[Inspectres] Salem Mass Branch Open

[Old_Scratch]

Sunday night was the Grand Opening of the Salem Massachusetts Inspectre's Branch.

It was an ordeal to get the players together, but after months of board games and missed sessions, I was able to convince them to get the game together.

The Characters (and their Players)

Professor Gradgrind, formerly of the Dept. of Chemistry, Franchisee. Talent: Chemistry.
(Played by Ken. Ken is one of the most willing of players, yet is one of the least active. It seems like he shows up to observe (over participate) in something social. When put on the spot, he tends to freeze up, hem and haw, and is the least likely to speak up on his own. Ken actually comes up with some very novel character concepts in the past, but has real difficulty using his concepts in play. Always enthusiastic about the games afterwards. A little experience with more narrative games...)

Lance Olaf aka, "King Arthur", Acting CEO, part-time Medieval Times employee. Talent: SCA member/costume sword play/Ren Faire Geek...
(Played by Aaron. He comes from a MUD/MMORPG/computer game/Mech Warrior background. Has two styles of play generally: min/maxed monstrosity with heavy tactical play when he likes a game, and when he doesn't care for a game he tends to go with what I call Absurdist play, where he seems to do his own thing, turn the game into a parody, and encourage the game towards absurd or surreal directions. His play style is different than my own, but when he contributes to the game, he is very often on the ball and is inevitably a step ahead of the other players. This game, he deviated from the previous styles, which I'm grateful for...)

Steve Dave, Inspectre's Trainee/Intern. Talent: Sci-fi/Comic Geek
(Played by Chuck. Currently my strongest role player. If he doesn't show up, none of the other players want to role play. Quick on his feet, creative, and quite fun to play with. His problem, he tends to play the same character: a dark, menacing characters with a dry wit. He deviated from the norm this time as well.)

TJ Kryzvechzski, aka "Lefty", Chief Security Officer. A former amusement park security guard after being a failed minor league baseball player. Talent: Baseball
(Played by Ed, an infrequent gamer but quite good. Plays a variety of characters and is usually very engaged in the game.)

The Franchise: 5 Point Start up located in a former White Castle. TJ/"Lefty" has a baseball cart, Lance Olaf rolled terribly for his vehicle and wanted an Ambulance and ended up with a stage prop: a Medieval Plague Cart with brass bell, and Professor Gradgrind ended up with the biggest vehicle: a Blood Mobile.

In about two and a half hours we made characters (conducting job interviews) and ran two missions. I don't know what we were doing wrong, but the games went by lightning quick... The players piled on Franchise dice very quickly, so I'm going to have to go back and reread it. Game play was overall enjoyable: players warned that it was likely to go silly, and at times it did, but the players were quite capable of policing themselves. It seemed like all the players had little problem slipping into director stance except for the Professor's player who did almost nothing at all in game play, just tagging along but the player still seemed to enjoy himself.

The 1st Game: Your typical haunted house amidst a cemetery perched precariously atop a cliff. The patron was a tall, well-dressed Baron Olgev who had problems with strange sounds and movements seen only out the corner of the eye. This prompted TJ's/Lefty's personality: He authoritatively asserted that the problem was probably "Possums" and suggested a number of ways to remedy the vermin. This set the tone for all of TJ's personality: he simply has an inability to see the supernatural and comes up with natural explanations.

Steve Dave the Comic Guy really slid into place as well. Despite his lowly position in the team hierarchy, he seemed to enjoy himself answering phones and doing the gopher work. He quickly pulled of "Brazil"-like Ministry of Information bureaucracy, urging all manner of forms upon the client, and when arriving outside the job site, quickly produced a handy checklist: "House on a hill? Check! Graveyard? Check! Howling of wolves? Check! Fog? Check! Army of the Walking Dead? Anyone see an Army of the Walking Dead?".

After a quick entrance into the house and a number of stress dice, Steve Dave the Comic Guy was attacked by a tentacle from the cellar and announced in Confession before falling unconscious that he thought he saw a zipper on the monster. Lance Olaf of Medieval Times then slipped into Confession that announced he had arranged this whole affair as a training exercise, and was ambivalent about their performance. Roughly the same time, TJ had engaged the monster with a baseball bat (he wears his Catcher's kit over his uniform) and discovered that the man in the outfit was the player that beaned him with the ball ending his minor league career. Vengeance ensued.

The 2nd Game: A frantic phone call from a business man in an office tower from the company Infocom (turns out, it really was a game company, which then shifted the game towards Text Based Games). Players enter the building ("Building built on Native American burial ground? Check! Gargoyles? Check! Cyclopean Architecture? Check! Built Using Non-Euclidean Geometry? Check!).

