Confessionals in InSpectres

[Jake Norwood]

How often in a single game session should players be using the confessional? Once each? Once each per scene? No rule about it?

I ask because when we did it up here there were confessionals just about every scene, which was fun but really made the game chaotic and overly silly. At Origins, though, you guys seemed to do only one confessional each for the whole session. It seemed to work well that way, but I was wondering if anyone out there has more consistant experiences, views, or "rules" that could shed some light on this.

Jake

[Jason L Blair]

How often in a single game session should players be using the confessional? Once each? Once each per scene?

One confessional per scene, one confessional per player per game. I believe that's what v2.1 says.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Yes. 1 per Scene, 1 per player.

Confessionals are REALLY powerful, especially since there's no GM veto and there are no die rolls required. Also, like you said the story can get waaay strange (too strange) if Confessionals rule the game.

Plus I like to keep them special by limiting their usage.

The 1 per Scene exists to put the kibosh on "This happened!" "No, THIS happened!" trumping by...ummm, overzealous players.

[Valamir]

Do you find that confessionals are used to actually go into detail like a little mini scene, or do they tend to remain cryptic quips that players than fill in the blanks during play (like the entire confessional being "After that mess, I'll be surprised if we don't get a bill", or "We'll be hearing from the home office on that one any day now".

And, which type works better for actual play.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Do you find that confessionals are used to actually go into detail like a little mini scene, or do they tend to remain cryptic quips that players than fill in the blanks during play (like the entire confessional being "After that mess, I'll be surprised if we don't get a bill", or "We'll be hearing from the home office on that one any day now".

And, which type works better for actual play.

Most of the time players do the foreshadowing thing but I've seen people be a lot more detailed. I think that there's a general sense of "I have a cool/funny idea and I wanna see how the other players handle it..." and that motivates some confessionals. I'm not sure what method works "best" in play.