[InSpectres] Everybody should play InSpectres

[Nathan P.]

I've played InSpectres four or five times now, with two different groups, and it is the most reliably fun game I've played. PTA runs a close second, but, thinking over my experiences, every single session of InSpectres has been a laugh-out-loud awesomefest.

As for the actual game last night - its my groups "one-shot night," and I've been having a crappy couple of days, and I was all "time to play InSpectres, no arguing!" Whole game took about an hour forty-five, with the same two players in my Carry playtest from last week.

Can made a plumber who was actually a descendent of a Saint and could dispel spirits with items made of cold iron - like pipe wrenches. Pat made a computer geek who was the child of a vampire clan - but humanity is a recessive gene in vampires, and he was born fully human, the black sheep of the family. We created an old but craptastic franchise in inner-city Brooklyn, and played through a 12-Franchise Dice mission that got kicked off by a 50s-style housewife calling the InSpectres over the "strange lights and noises" in her house. Which, after much frustrating conversation, had started when the extradimensional portal in her basement opened. Over the course of play we determined that she was married to a cult leader who was somehow still alive and well ever since the last time he tried such a stunt, in the "Great breach of 1878." A good pipe-wrenching and the use of a vampiric artifact full of blood that Pats char had "inherited" took care of that problem.

InSpectres, I think, really demonstrates the "fruitful void" that has been talked about. Genre buy-in combined with the mechanics that determine who gets to say what about each roll creates an atmosphere of wackiness - I beleive at one point Can said "Ok, so I have this crowbar, but it needs something wacky. Someone, wacky up my crowbar!" These guys have played a number of my hippie games, so I only needed gentle prodding to get them to describe the results of rolls, and they rolled a 5 or 6 on almost every roll, even after I started hitting them with Stress (!), so it was very fastpaced and full of success. Which was cool, but next time I'm going to throw more Stress, make them use those card reserves.

I don't really have a question for this post, unless anyone wants to discuss more things about InSpectres that makes it fun, or more about the idea of the fruitful void.

[coffeestain]

I played InSpectres for my first time a week or so ago and you're right, it was an absolute blast.  I hadn't read the rules in months and months, so took a brief skim over them before we started and that made me nervous.  But honestly, once things got started with a very gentle, half-hearted nudge by me, the game snowballed from one awesome thing to another.

The only thing I feel odd about and would like to talk about is allocating Stress rolls.  How often do you think it should be done?  What do you feel it should be done in response to?  It just feels so loose and wiggly to me.  I can see how it'd make a great pacing mechanism, but I wish it were a little more structured and a little less fiat.

Regards,
Daniel

[Michael S. Miller]

InSpectres does, indeed, make a great one-shot. But I've found that there's even more fun in playing multiple short missions in a single session. That way, folks get to play with Franchise Dice and Vacations and all the fun office politics that ensue from that.

[Matt-M-McElroy]

InSpectres does, indeed, make a great one-shot. But I've found that there's even more fun in playing multiple short missions in a single session. That way, folks get to play with Franchise Dice and Vacations and all the fun office politics that ensue from that.

Agreed. I've had a couple of fun one-shots of the game, but the best game I ran was a three part arc (one mission/investigation that took some time to figure out). The Player input and use of Bank (and other Franchise Dice) really makes the game work. I used this game as a "gateway game" for some folks who had never done any RPG before and they had a blast. Now they regularly play All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Conspiracy of Shadows and Buffy.

Regards,

Matt M McElroy
"What Are You Afraid Of?"
http://www.flamesrising.com

[coffeestain]

Matt, I agree entirely.  It's one of the games I really want to run in demos here in Madison, I just need to get a handle on how best to use Stress dice.  I think it's great for introducing brand new players as well as gamers who aren't familiar with games that give strong directorial powers to players other than the GM.

The setting is extremely easy to grasp for anyone who hasn't been in a coma for the past 20 years.

Regards,
Daniel

[Dirk Ackermann]

Yep. I fully second this!!!

If you are new to these forgie-games then do not look further then InSpectres to introduce you and your group to narrative rpgs.

Why?

The rules are light, but so convincing.
The mood of an enterprise like this is captured like a "Ghostbusters 3".
The new ideas created in this game could have been in 2 or 3 games: stress, franchise, confessions, ... .
It is very understandable written and sometimes make for a good lough.

A player asked me - he had bad luck the whole time - that if you are not lucky then you can not have an impact on the story. Then I  told him again about this confession, what, until then, nobody had used before. His mind rumbled and boiled and in the next scene he made a confession that shook the foundation of our story! Since this time everybody are on the verge of a real fight about the right to tell the first confession.

So: play this game and have fun. You will not regret it.

Thanks,

Dirk

[Arturo G.]

