[InSpectres] Space Cadets! Episode 1

[WiredNavi]

So, we played our first session of Space Cadets! yesterday.  I think it went well, given that nobody (including myself) was familiar with the InSpectres system or, in fact, anything that isn't primarily Sim-based.
I introduced the characters and modifications to the InSpectres system I'm using here.  Kendra named her character 'Melina Dortz' and Jamey named his 'Trent Michaels', and we added one more PC before we began:

Mike's Character - Plit:
Species:  Zalgathronii
Powers:  Ubiquitous Ray Gun, Control Greenery
Test Results:
Academics - 2
Atheletics - 3
Technology - 3
Contact - 1
Cool Rating 1
Plit is a three-foot-high green man with a single yellow antenna emerging from his forehead.  He is a Sub-Commander in the Zalgathronii Aggression Force, which sent him to Earth with orders to become popular and respected in order to help pave the way for Zalgathroni takeover.  He believes himself to be a superior being and is full of secret plans for world domination.  He also happens to be a master of Zalgathroni Feng Shui, and can get very irritable when things are put out of place - after all, he rearranged the reactor core containment rods for a perfectly good reason.  He always seems to have a ray gun on him, which, like all ray guns, blows apart inanimate objects or stuns living beings, but not vice versa.

I decided that to get everyone used to the system and to narrating their own successes and failures, the first session would not be a standard job/mission per se, but would instead be the characters exploring the station, getting their living quarters set up, finding out where things were, etc.  Each 5 or 6 they rolled while exploring the station would allow them to assign one of the 10 Station Dice which I was starting them out with to one of the Station Facilities categories; when they'd assigned all 10 dice, the 'mission' was over and the episode could end.  This worked pretty well, but I think that putting it into some sort of mission context would have helped because there was a bit more aimless standing around than I'd hoped there would be.  The blame for this rests squarely on my shoulders for not having any sort of narrative direction, and I think that in further sessions when there is more of an active purpose for the players, it won't be such a problem.

I opened with the five characters shuttling up to the station while being interviewed by an MTV camera crew.  I didn't do as well with this as I'd hoped; I wanted to try to spark their imaginations and get them thinking about what kinds of things they'd need/want to do on the station but I became a bit sidetracked with interacting with the characters themselves.  After they docked, they pretty much went hog-wild, making rolls to find places to sleep, activate key systems, etc.

Highlights of the session:
- Plit turned on the gravity from the bridge controls, dropping everyone on their behinds (Stress Check level 1 for everyone), without actually irritating anyone at all and in fact making the two humans Cooler (they both rolled 6s and gained Cool Dice) as they landed neatly on their feet.
- Melina checked to see if the lounge viewscreen got Earth channels (Technology roll: 4) - it did, and would display them happily, but only when she was watching.  It wouldn't respond to anyone else.  Plit, in a fit of pique, attempted to order it to behave (Contact roll: 2) and instead the viewscreen began shrieking static at exactly the frequencies that Zargothronii dislike (Stress Check level 2 for Plit).
- Sydney redecorated his/her/its room to 'feel more like home' (Technology roll: 5) and ended up with a nest of hissing wires, coiled cables, and oozing alien debris.
- Melina got stuck in her overly-soft, pillowlike bed and called for help.  What she got was Sydney, who scrambled into the room and helpfully lifted her out of the bed (Stress Check level 2 for being 'menaced' by a horrible Geiger-esque monstrosity).  At exactly the same time, Trent stuck his head in the room, saw a cute human girl being attacked, and dived across the room (Atheletics roll: 6), scooping her out of the alien's arms and tumbling them back into the bed, right where he wanted to be.
- After that situation was dealt with, Melina declared that the bed 'had to go'.  Plit responded, "It must go?  So be it,"and blew it to smithereens (Atheletics roll: 6) covering the room in feathers.
- Melina attempted to find a good vacuum cleaner to clean the feathers out of her room (Technology roll: 2) and instead found a large closet which was completely full of dustbusters.  She decided to find another room to stay in instead.
- Trent searching the computer system for EDF uniform storage (Academics roll: 5) and finding all sorts of womens' uniforms (but no mens' uniforms), upon which he sprinted down the hall, pulled out the two skimpiest, most vinyl-leather-and-fur versions of the womens' uniforms he could find, and told the two girls that these were the best he could find.

About halfway through the game, I started asking the players just before they rolled, "What is your intention?  State it explicitly."  This seemed to helpa lot; before, the players were stumbling over what a 'success' or 'failure' meant, but once we started doing that, they knew already and just wanted to come up with something funny.

I'm a bit worried about massive Cool inflation (everyone ended the session at 1 or 2 Cool) but I haven't thrown any really large Stress hecks at them yet.  I'll see how the next session or two goes before changing the system around again.  It looks like we're going to have a lot of fun with this.

[DevP]

It's good to hear that the one stumbling point (if you want to call it that) - the players wanting more concrete things to do - will just get better with real "jobs" and consequent job dice.

As for Cool - depending on how you scale it, a lot of those events would work for 1-die Cool rolls. (Perhaps more for the skimpy-vinyl-incident.) I guess that forcing more Cool rolls - and as GM, it's your *right* and *duty* to do so! - might nip the inflation.