Love the game..  Finally had a chance to playtest it for rules understanding on three occasions... Once with my wife; once with a friend; and once just on my own acting as several players...  There are three things I'd like to discuss to help me grokk (by the way, I also love Tony; he's created an awesome game AND he uses Heinleinisms casually):

At the beginning of every page is "free narration" until the starter of the page decalres an action, right?  How does the narration work?  What limits are there for this free naration?  How does one decide who's narrating?  Is it a free for all?  Is the only way to stop the madness of the free narration for the starter to declare that action?

I understand that when using abilities to narrate a scene, that it should be the use of that ability that is the primary focus of the narration.  What happens when someone's use of an ability is questionable?  Is this just an honor rule?  If Alex has only a level 5 style "smile that lights up the room" and does a terrible job narrating how it might move along the story (i.e. that ability is NOT the focus of the narration, but the player claims it is) is there any recourse for the other players, or do they just have to call them an asshat and move on?

Along a similiar line; if a character a player is narrating is incapacitated, can the player narrate an ability of the character?  Back to smile lighting up the room; I suppose a character might involuntarilty/unconciously use an ability; is that allowable, or must a use of an ability be based on that character "attempting to use the ability"?  I can see an asshat narrating "The alien shoots Poly Purebread with his deathray and there's a 13 inch diameter hole where her heart and other internal organs used to be" and then the player of Poly Purebread, journalist without powers, just kind of stares at the first player, pondering what event he's going to narrate, 'cause Polly's not gonna be using much of any of her powers is she now!  Once narrated, the action HAS taken place, am I right (assuming no house rules or hero's code to the contrary of course).  Of course there are also dozens of ways to incapacitate someone without killing them, even if you do have a "no killing main character's" rule.  Even IF the character can be made alive again or un-incapacitated, would not their alive-again or un-incapacitated be the focus of their narration?

An addition; what does a player do if he/she is playing a place and the other players just decide to leave?  What recourse has the player at this point?  Again, are they relegated to event duty? 

AND if someone is relegated to declaring events for whatever reason (such as crossing off every single one of their abilities; for example) how does the scene end?  You can't resolve a new event...  There will always be new events in such a case... Can a player "pass" ?

Free narration:  Other than the Not-Yet rule, it is a free-for-all.  The only way to stop it is for the starting player to start.  I have once had to say "Hey ... I'm getting sick of free narration, can we get to the action?" in a PBP game, so I totally recognize that it can be a problem where (either due to medium or due to unfamiliarity among the players) people aren't picking up the "move it along" social cues.

Using Abilities:  Doesn't have to be primary.  It has to be included.  If you call upon the ability "Smile lights up the room" then you can narrate smiling that way while also executing a double-backflip kick with thunder-chi power-bolts.

Incapacitated characters:  Apart from "narrate away the incapacitation" which you've touched upon, there are a host of other more "artsy" narration techniques.  I watched a player at a convention play Major Victory for something like two hours after the brain was pulled out of his body.  "Oh, if only I could deliver my Star Spangled Punch now!  As it is all I can do is flop my ganglia in a feeble attempt to influence events," is a perfectly good narration for using Star Spangled Punch.

Likewise, I've played a character who was not in the same room (or the same planet) as the scene, and narrated my use of powers through the memories and reactions of other characters.  "Remember Zak's hopeful demeanor?  Surely we can't simply leave him to be tortured by aliens.  We must act!"

Passing:  Usually people choose to boost an inspiration.  I've seen a few situations that called for a pass ... when you would increase an inspiration, but you have no check-off abilities left, and don't want to take the debt.

LemmingLord wrote:
At the beginning of every page is "free narration" until the starter of the page decalres an action, right?  How does the narration work?  What limits are there for this free naration?  How does one decide who's narrating?  Is it a free for all?  Is the only way to stop the madness of the free narration for the starter to declare that action?

I understand that when using abilities to narrate a scene, that it should be the use of that ability that is the primary focus of the narration.  What happens when someone's use of an ability is questionable?  Is this just an honor rule?  If Alex has only a level 5 style "smile that lights up the room" and does a terrible job narrating how it might move along the story (i.e. that ability is NOT the focus of the narration, but the player claims it is) is there any recourse for the other players, or do they just have to call them an asshat and move on?

I can see an asshat narrating "The alien shoots Poly Purebread with his deathray and there's a 13 inch diameter hole where her heart and other internal organs used to be" and then the player of Poly Purebread, journalist without powers, just kind of stares at the first player, pondering what event he's going to narrate, 'cause Polly's not gonna be using much of any of her powers is she now! 

Looks like all your questions have been answered. I just wanted to add one thing.

