The Forge Archives

We played Capes today, and had a lot of fun - this game rocks :)  This post is gonna just be record keeping (since I got tagged with record-keeper).  I'll add other thoughts after this post

Scene 1: A bank robbery
Characters:  Bank Robbers, Police Chief Hayes, The Dark Disciple, Point Blank
Conflicts:
Goal - Bank Robbers Steal the money - won by Bank Robbers
Event - Find out why the bank robbers are here - won by Police Chief Hayes
Goal - Protect the hostages from harm - won by Point Blank
Goal - The city delivers Uranium - won by Police Chief Hayes
Goal - The Bank Robbers escape with the money - won by Point Blank
Event - The villian escapes - won by Police Chief Hayes
Goal - Point Blank makes up with Police Chief Hayes for messing up 2 police cars and opening up the safe. - won by Police Chief Hayes

Scene 2: Disruption at the university labs
Characters: Kid Power, Zor-dan, Police Chief Hayes, Jack Schnell, X-94
Event(3) - Villian makes off with Uranium - won by Police Chief Hayes
Goal(4) - Capture Doctor Seng - won by Jack Schnell
Goal(5) - Capture Jack Schnell- won by Jack Schnell
Event(5) - The science building is reduced to rubble - won by X-94
Goal(6) - (Kid Power) Impress Police Chief Hayes - won by Police Chief Hayes
Goal(6) - Zor-dan protects the helpless humans - won by Zor-dan

Scene 3: The heroes team up
Characters: Jeff Stark, Manshark, Bobby Tripe, Zor-dan, Point Blank, The Dark Disciple
Goal(2) - The Dark Disciple convinces the heroes that he's one of them
Goal(2) - (Point Blank) Get outa trouble - won by Jeff Stark
Event(2) - Build Super Alliance - won by the Dark Disciple
Goal(4) - Supers are subordinate to the Mayors office - won by Bobby Tripe
Event(4) - Clobberin - won by Manshark
Goal(5) - The Dark Disciple controls Bobby Tripes mind - won the the Dark Disciple (with assistance from Bobby Tripe :)
Goal(6) - (Manshark) Eat somebody - won by Point Blank
Goal(6) - Arrest Manshark - won by Point Blank

Character List:
Bank Robbers
Mook-Crusader
Abilities:
Shoot 4            
Rough House 2
Boast 1          
Steal 3
Outnumber 5      
-
Improvised Weapons 2
Obediance 3
(More- but they were lost when the personality was re-used)

Point Blank
Shootist - Angsty Nice Guy
Shoot* 4
Rapid Fire* 5
Ricochet Shot* 3
Pinpoint Accuracy* 2
Extreme Range Shot* 1
-
Chain Reaction* 3
Shoot Equipment* 2
Desperate Effort 4
Do other things while shooting* 1
-
Shy 1
Sincere 2
Wry Humor 3
Justice 3(2) Truth 2 Love 1 Hope 1(1) Duty 2(2)

The Dark Disciple
Magician-Psychotic Loner
Bind Forces/things* 2
Wards and Shields* 5
Summon forces/things* 3
Unleash Artifacts of Power* 1
Know hidden nature of the world* 4
-
Dramatic incantation* 3
Intimidate 4
Screw the rules 2
Runes and sigils* 1
-
Denial 3
Abrasive 1
Confident 2

Chief Hayes
Police-Older but wiser
Communicate 4
Cuffs 2
Shoot 1
Crowd Control 3
-
Understand your limitations 4
Freeze! - 1
Dire Prediction - 3
Cordon off area - 2
-
Insightful 4
Preachy 1
Judgemental 3
Disappointed 2
Exemplar of Duty for Kid Power (Free goal - Kid Power tries to impress Police Chief Hayes)

Zor-dan
Godling-Inhuman
Super-strength* 4
Super-speed* 1
Invulnerability* 3
Flight* 2
-
Casually overpower mortals* 3
Misunderstand Humanity 2
Inspire Awe* 4
Divert Large Flying Objects* 1
-
Curious 2
Confused 3
Logical 4
Superior 1

Kid Power
Brick-Spunky kid
Super-leap* 1
Titanic Punch* 2
Invulnerability* 4
Super-strength* 5
Great Leverage* 3
-
Massive Property Damage* 2
Exceed expectations 1
If it doesn't fit, force it* 3
-
Optimistic 1
Childish 2
Reckless 4
Decisive 3

