[InSpectres] Wodehouse variant thinking

[clehrich]

So over in Actual Play, Sven started a thread about Operation Icebox and had a comment also about P.G. Wodehouse's novels in InSpectres.  That started to get crazy, so I'm starting up here where this part belongs.  But remember, guys, this is all Sven's fault -- he's the nut who thought, "InSpectres?  Wodehouse?  Of course!"  So blame him.  I think it's genius, of course.

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The Concept
Now the basic idea is that InSpectres rules get used to create Wodehousian madness, specifically Bertie and Jeeves.  I'm crossing my fingers that a whole bunch of folks know the books and stories well.  My brother is insane, and owns every book Wodehouse ever wrote -- no, I do know how many there are, no I'm not kidding, all of them -- so I've got a lot of them pretty solidly.

So Sven started it:

The main thing I'm worried about with using the InSpectres as a model is - what does the group represent?  At the moment, I'm falling back to thinking of it as the character's Club.  Also, it seems appropriate to give players a way to reduce how Boggled their characters are - possibly one or more dice per foolish plan that they come up with.  I'm thinking here of modelling how Bertie is stumped and tongue-tied by a ferocious Aunt, and then comes up with a "brilliant" plan of how to deal with the dilemma, which puts him back in excellent spirits. (In fact, perhaps going along with a plan should help "heal" Boogle dice, since other characters seem to find comfort in Bertie's schemes - until they go horribly wrong, at least.)  And since they're more temporary than the standard die losses, it might be better to have one Boggle pool, that applies to all skill rolls...

My proposal, specifically for a con, was:

Hmm.  Clearly Drones members are the way to go.  Why not set up a little more of the situation?

So Pongo Twistleton, visiting at the Glossops', has fallen in love with Honoria Glossop.  Bingo Little (married to Rosie these days) is doing a spot of tutoring at the Glossop house.  Gussie Fink-Nottle is hanging around there too, because Madeline Bassett is visiting Honoria, who's been a bit under the weather, and not surprisingly is chafing at Madeline's nursing.  Pongo isn't sure what to do, so of course he turns to Jeeves.  Jeeves will be going out of town on his annual holiday, fishing somewhere probably, but he comes up with a wonderful plan, which obviously Bingo and Gussie will have to be told about: Bertie is going to the Glossop house and will push Madeline into the weed-choked pond, and then Pongo will jump in and save her while Honoria is watching.  The idea being that Honoria will fall madly in love with Pongo's manly athleticism, Madeline will of course cling to Gussie for comfort, and Bertie will be even less likely to end up engaged to either of them than he is now.  Fortunately Sir Roderick Glossop is away giving a lecture in Austria, because of course he won't have Bertie on the place, as he knows Bertie is totally insane (keeps rabbits in his bedroom, after all).

The PCs:

[*]Bertie Wooster
[*]Pongo Twistleton
[*]Bingo Little
[*]Gussie Fink-Nottle[/list:u]Assuming your players know these characters and the rough situation, and you can describe it appropriately just to remind them, I think you're off and running.  God only knows what's going to happen.  Will Sir Roderick pop up?  Will Aunt Agatha visit?  Will the pushing-Madeline-into-a-pond go off without a hitch (certainly not!)?  Will Rosie get suspicious that Bingo is after Honoria again?  What about the little horror, Thomas or whatever his name is, whom Bingo is tutoring?

One interesting mechanic: is there some way that maybe the Confessional can be used for Jeevesian interventions (since obviously he's going to have to be called in by telegram)?  The idea being that at the very end, somehow, the crowning moment is something that completely hoses Bertie but has everyone else in the appropriate girls' arms (whoever that might be at the moment).

Welcome to the Forge, Svend!

And after that Woosterian madness, maybe we can use InSpectres to play a game of Futurama.

Chris,
You're front-loading the situation that much for a con game, right? How much detail do you think an Inspectres-style Wodehouse game would need to provide if everyone was familiar with the genre?

