to beat me on, but the rules conspire to keep that from happening.  Under that dynamic, story tokens flow from them to me, so while I may win no conflicts, they don't get any story tokens and I potentially get a bunch.

So what is likely to happen is that one or more of the other players is going to want in on some of that gravy, and they can do that in several ways.  First, at the beginning of the scene, they can grab other characters to fight on the villain side.  These can be quick non-debt characters like "innocent bystanders" or "bank robbery"...also handy for debt-free reactions. 

Second, and more importantly, they can introduce conflicts to challange characters other than Doctor Doom.  "Goal: Ben Grimm respects Reed Richard's leadership", etc.  With them expending resources on these conflicts, they can get story tokens but will have fewer resources free to oppose me.  In fact, if I as the Doctor Doom player want some more narrative power, I can introduce these conflicts myself and hope people latch on.

If none of this happens and the imbalance persists, the scene will end quickly because it is uninteresting.  As people play the game more and start to understand the nuances, quick scenes tend to no longer happen by accident.  In fact, it even gets hard to do quick scenes at all because players start to instinctively work to make every scene more interesting.

Eris - this is awful.  The more I hear about the working of this damn game, the more I want to play it!

(grin)

Don't know if I will be able to find another 2-4 people in my area, but doing my darndest - including using all the web based player finding tools I can.

Very, very interesting post, Eric. Thanks.

Hans wrote: 2) have the villain on multiple character sheets....

Sydney wrote:
....Introduce a bunch of sidekicks / minions, ideally with Debt (Undifferentiated  is fine)....
...Create a character that's not a person, but a powerful artifact with a will (and usually Debt) of its own -- e.g. Sauron's Ring of Power, Elric's sword Stormbringer, even a fiery nimbus of power...
...the base character is a were-wolf (or were-dragon....), so when s/he transforms, the beast-form is introduced as a separate character with its own abilities -- and even its own Debt...
....Introduce a situation character that represents your base character's situational advantages, like "Ambush!" or "My tactical genius"....

Sydney wrote: Tony used these to terrifying effect in a recent game: "Goal: Target my character with any kind of attack" to prevent anyone hurting him, "Goal: Slow my character's progress towards his goal" to prevent anyone stopping him," and "Goal: Predict my character's behavior" to render it nigh-impossible to narrate use of a time-traveller's foreknowledge against him. You could also use these offensively, e.g. "Goal: Cease writhing in agony at the piercing whine of The Amazing Shrill" or "Goal: Avoid any blow"

Having just seen your other thread:

The thing is, "many Story Tokens = many characters = many actions" is not, in fact, a sure-fire way to win when you want to. Believe me; I've played in, gosh, dozens of Capes sessions -- I live near Tony, don't be jealous -- and I've been a frequent, frequent user of this tactic. And it's a good tactic. It is, as you say, the most efficient use of Story Tokens: spend one Story Token now, get one additional die to roll this turn and every turn until the end of the scene.

But! It is not necessarily the most effective use of Story Tokens, because it only gives you those multiple actions during your turn. Once it's someone else's turn, and you're back to Reacting, you still have just the one reaction; and once everyone's taken their regular turn, and people are buying extra actions, then you're back to buying them at the "one Story Token = one action" exchange rate.

"But if I have so many actions in my regular turn, surely I can make sure I control everything and won't have to worry about anything afterwards!" Well, maybe. In my personal experience -- wow. So very much not. Again and again and again, I've had armadas of characters, only to have some crucial conflict still slide out of reach...unless I spend just one more Story Token for one more action. If the other players are on the ball, they can put things out there for you to want to win almost as fast as you can increase your ability to win them.

And maybe you do win everything you want. Congratulations! Now you've got fewer Story Tokens, and you're probably staked Debt in order to split your dice* and win things, so your Debt is reduced and your opponents have a bunch of Story Tokens. Guess what happens next scene?

* Because if you don't stake any Debt on a conflict, and your opponents do stake two (or more), you only get one die to their two (or more). And the odds are very poor for one die, however many times you get to reroll it, to beat two dice at even moderate values. The odds are impossible if one of those two dice is a six, of course.

Tony used these to terrifying effect in a recent game: "Goal: Target my character with any kind of attack" to prevent anyone hurting him

Sydney wrote:
The thing is, "many Story Tokens = many characters = many actions" is not, in fact, a sure-fire way to win when you want to.