[Inspectres] Case of the Flaming Pussy

[xenopulse]

Gamestorm 9 is going on this weekend in Portland. Last night, from 10 to 12, I played in a game of Inspectres. I've read about the game plenty of times, but this was my first time playing it. It was definitely a blast. Here's a summary (I don't have much time because I'll head back to Gamestorm later).  Feel free to ask questions etc.

Jake Boone GMed.  He knew the rules well and was very enthusiastic about the game, which was great.

Brian Underhill played Andrew "Coop" Cooper, a busted-knee ex-football player for the Cleveland Browns. I don't follow football, but thanks to Coop reminding us of it every scene, I won't forget the Browns--ever.   Coop is a guy with not enough success, too many girlfriends, and no idea what he is getting into.

Chris played Professor Fizzie.  At least that's what my character called him. Our R&D expert, gadget man, and pizza hurler.

David, a boy of maybe 12 years, played Bob, a sewage cleaner who provided us with the idea for modified sewage vacuums to suck up ectoplasm.

Finally, my character John Jones was a used car salesman, smarmy and self-assured, with fiancee and mother issues and an eye on the money.

First thing to notice: Inspectres gives a lot of narrative control to players, but also provides plenty of creative constraint by being the "Unofficial Ghostbusters Game." That works out wonderfully--players need to come up with a lot of stuff, but the inspiration is there because of the constraint. The tone is also set to humorous from the start.

When a player wants to have some piece of equipment for her character, she rolls for it, and the roll determines how good the equipment is.  Often you need to add humorous details.  Some of my favorite items that we made up:

- ectoplasm detectors from an Inspectres branch that just up and disappeared. Sometimes you hear screaming from within the detectors. In fact, it sounds like people screaming "Let us out!"
- instead of the occult books we wanted, we got the Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown series (and a badly xeroxed copy of an Allister Crowley book)
- but hey, at least we got an Italian cappuccino maker and a police scanner that also picked up transmissions from intelligence agency frequencies and our competition in Portland (which we were stalking)

David came up with the mystery for our first job: a possessed cat. Jake added that it had a heat problem, too, and might be eating the other cats in this old lady's house. So when our brave Inspectres arrived at her residence in the West Hills, we found a gazebo surrounded by pet bones (up to dogs) and a flaming cat with a big evil wildcat ectoplasm aura.

Here's another cool thing about Inspectres: we had to do an in-character media interview before we went, but chronologically it took place afterwards. So Brian/Coop already determined that, yes, minor injuries were incurred... and I/John persuaded the KOIN news reporter that really, we did the city a favor because that house across the street was ready to be torn down anyway.

In short: John approached the cat and called for help, Bob drove our containment truck offroad into the lady's backyard, flaming kittens attacked the truck, Coop pulled out his .32 and shot at the kittens, hitting himself in the leg, Fizzie tossed old pizza into our containment area to lure the kittens, Bob filled the truck's inside with fire extinguisher foam, and then John reversed the suction flow of our sewage-ghost-sucker and blew the cat demon right out of the kitty. The demon was catapulted into the house across the street--into its propane tank, to be precise. Kabooma!

We had a lot of good laughs along the way, with the regular narration as well as the confessionals, which we used sparsely (it was a short 10-die mission). Confessionals have a lot of potential that we didn't get to tap into.

I tried to involve David more, who naturally was a bit shy playing with grownups, and I think we all got to share in making things up and determining how the adventure went.

In conclusion: Inspectres is one of the few (and earliest) games to put most of the narrative control in the players' hands, and it does it damn well.  If you're going to give that control, putting a lot of creative constraint in place is one of the best ways to make sure it works out well.