Just a thought: Jeeves-and-Wooster style Inspectres might encourage players to shaft their own characters even more than usual. That'd be fun.

So here's my thoughts.

Bertie
...is a big problem.  He's very dominant, narratively, and is always the one who really gets the shaft at the end.  He escapes, but no more.  He never, ever gets the girl.  The best he can hope for is to survive by the skin of his teeth.  And very often it's Jeeves who puts him in the nightmare situation to begin with, which he never seems to notice.

One way to deal with it is to scrap Bertie entirely, but I hate to leave him out.  If nothing else, the thought of doing an Actual Play writeup where I get to write things like, "I stared down into the plate of fragrant eggs and b. and pronged a moody forkful" just makes my mouth water.

Besides, without Bertie, no Jeeves.

Another possibility is to swap him around.  Each player gets to be Bertie (or has to be Bertie, depending on how you look at it) in rotation, adventure to adventure.

Jeeves
I'm convinced that a really cunning mechanic can be devised, using Confessionals I suspect, by which the whole endgame can be wrapped up elegantly by a piece of Jeevesian invention.  But I'm certain that Jeeves is a true NPC --- really not a player, including not the GM.  He's nobody's, a sort of perpetual deus ex machina who enables good (or anyway not disastrous) results to occur.

Ideas?

The Crew
I would think Drones Club is the way to go.  There are so many loonies in it.  Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, Pongo Twistleton... the list goes on.  And you can always claim that any friend of Bertie's is a member: sure, Stilton Cheesewright isn't, to my recollection, a member, but did Wodehouse ever say that for sure?  Maybe he is, even if he's also a local policeman on a bicycle.  He went to school with Bertie, after all.

But you may not want the same crew of idiots every time.  Why not have a list of the possibles, with what's currently known about them (generally not a whole lot that's permanent), and people pick as they set up the session?

Remember, when thinking mechanics (if this is necessary at all), that the object of having Drones members and Bertie is to set up conversations like this:

"Bertie old man!"
"No!"
"But Bertie---"
"No!"
"Old man...."
"No!"
"But we were at school together!"
"Oh, all right."[/list:u]

The Girls
Oh yes, lots of girls.  All pretty, in their way.  It's essential to have one fewer girls than there are men, unless one of them is truly dreadful and obviously not in any way a romantic interest for anyone.  And even then, she's dangerous.

I think setting up one girl at the start, to give us location and the basic outline, is sufficient.  Then we drag in friends, ex-fiancees, sisters, aunts who turn out to be younger than their nieces, etc.

Aunts
One per show, max.  Don't overdo aunts.  They're dangerous.  Some of them chew broken bottles and howl at the full moon.  Others shout "Yoicks!" when indoors.  An aunt is an instant magnet of danger and excitement, and peaceable men like Bertie avoid them whenever possible.  But they may be demanding something, which can be a hook, and they'll blackmail for it.  Aunts have no morals.

Mechanics
...need a little tinkering.  Ideas?  I do think that it's perfectly legitimate to have every character have one extreme characteristic (Money: Has the stuff in heaping sackfuls), except that Bertie isn't especially anything -- he's just especially preux, you know, what?

I love Sven's Boggle idea.

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Okay, what do you folks suggest?

[Russell Collins]

Well, Bertie is especially inventive isn't he? He's always got the mad schemes for everyone else to take part in. And since he narrates the novels, I'd almost vote for him as the GM, setting the scene for the other characters and playing straight man to their innanities. Besides, he should be the one to call in Jeeves to put everything right, signalling the beginning of endgame.

A Boogle trait to track the level of situational misunderstandings would be a necessity for this kind of game. It has to act as a reason to go along with ridiculous plots and desperate measures, but it adds to the difficulty of those very things.

Now I'm thinking about how to work that system to play Fawlty Towers as a game. Time for bed.

[Svend]

I can think of a number of Wodehouse novels where there are more than one protagonist - the psmith books, for example.  Besides, very few literary inspirations make their way into the RPG world completely unscathed.

