[In Spaaace] Ace Reporters!

[gsoylent]

This is my account of our first In Spaaace game. It may be of interest as it's the report of three people first experience with Forge-like games and ideas ( we have played FATE a couple of times, but I'd argue we've treated it more like 'FUDGE with not quite enough skills'). So for good or evil, this was going to be a radically different game experience for us all.

The Game: Greg Stolze's "In Spaaace" (Token Effort). This is a diceless rpg in which players and GM bid tokens against each other in secret wagers for control of the story. Winner narrates but pays a token to the loser.

The Players: Just the three of us. We are old friends, all three experienced roleplayers and GMs, though we perhaps don't quite have the same time and energy to devote to the hobby as we once did.

Adventure Structure:
The setting was based on the Futurama cartoon. The players took on the roles of reporters (their decision) working to produce a weekly news review program.

To structure the adventure I borrowed a page or three from Inspectres. I started the session by having the editor dump three story leads on the party. But I made it clear that, while I was going to provide interesting locations, NPCs and events for them to interact with, they were going to provide the story. 

So for instance, one story lead was about a volcanic eruption of the island of Onka-Onka. As the players researched the it, went on site, spoke to people they learned all that the native Onka tribe was refusing to evacuate, that the statues of Onk, (huge heads somewhat similar to the ones on Easter island) had miraculously be spared by the lava and that a film crew was on the island making a James Bond movie at the very same time.  All of which may mean nothing or may mean everything, depending on whether the players choose to spend tokens for Plot Edits and come up with "what is really happening here".  The more comprehensive the coverage of the story, the better the final ratings of the show.

Finally the adventure also had an element of time management. The party would be working to their weekly deadline and I would keep track of the days as they went by.

Analysis:
I am not going to give a blow by blow account of the game. It worked well, we laughed a lot and kept pretty focused on the game throughout. Considering how much a radical departure this was from our usual games, both players remarked how natural it felt (although a few issue regarding the mechanics did arise). Player interaction with NPCs was much higher than normal. It maybe due to the nature of the scenario.

Luckily I got quite a bit of unsolicited feedback on the game from the players, which I can summarise here.


Player A "I thought yesterday went pretty well, except that the creative juices were running dry on my side & I didn't really come up with anything worth pursuing - bit disappointing. I was quite proud of the lava surfers, mind you, and think I established an interesting character. "

Player B "I liked the game, though it's funny that the GM is actually an opponent rather than a facilitator.  I guess I'm not used to the GM actually restricting the things you can do, so much as judge how easily it would happen.  It's just a different feel to the game I guess.

I liked how easy it is to create characterization... and the lightness of the ruleset is such a breath of fresh air... finally, a game where combat isn't required! Yay!  But that game is hard work!"

The hard work comment refers to the fact that the session was a creative whirlwind, played at pretty sustained rate.

From a GM point of view it was really nice not to have to second-guess where the players may be going or trying to keep things on track. I still had to improvise a lot, some bits resulting more inspired than others, but there was none of that anxiety that the improvised bits might not fit in with the over all plan, because there is no overall plan.

One thing really surprised me. In an ordinary game, as a GM I know which scenes are important to the plot and which scenes are not. The result is that I often instinctively put a lot more energy and detail on the first and maybe try to speed along the "fluff" scenes. Now in this game, because I don't know which bits will become important to the story in the end, no is no such thing as a fluff scene. Each and every one scene is potentially important. That is kind of an eye opener.

We did not complete the scenario. I hope to add the second half in the next few weeks, depending when we next get a chance to meet up.