LemmingLord wrote: I can see an asshat narrating "The alien shoots Poly Purebread with his deathray and there's a 13 inch diameter hole where her heart and other internal organs used to be" and then the player of Poly Purebread, journalist without powers, just kind of stares at the first player, pondering what event he's going to narrate, 'cause Polly's not gonna be using much of any of her powers is she now!  Once narrated, the action HAS taken place, am I right (assuming no house rules or hero's code to the contrary of course).

Hans wrote:
What?  I was desparate, give me a break.

Bret wrote:
And so on. I probably shouldn't admit this, but I take a sinister pleasure in using Capes's capabilities for wide open narration to creatively counter asshattery.

My one concern would be that resolving issues with asshattery in-game is passive-aggressive and not as good a solution as talking it out outside of game or even popcorn-throwing.

Bret wrote:
resolving issues with asshattery

Bret wrote:
My one concern would be that resolving issues with asshattery in-game is passive-aggressive and not as good a solution as talking it out outside of game or even popcorn-throwing.

That is a really interesting idea, and one I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around. The idea of using metagame conflicts as fuel for in-game conflicts strikes me as simultaneously dangerous and brilliant. It seems like it would be difficult for me to seperate my frustration with someone doing things that strike me as asshat-ish to gain the sort of distance you need to maintain from in game events to be able to do things like lose a conflict without punching someone in the face (hyperbole, but you know what I mean). Damn I wish I had a regular Capes game going so I could try this stuff out in action.

Or maybe I'm seeing this differently from how you meant it. I can also see you meaning this as, "You want to narrate Poly getting smoked, it's not going to be that easy. Prove it," and throwing down a relevant conflict like the one you described. This doesn't seem to be much recourse against some of the Mass Murderer players I've run into at cons who only drop Conflicts like, "Goal: Kill Poly," and "Goal: Kill Captain Freedom," and so on, but maybe that's just a situation for popcorn throwing.

Bret wrote: My one concern would be that resolving issues with asshattery in-game is passive-aggressive and not as good a solution as talking it out outside of game or even popcorn-throwing.

Eric, this is exactly what I needed to hear and makes perfect sense. I can see in games in the past where I was doing the exact same thing you described you and Tony doing and can see where that was Bad Idea. Thanks!

Bret wrote:
Eric, this is exactly what I needed to hear and makes perfect sense. I can see in games in the past where I was doing the exact same thing you described you and Tony doing and can see where that was Bad Idea. Thanks!

Thanks everyone for your replies..  Good stuff..

If you don't mind, I'll just add another question - how do inspirations work again?

If I have a 1 point inspiration do I add the actual die to the mix almost like a split or does it change the current die to a 1? 

LemmingLord wrote:
Thanks everyone for your replies..  Good stuff..

If you don't mind, I'll just add another question - how do inspirations work again?

If I have a 1 point inspiration do I add the actual die to the mix almost like a split or does it change the current die to a 1? 

You can raise your inspirations??  How do you do that?  And where is that in the rules?  I probably need to reread that section!!

LemmingLord wrote:
You can raise your inspirations??  How do you do that?  And where is that in the rules?  I probably need to reread that section!!

TonyLB wrote:
Incapacitated characters:  Apart from "narrate away the incapacitation" which you've touched upon, there are a host of other more "artsy" narration techniques.  I watched a player at a convention play Major Victory for something like two hours after the brain was pulled out of his body.  "Oh, if only I could deliver my Star Spangled Punch now!  As it is all I can do is flop my ganglia in a feeble attempt to influence events," is a perfectly good narration for using Star Spangled Punch.

Likewise, I've played a character who was not in the same room (or the same planet) as the scene, and narrated my use of powers through the memories and reactions of other characters.  "Remember Zak's hopeful demeanor?  Surely we can't simply leave him to be tortured by aliens.  We must act!"

LemmingLord wrote:
Also, Tony, if you know where I can find those rules on how to increase one's inspirations I'd appreciate it!

Bret wrote:
Looks like all your questions have been answered. I just wanted to add one thing.

LemmingLord wrote: I can see an asshat narrating "The alien shoots Poly Purebread with his deathray and there's a 13 inch diameter hole where her heart and other internal organs used to be" and then the player of Poly Purebread, journalist without powers, just kind of stares at the first player, pondering what event he's going to narrate, 'cause Polly's not gonna be using much of any of her powers is she now!  Once narrated, the action HAS taken place, am I right (assuming no house rules or hero's code to the contrary of course).

Remember, we're talkinga bout comic books here. People die and come back to life all the time. Things I've used, inspired by comics:

- Poly comes back as a zombie!
- That was actually Poly's clone/robot double!
- The superhero's quest to go back in time and stop Poly from ever getting shot!
- Poly is healed using comic book superscience!

And so on. I probably shouldn't admit this, but I take a sinister pleasure in using Capes's capabilities for wide open narration to creatively counter asshattery.

Sindyr wrote:
Or another way to deal with it is if this guy is the asshat you say he is in that example, just narrate her wound away with no explanation offered, because he obviously does not deserve one, only scorn.