Upon entering the Fifth floor, they discover a giant 50's/60's era computer running text based games and using Daleks as its minions. It had trapped the game company owner and plugged him into an endless text game. TJ's player did a confession and suddenly announced that he was sick and tired of wheeling the Professor's Wheel Chair around, and suddenly everyone broke up laughing as the Professor was suddenly wheelchair bound. I quickly had a Dalek seize the wheel chair and push the protesting and feeble professor toward a machine. TJ went nuts and smashed up the computer with his bat and then pulled the plug. Game finished.

Initial Thoughts & Player Hang-ups
Players were slow to use confessions initially, but players quickly got into play. Nearly all the characters quickly picked up Director's Stance (which they've often been reluctant to do in any substantial manner). It was surprising how quickly the found their own voice and character and how the office culture developed. I fumbled a little bit over the transition from traditional to more narrative games. At one point, a player asked "Do I see anything?" and I wondered: What do I do? Do I come up with something off the top of my head, or do I make them roll? And what would I have them roll for a "Perception" check anyway? I guess I wasn't sure when the players should adopt the Director's Stance and when I should assert it. That's my biggest concern about the book, I wasn't sure where the line should be (or if there even should be that line...).

As for the game, the Franchise Dice were attained too quickly. I may have been doing something wrong with it. The second thing was I learned how important Stress was quite early on. You've got to hit the players quick and fast with Stress. Some of the best parts of the game where when the players freaked out, and I should have hit them even more with Stress.

The biggest problem was that it was not your traditional game. The players had fun, they enjoyed themselves, but I got the impression that they felt they hadn't really played a role playing game. There's a problem with player expectations, they know what a role playing game is like and this doesn't seem like an RPG. This is the same response I got with Pantheon, my own diceless or character-sheet less RPG experiments, with Sorcerer, Puppetland, and My Life with Master. They enjoy themselves, but they can't see playing it prolonged, even though the best stories and characters emerge from these games. I'm a little confounded by their perspective.

A couple of questions: Most of my players deviated from their typical play style: Why was Inspectre's successful at this while other games haven't been?

Should I try to get Ken, the reluctant and quiet player more involved in the game. He says he's not quick on his feet when put on the spot, but I know he is, his only hang up in during gaming. Do I try and involve him more, or is he fine just chugging along at his own rate? I've played with the guy for years now and he has improved, but he still participates very little at all.

Is there some way of legitimizing these sorts of games in the eyes of my players? They enjoy them, but they seem to harbor a little reluctance at accepting them as perfectly viable in comparison to more traditional games.

[ScottM]

Your game sounds like it was fun; it reminded me that I still want to give it a shot.  It sounds like your players enjoyed it too.

I suspect Inspectres was successful in breaking their style because it's so clear on the matter.  The appropriate role is not one you take in most games.  Add to that familiarity with the source (Ghostbusters, and in your case, it sounds like Scooby Doo), and you have players who are confident about going away from a safe, competent character.

Ken's a big issue; I don't feel there's enough in your original to comment on.  I know Ron's talked about drummer like people (in his Bass Play analogy)-- people who set the beat, but don't steal the show.  Is that what Ken's doing, or is he just a lump going along for the ride?  Sadly, I can't help with legitimizing, but I'll listen in to everyone else's responses eagerly.

Scott

[Nathan P.]

Hey there,

I also recentely starting running a game of Inspectres, with a smaller group (2 players and myself, though we may be picking up a third). We've played through two missions as well, and I totally hear you on the thing about how quick they seem to go by. One thing to keep in mind is, the more rolls that are made, the more likely that they're gonna earn franchise dice - which means you either need to have a higher total, or space out the rolls more, in order to have a longer game. I actually doubled (from 10 to 20) the amount of Franchise dice needed from the first to the second mission. As for the spacing out thing, this game really, really makes you play that bass. I've been trying to keep rolls few and far between during the first part of the mission, and then increasing in frequency as it moves towards climax.

As for "legitimizing" - I dunno. I don't have the same sense with my players. Though, they're really into the franchise building aspect of the game - as in, I had planned for it to be a oneshot, but they wanted to play again so that they could build up the franchise more. Which I thought was cool. Maybe you could push that a little more, and see if they hook onto it?

Anyway, it seems like you had fun, which is awesome. I hope some of the above it helpful.

[Old_Scratch]

Great, thanks for the response...

