Indie Netgaming - SQUEAM!

[Paganini]

We set up an impromptu game session over on the indie-netgaming list today. I was the GM and ran SQUEAM. We used IRC on the MagicStar server (which has some cool built in RPG functions, like a dice roller).

It was a lot of fun. It lasted about 3 hours - too long for a SQUEAM game, I know, but it was on IRC, so I think that rule bending was justified. In fact, it actually seemed like we needed more time. The game seemed to flow great until the very end, when it felt a little forced as we tried to finish things up for the people who had to go. Of course, Violet's player rounded the whole thing off with a GREAT ending. Way better than my "day after" idea. If you're interested an entire transcript of the game cam be found here:

http://web.madisontelco.com/~paganini/SQUEAMTS.txt

I'm still not exactly sure who all of my players were, but it was a lot of fun anyway. I know Raven was there, and Nathan Hill, and Xiambarg, at least, but I still haven't gotten who was playing what quite straight. :) JB (the real one, not Jack Spencer ;) dropped in later on and watched for a while.

Here are my perceptions of the game session and of the SQUEAM system in general. First, the good stuff:

The players were all great... in spite of some interruptions by thunderstorms, phone calls and the like, the game went along at a good pace, IMO. The tone was set right off the bat during character creation. I posted a little setting blurb (university campus closed for the summer, PCs are *supposidly* only remaining students there) and we went from there. Raven was a little late, so while he was reading the rules the other players and I worked up a quick & dirty relationship map thingy to explain why they were all still at the school, and why they were all together in the begining scene. (Result: The characters and some NPCs that were still on campus broke into the student union to throw a big party.)

During the party I set off my first bang (A Mysterious Telephone Call) and we went right on from there. The character interraction was great. Jared's Dead Teenager archetypes are absolutely perfect. This was probably the fastest character creation I've ever been involved with, and it was done with great style.

I made two special rulings that related to the IRC format. The first one was that a tied roll pretty much meant a failure (trust games and such are hard to do in IRC). This rule actually came into use often enough to justify it's existence. The second rule was that any time a character died, that character's player could immediately create a new character and narrate it into the game, if the player wanted to. That way no one would just have to sit around watching. This only happened once, but it was a great scene. The new character had a fantastic entrance, killing one of my NPCs (who had just gone insane and was waving a gun around) by whacking him on the head with a piece of a toilet. :)

I think all the players had exactly the right style in mind for what the game should be, and the SQUEAM system works well for getting people in the right mindset. The game had *exactly* the sort of feel that a shlock horror flick should have.

Things I would have liked to see more of:

More directoral control from the players. Part of this could be my fault... I'm not that experienced as a GM. Still, I put out a pretty much open invitation for the players to do whatever they wanted (and I really needed the help, since I was basically unprepared for this game... I had a couple of scenes I'd cooked up over the weekend, and right before we started playing a PM from Sidhain via ICQ gave me the "prime evil" in the game... a giant snail that eats things. I did some quick web research on snails while the game was going, came up with an Old English word for Snail and used that as the name of the bad critter: Snegel. Drove the characters nuts. I think they thought it was Cthulhu come to get them. :)

So, more directoral activity from the players would have been cool. They were cool about introducing details into the scene (Violet did a couple of times, grabing a fire extenguisher, introducing a new NPC), but nothing that really drove the story. I felt like I had to keep coming up with bigger and bigger shocks to keep the story moving.

It was interesting that characters in the game seemed to survive really long, while still retaining the horror filck feel. I gave some NPCs some pretty grisley deaths, but we didn't really start wracking up PC fatalities until time started to be a factor. (At that point, Billy stood up and shouted "EAT ME!" a la Agent K from Men in Black. It was great! :)

I think I would actually have liked to see more character death in the game, but I'm not sure how I would have gone about it. I think SQUEAM would benefit from some pointers on how to keep PC death from being mundane. That is, I needed some help coming up with cool ways for PCs to die. I think it's a requirement for this kind of thing that death has to be really common, but always interesting. In this game when you died you basically got eaten by a snail (either Snegel or his offspring). We had some good descriptions, but it seemed kind of redundant to me after the second or third character got slimed. Of course, this may be the serious narrative gamer in me speaking out. For a shlock horror game, this could be completely appropriate.

