Indie Gaming Monday - InSpectres Again!

[Zak Arntson]

Played InSpectres again. Trying to put all this talk into action. Quick synopsis:

Three Players (nobody from the Forge this time), me GMing. My adventure hook was randomly picked from the Dictionary of the Occult (or some similar title): Anubis. So the InSpectres are called by the university museum about a missing artifact. They don't want to alert the authorities for various & contrived reasons. The InSpectres show up, and to make a long story short, there was sentient green embalming fluid, Polynesian bad-ass bikers, an Anubis mask that possessed people and um, a bizarre climax that involved Street Fighter moves and a bunch of gunplay.

It wasn't nearly as satisfying this time around. When I GM'd with Clinton, he was really in the InSpectres "mood" and helped to move the plot along. That kind of energy didn't quite happen (though one Player did cause the green goo to be sentient, another labelled it embalming fluid, and the last made it talk and stuck it in his pocket). There was tons of fun improvisation, and a great build-up to a pretty crappy climax, with a sort of "you face down the big green Anubis slime monster. You've got enough Franchise Dice, so run wild." followed by the ex-kickboxer rolling a 6 and kicking the crap out of the thing. End of story.

I blame a few factors: We weren't jamming as well as we could have. There was a stilted quality to our improv, which I chalk up to both us not being on the ball (several awkward pauses in the game, or outright admissions of no inspiration on all of our parts) and this was the first time this particular combination of gamers had played together. I also wasn't playing GM well enough, and wasn't prodding things to my satisfaction. I relied a little too heavily on letting the Players improv without offering enough suggestions.

One thing we noticed, and this is probably a factor of expectations not matching the system, was that the PCs notably degenerated over time. The climactic ending wasn't such partly because of the significant loss of PC effectiveness. This was due to the Stress rolls and the game's reliance on off-the-cuff narration.

Last Monday's game was great (though two Players told me it wasn't good enough, 'cause they wanted more supernatural stuff -- I guess they didn't embrace the Player-inserts-facts part), due in a good part to Clinton's enthusiasm and willingness to suggest plot direction.

After the game we talked about it. We all had a great time, but we all were somewhat unsatisfied. It turns out our expectations didn't match the game. I noticed that our PCs were: A crazy ex-Cop, an ex-kickboxer with a penchant for Street Fighter moves, and an uber-hacker who wore his computer. These are far from the average Joe of what I consider typical InSpectres backgrounds. I think next week I'll either tweak the system or write a supplement or clean up one of my games (plug: http://www.livejournal.com/users/zaka, either Metal Opera or Les Chasseurs).

So, lessons learned: Talk about expectations before play. We did do this some, but I should've been clued in when the PCs were created. I think I may come up with an expectation checklist, so we can better match a game to our expectations.

Another lesson: InSpectres without preparation works great if you have some good improv, but if I play it again I'm definitely going to write down a few key exciting scenes and things to keep the game moving. There were too many pauses on my part as GM (hoping that the Players would move things along with their constant rolling of 5's and 6's).

In closing, InSpectres was still a hit. We all definitely had fun. The Player new to InSpectres commented afterwards on how the fact system was a really good feature. I think it's definitely a great play concept. I know I've been putting it in most of my games lately :)

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Zak,

What tips me off is this:
"I noticed that our PCs were: A crazy ex-Cop, an ex-kickboxer with a penchant for Street Fighter moves, and an uber-hacker who wore his computer. These are far from the average Joe of what I consider typical InSpectres backgrounds."

I think that the key issue here is the role of Stress in the game. Characters like these are not built to be "stressed out" in the sense of growing more incompetent; they are built to become more competent through stress, as in the typical action movie. Steven Seagal meets Ghostbusters, in my opinion, is not a particularly viable hybrid.

One of the points I always bring up when playing InSpectres, right away, is that we are talking about an investigative startup, not a hard & lean action squad. The characters evoke sympathy when they're stressed out, not admiration for their astonishing ruthlessness when pushed.

Now, the real question becomes, am I confounding my tastes in the game for the game itself? Can InSpectres be run more as a butt-kicking spook stomper? I suggest that the whole notion of Stress and its role in play makes this a problematic application. Maybe not impossible, but definitely not easy.

Best,
Ron

[Zak Arntson]

Exactly, that tipped me off, too. Next time we play I'm going to lay it out that these guys should be _average_. But then, would they have fun? That's why I've been into alternate ways of PC effectiveness in design. It seems like one of those gaming assumptions: PCs require a resource that is diminished over time. We can trace that back all the way to probably the earliest versions of D&D.

Can InSpectres be run more as a butt-kicking spook stomper?

Yes, but only if you write a Supplement that supports this. The entire Stress mechanic goes against this (unless you have a zillion Franchise Dice). So, you can play very, very successful and butt-stomping InSpectres by spending a zillion dice from your Cards. But the System doesn't support butt-stomping startups.

I talked to my group, and they seemed more interested in a game where you become more effective by the end, which is contrary to InSpectres mechanics. So we're looking into different games to try out (it is Indie Gaming Night, so we shouldn't be playing InSpectres all the time, anyway) or design.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Hey guys,

Interesting comments about "butt-kicking characters" and stress.

The rules do allow for butt-kicking characters -- but they're the weird Angel, Buffy, Hellboy characters...people who don't really get stressed by supernatural stuff.

The actual game boils down to normal joes fightin' supernatural stuff. Just take a look at the last big scene in Ghostbusters. The apocalyptic monster is summoned...accidentally. He's dealt with, more or less, after one of the GB's makes a "guess" -- intense, climatic endings are probably not going to happen. If anything, the final scene of an InSpectres game is going to involve some degree or sloppiness, embarrassment or sheer luck.

Oh, and maybe try a game of UnSpeakable -- the more stressed you get, the better you become (uh, kinda...in a bad way).

[Ron Edwards]

Zak,

Sounds like the game you want is Extreme Vengeance. It is the quintessential butt-kicking, better-as-you-go game, even more so because there is also a resource being used up as play continues.

Best,
Ron