InSpectres in play

[Overdrive]

Generally we all had a great time. Probably the most funniest rpg session ever :)

The franchise was put together by Fox, an antiquarian with no technical talent, and Aaron, a television repairsman who at the age of 30 still lives at his mum's (he quit the TV repairs because he had to meet the clients). The third agent was Danael, an ex-junkie and a former promising swimmer who nowadays makes her living by repairing old cars.

We gave the CEO and Technical Officer titles to Fox (employee #1) and Aaron (employee #2), and figured they needed a secretary. So Danael (employee #3) got the title of Head Secretary. At this point we concluded that she was actually a mega-babe (with Contact 3 and Athletics 3) and that was probably why she was hired. The secretary position was also applied for by a very competent _male_ applicant, guess who they picked :)

The starting interview was at a radio station. Some weekly midnight show of weird occurrences and such. The interviewer was pretty bored to interview all sorts of weirdoes for the past two years *at night*. We established completition, a rival company with lots of assets and such. Funny stuff.

There was something happening at the University library. Investigations lead to believe it had something to do with ghosts. The agents were pretty stressed, but went to eliminate the problem. Aaron's confessional was "luckily I brought the UV and IR cameras with me, as they proved to be very helpful," so we thought the cameras were to be used. They got the ghost to reveal herself at midnight (or actually 15 minutes past the midnight, they aren't always so precise).

A glowing mist ensues. She was wailing something about a lost love, if she could once again see her lost love then she would go away for ever, blah blah. Danael took a confessional, stating "of course Fox believed all the ghost said, and Aaron seemed to be too slow with the cameras.."

Aaron photographed the ghost with an IR camera, rolled four. The negative part was "and now I'm going to EAT YOU", but the shot was good. All agents freak out when the ghost attacks them! But because of the cameraplay the misty ghost begins to get more solid, and slow. Danael has a chainsaw and tries to use it, but the ghost is so solid that the chainsaw breaks down. Aaron takes another photo, the ghost turns into a thick solid white block of 'stuff', falls on the floor rolling its eyes wildly! Not so scary anymore :)

Well, that was about it. There was some more summoning and stuff, and all was well in the end.

But the agents were terribly stressed. They had a total of 10 stress dice, and the job was only 12 franchise dice. Which leads me to a question: the rules say that whenever a bank die is used, it can empty the whole bank. Now, bank dice are used to get rid of stress dice, right? Seems that chances are that after every job the bank runs out of dice, as getting 1 with at least one of them is more than likely. Is this intended or am I misreading the rules?

[Mike Holmes]

Off the top of my head, you take get the new bank dice after the mission, and just burn them off for PTO (to relieve stress), no roll required. Or something like that.  

Sounds like fun. How did they get so stressed out? Lot's of rolls seeing the ghosts?

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

If I'm not mistaken, you guys came out to the good, with two dice of "profit." You could even save a few PTO dice by having a couple more agents created, and thus let some of the stress get spread around per character over a series of adventures.  

Still, ten stress dice does seem a little excessive for what appeared to be a fairly short adventure. In the games I've played, people have been quick to assign features to one another's characters, in no small part because it permits bonus dice in upcoming scenes. Also, maybe we roll a few more 6's than you guys? Gaining plenty of Cool dice and thus cancelling out a lot of stress.

Back to the basics, though - you get my personal Awesome Gold Star Sticker for playing InSpectres wonderfully. It's my top "let's try these new weird games" pick for almost any group.

You hear that, everyone? If you haven't played InSpectres yet, you're missing out.

Best,
Ron

[Overdrive]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I had them roll stress dice for pretty mundane things like 'getting cut off in traffic'. When you're thrilled about your first assignment and skimming through the old blueprints and someone comes up and says "it's closing time, so get out", it just might be worth of one stress die. After the ghost appeared for the first time both Fox and Aaron failed the stress rolls. They got out of the library quickly, remembering that Danael had taken the car. Fox (with Technology of 1) tried to call her with his cell phone but of course failed the roll- another one die stress roll. This sort of stuff.

And yeah, they rolled no sixes. Best roll was 4 I believe. There were a couple of total meltdowns, so it was very stressful.. Perhaps too much so, maybe I'll have to adjust somewhat.

We're planning to play again on Sunday. A friend comes visiting from Turku (about 150 km away) and I think I let him play a weird agent. Any cool ideas on what to include in the game?

BTW, Dust Devils is also on my list of games to try. Normally I run TROS but since things haven't gone very smoothly (the players are still too passive) I decided to try these games with lots of player power. So far *great* results.

[Jake Norwood]

Normally I run TROS but since things haven't gone very smoothly (the players are still too passive) I decided to try these games with lots of player power. So far *great* results.

Yeah, I have to play inspectres with every new recruit. It really opens them up to how different roleplaying can be from what most of them are used to.

Jake

[Overdrive]

Ok, bear with me for one more story. What I thought would become another few hours of constant laughter turned out to be a very creepy horror scenario.. InSpectres can obviously be played more horror than comedy, cheers to that.