I feel I should point people who might not know it at The Drones, which is another take on doing the same translation:

 http://www.granta.demon.co.uk/drones/

One problem with the kind of Boggle rules I'm suggesting is that Franchise Dice (or their moral equivalent) don't get soaked up in "healing" the characters.  I'm not sure about the best approach to this.  On a possibly related note, I found (in standard InSpectres) that the more franchise dice we needed to earn, the higher we tended to push the stakes, and eventually it felt like we jumped the shark. (Or in the case I'm thinking of, got backed up by Rudolf and the People's Liberation Army as we took on Santa.)

However, one of the nice correspondences between Wodehouse's characters and Inspectres ones is that they tend to be essentially static, though they will take on various attributes.  So I don't really want a character-advancement mechanic, either.

Perhaps it needs a slightly different approach?

Just to summarize what I was thinking about WRT a character's Boggle pool - you'd use the standard Fear check table, but instead of subtracting those dice from a skill for the remainder of the "mission", you just add them to the character's Boggle pool, and they subtract from all skill checks the character attempts.  They can reduce this pool (normally with a Cunning Plan) - but maybe there's an element of chance as to whether they can succeed in reducing their Bogglement? (Failing this roll would mean that they were unable to convince themselves, or someone points out the Obvious Flaw, I guess.)  I'd say you can only actively reduce Boggle once per scene, but that's just a feeling at this point.

Anyway, those are my not particularly well organized thoughts. :)

[hix]

Chris, it just strikes me from what you were saying (about Jeeves) that maybe Jeeves and Bertie are personaes that only get adopted during Confessionals.

That is: no PC gets a confessional. When you get up onto the chair you either narrate as dry cynical Jeeves or slightly desperate mostly oblivious Bertie.

[clehrich]

Gains and Steve,

I am very hesitant to give up playing Bertie.  Mostly, I just want to do it.  But also I think that Bertie has a special role as the central nexus of insanity.  When the worst happens, he's always standing at ground zero.  

I think one of the best things about InSpectres is the tremendous fun-value in getting hosed.  Bertie is the master, the consummate expert, at getting hosed.  How can I pass that up?

[clehrich]

I can think of a number of Wodehouse novels where there are more than one protagonist - the psmith books, for example.  Besides, very few literary inspirations make their way into the RPG world completely unscathed.

Look, you may be able to find zillions of mad kiwis who not only know the Bertie & Jeeves stuff but also know psmith and Featherstonehaugh Ukridge and Blandings and everything else, but the rest of us have to deal with folks whose sole conception of anything Wodehouse is the mediocre Laurie/Fry series (note: I like them in other things, but I did not think that was their finest hour).

I feel I should point people who might not know it at The Drones, which is another take on doing the same translation

Not great, though, is it?  Your suggestion of InSpectres is much, much better.

One problem with the kind of Boggle rules I'm suggesting is that Franchise Dice (or their moral equivalent) don't get soaked up in "healing" the characters.  I'm not sure about the best approach to this.  On a possibly related note, I found (in standard InSpectres) that the more franchise dice we needed to earn, the higher we tended to push the stakes, and eventually it felt like we jumped the shark. (Or in the case I'm thinking of, got backed up by Rudolf and the People's Liberation Army as we took on Santa.)

My immediate thought, and I'd have to playtest this, is that we're making this much too hard.  See, in InSpectres you actually do sort of want to succeed, get franchise dice, and complete the mission.  In InSpector Bertie (or whatever), getting all the Lunacy Dice (or whatever) means that Jeeves comes in and fixes things.  So there's a certain disincentive to acquire Lunacy Dice, since all the fun really happens in the buildup.  

That's the crucial difference I see here: the whole "mission" is buildup, not resolution.  When you have all the dice required, only then can resolution occur.

However, one of the nice correspondences between Wodehouse's characters and Inspectres ones is that they tend to be essentially static, though they will take on various attributes.  So I don't really want a character-advancement mechanic, either.

Agreed, no changes needed there.

