InSpectres Wellington: Heavy Caseload

[hix]

I was really looking forward to running InSpectres ... but nervous too.

This was our group's third experience running a system encouraging Director Stance:
Universalis,
Metal Opera, and
The Pool), all of which have been fun but bumpy ... also, despite reading the many Actual Play accounts, I wasn't sure where the 'story' for the session was going to come from.

IOW, I worried way too much 'cos InSpectres is probably the most fun we've had as a group, and the most engaged we've been in each other's stories. I've been running the game. The characters the others came up with are:

Josh – a former computer game programmer who joined InSpectres to meet girls.
Gerald Coldwater – wants to prove he's better than his rich father. His talent is his family name.
Petrova Fossil – ex-gymnast who, it turns out, has a wee bit of a problem with interpersonal relations.
Eugene – in hiding from the Masons after seeing something he shouldn't have. His speciality is the Occult.

Following Michael's advice, I started with a 3 dice franchise and ran a 4 dice mission.

Right at the start, they discovered they had crappy uniforms and that Head Office dictates a theme to wear every Friday – this week it'll be Hawaiian Shirts.

Their advertising campaign went extraordinarily well. Only one person was trapped in a mauseleum for 9 hours. On the other hand, Josh drew the attention of the local news and a busload of 18 year old girls going on vacation. [/b]

During this phase, the location shifted from a generic US city (there was a comment about Spring Break) to Wellington (I specified the City Council building as a location).


The first Stress Check meltdown happened when they received 3 calls from clients at once ... They were all in character from this moment on ... and Petrova turned out to be scary – she lost all her points in Contact before they'd met their first client.

About 5 scenes in, a player asked if they could use Confessionals yet. I'd done a good job explaining what they were (I thought) – but didn't specify you could use them from the get-go.  The players took full advantage from then on, with lots of applause the first few times they were used. In fact, there was lots of great reinforcement of each other's ideas, lots of suggestions to build on each others' narration ... and I think I saw the moment they grokked how useful characteristics would be for them.

Now we've played three sessions and five jobs so far. I'll try and post write-ups of those in the next couple of days.

[hix]

JOB 1: 9.30 am to 11 am

Thomas Price, employee of the WCC (Heritage Trees division) calls from the men's toilet of the WCC buildings – complaining of "not being himself".[/b]

I think our first confessional involved assigning the characteristic, "Knows about Indian culture" to Eugene. But this lead to a scene where the comedy misfired - he wanted to be suave and I wanted to block him from gaining access to the building. Anyway we talked about it afterwards and we've been more in sync since.

After forcing entry into the bathroom, Thomas reveals his head has transformed into an elephant's. Josh IDs this as possession by Ganesh, the Opener of Ways.[/b]

InSpectres sets out quite a specific format for a job, from meeting the client to figuring out what's going on to equipping and confronting it. In our sessions, we haven't really adhered to that structure. Earning Franchise Dice has provided all the framing we needed.

Solution: Allow Ganesh to open the new ballet company's building. [/b]

I'm not sure if it happened in Confessional or roleplaying, but Gerald's player got himself into a situation where he's being seduced by the Governor General. That look of fear and desire he carried on his face is one of my highlights from the session.

Total Elapsed Play Time: 1 hour, from character design to Vacation.

JOB 2: 11.30 am – 2 pm.

Based on anecdote about why a local pizza shop (that always had slack service) recently closed down.

Michael 'Luigi' Castro ... says there's a reason the deliveries are so late ... but you'll have to see for yourself ...

They take their franchise's new company car (their third): an ex-Iraqi humvee they bought real cheap of trademe.co.nz because no other bidders believed it was real.

En-route, they encounter Coldwater Clean-Up Crew, the rival paranormal agency that Gerald's father has started in order to beat his son. One confessional later and Petrova has a 'Demolitions' characteristic and is chucking a pre-loved grenade into CCC's company car ... [/b]

Tonally at this point we shifted far towards Paranoia ... despite me explaining deadpan tone ... but hell, it worked ... it was a blast.

Once they arrived at the pizza shop (which was experiencing a heavy blizzard spreading out from the kitchen), the InSpectres discovered the source of the problem. A former customer (Misty McGraw, a nice reincorporation of from our game of The Pool two weeks ago) was venting PK energy from her frustration at the late deliveries.

Meanwhile, a professionally inappropriate relationship began developing between Josh and Petrova.

Solution: Channel lightening from the storm down onto Misty, knocking her unconscious. [/b]

BY THE END OF THIS SESSION

The whole group was buzzing about it afterwards. We stayed around talking about the game. A couple of us wanted to keep playing till we fell asleep.

Me, I was awe-struck by how little of what happened had anything to do with me. Even when I felt it was time to confront the 'monster', all I ended up doing was giving vague clue after vague clue ... "There's a moaning noise," "You think the door is opening," and they ended up telling me what it was ... like a Rorshach test.