I also think some guidelines for when to apply the mechanics, and how to interperet results would be nice. The mechanics didn't really seem to affect the story much, they were mostly cosmetic, sort of like "throw up" and "scream like a leetle girl" rolls. It was interesting that the players seemed to really *want* to make the rolls. They were spontaneously making rolls for their characters to decide actions, independant from me. Sometimes I'd miss calling for rolls that I should have, or get behind writing responses, and they'd be going "hey, shouldn't we make Fright rolls now?"

So, that's the story. Jared, I'd love to hear any coments you have about the game. Same goes for any of the players who read the Forge. What'd you think of the game? How'd I do GMing? How'd the system hold up? What specific things about the session did you like / dislike?

[Nathan]

I was Violet Hunter, sophomore art history major. She was a "Freak", because she watched her parents die in a freak electric storm one dark summer afternoon. Fun stuff. :)

I think directorial power is a very overwhelming thing. Once you accept it and start using it, it becomes pretty easy and fun. Unfortunately, I will maintain in gaming that: if you want a loose, freeform, power-shared game, you have to do a ton more work. Winging it can work -- but most often, it doesn't achieve what it could.

With that said, I thought Paginini did a great job last night. I had a lot of fun despite all the distractions. IRC Gaming is a very valid way to run your game! Let me say that again: IRC Gaming is a very valid way to run your game!

On to Squeam -- with directorial control  comes the need for lots of guides. None of us new exactly who was going to die first, and I know at least a couple of players were probably waiting on the GM to say something. I almost wished that Squeam had an extra stat or some mechanic that let you roll at the beginning of the game or at certain points to determine who is going to die next. It would alleviate some stress.

Otherwise, I'm waiting to see if someone else is going to volunteer to die, and someone else is waiting to see if I am going to volunteer... agghhh... deadlock!

I could even see something like - everytime you fail your Fright, Squeam, Naivety, or Curiosity roll, each of those stats go up by one. Once they all reach 9, your character takes his/her exit. When a last character or two are standing, they can wrap things up in a climax or die or whatever. :)

So, that is my two cents. One of the players (he played Johnny) had never visited the Forge in his life. He is a friend of mine that goes to college here at the university I work at. But he likes indie games, anyway.

Thanks,
Nathan

[Paganini]

I thought he did a great job with Johnny the Prep. Making fun of the Musician, jumping out of the shadows, etc. was all perfect for the character. Next time you see him, tell him I said so. Also, of note, that player was the player who decided he wanted his character to die so he could introduce a new character: Chris Stone the pothead (Chris is the one who killed Herb the Nerd with the toilet. :)

Generally, I think your comments are right on. Next time I run such a game, I think I'm going to use something like the Pool, where the directoral power is hardcoded into the game with Ms o V. I think some mechanical help in saying "yeah, it's your turn to drive the story" would have been very useful last night.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Squeam is really a traditional "Gm says this" RPG without a heck of a lot of directorial power (tho' it does have author stance stuff).

It's really easy to kill your character. Just put him in a situation where the GM can point and say, "Okay -- you die." Attribute rolls can be made in some situations (GM: "You're trying to run away? Roll your Fright to see if you can even move...") and failure = death (well, without Fate points to spend).
 
And man, a 3 hour game of Squeam seems really, really long, even for IRC...

[greyorm]

As I have extensive experience with IRC-based play, I should note for Nathan and Jared that because of the dynamics of text-based on-line play, three hours on-line is more like an hour to an hour-and-a-half of tabletop gaming, in that you get roughly the same amount "accomplished" in each period of time when comparing the former medium to the latter.

Unlike Nathan, I thought the game's flow seemed a little forced up until the end, when it seemed to go much more smoothly since everyone was gunning to create an ending and get killed.  The ending, BTW, was just great, with enough campiness to satisfy the most hardcore B-horror movie addict.

As to the game itself, I felt there wasn't enough use of the ability scores to determine direction.  Also, we failed to roll Curiousity or Naivete enough and in the most appropriate situations.  We rolled Squeam and Fear numerous times, but it seemed the rolls were ultimately...useless.

That is, they didn't really DO or MEAN anything...I think a good Squeam game would have to be run by writing scenes around succeeding/failing at those specific rolls in order to survive or drive the plot forward.
As it stands, my impression of the rolls in our session was that they ultimately didn't do anything important in the game, and the story could have been run and finished without rolling a single check.

