Marginalia on InSpectres

[Ian Charvill]

I didn't get to play yet as much as I'd like.  I was looking to change job about the time I started running it and my first application turned into an interview turned into a job.  We did character generation and a session where the players moved into their franchise headquarters.

I'm intending to try it again once I put together a gaming group in my new town.  A few things struck me in terms of doing it all again and what I would do differently.

Firstly, a few fans of the game have a habit of suggesting the game tends not to work well with people who've played a lot of traditional games.  Maybe I'm just better at explaining stuff than any of them but I didn't find that to be the case.  If anyone is thinking of running InSpectres but is holding off because they're not sure if their players will "get it" don't hold off, play it.  Two notes:

1. I did notice people who'd GM'd before took to the narration mechanics better than people who avoided GMing.  I think this boiled down to nothing more than people who had practice of narrating found narrating more familiar and comfortable than people who didn't.

2. The concept of confessionals may be a little alien to players who've never watched reality TV.

The second point is, I think, much more significant.  Stress sucks.  I don't mean that in the sense of getting hit by an orc with an axe in D&D sucks, I mean it in the sense that it takes away from the fun of the game.  As a session progresses characters accumulate stress so their scores go down, so they're less able to succeed at rolls.  This means, as the session moves towards it's climax players are progressively disempowered.  They lose the right to narrate.

This stems from the player narrates success, GM narrates failure mechanic.  I mean, right away, this takes away the rights of the player to hose their own character.  There's real comic potential in failure, but that's put into the GM's hands.

If there were a mechanic where stress disempowered the character but empowered the player, I think it would work better.

The third and final point is an aside.  There's group held bonus dice to pump Academics rolls, Athletics rolls, Technology rolls but not Contact rolls.  To boost a Contact roll you have to risk the bank.  The organisations I've worked for have had budgets for schmoozing.  Diners Club cards, expense accounts and so on.  I'm not sure whether the point of the game was that the people starting the franchise didn't have the nous to budget for customer relations or whether it was just an oversight.  The comic potential of a group that know how to make their clients feel great about the InSpectres experience but had no clue how to deliver an actual service is great.  I guess that's just a limitation on the scope of the game, but I don't see any gains from making it that way.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Firstly, a few fans of the game have a habit of suggesting the game tends not to work well with people who've played a lot of traditional games.  Maybe I'm just better at explaining stuff than any of them but I didn't find that to be the case.  If anyone is thinking of running InSpectres but is holding off because they're not sure if their players will "get it" don't hold off, play it.  

Shut up. The game is perfect, the players are broken. Read on!

1. I did notice people who'd GM'd before took to the narration mechanics better than people who avoided GMing.  I think this boiled down to nothing more than people who had practice of narrating found narrating more familiar and comfortable than people who didn't.

This makes a lot of sense...not something I've thought about though. But I can see it...

2. The concept of confessionals may be a little alien to players who've never watched reality TV.

I think it depends on how you present it. *I* choose to present it as a "little room with the camera" -- an idea I got from reality shows and COPS and such. You could also envision it as an interior monolog (which almost everyone would get, I think). You can also frame it using different methods. UnSpeakable does it as journal entries and letters (ala an HP Lovecraft story) and I've heard people using the InSpectres rules to play other kinds of games, with one being set on a starship and the Confessionals are captain's logs and personal entries.

The second point is, I think, much more significant.  Stress sucks.  I don't mean that in the sense of getting hit by an orc with an axe in D&D sucks, I mean it in the sense that it takes away from the fun of the game.  As a session progresses characters accumulate stress so their scores go down, so they're less able to succeed at rolls.  This means, as the session moves towards it's climax players are progressively disempowered.  They lose the right to narrate.

This stems from the player narrates success, GM narrates failure mechanic.  I mean, right away, this takes away the rights of the player to hose their own character.  There's real comic potential in failure, but that's put into the GM's hands.

If there were a mechanic where stress disempowered the character but empowered the player, I think it would work better.

Play TrollBabe? I dunno, man. I guess you could just...and I'm plucking out my own left eye as I type this so excuse any typos...just ignore that rule and insert your own version. Yeah, you paid $20 for this.

