[InSpectres] Pacing and Stress

[Elkin]

Hi,

About two months ago, I was introduced to InSpectres on the Indie Gaming chatroom. We had a short chat game, which was pretty fun. I bought the pdf, and GMed a single-session game, which also proved to be a great source of fun. I then decided to listen to all the advice I found here and on the pdf about how much better InSpectres plays over several sessions, and rounded up a few friends for a mini-campaign.

I should probably introduce my players: we are all in our mid 20s; three of us (myself included) are experienced roleplayers. One of us had lots of experience in PTA, the other with more freeform/rule-light sim games. From the other two players, one was playing for her first time, and one had played some D&D in junior high. I knew all of the players beforehand, but the two experienced players didn't know the two unexperienced ones.

We had the first session on Tuesday. We did character and franchise creation and I explained the rules. The group came up with the franchise owner - a retired military functionary, and his three hirelings: a work-shy paranormal lawyer, a motherly, overbearing secretary and the peculiarly unnoticeable janitor who actually gets all the real work done.
We had an interview with an investor (a mobster looking to launder some of his ill-gained profits), and set off to fill the forty-five minutes we had left with a short (6 dice) mission, which turned out to involve the remains of the last Romanovs, buried underneath the basement of a haunted public housing project. The game again proved to be a serious fun-generator, but I did experience two problems.

The first was the confessional mechanic. I was afraid it wouldn't be used, as was the case in the single-session game I GMed. To remedy that, I provided several examples of cool confessionals before play, and had the NPC investor do a mock-confessional at the end of the opening interview. The two inexperienced players felt too insecure to pick up the glove and sit in The Chair of Truth, which hopefully will be remedied given enough time. The two experienced players gave several confessionals, but it looked as though they didn't feel confident enough to mess with the plot or with the other PCs. Everything they narrated was about things happening to their character, or a thing their character was doing, as if by saying something about the plot they'd step on my toes. This made the confessionals funny and insightful, but not as mind-bendingly awesome as they were in my two previous games.

The second issue was stress. Picking on words of wisdom I found here and on Story Games, I didn't plan on dishing an amount of stress that would seem fair or balanced: I just made them roll some stress dice whenever the pace of the game was slowing down, or whenever they did or saw something which I thought was annoying, spooky or dangerous. The group ended up with a total of 15 skill dice lost to stress and only 6 franchise dice to compensate for it. The player of the janitor PC suffered 6 stress and complained that he felt as though his character was seriously crippled and underpowered. To me, it seemed appropriate that the character who did all the real work without getting any of the credit would collapse under all the stress, but I can certainly understand the concerns of the player, who still wants to meaningfully influence the story.

I hope that the second problem will remedy the first - players of underpowered PCs would have to resort to confessionals to make significant contributions to the story, and characteristics would have to be given to compensate for the low amount of franchise dice.
But still - was I raining too much stress dice on the heads of the helpless players? Would it be better if I said something along the lines of "Ok, guys, looks like you're dropping the pace. Does anyone want to do something interesting, or should I introduce some more stress-inducing creepiness to get the game moving?". Alternatively, should I not pump in more stress when the pace slows down, but simply wait for the action to resume on its own?

[Ron Edwards]

Oooooohh, InSpectres, yes Precious!

I think your Confessional issue will improve over time. The first time you played, no one did it. Now, in a more long-term context, the very next time you played, a couple people did it with relatively "safe" content. I bet as time goes by, more people will do it, and more of them will use the Confessionals for more ambitious 'setup' content.

Also, nothing is wrong with sticking to fun Color with one's Confessional. I think there's no reason to press for more ambitious content on your part.

The Stress issue is definitely worth considering in detail. I have found InSpectres to go one way or the other: either someone maxes out on Cool and conflicts start sailing just their way, or someone crashes and burns into Stress from hell; and whichever way, the company's fate tends to follow.

Basically, some strategy is necessary on their parts. To keep the company from tanking, they have to start working toward their current strengths to seize the narrations, solve (actually invent) the problem, and rack up the dice; as well as to start protecting and helping the poor bastards who are stressing out.

