Hard Rocking with InSpectres

[Jasper]

A couple of freinds and I got together to do some role-playing last night, and they chose InSpectres, despite my having just printed the thing out for them.  In brief, it was a blast, and I'm going to order the full version.

The characters were a Janitor named Ralph, who's Talent was cleaning; Professor Davis, an often smug expert on the occult who was completely clueless about modern technology; and the secretary of the outfit, a neo hippy named Antigony.  We decided it was a very new, low-budget operation assembled by Prof. Davis.  His last two would-be agents left though, so he recruited his staff.  We had a great time just making the characters and coming up with this post-hoc explanation.

So, they get a call from the president of the city's largest bank: he's having some sort of ghostly disturbance.  They pile in the Volkswagon, and get down there.  Now, somehow or another, more action crept into the Investigation phase of the game than was intended, but it was by far the best part of the game in our case.

During Investigation, all the players seemed to really get the fact that (a) "fortune in the middle" was expected, and that (b) they had a lot of power to shape the story.  The seized that power, especially the professor's character.   It turned out that the electrical disturbances in the building were being caused by a ghost in the form of an 80's hair band guitar-player.  When a spectral laser light show started going on in the basement, the Professor wondered if it was music and ran screaming out of the place, as did Ralph.  Great scene.  After that, the professor studied the place and came up with a great explanation about dischordant art-related spirits, who had in fact plagued many great painters and musicians in the past, and came up with a nice, but not easy, way to destroy it.

Just to be brief with the plot summarazing, they found a drunken punk rocker, who Antigony convinced to help them via some gratuitous flirtation.  The plan: to get him to outplay the ghost so they could perform a ritual and entrap it in the guitar.  Basically, that's how it played out, with some complications of course.

Antigony's player used Confessionals to great effect.  Never did she use it to make things easier as a matter of fact, and often she decided to use it just because things were slowing down (and she enjoyed harassing her boyfriend's character).  They had just arrived safely at the bottom of the elevator shaft and were trying to bust open the door, when she, through a Confessional, began to describe the elevator sliding down to crush them.  Great reactions from the other players, and from me :)

Ralph's player used a Confessional once, and not only role-played it well (by complaining about the professor's nonsensical ramblings), but also helped the group out.  The professor's player never really got the hang of them, and said he couldn't figure out what to make happen.  He's usually creative, so maybe it was just too much freedom?  I'm not quite sure.

Unfortunately, we were getting tired, and our imaginations seemed to suffer, so the Action phase was less enjoyable.  To some degree, we all painted the group into a boring corner that was hard to escape from, but it could have been done.  All the players also seemed to forget points (a) and (b) from above.  They started to define their actions in great detail before rolling the dice, which then really limited them afterwards.  They complained that they didn't know how to narrate a level 4 success (successful but with a complication) in situations like forcing a door.  I tried to give them some clues, but I hadn't exactly idfentified the problem at the time, so the problem persisted.

Similarly, they slipped back into expecting illusionism from me, which doesn't really suit the game. They kept attacking the ghost with various forms of music, strengthening the effect of their punk rocker, but they were afraid to really change the scene.  I think that in their minds the Exploration phase was "set-up" and once things had been defined there, they shouldn't be changed.  So I had to really prod the Janitor's player to finally narrate the last few actions before taking over the finale.

However, I don't think these problems were any fault of InSpectres itself.  Players really can run the game most of the time, and I think that's great.  This was a new concept to my players, and they were sometimes miffed when expected to do more than decide their own character's actions.  Everyone had a great time however, and if it hadn't been so late, it probably wouldn't have dragged at the end as it did.

Oh, a few choice quotations:

"What do you know about heavy metal, Ralph?"  - Davis to Ralph, with the utmost seriousness.

"I know what I'd do with a heavy metal expert." - Antigony, while dreamy-eyed

"Antigony, you're a receptionist.  Go... recept."  - Davis, with the punk rocker ringing the doorbell in the background

Davis to Ralph, with great urgency: "What do you have that can make light?!?"
After a brief pause, "Uh, a flashlight in the car?"
Another pause.  "That's probably better than a burning pan."

Good times.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

It sounds a lot like one of my InSpectres sessions. I hope you get a chance to play again with the same characters, as the system actually works very well in the long-term. For one thing, the group sort of "settles" on a shared set of standards for how the dice relate to actions in the game; and for another, players tend to get pretty emotionally wrapped up in the survival of the franchise from mission to mission.

Best,
Ron

[Jasper]

Do you mean that InSpectres specifically has a "rule" or section in the text that discusses deciding on a representation for die rolls?  It seemed to me that fortune in the middle was expected.  Otherwise, it seems that your revert more to the old GM power model, rather than shared power, since the players can't introduce very much if they're focused on more standard action resolution.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Jasper,

Whoa, you're reading way more into my comment than is there. I'm not talking about changing the Fortune-in-the-middle element of InSpectres play at all. I am saying that any group using such mechanics tends to decide, socially, among themselves, often with no direct discussion about it, just how much description and extra nuance can be delivered per roll. Nothing more than that.

When that development has occurred, playing InSpectres "blossoms" into something even more powerful than the fun you're already having.

Best,
Ron