**unsolicited!!** - a game of spam and human desperation

[Larry L.]

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Where to begin? You know spam, that thing every single person who uses the internet hates? Why does it continue to exist? Is there actually anyone out there that bites this hook? Hmm...

So I have this idea stuck in my head for an odd little story-telling game. I'm having trouble attaching mechanics to it. I got through part of a Power 19, which actually turned out to be much more helpful than I expected. Since it has now exceeded the requirement for a 24-hour RPG, I'll share the stuff I've figured out. I need some ideas for answering the remaining questions.

I usually think reading other people's Power 19s are boring as snot. I'm not convinced these questions paint a complete picture of what I'm going for, so if you're curious, feel free to ask.

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1.) What is your game about?**

Poignant, absurd, and sad stories about the pursuit of wishful thinking, the inevitable disillusionment, and coming to terms with reality.

2.) What do the characters do?**

The characters pursue, despite all common sense, an offer made by a junk email they have received which seems to offer some slim hope of escape from desperation.

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?**

Construct absurdly elaborate and genuinely touching situations for which a selected piece of spam will offer a perceived solution to an immanent life crisis. Determine whether the character ends up better or worse for the experience.

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

This game is set in the real world, with real human beings. The only fantastic element is the promise offered by each junk e-mail, which is inevitably revealed to be a scam.

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

Characters emerge as part of situation development. The creative seed is a hard copy of an actual spam e-mail.

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
Players are rewarded for creating character with genuine emotional appeal (in spite of substantial shortcomings in judgment) to other players. Players are encouraged to handle the absurd material with a certain reverence.

14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

Beautiful Sadness. Catharsis.

16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?

Spinning the absolute nadir of modern communications into a rewarding exploration of human connectedness.

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[earwig]

What might be cool is if you could some how create a system based on the player's actual spam.  Maybe stats could be Enlargement, Refinance, and Weight Loss. I dunno.  That could be hilarious.

[TomTitTot]

While it isn't really any help, I would totally play this game based on the OP alone.

[Elizabeth]

The bits of the Power 19 you've got so far are really compelling, and make me want to read the game.

I guess my only question is this: it's been a long time since I actually read my spam email, but they all seem to advertise the same two or three things. If chargen is based off of a hard copy of an actual spam email, do you think it will be difficult for players in the game to end up pursuing different spam emails, or does that even matter? Does the lack of spam themes limit the replay value?

Like I said, I haven't read anything in my spam folder in a while, and I think this game sounds really great.

[Larry L.]

earwig,

Well, "hilarious" isn't quite what I'm going for. Maybe everyone gets a good chuckle at how clever the initial premise is, but eventually players should really sympathize with those poor people, and pine for their eventual redemption.

And the character situation is generated from a single spam, not from a set of aggregate stats. I'd like to use some kind of keyword system like The Pool or HeroQuest, although spams vary a lot in how much content they actually contain. (600-word Nigerian money-laundering scam vs. 2-line web link.)

Elizabeth,

That's a concern. But I think one can think up any number of possible character situations based on a single type of spam. I'm okay if the game is really only suitable for a one-shot.

[earwig]

    Wow, okay, this could be really interesting then.  I apologize, but when I first read it, I was thinking along the lines of humor...but if you aren't going for humor...the irony here is that if you aren't playing up the ridiculous (as my original misconception), then it moves into some darker territory indeed. 

    I was just having a discussion with someone last week in regards to door-to-door religions, and how they gather quite a few followers from desperation alone.  The folks who need something in their lives meet up with the folks who offer a version of that very something.  I brought up the fact that if you knock on enough doors, eventually somebody will listen, and that person happens to be looking for what you're selling, you can bring them onboard.  Just likes sales, "it's a numbers game."

Thus is spam.  It fills a need for those who are searching.

I dig it.  I've gone back and read your original post, and I apologize for not seeing what you were going for originally.  I would definately give this a shot.

Here's a couple of thoughts I had on some of the questions you were missing on the 19 Questions.  You seem to have a pretty solid idea of where you want to head with this, but these are some thought that came to me when I reread your original post.
    *Note: I apologize in advance for spelling and grammar errors, it's late.