On a more personal note, yes, the player of the janitor is right: the system crippled and underpowered him. And in fact, that's a feature of play. One thing to consider about InSpectres is that it is definitely about how forming a company together puts a serious bite on friendship and loyalty. Or another way to put it is that people always believe that as long as they remain loyal and friends, then the company's success is improved - whereas that most often turns out not to be true.

InSpectres is definitely about that conflict. If you really play the thing, and it's clear to me that you genuinely are, it ain't light and funny except when the dice give you the leisure to make it light and funny. Otherwise, it's pretty brutal about how company success exacts personal prices, and how the other people in the company may be willing to let you suffer.

You're right about the Confessionals in the long term. The characters most hammered by Stress are the ones who are most fun to see in the Confessional anyway, or better, discussed in the Confessional, and they get traits that way, which can improve their dice rolls later. But that's long term, and I think you might also consider short-term issues of fun too. Here are some ideas, although I hope others can post about possible solutions as well.

If a character gets whipped in InSpectres, it's a good idea to let them have their say. Perhaps you can feature the janitor to some extent in terms of letting him tell the other characters what he thinks of them, what he thinks of the company, and whatever other role-playing is involved. Perhaps this could even be the linchpin of a new episode, whether the janitor stays or leaves. Or if the player is interested, bring up the possibility of something happening to the janitor to turn him into a werewolf or something like that. Not guaranteeing it, but putting the possibility out there as a feature of "whether the janitor will stick with the company" as a legitimate factor of play.

All that is definitely a "perhaps," and nothing more. With luck, it'll prompt you to think up better ideas on your own.

Best, Ron
And just because: Inspectres webpage

[Noclue]

The player of the janitor PC suffered 6 stress and complained that he felt as though his character was seriously crippled and underpowered. To me, it seemed appropriate that the character who did all the real work without getting any of the credit would collapse under all the stress, but I can certainly understand the concerns of the player, who still wants to meaningfully influence the story.

I must be playing a different Inspectres. In our last game, my receptionist-cook had a single stress technology die and a -1 stress. So I decided to cook everyone a fantastic breakfast. Of course, the stress meant that was an auto-fail so we all ended up in the ER with food poisoning. Later, when I was welding a cage, there was this awful explosion. Unfortunately, I had given another PC the characteristic "afraid of fire" in the confessional, so he rolls stress, goes nuclear and we all end up in the hospital again. Then, when our credit cards start bouncing I roll stress, have my own meltdown and end up in Jail...

Seriously, how does stress prevent you from influencing the story?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi James,

You have a point there, stated a little unsympathetically. Are failed rolls being given the in-game weight they deserve? A quick system check would be a good idea.

On the chance that the group is using the system details correctly, the player might be talking about rolling successfully at all. "Influence the story" is usually associated with rolling successfully, since failing in many RPGs means either accomplishing absolutely nothing and/or getting hurt.

Best, Ron

[Elkin]

That's a good point.
I usually narrated failed rolls as "something bad happens: roll stress", or "something bad happens: looks like you're in for another stress roll if you don't do anything about it". The second option particularly led to one of the most memorable (to me) moments of the session:

Player: I use my shirt to wipe off the ritual drawings on the basement floor, revealing whatever is hidden underneath them.
*Skill roll. High roll of 3.*
Player: The good news is that I found a trapdoor.
Me: The bad news is that you accidentally flipped one of the lit candles, and your shirt catches fire. Roll stress.
*Low roll of 5*
Player: Unaffected, I remove my burning shirt, throwing it aside.
Me: Ok. Everyone else: you get to see your tubby middle-aged boss shirtless. Roll stress.

Returning to topic, I can certainly see why, with this attitude, the player feels the way he does about the stress rolls - it generates impact, but necessarily of a very negative sort, which hinders his possibilities to create 'good' impact even more. Furthermore, I think it collides with the character concept he had in mind: I think he wanted his character to be an unphasable office drone, though I did explain to him that this was to be achieved by gaining Cool.

