[Capes][DexCon] The Magical President of Magical Paraguay

[TonyLB]

This is one of the DexCon Capes games.  So, I rolled in to DexCon wednesday night and within a few hours I was playing Capes with a bunch of new players.  Coherence was ... y'know ... not high.  I think that the novelty value of dealing with the system for the first time tends to drive people toward some silliness.  Certainly this game went ... wacky.

I'll own some of the blame for that.  The scenario was alternate-world invaders bursting in on the Mephisto's Pantry neighborhood.  Well, technically they stole the neighborhood into their own dimension, and were preparing to pacify it.

So one of the players (Elizabeth) immediately grasped the unlimited narrative power Capes gave her, and narrated that she protected the entire neighborhood by closing the adamantium dome she'd had secretly installed underground.

Then she gave me this look.  This sorta-sheepish, sorta-proud, very-challenging look.  Like "Okay!  Your system lets me do that!  What'cha gonna do?  Gonna change your own system?  I double dog dare you!"  It was awesome.  She was psyched to grab the guts of what Capes does for you, even when she thought it wasn't kosher.

So I had my commando guy walk up to the adamantium wall, pull out his electro katana, and cut a hole in it.  Elizabeth gave with this gleeful little "Oh you didn't!" expression, to which I replied "Hey, this thing can cut through a tank."

And we were off to the races.  I own my part in what happened afterwards.

Later, Elizabeth's character was being charged with trying to export weapons to Paraguay.  Dunno quite why.  But in the fascist-American dystopia to which they'd been transported, Paraguay was no longer its own nation.  So Elizabeth mocked the charges against her, saying that she was accused of shipping arms to "the magical fairy realm of Paraguay" (eye roll, spread hands).

I was totally fine with the notion that these folks were so ignorant of anything outside their own purview that they didn't even know of the existence of Paraguay (could I, myself, place it on a map?  Dicey proposition...) and I threw in some gruff color about Commando Jack flashing back to the years he spend pacifying that Paraguayan jungles, but I was cool with the argument working.

But, see, we had a sorceror on the scene.  And his player decided that this guy was going to prove that Paraguay was magical, by summoning (and I quote) "The Magical President of Magical Paraguay."  And, of course, he could.  He did.

This is the point at which I yelled, more in amusement and bewilderment than in frustration, "Paraguay is not magic!  It's a REAL PLACE!"

Once they knew they had me they just bled me dry.  I beat the magical fairy president to death, and they brought him back as the Magical Martyr of Magical Paraguay who died for our sins.  The Once and Future President of Magical Paraguay.

God, we laughed about it all the way through the convention.  If I'd had the power to make things be coherent (or to bitch and moan and stop the action when they weren't) I would have done it and it would have been wrong.  They wanted the silly.  They wanted raw goofiness.  I can tell it's what they wanted because it's what all the stories they told about the game afterwards kept returning to.  "Tell them about the Magical President of Magical Paraguay."

And so I have.

[Ricky Donato]

Sounds like you had a blast!

Why do you call it incoherent? Based on my (limited) understanding of coherence,  this sounds like a coherent game.

[TonyLB]

I'm not talking about GNS incoherence.  I'm talking about "Man, that made no freakin' sense!" in the best possible way.  Does that clear things up?

[Ricky Donato]

Yes, that makes much more sense.

[Valamir]

You might find my Guadalupe the Pirate Actual Play report of interest.  It was a very similar experience in terms of cathartic sillyness.