One of the players said he found it easier to grok than Universalis, because there were 2 or 3 different ways to receive input from the players while still having the comfort of having a GM running things.

My big discovery was that almost all you need to run a game is a copy of the Stress and Skill Charts on the same page.

All the advice I read on the Forge said: call for lots of Stress Rolls. Found them easy to apply and I can see that you can use them to control how quickly the franchise increases in effectiveness. But I can't correlate amount of Stress Checks you call for to the size of the Franchise at the end of the game. I also needed to focus more on Card Dice, and tempting them to use them. But I can see the Franchise as an increasingly effective character.

I figured that the Play Structure might come into force more next time ... 16 dice mission. Personal stories primed to explode. Nastiness will ensue.

So much backstory and ideas to use for Bangs:

Why does Dad want to destroy Gerald?
What else is Eugene running from?
Will Petrova quit? Which of her co-workers will she destroy in the process?
And will Josh learn to fear the name, "Alexander Blonksteiner"?[/b]

[hix]

SESSION 2 .. about a month, 6 weeks later (I think)

One of the players was missing (on honeymoon) so we made up new characters and played the InSpectres Wellington Night Shift.

Basil Fossil – stoner brother to Petrova in the Day Shift.
Dr John McLean – a police psychiatrist taking a leave of absence.
Kayd – Second hand book-dealer, into crystals.

Job 3: Recovering stolen wedding gifts from the club where our absent player had his reception.

It turns out ordinary thieves were stealing the gifts to fund the running of a hidden security console designed to get rid of the club's poltergeist.

SOLUTION: Trap the thieves, beat up the poltergeist and then dispel it with an incantation. [/b]

Everything resolved in (pretty much) one scene. The characters got out of the lift at the club, met all the NPCs involved, figured out what was going on and dealt with it. Only one person fell through a secret door into the control room, splitting herself off from the party.

That made me think that if I wanted to get more cinematic - with cross-cut scenes and a case that lasted more than five minutes of game time – then I'd have to get pro-active about creating that. But, you know, this probably just goes back to my dissatisfaction (while running The Pool) of realising most of my off-the-cuff games wind up with a 'we all end up in one place and beat up the villain' sort of ending. InSpectres is just as fun when it's run as a simple 'show up and deal' job.

I went extremely harsh on the Stress rolls – prompting some complaints and some talk about how Stress not only decreases character effectiveness but it messes with the picture people have in their head of how cool their character is.

There was also this neat point at the very end of the case where the players made a Teamwork roll. In resolving what happened, we worked backwards – from the worst roll to the best – to create a climax around defeating the poltergeist.

Job 4: It turns out that the franchise's polaroid camera is haunted – inspired by the Sun Dog (Stephen King) – and taking pictures of a flaming man stepping out of elevator.

The Night Shift track the phenomenon down to the apartment building we play in (causing Jenny to insist that I didn't make her scared of where she lives). [/b]

I'd been house-sitting and playing lots of Silent Hill 2 alone in the dark for the week leading up to this game, so I threw in some of the odd noises and effects from that game into this job.

The characters split up during this job, to good effect. Kayd developed a relationship with the shifty Dr Featherston – who complained of an unearthly howling noise in the building. Dr McClean broke into Featherston's apartment, believing it to be the centre of the phenomenon ... and Bas crawled into some air ducts and discovered a pentagram with a howling face on it.

SOLUTION: The pentagram was the source of the noise and was easily erased with a previously established water balloon. The flaming man turned out to be a patient of Featherston's ("You're a witch doctor?" // "We prefer the term 'supernatural surgeon'.") and Dr McClean took the opportunity to recommend some self-esteem therapy to the obviously self-conscious gentleman.[/b]

I took the opportunity to play lots of hints about Day Shift character stories. An elderly Indian man asked after Eugene. Petrova's ex-boyfriend tried to take over the franchise's office.

Also set up some more personal stories: Kayd's relationship with Dr Featherston. And the unresolved question of who set up that pentagram?

[hix]

SESSION 3

Putting our Sorceror game on hold, we played InSpectres again. This session we had a new player, pretty much new to roleplaying too. She came up with:

Andore Pyrenees – former postal worker who decided to become an InSpectre because she was nosy.

We mixed up Day Shift and Night Shift characters. So it was Andora, being interviewed for a job by Dr McClean and Petrova and Basil Fossil. As for Eugene (the owner of InSpectres Wellington), we decided he was off on a team-building course by himself. The interview leads to a confessional which leads to Dr McClean being knocked out.

Meanwhile, Josh is held captive by Alexander Blonksteiner. Blonksteiner is the psychotic boyfriend of an 18 year old girl Josh had hit on during the marketing of their franchise in Session 1.