Jack Schnell
Hunter-Curmudgeon
Tireless Stamina* 4
Ensnare* 3
Razor-keen senses* 2
Find-weakness* 1
-
Perch in a high place* 1
Scoff 5
Predict prey's next move* 4
Brutal realism 3
Exhaust your prey* 2
-
Aggressive 1
Demanding 2
Sarcastic 3
Obsession 1(1) Price 1(1) Power 2(2) Despair 4(2) Fear 1(1)

x-94
Robot-Neurotic
Armor* 3
Rocket Feet* 2
Transform into Machine* 1
-
Plan Ahead 3
Computer Brain* 2
Worst Case Scenario* 1
Massive Property Damage* 4
-
Nervous 3
Apologetic 4
Desperate 2
Understanding 1
Witty 5
Justice 1 Truth 5(2) Love 1 Hope 1 Duty 1

Bobby Tripe
Politician-Sycophant
Anticipate 3
Simplify 1
Organize 2
Weasel 4
-
Pass the buck 5
Toady 4
Inspire Action 2
Apologize 1
Connections 3
-
Spiteful 1
Sly 3
Enthused 2

Manshark
Animal Avatar-Inhuman
Shark Telepathy* 1
Frenzy* 4
Big Shark Teeth* 5
Swimming* 2
Shark Sense of smell* 3
-
Suprise Attack* 3
Misunderstand humanity 1
Tooth-shaped gouges* 4
Ominous circling* 2
-
Confused 2
Cold 3
Superior 1

Jeff Stark
Lawyer-Crusader
Argue 4
Advise 2
Recite 1
Interrogate 3
-
Books full of precendent 1
Face down hypocrites 3
Infectious energy 4
Paperwork 2
-
Inspired 4
Determined 3
Judgemental 2
Frustrated 1
Exemplar of Hope (Kid Power) Duty (Point Blank - free Goal Get outta trouble)

Cool!  I love some of the names (particularly "Jack Schnell", which looks strange in text, but which I assume was pronounced with a heavy german accent to rhyme with "mach schnell").

I'd love to hear a few things about the out-of-game dynamic going on.

[*]Who played the villains?  One player who got a kick out of doing so, or different players each scene?[*]Who created conflicts?  Did people specialize, one player creating 'story-serving' conflicts and one creating 'screw with the players' conflicts?[*]Which conflicts really got people's attention?  'Protect Hostages' or 'Make up with Police Chief'?[/list:u]

Not that this is a big deal, but I think that in the second scene's sixth page, Kid Power did impress Chief Hayes.

Quote from: TonyLBCool!  I love some of the names (particularly "Jack Schnell", which looks strange in text, but which I assume was pronounced with a heavy german accent to rhyme with "mach schnell").

Absolutely!  And there was a particularly funny part of scene two in which the "villainous" Jack Schnell was, with accent thick, disgusted with the superheroes for destroying "this place of learning."  It was a very nice pseudo-ethnic/genre comment.

Quote from: TonyLBWho played the villains?  One player who got a kick out of doing so, or different players each scene?

As the first scene started, Steve created the bankrobbers(V), Larry created Chief Hayes(H), Shane created Point Blank(H) and I created The Dark Disciple(V).  There was great interaction between the players as we all helped flesh out the intricacies of the characters and their interactions.

As Larry created the second scene, he created Zor-dan(H), Shane created Jack Schnell(V), I entered Chief Hayes(H) from the previous scene and Steve created Kid Power(H).  Later, I created X-94(H).

For the third scene, Shane entered Point Blank(H), I entered The Dark Disciple(V?), Steve created Jeff Stark(H) who was an exemplar for a couple of the heroes, and Larry created Bobby Tripe(H?).

Because of the way things had played out at the end the lines between hero and villain were somewhat obscure.  Everyone but Larry played a clearly villainous character at some point, but Larry's Bobby Tripe was in many ways the least protagonistic character in the game.

Quote from: TonyLBWho created conflicts?  Did people specialize, one player creating 'story-serving' conflicts and one creating 'screw with the players' conflicts?

I don't think we saw any kind of specialization like that.  We all created Goals and dabbled with the Events.  In that first scene, I created the Event: the villain gets away.  No one thought it sucked so we just ran with it.  But also, no one claimed a side or even rolled the dice for several pages.  It wasn't interesting to anyone but it did constrain the other conflicts to some degree and that was worthwhile just to see how it shaped our groupthink.

