Spookybeans is here

[joepub]

have been searching for information on the show, but have been unable to find anything yet. When did it air, and where?

Sorry, it was Freaky Stories.
Aired around 1997.

[Ben Morgan]

Cool, I'll have to look in on that one.

-- Ben

[agoodall]

Spookybeans, the gothic comics roleplaying game, has now reached playtesting phase.

Hi, Ben. I posted to RPG.net asking about games suitable for playing Invader Zim, and a couple of folk suggested Spookybeans. I read through the rules, and they look good! I haven't had a chance to play it, though.

One thing did strike me. A previous poster suggested that a player may delay using Ooohs in order to freeze their character at 9 Happy-Happys and/or Doom/Dooms. I can see a player having a run of good luck or bad luck driving the game to an early conclusion.

Have you considered adding a mechanism whereby another character could introduce some sort of plot complication and reduce another player's Happy-Happy or Doom-Doom? I was thinking that one character could add 1 to his own Doom-Doom in exchange for reducing another character's Happy-Happy or Doom-Doom. Doing this would also result in some in-game occurence, but I'm not sure what that would be. It would mean that, by the end of the game, the grand total of players' Doom-Doom would be higher than the total of all their Happy-Happy scores, but that seems to fit with the genre.

[joepub]

Have you considered adding a mechanism whereby another character could introduce some sort of plot complication and reduce another player's Happy-Happy or Doom-Doom?

I really like the idea of doing SOMETHING like to gauge characters "dying young".

It would suck if the first 10 Ooohs I spent were successes, because I would reach Happy-Happy and would thus be removed from the game...

[Ben Morgan]

Good point. No one deserves to be that lucky, certainly not a Spookybeans character. In the grand scheme of things, they're a couple of notches up from Elfs, or kill puppies for satan characters.

I'm thinking of setting it up so there's no maximum for HH and DD (no more Critical Mass, iow), but when the scenario ends, whichever is higher is the ending that happens, or something similar. That'll allow for Mallrats-type ending montages.

-- Ben

[joepub]

I'm thinking of setting it up so there's no maximum for HH and DD (no more Critical Mass, iow), but when the scenario ends, whichever is higher is the ending that happens, or something similar. That'll allow for Mallrats-type ending montages.

Perfect.
I like that idea a lot. You have my thumbs up in that decision.

What would be cool is if players could choose to end their character, at an appropriately poetic moment...
Like if a character's got a higher Doom-Doom, which is "Will be torn apart by beasts of the woods",
then when that character is being chased by watchdogs, the player could go "It looks like my fate has caught me."

Because this is more of a narrativist game, some players might be into that.
I know that if a "perfect moment" for my HH or DD arrived, and I had the option to "give in" to it, I would consider it.

Then they get to write up a new character, which is introduced as quickly as it is finished.

I dunno, just my thoughts.

[agoodall]

I'm thinking of setting it up so there's no maximum for HH and DD (no more Critical Mass, iow), but when the scenario ends, whichever is higher is the ending that happens, or something similar. That'll allow for Mallrats-type ending montages.

I like this idea. It allows the gamemaster to choose when he wants the HH or DD to happen to a character.

It does introduce a new wrinkle. I character could, theoretically, go above 10 on HH and DD. Okay, so there's no top end to worry about. It does mean the same character could, theoretically, have the highest HH and DD and they could be the same number! What happens then?

(My personal feeling is that either Doom-Doom should have precedence, or the character should have some sort of semi-happy ending, like Dib at the end of the "Megadoomer" Invader Zim episode, where Zim's plan to destroy him with the mech failed, but half the neighborhood was in flames and Dib's camera had the lens cap on it.)