About your suggestions, Ron, I'm not really enthusiastic about introducing Weird Agents to play. The pitch I used on the players - especially on the non-roleplayers - was that this was a game about sort-of real people. This is probably because of my English, but I didn't really understand your other suggestion, the one about letting the player to have his say - perhaps you could elaborate or provide a more concrete example?
Maybe another course of action I should take would be to let the players have a first say about what happens on a failed roll. I've sort of been hogging the narration of failed rolls, seeing as they were supposed to be pretty rare.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi,

I don't like Weird Agents much either, for exactly the same reason as you, and having played one and finding that the weird took over everything. My suggestion was based merely on the player getting to play someone who can have a big wild impact. It seems like a poor fit for him and everyone, though.

I love your account of play. That's exactly how I like running and playing in InSpectres. Best Stress roll ever.

So how to preserve that fun without having at least one player find the Stress/failure rules aggravating? It's a matter of making sure that their contributions to the failures on 3's and 2's count just as much, and as significantly, as your contributions to their successes on 4's and 5's. (I hope I'm remembering the numbers right; if not, adjust as needed - when they fail but still get to narrate stuff). If you could turn an "erase the pentagram" into "... and your shirt catches on fire," then they can certainly turn "you miss the demon" into "but I spray Mr. McGillicuddy with the anti-demon foam instead, immunizing him," or whatever they want.

Regarding the janitor having his say, I refer only to beginning a scene in which the characters get a chance to talk to one another. If you have any NPCs about, perhaps one of them could say "Hell, that wasn't so bad," and clearly expect agreement from the janitor. Or be up-front and say, "Hey everyone, let's do a scene where we debrief about the last mission."

If I were a little bit frustrated with how things had gone for my character, I'd be happy to role-play the character telling the others what he thinks about the experience. It might well be sufficient for me to get rid of the frustration because it'd be fun to go off on them (I find myself imagining a ranting John Cleese monologue ...). If this doesn't apply to this player, then the suggestion won't be useful.

Best, Ron

[Noclue]

Hi James,

You have a point there, stated a little unsympathetically.

Sorry for that. I wasn't going for unsympathetic. I was shooting for glib, maybe a touch bemused.

My question at the end was serious though. In the games we've played, failure was wholeheartedly embraced and stressing out was just part of the fun. But from the OP it sounds like the player feels deprotagonized by the stress dice, which shouldn't be happening. So, I am actually having a little bit of cognitive dissonance.

One little thing I see in the response, I think the player should be free to color their character how they see fit regardless of cool dice. If he wants to play the unphaseable office drone, that should color his narrative when he reacts to failure and when he freaks out. Maxwell Smart comes to mind as an example (TV show, not the film). He's funny because he's constantly failing, rarely in control of anything, and constantly maintains his unflappable superspy facade.  I might have read too much into the statement about needing cool dice to complete his character concept. But clearly, if his character concept does not work in times of stress, it's a bit out of sync with what the game delivers.

[Elkin]

We had another session of InSpectres, in which we received a new player, and had a short but sweet 10-dice mission, which involved pink, furry and robotic weather-altering critters wrecking havoc inside air conditioning systems. I relayed to the players most of the insight I learned from this thread, to what I think were pretty good results.

Regarding the two problems I had: I found myself with fewer opportunities to call for stress rolls. I did, however, manage to reduce the CEO to zero skill dice, and his player still felt empowered enough to keep on charging at the Pink Menace with nothing but his talent to provide him with a die. The confessional problem also seemed to subside: people gave out some downright nasty, clever and hilarious confessionals.

The one complaint I did receive was about pacing. This mission and the previous 6-dice mission took us the same time to complete (a little over an hour). We had another hour left, but didn't know if we could finish another mission within that time limit, and the prospect of "failing" a mission just because one of us had to catch the bus seemed unappealing. It would be helpful if we could have a rough estimate of the relation between number of mission dice to actual play length.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Cool! It seems to me that the group is simply absorbing and utilizing InSpectres stuff at its own pace, which is understandable. I'm glad that the thread seemed to help too.

Regarding pacing, it may be that it's more of the same: next time it won't be an issue. It's possible, now that you all know the game works and can be relied upon to facilitate fun stories, that everyone can ease up and enjoy more Color during and in between events of play.

Best, Ron