8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?
I see this as more a storytelling game, deep into the psyche of the characters portrayed.  After all, most of us either filter out or simply delete our spam.  But someone is responding.  Who does?  More importantly why do they?  Perhaps the game can work in both directions, having the characters recieving the spam and finding hope within, but as they persue the redemption offered by the spam, perhaps we need to take a step back to see where they are coming from.  So the person who is overweight (are they really, or is it just a self-perception (self-schema)?) finds solace in an amazing weight loss program, but how did they get to that point?  What happened that they would put their trust in a mass email rather than doctors, dietitians, or proven methods?  Had they tried the usual route before?  Did it fail, or did they only perceive it to fail?  How is it that they needed help with their weight in the first place? etc.

You can run this as taking place in the present, flashing back at various points to an earlier "episode" in the character's life, or start at the beginning and work through the spam email.


9.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)

Perhaps instead of each player having a character, there is one central character, based on a piece of spam.
The players each represent a particular element of desperation, each player taking control of the character as this deperation takes hold of the character's life.  So in the weight-loss example, one player could represent self-loathing, another health issues, another public embarrassment, etc.  The remaining players will act as narrators and/or "npcs" throughout the different episodes of this person's life.  They can play everything from bullies on the playground to the doctors and nurses to the guy on the stewardess on the airplane who informs the character that he/she needs to purchase an extra plane ticket as two seats are needed.

12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?

   So rather than advancing from the starting point forward, perhaps then the characters "advance" by flashback, building off of what happened in the past.  Maybe their "points" are not traditional experience points, but rather points adding to desperation.

    They add these points by "experiencing" things that would lead to such desperation that one would find hope in their inbox.
   
    Once the character has accumulated enough of these points, the spam email is responded to and put into place.  All the players then "spend" these points on different story elements, which they must narrate, that determine whether the character finds redemption (either through the spammed product itself, or through reaching such a low that they put their life together in spite of the product's failure) or falls futher.
   

13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
   With what I've described, advancement is actually reversed.  The characters do not advance, but rather fall
deeper into desperation.  Only by hitting bottom (thus the spam) can they ever achieve redemtion.

***Just some thoughts. Like I said, you probably have a pretty good idea where you want to go with this, but I figured I'd toss a few ideas out there anyway.

Hope my rambling was at least some help.

P.S.
You may already know this, but a good resource for you is http://www.spamhaus.org/.  This is the home of the Spamhaus project:

The Spamhaus Project is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to track the Internet's Spam Gangs, to provide dependable realtime anti-spam protection for Internet networks, to work with Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and pursue spammers worldwide, and to lobby governments for effective anti-spam legislation.




   

[matthijs]

I love the idea of using spam as a creation seed.

What if, for instance, each player had two connected players - one that played/GMed the spam fantasy world the character would like to live in, and another who played the hard reality?

One problem I see is that very many scenarios will be about guys who desperately need cucumber-sized penises.

[Larry L.]

Matthijs,

Yeah, this is the part where I'm getting stuck... devising the best system for authority over antagonism. I'm thinking something vaguely like Contenders right now, the person to your left handles this.

I'm toying with the idea of whether the spammer should be a real character the PC can encounter, confront, or otherwise interact with.

A little background on the subject: My understanding of the way this works in real life is that the only people making money on spam are people who sell the tools used to spam to clueless rubes who have some vague interest getting into e-commerce but don't know better. Then they invariably not only fail to make the promised riches, then get their internet account suspented and get threatened with lawsuit and called all sorts of awful things.

So, I'm sitting on the fence as to whether humanzing or dehumanizing the spammers themselves is more effective for this game.


Also, good thought. There clearly needs to be a requirement there can only be one of any given sort of spam offer in a given game. If somebody else grabs penis enlargement, you'll have to find something else.

[matthijs]

Perhaps you don't need anything about the spammers themselves. What if the spam is just a catalyst, something that lets the character's dreams, insecurities and hopes blossom and turn into a weird fantasy of how things REALLY are?

"I thought we just had relationship problems. But after I got that message about my... well, you know... I understood all the hints she'd given me. Her mother was in on it, too. But they didn't want to tell me. Now I know it's too small, but I can fix that! It'll help us get back to how we were again!"

The spam player could just feed into this fantasy at every opportunity, presenting events and characters that make the fantasy seem believable.

[Larry L.]

Mattijs,

That's an interesting take. It sort of suggests something like a Terry Gilliam movie, where characters escape to an elaborate fantasy to cope with harsh realities. It wasn't quite what I was going for originally, but it offers some neat possibilities.

Still, I'm pretty happy with what I've worked out in terms of the game fiction. I'm still trying to figure out how to break up responsibilites for conflict and antagonism among the real people at the table. Where's the adversity coming from in this situation?