So, for example, a Curiousity or Naivete roll would have been appropriate when we entered the professor's office and found all the weird ritual stuff. But only meaningful is failing the roll had some drastic consequence, like, "Oops, I just summoned a Shoggoth!" or the zoned-out professor suddenly leapt up and took off the head of whomever picked up the Book of Snegel and started reading it.

As well, Nathan's completely right about the lack of originality/creativity in PC deaths.  I think this probably stems from the "prime evil" he chose, and that it was what was killing us.  The best solution, I think, would have been to have a human cultist (or two) knocking their classmates off one-by-one in different, interesting ways, saving Snegel and his kids for later on.  That, or we should have been able to deal with Snegel and have to deal with a ticked-off cultist (or two).

As for getting directoral, there was one plot twist I added that everyone seemed to ignore: I had Smith show up in the professor's office, though he hadn't come down with everyone else -- I at least expected to be asked, "How'd you get down here?!" or have someone make a Fright roll when he suddenly popped his head out, but the event was completely passed over.

Other than that, it was a good time.  I enjoyed playing the beatnik-janitor (with a Squeam of 9!), and trying to figure out what it was that was after us. I'm definitely up for more indie gaming on the channel, even thinking of running a few one-shots here and there myself.

I definitely recommend anyone who wants to get involved with the channel's on-line gaming do so!  Even if it is just to stop by and watch.

[Paganini]

Unlike Nathan, I thought the game's flow seemed a little forced up until the end, when it seemed to go much more smoothly since everyone was gunning to create an ending and get killed.  The ending, BTW, was just great, with enough campiness to satisfy the most hardcore B-horror movie addict.

Interesting. As I noted, I felt just the opposite. Maybe you could give some specific examples?

That is, they didn't really DO or MEAN anything...I think a good Squeam game would have to be run by writing scenes around succeeding/failing at those specific rolls in order to survive or drive the plot forward.
As it stands, my impression of the rolls in our session was that they ultimately didn't do anything important in the game, and the story could have been run and finished without rolling a single check.

I agree completely. I think a big part of the problem was that I had about a half hour during the drive home from work to come up with the material. Next time I'll definately be more prepared. I had come up with wierd things to happen, but I hadn't really put a lot of thought into the consequences of those things in terms of "what happens if a failed roll is made here?" The next time I run the game I'll definately have the scene structure depend more heavily on the rolls. I think the rule of thumb should probably be that a failed roll means that the character does something that puts him in a tight spot. Like, maybe Herb should have died of a heart attack or had a siezure or something when Johnny jumped out at him.

So, for example, a Curiousity or Naivete roll would have been appropriate when we entered the professor's office and found all the weird ritual stuff. But only meaningful is failing the roll had some drastic consequence, like, "Oops, I just summoned a Shoggoth!" or the zoned-out professor suddenly leapt up and took off the head of whomever picked up the Book of Snegel and started reading it.

And this is where I would have loved to see more player directoral input. I was hoping the players would add plot twists like this right and left. I didn't even think of having that stuff happen - I trying to keep track of what everyone was doing. :)

As well, Nathan's completely right about the lack of originality/creativity in PC deaths.  I think this probably stems from the "prime evil" he chose, and that it was what was killing us.  The best solution, I think, would have been to have a human cultist (or two) knocking their classmates off one-by-one in different, interesting ways, saving Snegel and his kids for later on.  That, or we should have been able to deal with Snegel and have to deal with a ticked-off cultist (or two).

Yeah, that would have worked much better. Time for Snegel II - The Slime Cult. :)

Although you guys did have to deal with Herb. Maybe I should have had him actually pull the trigger? :)

As for getting directoral, there was one plot twist I added that everyone seemed to ignore: I had Smith show up in the professor's office, though he hadn't come down with everyone else -- I at least expected to be asked, "How'd you get down here?!" or have someone make a Fright roll when he suddenly popped his head out, but the event was completely passed over.

I didn't even notice this! Weren't you with them in the Annie's Body scene? I thought you tagged right along. Hmm. Maybe a good idea for future games would be for me to ask people to send me a heads up when they want to do something like that. Not to ask permission, but just so it doesn't get ignored by mistake.