The Forge Archives

Hi there,

So I ran some more InSpectres last night, which for me was the first time using v. 2.0. The session had some interesting features: the players were all women, and all were fans of The Questing Beast but not all had played it together. We included character creation 'cause it's so quick (PC names: Zoomer, Slider, and Diane, the latter urged to be "Boom-Boom" by the other players but not accepted, to my disappointment). I let them choose the size of their franchise, as my previous games had always used the minimum startup (old Cutlass Supreme, Chinese take-out, dubious office space). They went for slightly more upscale, with 10 starting franchise dice.

Let's see: I began with this paragraph, which I'd used for InSpectres before.
We begin with an interview with Dean Quigley of the local university, who is concerned (a) about no one finding out that he's hiring you, and (b) that more students seem to be going into the library on the Lincoln Park campus than ever come out of it ...

And what did we get? Hmmm ... the foundations of an old brothel beneath the library, were-rats, Dean Quigley in boxer shorts and Mickey Mouse ears, green slime, a horrid rune I made up on the spot, a "reverse the polarity of the spell" device made with blender parts and some of the green slime, the sleeping ghost or essence or whatever of a 1920s prostitute, and several puns and references as are only made by women in groups, usually to the amazement of the single unfortunate male in their presence. It all worked out very, very well; somehow, InSpectres always yields a brilliant and bizarre set-piece climax without any pre-planning at all.

Confessionals included "Thank God I had some moist towelettes!" and "Brilliant ... but boy is she unlucky." They really liked giving one another cues for the next scene.

I played Stress a lot more carefully than I'd done in previous games, and the players quickly decided Cool was the prime attribute. They really, really wanted to play again, because they were proud of their business (including a nifty logo drawn by one player during the session), they were all frazzled by the adventure (despite spending most of their pay on PTO), and they were apparently honestly curious to see whether they could actually make the venture work.

Best,
Ron