Quote from: TonyLBWhich conflicts really got people's attention?  'Protect Hostages' or 'Make up with Police Chief'?

That's hard to say.  To some extent the order of completion is tied to the level of interest, but not without fail.  Things like Point Blank making up with the Chief and Kid Power impressing the Chief seemed to get more attention that I would have guessed.  Also, how do you measure?  There were conflicts where only two people were acting, but everyone was paying attention and others where everyone was contributing die-rolls and splits and stuff.

This was our second or third meeting (having played Donjon before) and I felt like we were really grooving with each other.  We'll be playing at least once more before moving on.

Quote from: Christopher Weeks

Quote from: TonyLBWhich conflicts really got people's attention?  'Protect Hostages' or 'Make up with Police Chief'?

That's hard to say. .... Things like Point Blank making up with the Chief and Kid Power impressing the Chief seemed to get more attention that I would have guessed.

I think this happens a lot in Capes: "Screw the A-Plot (e.g. giant wallaby destroying downtown, evil supercomputer mind-controlling world leaders), we want to invest resources and energy in the B-plot (e.g. Mary Jane finally gets the nerve to ask Billy to the dance, Joe impresses the Professor)." It'd probably be the ideal game to play Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Quote from: Christopher WeeksAs the first scene started, Steve created the bankrobbers(V), Larry created Chief Hayes(H), Shane created Point Blank(H) and I created The Dark Disciple(V).....As Larry created the second scene, he created Zor-dan(H), Shane created Jack Schnell(V), I entered Chief Hayes(H) from the previous scene and Steve created Kid Power(H).  Later, I created X-94(H).... [etc. etc.]

Wow. Hence the heavy use of the "click-and-lock" templates, I presume: You guys were just throwing new characters down on the table like poker players throwing down cards.

Question (and subquestions):
What preparation, if any, did you do pre-game besides "well, it's a superhero comic"? Any character concepts? Plot ideas? Setting thoughts? Or did you just grab the rulebook and go?
And in the end, did you wish you'd done more prep, or did you have more fun making it up as you went along?

QuoteWhat preparation, if any, did you do pre-game besides "well, it's a superhero comic"? Any character concepts? Plot ideas? Setting thoughts? Or did you just grab the rulebook and go?
And in the end, did you wish you'd done more prep, or did you have more fun making it up as you went along?

A little bit of discussion beforehand that we weren't trying to do anything super dark and edgy. That's it.
We just went with the default "1950's Comics Code" presented in the rulebook. It worked well.
Steve came up with the starting situation of "Bank Robbery."

EVERYTHING else emerged on the fly through the game system. We did a lot of kibbutzing on each player's turn; I think we were in a cooperative mood. Once everyone has the system down, though, I'd like to play a little more competitive, which much greed about one's own creative agenda. :-)

Claiming conflicts was a really interesting mechanic. For instance, in the fight at the university, everyone else kept putting attention into Impress Chief Hayes. This didn't jibe with MY creative agenda of "Uh hey guys,  can we deal with the bad guys before we worry about who we want to suck up to?"  (Yet somehow my not getting my way was totally cool and fun anyway. )

Conversely, in the last scene Steve introduced the Manshark clobberin' encounter. I played a little more strategically this time.  I focused on the related conflicts of Bobby Tripe's goal to make the new super team subordiate to the mayor's office (a shameless PR coup) and Dark Disciple trying to control Bobby Tripe's mind. After Chris staked a bunch of Debt on this latter goal, I intentionally threw the conflict and racked up a bunch of Story Points. I let Chris do some of the work in pushing Tripe's success in his political goal, since now it dovetailed perfectly with his creative agenda for Dark Disciple. I left Steve to marshall his resources to oppose Tripe. With that out of the way, I burned a story point to bring in Zor-Dan, who quickly whomped Manshark. (Super-strength on one of the dice that Point-Blank had already split.) What might have been a threating encounter instead became an absurd outbreak of random disorder going on in the background -- Bobby Tripe and Jeff Stark were so wrapped up in their shouting match over the fate of the supers they didn't even react to the evil monster who had burst through the wall.

(Okay, I didn't really plan it that way, but it sure LOOKS ruthless in hindsight.)

I kept trying to drag in kewl stuff I had seen in the playtest, like making up the cover first, but in hindsight I see why some of these elements were sent to the bit bucket, since this didn't work nearly as smoothly as the stuff that made the cut.