EDIT: Posted this, then remembered to answer the question. InSpectres is not a game about player narration rights (which is so 2002...I mean, come on people! Get over it!). Because success can be so furtive, players deserve the right to toot their own horns when things go well. The GM's role in the game is as pacing guy, sure...but it's also quasi-adverserial. I don't know about anyone else but I lived that live and it's payback time. I kinda want the franchises to go under.

The third and final point is an aside.  There's group held bonus dice to pump Academics rolls, Athletics rolls, Technology rolls but not Contact rolls.  To boost a Contact roll you have to risk the bank.  The organisations I've worked for have had budgets for schmoozing.  Diners Club cards, expense accounts and so on.  I'm not sure whether the point of the game was that the people starting the franchise didn't have the nous to budget for customer relations or whether it was just an oversight.  The comic potential of a group that know how to make their clients feel great about the InSpectres experience but had no clue how to deliver an actual service is great.  I guess that's just a limitation on the scope of the game, but I don't see any gains from making it that way.

Forgive me for not thinking of everything! Haha...I kid. You could always allow the Credit Card to be used to schmooze clents. InSpectres (as a fictional company) is meant to resemble less a cool cat corporation and more like a cleaning service or pest extermination business. "Client" is a bit glamorous a term. "Client" is like, "I'll send my man to pick you up in the Bentley" and then you send him a fruit baskets every Chaunakah. In my mind, it's more like a WebVan or Cosmo kind of service, one interested in cheap, quick and painless elimination of supernatural pests. Ie: DOOMED.

Man, it's hard to spell Chaunakah with one eye.

- J

[Ian Charvill]

Firstly, a few fans of the game have a habit of suggesting the game tends not to work well with people who've played a lot of traditional games.  Maybe I'm just better at explaining stuff than any of them but I didn't find that to be the case.  If anyone is thinking of running InSpectres but is holding off because they're not sure if their players will "get it" don't hold off, play it.  

Shut up. The game is perfect, the players are broken. Read on!

1. I did notice people who'd GM'd before took to the narration mechanics better than people who avoided GMing.  I think this boiled down to nothing more than people who had practice of narrating found narrating more familiar and comfortable than people who didn't.

This makes a lot of sense...not something I've thought about though. But I can see it...

2. The concept of confessionals may be a little alien to players who've never watched reality TV.

I think it depends on how you present it. *I* choose to present it as a "little room with the camera" -- an idea I got from reality shows and COPS and such. You could also envision it as an interior monolog (which almost everyone would get, I think). You can also frame it using different methods. UnSpeakable does it as journal entries and letters (ala an HP Lovecraft story) and I've heard people using the InSpectres rules to play other kinds of games, with one being set on a starship and the Confessionals are captain's logs and personal entries.

Definitely I need to reframe it when I run it again.  The other examples are interesting.

The second point is, I think, much more significant.  Stress sucks.  I don't mean that in the sense of getting hit by an orc with an axe in D&D sucks, I mean it in the sense that it takes away from the fun of the game.  As a session progresses characters accumulate stress so their scores go down, so they're less able to succeed at rolls.  This means, as the session moves towards it's climax players are progressively disempowered.  They lose the right to narrate.

This stems from the player narrates success, GM narrates failure mechanic.  I mean, right away, this takes away the rights of the player to hose their own character.  There's real comic potential in failure, but that's put into the GM's hands.

If there were a mechanic where stress disempowered the character but empowered the player, I think it would work better.

Play TrollBabe? I dunno, man. I guess you could just...and I'm plucking out my own left eye as I type this so excuse any typos...just ignore that rule and insert your own version. Yeah, you paid $20 for this.

EDIT: Posted this, then remembered to answer the question. InSpectres is not a game about player narration rights (which is so 2002...I mean, come on people! Get over it!). Because success can be so furtive, players deserve the right to toot their own horns when things go well. The GM's role in the game is as pacing guy, sure...but it's also quasi-adverserial. I don't know about anyone else but I lived that live and it's payback time. I kinda want the franchises to go under.

Trollbabe leaves me a little cold, I guess 'cause of the comic strips.  Just a taste thing I guess.  I guess InSpectres is one of the first things I've played with overt player narration mechanics so I may have been seeing them too large.  I want InSpectres to be funny and I'm not one for laughing at my own jokes, so I want the system to give the players the opportunity to make me laugh.

