[InSpectres] Space Cadets!

[WiredNavi]

My gaming group has a four-year-running tradition of playing a silly, anime-style game ala Teenagers From Outer Space over the summer.  After becoming familiar with The Forge and all the great games that I've never heard of, I decided to modify InSpectres a bit and try to run a TFOS-style game that way.  I'm very enamored of the PCs-with-narrative-control idea; every time we played TFOS, the best sessions and most comedy came when the players grabbed the reins of the game and narrated their own craziness without worrying about what the GM was up to.  I'm calling my game 'Space Cadets!'
   The setting: essentially the same as Teenagers.  The tone is anime-style comedy.  Aliens showed up on Earth about twenty-five years ago, fascinated with pop culture, and now aliens of all types are living and working on Earth, etc.  Of course, now that Earth is the most desireable chunk of rock in the galaxy, all sorts of alien threats are, well, threatening it - everything from conquering space armadas to invasions by pod people.  That's where the Earth Defense Force comes in.   However, there's always the problem of getting a decent budget, so the UN turned to corporate sponsorship for the EDF.  Thus, we have SPACE CADETS!, the newest reality-style TV show from MTV.  Six human and alien youths will become the crew of Transorbital Sentry Station #4, living together, learning together, bickering with each other, and doing their best to defend the Earth for your viewing pleasure!

   Some of the rules modifications which I've made:

   The 'Gotcha' Rule - if your character deliberately causes another PC they're irritated with to make a Stress roll, and the result is 3 or less, your character gains a Cool die.  This is to give people a reason to bicker with each other ala reality TV shows.
   Losing Your Cool - If you make a Stress roll, and the result is equal to or less than your Cool, you lose a cool die.  This is to counter the potential easy gain of Cool dice.
   Alien Powers:  Aliens (otherwise much like 'Weird Agents' in the normal game) don't have Talents, but they do get 2 Powers.  Powers are essentially just narrative abilities which allow them to try things which normal Humans can't do.  They do not require Cool points to use, but they do generally require a normal roll.
   Fake Out:  All Humans get the Power 'Fake Out', which allows them to make a roll to convince an alien of something about Human culture.  Most aliens are very interested and enamored of human pop culture, so this can be quite useful ('Hey, here on Earth we settle our differences via chess contests, not shooting each other!'), but not all aliens will care, and some of them will want to 'reinterpret' Earth culture to suit their own needs.
   The Franchise Cards: are replaced with Station Facility Ratings - Databanks (Academics), Training Facilities (Atheletics), Auxiliary Systems (Technology) and Prestige (Contact).  The Bank is replaced with The Holodeck, but is otherwise unchanged (though I rather like that the Holodeck malfunctions about 1 in 3 times it's used.)
   Improvement:  If you manage to get 4 Cool Dice, you can turn them in and raise one of your attributes by one.  Mostly there to stop Cool Ratings from going up too high and staying there.

As far as characters go, so far we have:

Jamey's Character - (unnamed as yet)
Species:  Human.
Talent:  Studying 'Biology'
Test Results:
   Academics - 1
   Atheletics - 4
   Technology - 1
   Contact - 3
   A fairly stereotypical second-year frat boy.  He's a bit arrogant, a bit lascivious, and very interested in, er, making friendly with all the aliens, especially on camera.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity.  He used to be a high-school sports star, and is now a pre-med student, but not a very good one.

Emily's Character - 'Sydney' (real name completely unpronounceable)
Species:  Geiger Alien, like from the movies.
Powers:  Terrifying Visage, Eat Anything
Test Results:
   Academics - 2
   Atheletics - 2
   Technology - 1
   Contact - 4
   Cool Rating 1
   Sydney is actually quite civilized, like all of his people.  However, they've gotten an incredibly bad rep from those movies (as well as the fact that they are terrifying looking and consider almost anything edible).  He (she? it?) is on Earth as a cultural ambassador, out to prove once and for all that just because you're a freakish Geiger-esque monstrosity doesn't mean you're not a person too.  Sydney is refined, appreciates the finer things in life, and is something of a gourmet.