We had a little problem in our first session of InSpectres two weeks ago. I wanted to ask previously about it but I got no time.
We tried a 14 Franchise Dice mission. It took as only around 45 minutes to finish it. There was almost no time to develop a story. They were a little lucky with the dice, but after 3 scenes of investigation they had 7 Franchise dice, half of the full measure. Thus, the rest of the little session was a mad-run, looking for a final before we get the 14 dice. At the end there was a feeling of "incompleteness" around, if you understand me.

Questions:
Is this normal? Were we loosing time in non interesting/direct confrontation stuff during the first half of the session? Should we play for more Franchise Dice?

Other Comments:
I like the idea of playing several short missions in a row to use the full system and introduce some scenes about vacation and more normal-life stuff mixed.

Stress:
I was increasing the stress rolls frequency and severity until I managed to make them begin to spend card dice. I think this is the best measure. If they try to be highly conservative about the card dice they will get a lot of stress that will penalize them during the rest of the mission. I think players should learn to spend the card dice easily. For us it worked fine, and at the end of such a small mission they really needed some vacation.

Arturo

[Nathan P.]

Cool. We definitly plan to play at least a couple more missions, have no fear! I love how the franchise-building and office politics turns into part of the game as well.

As for Stress - personally, I think Arturo nailed it. Stress em until they need to spend their franchise dice off their cards, at the very least.

Stress links into mission length in an interesting way. Personally, I think the first step to making sure that you don't get that "incomplete" feeling is to match the situation severity to the franchise dice required - like, for our 12FD game, it was one local phenomenon in one house, with a very clear kickoff as to where it was to be found. Thus, most of the dice were gained as they tried to deal with the problem.

I think, but I'm not certain, that "lucky dice" gets to be less of a problem the longer the mission. That is, a 30FD mission both leaves ample room for a standard narrative arc (discovery, research, fieldwork, setback, more research, fieldwork, success), and also gives the GM more time to pound on the Stress, making it more likely that they roll lower.

Finally, the way I play is that you have to gain the requisite number of Franchise Dice in order to end the mission, but if that happens before the logical endpoint of the narrative is reached, you just keep playing without gaining more franchise dice. I don't think this is addressed one way or the other in the text, but its been working well.

[Scott Dorward]

There's something genuinely special about InSpectres.  I've played it with probably around thirty different people over the course of the last couple of years, and not had a duff session yet.  What makes it so remarkable is that it seems to bring out the creative side of everyone who plays, even people who tend to be wallflowers in most other games.  There are a few people with whom I game who treat the idea of a player-led game with suspicion, and are very reticent to play anything that seems "experimental", but who will jump straight into a game of InSpectres with abandon.

I wonder whether part of this is that the overt comedic bent of the game give it an immediate appeal and makes it feel safe -- after all, you're only playing for laughs, right?  Also the premise of the game seems familiar enough that it doesn't require any special explanation; it's never taken longer than fifteen minutes to go from pitching it to a group of newbies to actually playing. 

Either way, it's proved the best introduction I could imagine for the players I know to indie games, and has paved the way to two years of very happy and satisfying gaming for me.

[Frank T]

On the last two GroFaFo Rallies, InSpectres and WuShu were the most played games. No matter if you are a d20 veteran, Vampire LARPer or Forge maniac, you "get" these games instantly and a good session only takes some 90 minutes. They are also very effective at showing people what can be done if you kill some holy cows. On the other hand, both seem to have the tendency of getting over the top and silly pretty quickly and losing their edge.

[Dennis O]

I agree entirely too, that InSpectres is a great, easy and funny game. But it's not always a blast. As Frank mentioned we played quite some rounds. I played in one and I "mastered" one. The one I mastered was once again a special experience. I had almost nothing to say, because the players made the story go on with enough Spotlights. (I also hadn't counted Franchise dice... we just played till everybody said "It's enough...")
On the other hand was the round in which i played. The GM and myself were the only ones who already had played InSpectres. Before we started he told us players "I'm the GM! Entertain me!". We explained how the game works and started. But "nothing" happened. I first did nothing, because I wanted to see what the "newbies" did. Still "nothing" happened. They waited for the GM to "railroad" through a plot. Then I used a Spotlight and kinda started the game. I showed them what could be done.... but it seemed effortless. So in the end the GM and myself (+1 player trying) made the story. The newbies said afterwards that they were "to shy to do something" or "it was not the right game for them"

So with the right players InSpectres is very much fun...

[John Harper]

I agree with everyone so far: InSpectres is a guaranteed good time.

Next time I run it, instead of having a set Franchise Dice total to hit, I'm just going to let the group earn Franchise Dice for as long as they want to, until they "solve the case." The FD they have at that point is what they get. I'll increase the Stress the longer they go before solving it.

That way, the players can decide if they want to do something short and easier for a few FD, or dive in to a longer, complex (and stressful!) case for a bigger reward.