Just to summarize what I was thinking about WRT a character's Boggle pool - you'd use the standard Fear check table, but instead of subtracting those dice from a skill for the remainder of the "mission", you just add them to the character's Boggle pool, and they subtract from all skill checks the character attempts.  They can reduce this pool (normally with a Cunning Plan) - but maybe there's an element of chance as to whether they can succeed in reducing their Bogglement? (Failing this roll would mean that they were unable to convince themselves, or someone points out the Obvious Flaw, I guess.)  I'd say you can only actively reduce Boggle once per scene, but that's just a feeling at this point.

Again, I think we're over-complicating what is basically very simple.

The whole "mission" structure is setup.  Each character of course wants not to get Boggled, because he wants whatever it is he wants: the girl, Aunt Dahlia not mad at him, the silver cow-creamer, etc.  And by default, Jeeves is away on holiday, so the plan is not to get into anything insane, but to have a peaceful, quiet weekend.  This, of course, will never happen.  Even if it starts to happen, Confessionals will ensure that it doesn't go too far.

Confessionals, as you know, can add traits to characters.  This is very important here: "Little did I suspect that young Pongo, having had this little spat with his fiancee Alice Braithwaite, would turn right around and make a play for her sister Daphne."  And Pongo's player gains points toward the resolution by playing that up.

Now when we get to the Resolution, there is certain to be an unholy mess.  So here's my suggestion.  Whoever has the fewest Boggle dice gets to pick the Brilliant Scheme, based upon the Psychology of the Individual.  This, of course, is done in a special Confessional: Jeeves Takes Charge.

Now we get a rapid resolution.  Everyone has to deal with this Brilliant Scheme and revert to his real goals.  So Pongo has to make up with Alice, come hell or high water.  Bertie has to get out of his engagement with Alice, into which he was of course dumped because Alice was made at Pongo (and Daphne), and so on.  This is essentially cooperative insanity, because now (like in normal InSpectres) we actually want to succeed, but only now do we know what our goals are and what the situation is in the first place.

I have some cunning ideas for mechanics; I'll post those very shortly, when I have them written up coherently, and then you can hack them to shreds, you naughty people.

[clehrich]

Jeeves Takes Charge
(This assumes you have InSpectres; if you don't, this will not make sense.  Go buy it right now.)

First, some basic conversions (please propose changes to the terms—I don't love too many of these):

Skills
Brains
Sport
Sociability
Funds

Die Pools
Heaping Sackfuls Dice
Card Dice (Athletics, Library, Easy Touch)
Aplomb Dice
Situation Dice
Skill Dice (9 starting)
Boggle Dice
Talent Dice

Mechanics
Exactly as InSpectres, with the following fillips:

[*]You gain 1 Situation Die when you roll a 6 or a 1 on a Skill roll; you gain no Situation Dice when you roll any other number.
[*]You gain 1 Situation Die when you roll a 1 on a Boggle roll.
[*]You gain no Situation Dice when using Teamwork.[/list:u]
Play Structure
Order of Events

The Call: someone calls for Bertie to do something
Initial Setup: all other PCs establish why they are on the scene
The Horror Begins: play until the chosen number of Situation Dice have been gained
Jeeves Takes Charge: the player with the fewest Boggle Dice explains Jeeves's scheme
All's Well That Ends: play until all Situation Dice have been removed
Dénouement: the player with the most Situation Dice escapes by the skin of his teeth[/list:u][/list:u]---
Now to explain the peculiarities.

You've got at least 2 players here, but 5 is more like it.  One player is Bertie.  One is the GM.  Everybody else is some member of the Drones Club.

The Call.
At the start, Jeeves is getting ready to go off on his annual fishing holiday, when the 'phone rings.  The GM gets to decide who it is, and plays out the conversation.  Somebody—an aunt, a friend, a girl, a couple, etc.—wants Bertie to do something.  I'm working on a little table so you can roll this up randomly, which is probably best.  Whatever it is, Bertie will have to go somewhere for the weekend, or else a whole bunch of people will be descending on him instead.  Jeeves goes off, with many good wishes.  Bertie goes off alone into the wilds.