I might want to try something more high-concept, philosophically, at some point. But I know I could happily get a lot of milage off of the current "generic supers" mode of play as it is.

One other thing on game prep:

Steve, Shane, and I each came to the table with a pile of Click-and-Lock cards already made. Chris brought color-coded mini poker chips and matching paper clips (for conflict ownership). I brought rubber cement and Shane had a removable gluestick. Steve had blank index cards. So in terms of props, we were very well prepared. This made click-and-lock chargen work a breeze.

Oh wow... I'm lovin' that a whole bunch.

Partly the colored paper-clips (which I am totally stealing, as of now, to replace my clumsier ad-hoc use of trivial-pursuit wedges).  But mostly the idea that three players would each do that amount of prep-work.  Very cool.

One thing I'd kinda like to do differently next time is more non-conflict roleplaying.  I think we tended to skip to conflicts so fast that some characters got very short shrift (I'm thinking of Zor-dan, and X-94 here, especially, but Kid Power probably qualifies too).  Also, we concentrated very much on super activities, and paid little to no attention to secret identities.  Next session, I'd like to see if we can't bring that into the mix a bit more.  I think maybe we focused on high conflict scenes a bit much - how frequently do you see scenes with only 1 or 2 conflicts?

I very rarely see scenes with only 1 Conflict.  I occasionally see ones with as few as two, but those rarely go more than a page or two.

I guess the question (in my mind) is why you would want a non-conflict scene.  When you can create Conflicts like "Goal:  Work up the nerve to say something to high-school hunk Bobby Brennan" and "Goal:  Stick to the literal truth while still keeping my super-identity secret from Uncle Morty," why wouldn't you take advantage of that opportunity?

That's not what I meant - I guess I'm assuming that non-action scenes would be lower conflict.  All the scenes we had contained a definite hero/villian conflict which people focused on.  As a result, we've seen very little about X-94 (for example).  It showed up, saved some people, and that was about it.  I know it's neurotic, because I saw the click-n-lock, but I don't think it's even actually spoken.  I suppose we could see more of it's personality in a scene devoted to a non-combat interaction, but I was thinking maybe we should be doing more RPing between pages - just to help establish personality and such.

Steve

Quote from: Grover...I guess I'm assuming that non-action scenes would be lower conflict....

You might be surprised. In playtest (with slightly different rules. I admit), the reverse was true: action scenes had one or two big conflicts ("capture the villain," "defuse the bomb") and everyone spend their turn desperately trying to pump up their side of those conflicts; personal-interaction scenes had a slower pace and therefore people felt they had time and turns to spare to declare new events/conflicts (who impresses whom, how people feel about what's going on), creating a lot more complexity.

And I'd agree with Tony: In Capes, given that you're rewarded for either winning or intelligently losing a conflict, there's no reason not to define what's happening in mechanics terms. "Just roleplay it" is wasting your opportunities to rack up those precious Inspirations, Debt, and Story Tokens!

Hello,

Grover, I'm getting the idea that you're equating, or at least associating, "conflict" with "combat."

One of the things I like to point out about Capes is that the first huge example of play concerns the heroes bitching at one another while working out. There's no combat. There's no hitting. There isn't even any threat of hitting. But it's a big ol' conflict and gets resolved, in detail, using the rules - and it's chock-full of all that "role-playing" (i.e. speaking in the character's voice, bringing up dramatic feelings, etc) that you're talking about.

Best,
Ron

I actually greatly enjoy that "role-playing" activities or whatever you want to call non-combative stuff is attached to a conflict. Comic book readers don't want to endure a multi-page monologue to develop character. Character is revealed by dynamic, exciting stuff. Something is always at stake, even if that does not involve bodily harm. Very faithful genre simulation.

Capes is the first RPG I've played that sings as a competitive game, a genre simulation, and a shared narrative creation process all at the same time. I haven't played any other Post-GNS Model stuff yet, so I don't know  how other recent offerings play, but Holy Crap, this is the Supers El Dorado!

I have a hunch that as players develop competencies with how to "win" at the game mechanics, the character development stuff and plotlines will also get more fun. We'll see...

I like the way Point Blank's character came out in the first scene.  He starts out crashing a hostage situation, he shoots up the place (the bank), and finally smashes a police car while capturing the bad guys.  He quickly became the irresponsible good guy.  Later, the lawyer character fit perfectly as his exemplar of Duty.

    What was great about the ending of the first session is that the good guys are in real trouble, but that the game is better that way.