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Originally Posted by TonyLB
1) Okay. You don't see how it works. 'course, my sense is that you don't have the rules and haven't played the game, so that's not all that surprising. But reassure me ... you have at least viewed the flash demo and read the Capes Lite ruleset, right? Because otherwise we won't have much of a foundation upon which to discuss things.
Wouldn't it just?
2) Hey, I still stand by Story Tokens (in context) as doing the trick. Your whole "Rape me to rape you" example is a straw-man, whether you know it or not.
What Story Tokens do is to provide a reward that can only be sought through the classic two-step that GMs undertake each time they throw up some adversity: - Make a player care, deep down, about beating you and then
- Give that player a sporting chance to beat you, and accept defeat if it comes.
You seem to object to losing on principle, because it's going to compromise your vision of at least one of the characters you're playing. But that's pretty much par for the course in GMing, isn't it? If you were a GM in any other game (okay, except Paranoia, My Life with Master and kill puppies for satan) you would know that some of your NPCs are probably going to get chewed to mulch in order to satisfy the desire of the players to be victorious. You'd accept that as the cost of running the game. If you didn't, you'd be soundly lambasted for dominating the players with your untouchable cast of GMPCs.
3) So, same deal here: If you're all going to share the role of the GM then people had better do the important things that the GM does for the game. Somebody had better be giving players a chance to shine in the places they care about ... to rescue the hostages, kiss the girl, astonish a grateful nation, etc., etc.
Now you can get people to do that one of two ways. One way is to say "You have to do this. It's your responsibility, whether it gets you anything or not." It's the classic selfless-GM syndrome, which I'm not real fond of. The other way is to say "Hey, you don't have to do this, but if you do then you get candy (or sex, or Story Tokens, or whatever incentive applies)." That's the approach that Capes takes, and it works wonders. |
1) No, and I've never claimed to! Silly me, I was trying to get enough information about this game from the review, to see if it was worth further investigation...
THAT is why I was so very disappointed in this review!
It told me, essentially, nothing about the game other than that it was 'different', and 'kinda hard to explain'...
Considering that some of the people who HAVE seen the Flash animation have reported, in the course of this discussion, that it didn't help that much, and considering that I'm on dial-up, and don't care to sit through a month-long download, I'm not feeling overly motivated to visit your website! Sorry...
2) There's a very large difference between seeing my character beaten, in combat, by another character of equal or greater power level...
and seeing my character 'ruined' by another Player who objects to the mere existence of that character in that Game!
"Ahhh... You think Wolverine is so Macho... Let's have him dress up like a Ballerina, and then profess his love to Scott Summers! HAH!"
{Before you laugh, check out the latest X-Men...}
And... what makes you think I
haven't been so lambasted? :grin:
3) Yeah, that'd be kinda nice... Now, in a 'story-driven' environment like Capes, and (let's assume) a Convention game where none of the Players really knows the other... HOW do you pull that off?
In a game like M&M, or Champions, I can at least take out a set of pre-defined characters and pass them around, letting each player choose the character that appeals to them most.
But, if the GM-hat is going to be rotated around to all the players, I don't quite understand how the guy playing Captain Amazing is going to know that his teammate, The Brooding Detective, is afraid of Public Speaking situations, of the sort that the Captain is known to love!
Yeah, given several game sessions to get to know each other, and given a group that's really committed to making the game work, I suppose it could be a blast...
But, given all that, there are a LOT of games out there than can be a great time (INCLUDING Paranoia)!
All this being said, I have you at a tremendous disadvantage in this discussion...
I don't have to buy your game, if I don't want to!
You're in the position of trying to get me to go out and do something (and, worse yet, actually spend money to do so!), when Inertia is always the easiest course to follow...