[Imp Game] Condiments & Casinos

[daMoose_Neo]

Twilight is slowly but surely being supplanted by the Imp Game on our weekly game nights.

For the first time, however, I'm noticing some potential issues with the game, and coincidentily I'm seeing some of my same kinks in questions regarding Tony's Capes. More on that-

Tonight was with my Twilight regulars, Jon and Lucas, who also played in the Bunny King in the Sky scenario. We threw together a hoard of new Imps because its so easy and so much fun to explore different characters, which rocks quite a bit. I knew Imps never would attract folks who wanted to advance their characters, but seeing as how both Jon and Lucas are otherwise D&D goons, I'm glad they get in on the same thoughts too.

Tonights hoard consisted of:
Jon's Malforic. A Devious Imp with the traits of Ninjitsu, followed by an Anal Dwelling Butt Monkey and who dressed like Britney Spears (which he decided consisted of black leather to compliment the Ninja concept). He feared people who dressed funny and being without his gopher-chucks. His special ability was "Used Chraka".
*Anyone who's followed recent AP Posts with this fellow will notice a trend- all of his characters are, in some way, based on anime characters. This one was as well, apperently from Naturo?

Mine was Guedo, a Big Dumb Imp modeled after an enforcer: His traits were Buff, Intimidating, and wears a puffy pink shirt (A manly shade of salmon). He feared mice and leaves, and had the special abilty to spit Fireballs.

And finally, Lucas played Bob Joe, a Smart Imp with Imp Majik. He was nearsighted, had purple pointy ears, and wore an orange hunters suit. He feared Shifty People (IE Ninjas) and puffy jackets (IE Guedo)

Going with the ninja and enforcer and geeky spell caster concepts, we built the scenario from there: Babalouie's was a swinging casino the Master had a hand in, but Babalouie hadn't been paying the Master his "dues". So, we were sent in to convince Babalouie to pay up or have him sleeping with the fishies.
Game started out fine: we approached Babalouie's and ran into two Orcish bouncers who looked us over. One of them hated Britney Spears and almost didn't let us in, but Malforic convinced them he was only a look-alike backup singer for t he live entertainment that night, which got us in the door.
Bob-Joe (Lucas) at that point decided he was unnerved by Malforic's shifty ways and unleashed a Fire-3 on Malforic's monkey, setting it alight. This caused quite a rucus in the entry way, between Malforic lamenting his flaming monkey, the monkey being thrown into Guedo, who flung the offending Bob-joe into a slot machine, smashing his Coke-bottle lens glasses.

Here is where some of the chaos entered the game and we had more Out of Game discussion than In Game discussion- just a quick note: Not much is IC in the Imp Game, but a lot is Metagame descriptions of actions, questions, etc. Right about here though, Lucas and Jon started tossing chips left and right, running over each other's rolls and narrations, while I squeezed in on occasion to try to even things out.
We ended up with all sorts of odd and unusual things occuring, while my own efforts IG were thwarted by some really sucky rolls that only fueled their ability to go nuts.
My issue tonight, though, was that while the system worked, the players didn't, which leaves me wondering just who is the game suitable for? There was a fair bit of the running over, which strikes me as a disrespect for the other player. I suspect Jon is responsible for some of this, as he played in last weeks game and I felt a few attempts in that direction, though the other player helped keep things fairly even keel. Lucas reacted more off of what Jon did or made an overt attempt (as in early in the game) to hose him. Then there were "No, its REALLY..." statements after one of them already had the opprotunity to narrate and establish the item, person, or event in question.

The game ended with the discovery of the deck of Magic cards of Summoning (6 colors, as jest to M:tG's 5 colors), the discovery of Babalouie's secret lair, a couple of bouts with a pair of gods, Cerebrus, a lady of ill repute and a giant flaming monkey. A fair roll by myself at the end of the game put Babalouie into a position over us (by offering to wisk Malforic's wife, uber powerful and present, off to the Carribean) as well as put him in a wall by his pointy little horns and coughing up the combination to the safe where he kept his money.

So, while the game In Game ran well, Out Of Game there were some issues. We wrapped up the whole scenario, which I'm starting to see as a sign the group may not be compatable: the good games with good groups show no end in sight, while the couple that have finished have also had the disputes in common. Last week's game did end, and Jon did play, but that was due to time and WANTING to wrap it up in that time than "Lets just end this".
So, my questions for astute Forge readers:
1) Is it the systems responsibilty for managing such occurances as the "No, its really X!", as in trying to add things in out of turn to hose one players attempts at interacting with the IS (since its not really shared at that point), or is it the group?
2) In case a new reader isn't familiar, Imps is a very freeform game, with no central GM authority, a universal target number, and an arbitrary die roll system. Players narrate their own successes and failures. For whom does such a game work best? Worst?
3) How far should the game go toward regulating content? Several bones of contention I've seen for Capes go toward "absurdity", and while Imps encourages it, this session showed a couple of attempts to going too far.
4) What is it with new D&D RP'ers? I've seen this in Imps playtests already, Empire of Satanis seems to allow some of the same mechanics along the lines of input and narration and comments tend toward the same, that once they have this power, they just go nuts. It might be a limited effect among the groups I've converted from "GM and books tell all" to "You do the talking", but they seem to run right over each other or discredit each other's input...