Kendra's Character - (unnamed as yet)
Species:  Human.
Talent: Anything For The Shot.
Test Results:
   Academics - 1
   Atheletics - 3
   Technology - 3
   Contact - 2
   She's a high school graduate who looks like your average stereotypical anime nerd - red-brown hair done in two braids, huge glasses, cute round face, etc.  She is constantly frustrated by people taking for granted that she's some kind of geeky bookworm know-it-all (she's not).  She also has a problem with technology - not that she doesn't know what to do with it, but that it _likes_ her too much.  Robots find her fascinating, toasters unplug themselves to follow her down the hall, and even computers don't behave like they should when she's around.  She's here for the money, but she's also a photography/film enthusiast who's here to film a competing documentary - she wants to record the 'real story' of the show.

Eileen's Character - 'Lili Cyrehn'
Species: Succubus.
Powers:  Fly, Power Drain
Test Results:
   Academics - 4
   Atheletics - 1
   Technology - 2
   Contact - 2
   Cool Rating 1
   Lili comes from the planet Delilah V, which is populated by a race of cute demonlike aliens.  Very cute, very female demonlike aliens who can fly with cute little bat wings and drain the power from unsuspecting people.  Lili is a somewhat sheltered, geeky ingenue who's never met a male of any species before arriving on Earth and isn't quite sure what to do with them.  She's absentminded to a fault and doesn't really understand just how attractive she is to the opposite sex - after all, they don't have those where she comes from.

              We went through character generation a couple of days ago; sadly, several people were ill and thus only four of the six characters got created.  First session is scheduled for this Friday, and I've got big hopes.  I think this system is exactly what the doctor ordered...

[DevP]

This sounds totally wonderful.Thank you, and please give a post-play report if you can!

You might want to repost this to the Memento-Mori forum.

[DannyK]

The "Fake Out" power is a stroke of genius.

[WiredNavi]

I take no credit for the 'Fake Out' power; it's pretty much stolen from Teenagers From Outer Space.

[DannyK]

Oh, all right.  It still sounds pretty nifty.  I've never actually played TFOS, although I played a nifty variant called, "School Colors out of Space", which is pretty much the same thing, but with Chthuloid monsters instead of aliens.

[Mike Holmes]

What prompted all of the modifications? They're interesting, but also numerous. What made you think of each? Not in terms of inspiration (TFOS or whatever), but why for this game. for instance, did you think you needed to limit cool?

Mike

[WiredNavi]

What prompted all of the modifications? They're interesting, but also numerous. What made you think of each? Not in terms of inspiration (TFOS or whatever), but why for this game. for instance, did you think you needed to limit cool?

The Gotcha Rule:  Specifically designed to promote bickering and light backstabbing between PCs, to emulate irritable reality-show contestants.  I wanted to provide a systematic benefit for doing that, because otherwise knowing players they'd all be working together all the time.
Losing Your Cool:  From a purely Gamist perspective, it's never worth it to spend Cool to bump a roll.  It's always better to leave it in your pool to help you do better on your next Stress check and potentially increase your Cool even further.  Furthermore, Powers/Weird Abilities don't require Cool Dice to use (because I want them to be ubiquitous) and so there's not really a reason to ever lower Cool any other way.  If Cool gets too high, though, it makes low Stress checks worthless and forces me to toss enormous numbers of high Stress checks around just to deal with the high-Cool people.
Changed Franchise Cards:  Mostly just renaming.  I added a Prestige stat to add to Contact rolls because I wasn't entirely sure why there wasn't one, and to emulate the fact that the characters are the cast of a popular TV show instead of start-up franchise owners.
Improvement:  I may ditch this rule if it seems that the Cool ratings aren't going through the roof.

If I haven't covered something, let me know.