Regarding the speed of the game, I think it might have been the sheer number of rolls early on in research and suiting up. Maybe I shouldn't have been actually giving them Franchise dice for those rolls. I was a little perturbed by this, as they would roll for something, get a good result, and then gain a franchise die or dice even though they really hadn't advanced the story at all. A character rolls for a shotgun and gets two dice... Thinking back, I'd make a comment "shotgun: 2 dice" and then when they finally used that weapon to advance the story, then they'd get their franchise dice. I'm going to reread the book just to see if I overlooked anything...

Ken: he just likes to watch others participate. He mentions after a game his own lack of partiicpation. It was quite bad early on, we played a game where he played a forensic doctor, and in pre-game he mentioned that he was a young man, but then later on changed it to an elderly gentleman. But nobody knew this, and his playing didn't indicate that he was older than the other players, which then turned comedic in that after a month, he finally noted that he was sitting down to rest his aging muscles while waiting, and this resulted in laughter as the character had been chased by a demon, interrogated players, and in one memorable moment, the other two characters (private detectives) used Ken's character as a shield against bullets! When it was discovered that Ken's character was older, we were all shocked, *nothing* had revealed his age.

He has improved. His character sheets often have large sections not filled out, very often the character's name is missing. When asked what he does, he often used to gaze over the character sheet. I surmised that he slowly develops his character concept through play, and that he tends to get bogged down in the mechanics and details. I played a character sheet less game where I took care of all the mechanics and he just had to focus on playing. He did well under those circumstances I should note.

Characters: he plays elderly gentlemen and young thief-like women, normally. When he deviates from this norm, his ideas are pretty interesting. He played a Cherub in a UA/Engel game and in My Life with Master he played a Raven whose connection was the town mayor whom he interacted with via playing chess, flying in at night and making his moves then while the town mayor slept. Great concept I thought.

Its not so much his ideas, it seems to be his execution. Nobody tends to dominate the game and most of the other players feed off of one another, and he doesn't plug in to that himself. If not prompted, he rarely speaks up. If prompted, he often hedges or drags his feet. In a normal one on one conversation the guy won't stop talking, yet I think he has some sort of performance anxiety, worried that his actions are not as interesting as the other players. He seems to not be much of a team player (a common quote in our group during board games is "There's no 'Ken' in teamwork"). He shows up, he plays, and doesn't contribute much. I'm not sure its all that big of a problem, but the strength of the game is always in the collective and shared action, and it seems a little less without his participation. So is there a way to encourage his further participation?

[Nathan P.]

My understanding is that rolls made when kitting out the franchise don't count towards the mission goal.

Oh! Here's another thing. If you dish out enough Stress, it'll bring down the amount of dice being rolled in general, which is another way to pace out the game. Then you get into this cool thing where they're within striking distance of finishing the mission, but they all have really low stats so they start burning up their card dice for the stuff that they really want to do well at. Which is cool.

[Trevis Martin]

Yeah, there is a thread somewhere here where Jared notes that equipping rolls do not count for franchise dice earnings.

best

Trevis

[Mark Woodhouse]

I don't know if your social contract would stand up to it, but I'd suggest one way to drive things the way you're intending is to start handing out Stress pretty much every time YOU have to answer a question.

At one point, a player asked "Do I see anything?" and I wondered: What do I do? Do I come up with something off the top of my head, or do I make them roll? And what would I have them roll for a "Perception" check anyway? I guess I wasn't sure when the players should adopt the Director's Stance and when I should assert it.

Give them their shot at telling you what they see, and if they hem and haw... give it to them. Stress Roll. "You see your ex-boyfriend coming down the hall."

[Sacha]

The Inspectres book mentions that franchise dice are not earned during the equipping phase.

I ran my first game on Friday with three of my regular players. Basically I needed a break from my Glorantha campaign and have been chomping at the bit to try Inspectres.

Overall it was huge success with the players quickly coming to grips with Director Stance. This was probably due to all of them having some experience as GMs and we also love playing Once Upon A Time. I was apprehensive about confessionals but they picked it up immediately and we had a hatful of them in a relatively short session of about three hours.

The franchise dice racked up very quickly. I think this was due to a combination of me allowing too many rolls and not hitting them with stress soon enough. Once stress started to pile up the rate at which franchise dice were gained really dropped off. Unfortunately I didn't start asking for stress rolls until we were well into the horror aspect of the game. Having said that I don't think that having a load of franchise dice to play with detracted from the experience.

As the group's regular GM I found Inspectres almost gave me a night off, even though I was running it. The GMs responsibilities are far less with this game and I did no prep whatsoever. I'd toyed with having a story planned out in the back of my mind in case the players failed to grasp the Director Stance element. With further consideration i decided to have no story in mind at all and leave it all up to the players whilst I happily played bass.

Now I'm keen to give MLWM a whirl but it will have to wait because its back to Balazar on Friday.

Cheers,

Sacha