Initial Setup
Now everyone else needs to decide who they are (if they haven't already) and what they're doing wherever it is Bertie's going.  Going around the circle until everyone's set up (the order makes no difference), each one of these Drones comes to tell Bertie why he's here, and what he wants, and he should make clear what he expects of Bertie.  This may be only to stay out of it, but usually the Drone wants something more: pretend you don't know me, help me get a little more money out of my uncle, help me with my fiancee, help me become engaged to so-and-so, help me break up this marriage that will be disastrous for my sister, etc.  All of these conversations should happen more or less back-to-back, in Bertie's room or somewhere else secluded.  All the players of course know what is happening, but it is assumed at the outset that only Bertie knows all of this—and he doesn't want to.  Bertie will always agree to do whatever his friend wants, despite his misgivings; if the plan seems too ludicrous, he must suggest another or go along with the original plan.

The Horror Begins
Next, we have cocktails, a little random wandering about and having conversations with people, then dinner.  Over the course of the afternoon and evening, and through the next day, madness happens.  Play it out—and up.  Use Confessionals to introduce complications: if Pongo has had a spat with his fiancée Alice Braithwaite, suggest in Confessional that one would never have expected him to turn around and get engaged to her sister Daphne.  And so on.

Continue developing this situation by ensuring maximal miscommunication.  The GM's job is to bring in all the various other characters at difficult times: for example, send Alice to cry on Bertie's shoulder, and when he tries confusedly to point out that actually Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps is interested in her anyway, have her take this as a marriage proposal.  Consider handing out NPCs to players not in a given scene.  Don't have everything happen to Bertie, either: others' madcap schemes go awry, get misinterpreted, and so on.

When you have acquired all the Situation Dice decided upon at the start, it's time to bring in Jeeves.  Bertie desperately sends a confused telegram, and Jeeves appears.

Jeeves Takes Charge
At this point, you have a stack of Situation Dice, and each PC has a certain number of Boggle Dice.  Whoever has the fewest Boggle Dice (if there's a tie, pick the PC with the most Aplomb Dice) does a special Confessional scene, in which Jeeves proposes a cunning scheme based upon the psychology of the individual.  This should focus on whoever has the most Boggle Dice, i.e. the one who has become the person with the biggest, most central problem.  This cunning scheme will in some sense become the core of the resolution of the whole caper.

All's Well That Ends
Now do it all backwards.  Instead of adding Situation Dice to the pool, take them back and put them beside your character whenever you acquire them.  Focus play on the cunning scheme, but make sure that every character also focuses on his actual goals.  Player and character get a little more distinct than before: Pongo may think that it's a good idea to steal the cow-creamer in order to win Daphne's love, but the player knows that Pongo belongs with Alice and that he really wants this anyway, so the player should work at getting Pongo back together with Alice.

Dénouement
Once all the Situation Dice have been removed from the pool, whoever has the most such dice beside his character is the man left holding the bag.  That player narrates a final escape from the situation, and everyone else in turn explains whatever minimal information is needed to wrap it all up neatly.  If Pongo ended up with the most Situation Dice, his escape is probably a desperate climb down the rain-spout to meet Alice, and they drive off to London together.

Everything works out in the end for the PCs, at least in terms of what is really important.  Only villainous people can come a-cropper, and that should be by means of humiliation: it's funny for Aunt Agatha to be made to look a fool, or for Spode to have to creep and crawl to Bertie.  But they don't really lose anything but their pride.

No matter what, Bertie escapes exactly as he started: a genial idiot bachelor with far too much money.

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My guess is that if this gets playtested—and I hope to try it soon!—we'll find that some of the mechanics of normal InSpectres aren't necessary.  But the basics should be respected and kept carefully together, because they work.

Hey Jared, any suggestions?

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Yeah, write it up and I'll put it on the InSpectres page along with UnSpeakable and In-Speckers.