We also gave Capes a go last week. I don't have anything written down, so I'll be brief.

Who: Josh, Shuo, Cy.

We opened with Terros, who can bend earth to his will, inviting a bunch of super-powered people to his cliff-side cave-lair for a meeting to form the Society for the Elimination of Normals. After much debate from Zurn (a gadgeteer) and Blink (a teleporter) the society was scrapped amid revelations that Terros might have hired normals to attack Zurn's lab. During the debates, though, another mob of humans found the lair. A few supers were killed before Terros could erect a wall of stone, protecting the rest before disappearing into the depths of the earth.

Zurn and Blink, their eyes opened to the threat of normals, broke into a military base to steal technology to help them contact Terros. Their success further soured relations, causing the government to revoke the citizenship of and nationalize all supers.

The trio formed a plan to sink DC into the ocean and establish a super government. Alas, the valiant defenders of mankind defended the city. While the idea of a super government lived on, control was rested from Terros by Audubon in a surprisingly claw-based campaign.

All in all, while I had fun, I don't think Capes played out very well. I'm usually all for Game-y mechanics, but they didn't quite pay off for me. Perhaps if we had a better sense of the rules we would have been able to focus more on the story. Or if we'd focused more on the characters than their plans. Or if we'd used Exemplars. But I didn't feel like it was empowering us to tell cool stories. The pacing of actions and reactions made some scenes feel disjointed. We also had some Goals that were maybe too big or divergent for a scene, and made it feel more like two scenes running in parallel.

Three things I really like about Capes (that I'd like to see incorporated into something else):
- Giving rewards (Story points) for good adversarial play.
- Inspirations are a good way to encourage continuity while still leaving the outcome flexible.
- Cards/dice/chips to track what's going on and keep things in focus worked well. Other games do this to, of course.

From talking to Josh, it sounded like you guys used the "spotlight characters" option, preventing people from playing each other's characters in different scenes. Trading around characters is one of the things I really like about Capes, because it shakes up how you view the story.

I'd also put Exemplars in the "must have" category. They focus your attention back on personal relationships/challenges for heroes (aka story with meaning), instead of just getting sucked into action, which is definitely a danger in Capes when you keep looking for ways to use your "laser eyes" to roll dice.

We ended up kind of defaulting to PCs, not so much explicitly using the spotlight characters option. I think this was partly that putting together a new character was a bit of a hassle. Maybe next time we'll be more comfortable with it. Using someone else's character felt kind of like stealing, maybe I should have pushed it more as acceptable.

I agree that Exemplars are cool, but I wanted to avoid differentiated debt and drives while we were starting. Might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

Now that you mention getting sucked into the action, I don't find superheroes that engaging as a story genre, since the main thing that distinguishes a character is his Laser Eyes.

I'm now thinking it would be cool to reskin Capes as a West Wing political drama. Rather than powers, you have constituents, connections and/or positions. But you have to expend political capital (i.e. incur Debt) to bring them to bear. It would force conflicts onto more of a personal/human level. And probably let the "game the system" elements feel more in genre, since it's specifically about using the rules to arrange tricky deals and "win."

Now that you mention getting sucked into the action, I don't find superheroes that engaging as a story genre, since the main thing that distinguishes a character is his Laser Eyes.

That's a terrible danger of the superhero genre. Great superhero stories are entirely not about powers per se, but all about the dilemma of having powers. Reinforcing that idea should really be job 1 of a superhero game, at least if you want story rather than gladiator battlemap combat.

Switching genres would be easy-peasy. The trick is justifying the mechanical normal/super dichotomy, but heck I suppose you could give everyone drives if you wanted to (probably not a good idea).

This was my first time playing Capes and, like others have commented, the mechanics took a while to grasp. Cy drew a flow chart halfway into the game but there were still some furrowed brows from Josh and I until the end.

I liked the Inspirations and tracking pieces for the same reasons as Cy. I also appreciated how the Special Powers and Emotion selections had to play into the game. It challenges you to stay within the limits of the character you chose and gives them ready-made complexities that you can explore if you want to.

Although I had fun during this first play, I'm sure I'll enjoy Capes a lot more the second time. Big thanks to Cy for facilitating such a complicated game and also for a spectacular job bringing the powerful and emotional Terros to life. My apologies for making Audubon play such a dirty game of politics. Razor sharp talons don't really belong in a debate room... but my, aren't they convincing? ^.^

EDIT: After reading the above comments, I'm partly terrified and completely intrigued that there's more to the Capes mechanics that we didn't cover. Trading characters and Drives would be interesting to experience next game. A genre change would be interesting too but personally I like the Superhero genre. I think it's a fun decorative element to a story and makes invoking the mundane seem more special.