So we played out a set-piece: InSpectres rescuing Josh. During this, a confessional revealed Basil has a history of difficulty with the police (riffed on for the rest of the game).[/b]

Job 5 – Disappearance at local cinema.

Based on something that happened to me the day before. 20 minutes into The Grudge the woman behind me walked out, complaining it wasn't a 'funny scary movie' like she'd been expecting.

The InSpectres' new client shows up, a noir-ish femme fatale, who says that after her girlfriend walked out of the movie, her clothes were discovered on the floor of the lobby, neatly arranged as if she's been vapourised or sucked out of them. [/b]

"Girlfriend," snigger all the guys in our group (I hope, in character). Combined with the left-behind-clothes, it started a rapid downward trend for this game. The seediest I've ever played. Jacuzzis, lots of PCs accidentally disrobed and/or soaked, some drug taking and – if I remember through the haze correctly – a hallucinogenic induced orgy down in one of the cinemas. [/b] But I insist that most of it came from the players. ... Most of it.

Weird. A few times we'd catch each other's eyes, wonder if we'd pushed it too far ... and then silently agree to reign things in for a few moments.

Another moment: I love InSpectres' on-the-fly style. It's an easy game to "play bass" for; I can almost see The Ball being chucked around as I keep throwing responsibility over to the players to determine what's going on. But maybe I did that once too often, because after rolling a 6 one player responded with, "You tell me what's [behind the door]." Firmly and loudly throwing the Ball back to me.

Once again (just like the closed down pizza place), the movie theatre this game was set at has a bad local reputation ... and there were lots of opportunities to vent and throw in little in-jokes.

* A serial killer, Johnny "Buzz Saw" Anderson, killed quite a few people during the recent renovations. One of the funniest moments in the game was when it looked like, after the massive build-up we'd given him, 'Buzz Saw' was going to turn out to be an anti-climatic red-herring.
* The staff are nervous. About losing their jobs? Or something else?
* Andora orders a coffee and starts falling asleep while drinking it.  [/b]

The new player didn't use the Confession Chair – formally. But she did make really good implied pitches as part of her responses to the question, "What do you do?"

I took her 'falling asleep' idea as 'the coffee is drugged'. That lead to Petrova discovering that it was being spiked with Ingredient X. Seems important to note: Petrova's player was disappointed that she didn't lose all of her points in Contact.

* The entire InSpectres team (except Petrova) are now doped to the gills, having drunk, accidentally snorted or generally been exposed to Ingredient X.
* The serial killer shows up and starts hitting on Andora.
* In the confessional, "Who knew that the Jacuzzi in the room behind the ticket counter was going to be vital to solving this case?"
* After a torturous mis-pronounciation, Electroplasm became the key paranormal phenomenon. Ghosts were made of it, it slimed up through the ceilings to trap players, and the jacuzzi was full of it.

Following a sexy interlude in the jacuzzi between Petrova and Josh – and based on player cues - I lead them up into the projection room. A dark and scary location filled with disturbing noises and a crawling Japanese ghost-woman grabbing onto their legs. Which was kicked into wall and vapourised in true InSpectres Wellington confrontational style.

Then up into the attic. Bright and wide open ... and much bigger than it should've been.[/b]

And so we come to the most interesting line, said in confessional, of the entire game.   "When they came down, they wouldn't tell me what happened up there. All they'd say is 'What happened in the attic stays in the attic.'"[/b]

Pretty interesting ramifications for how this played out. I said I'd take care of the plot but as for "what goes on up there", that was up to the players. We had to keep pushing each other further and further to justify the statement. This is where the disrobing came in.

Anyway, at one point a player tried to reintroduce some decorum into the game and said that he re-tied the new player's topless character's clothes in a 'pretty bow'. But we all felt like this lowered the stakes and intensity of the moment ... so the new player ended up pushing it further.

* Resolution: The serial killer and a bunch of spectral clowns are trying to sacrifice the missing cinema patrons. The InSpectres kick and beat their way to successfully wrapping up the case. [/b]

Tomorrow I'll be running the InSpectres Christmas Special. A 50 or so dice mission. I've also developed a big plot twist for each of the players' characters. Should be fun.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Great stuff! I was gonna get me some Inspectres, but because I only buy games by the dozen that didn't happen yet. Got octaNe instead. Luckily that's great too, the character classes are brilliant in that game.

Anyways, just wanted to say that this is the best kind of commercial a game could hope for. Now I really want to get the game as soon as possible. I wonder if Jared's going to reprint it soon...

[hix]

What I've found great about the game: originally I believed you could only run it for 1 or 2 episodes. Now I can definitely see it running for much much longer. It's solely the enthusiasm of my players for this game that's changed my mind.

Also, I'd love to try some mods for the system. I think 'Futurama' would work great - and one of the players has already tinkered with a 'Jeeves and Wooster' variant.