But hosing the players and seeing them squirm, that might be kind of funny.

The third and final point is an aside.  There's group held bonus dice to pump Academics rolls, Athletics rolls, Technology rolls but not Contact rolls.  To boost a Contact roll you have to risk the bank.  The organisations I've worked for have had budgets for schmoozing.  Diners Club cards, expense accounts and so on.  I'm not sure whether the point of the game was that the people starting the franchise didn't have the nous to budget for customer relations or whether it was just an oversight.  The comic potential of a group that know how to make their clients feel great about the InSpectres experience but had no clue how to deliver an actual service is great.  I guess that's just a limitation on the scope of the game, but I don't see any gains from making it that way.

Forgive me for not thinking of everything! Haha...I kid. You could always allow the Credit Card to be used to schmooze clents. InSpectres (as a fictional company) is meant to resemble less a cool cat corporation and more like a cleaning service or pest extermination business. "Client" is a bit glamorous a term. "Client" is like, "I'll send my man to pick you up in the Bentley" and then you send him a fruit baskets every Chaunakah. In my mind, it's more like a WebVan or Cosmo kind of service, one interested in cheap, quick and painless elimination of supernatural pests. Ie: DOOMED.

Man, it's hard to spell Chaunakah with one eye.

- J

I dunno.  Certainly the UK commercial world, everyone's a client now.  Apart from at McDonald's where everyone's a McClient.  Because of how pervasively it's used, it's becoming quite a low rent term.  It's like, we're a company, right, we should call everyone clients.  Maybe it's just me, but I think it's funny when you start calling the cleaners Washroom Executives and stuff.  Fur coat and no knickers kind of a deal.

Thanks for the feedback.

Ian

[Michael S. Miller]

This stems from the player narrates success, GM narrates failure mechanic.  I mean, right away, this takes away the rights of the player to hose their own character.

It only takes away the ability to hose your own character if the GM refuses to take player suggestions.

BAD InSpectres GM:
<player fails roll>
Player: Oops, I guess I slip on the ectoplasm and fall down the stairs.
GM: Shut up! You lost the roll, so I get to narrate. Um, you get hit in the head and fall down. Because I said so.

GOOD InSpectres GM:
<player fails roll>
Player: Oops, I guess I slip on the ectoplasm and fall down the stairs.
GM: Absolutely! And as you're careening down, you remember that big, heavy crate you left at the foot of the stairs...


Don't cleave to their suggestions every time, but don't reject good ideas just because they came from the players. "GM narrates" just means that the GM has final authority to decide what happens, NOT that the GM and only the GM must come up with idea. Once I "got" this, narration mechanics became a lot more fun for me.

[Ian Charvill]

Hey Michael,

First off, I wanted to thank you for your comments.  I think they'd work for a lot of people but I wanted to just explain why I'd tend to go a different way.

When I play a game, for the first few sessions, I like to play it 'by the book'.  I don't tend to tinker until I've got a better feel for what a system plays like.

The method you described takes a lot of generosity from the GM to function.  Because it amounts to players can say whatever the GM says they can say.  Without a great deal of generosity the result is awful.  The only difference between your two examples is generosity: in the first the GM counters with a 'no'; in the second the counter is an 'and furthermore'.   They both amount to the same thing: the GM says.

A lot of terrifically good GMs use this.  I've seen it in games from Call of Cthulhu to Warhammer to Mage to GURPS.  A GM using that technique and being generous can generate a huge amount of fun.  Incidentally, because the buck still absolutely stops with the GM it takes a lot of creative pressure off the players.  That's why, I guess, that's what Robin Laws went with in HeroQuest for the central narration mechanic.  The players can narrate whatever they like as long as the GM gives it the thumbs up.  Centralised power, generalised creativity.  And gangbusters with a generous GM.

The thing that got me to play Inspectres is that it breaks from that tradition and says: the player can narrate and he doesn't need the GM's permission to be right.  That's very interesting to me.  It shed a light on things for me when Jared said about the moments of player narration being 'now I get to toot my own horn' with the GM positioned as a quasi-adversary.  

So, like I said, Michael, what you wrote: gangbusters, but not quite for me, for this game, right now.