So we played on Saturday. This time there were 5 players, which was too much. Aaron was on vacation so the team needed some new agents: Jack (an ex-crime scene investigator) and Michael (a christian voodoo priest from French Haiti, or something like that). The latter had come to America to fight the Big Snake, saw star signs of the Snake over Washington and read stuff from the newspapers that could only mean works of the Snake. We interviewed all new agents..

Including Herbert Olcott, a half-spirit whose father was Thoth-Amon (a guy who apparently ruled Egypt for 1500 years).

I hadn't planned the session very well for a number of reasons, so I had the team receive a handwritten (with a quill) letter from a Vladimir Zhernomyrden, who had a job for them and would visit the office on the following night.

Vladimir turned out to live in an old crypt at the graveyard with his brothers, and complained about disturbances during the day. He paid with some Spanish golden Doublons up front. It was a 20-die job (the franchise had 9 dice, some sponsorhip from the university).

So the agents set on the field. Three of the players hadn't played InSpectres before, so we had to share our ideas to come up with decent clues. This continued since it was so cool, and suddenly the players stated only the best and coolest ideas around. The mystery growed to cover vampire clan wars, old Indian burial grounds, Egyptian slave-vampires and pyramids. There even was a 50-meter obelisk that was buried in the ground, only 10 meters visible. It was *very* creepy.

But the players rolled badly! They got the franchise dice very slowly. All skill rolls took alot of time because everyone wanted to share the ideas. Suddenly we had played for like five hours, with only 13 of the needed 20 dice. Duh?

When the franchise dice were full the player of the weird agent ended the story with going in the pyramids "and there was a battle of gods"-thing. Cool, it finally ended.

It was still very good session and we had a great time. But the ending was... crappy at best, and it took ages. Was the group too large or what did we do wrong?

A question about weird agents. It says that they cannot earn franchise dice on successful rolls. Most of the play time the characters were investigating, and the weird agent did nothing. Since he couldn't earn dice then it would only take longer to come up with them if he were also investigating. The story was coming out of control pretty early, and we didn't want yet another chef running the show. The player was cool to accept this and did a great job setting limits on the plot when it seemed necessary.. but seems like taking a weird agent is a waste of time (though probably fun).

Another thing is that the players were reluctant to actually move to the fieldwork before establishing all the facts first. When they get to the crypt they had 18 of the 20 dice. Perhaps it was because the story was so open at the time.. but I frequently urged them to move on, with no effect. Any suggestions?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

It might be good to consider waiting for the next session to get to the ending, especially when you have lots of players.

It's hard to tell where the crappy-ending came from ... The low rolls shouldn't mean much, as the GM is a player too and has the same latitude to bring things to a close as anyone else. That seems to be the core notion, actually, if I'm reading your post right. You might want to consider the range of a GM's input in InSpectres, as you might have run it a little too far in the "players make up everything" direction.

It might have been a matter of too many in-game elements to deal with, or a matter of people extending the scenario through their input rather than closing issues. I've played InSpectres with six people before, and the key to the fun was that everybody let everyone else get stuff done when the stuff had caused enough trouble already.

That business about getting nearly all the franchise dice before heading to the site strikes me as wrapped up in all these issues as well, but I'm probably already way too far over the line of providing notions without having been there.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

I'm going to guess that the crappy ending was just due to exhaustion. Like Ron said, who said that each foray has to be resolved in one session? If you get tired after 3 hours, split it into two sessions. That gives everyone time to ponder what might happen next time. Think of it as a "to be continued" episode.

I like that they took forever getting out to the field. The research can be creepy, too. Do like Cthulhu, and have them make stress die rolls for reading really nasty texts. Do they stumble across an ancient scroll? Well, little do they realize that by reading it, they're summoning the creature that they're reading about. Bring the adventure to the characters, no matter what stage they're at.

Again, as Ron suggested, just because the players get to make stuff up doesn't mean you can't, too. You're just as responsible for the outcome. And don't sweat the prep. Just go with what feels right at the time. Heck, what you have written above about the snake is more prep than any InSpectres game I've ever played or run. :-)

Mike

[Overdrive]

Ah, excellent ideas. So basically the players come up with stuff the characters stumble upon, but that might only be a part of it. Cool. Before I had only considered adding something like when Jack the ex-policeman is pretty freaked out by the stuff they've discovered and goes to the garage to pick up some power tools, the prisoner (they got one and kept him there) has become a shrieking ghoul. As it happens, Jack shot him five times, and got another point of stress. All of them were too scared to go out during the night so I figured there just might have been something, and told the players so.

But it can be more :)

We're still learning, this was the second time around, and half of the players hadn't played InSpectres before (and the second half only one time) so.. One guy, who normally isn't really fond of these "experiments" actually told he got kinda hooked and wants more :) A great game.

And the crappy ending was probably because everyone was so tired.. But perhaps also because there was just too much information around and someone had to sum it up.