well tonight we played our first ever game of InSpectres. It was great!

The scene opens as the trio of paranormal investigators take coffee in their franchise "offices", the largest booth at the local dodgy diner in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. (Please excuse any inaccuracies, we're Australian ;) ) The staff include Bobby a Burger King hotplate manager and Bab5 fanboy (played by doug the guy who always plays swashbucklers.. his bravado kept the game alive. Oh and he really digs Bab5), Brooke chemistry lab technician who's done some work in path labs (zoe my g/f.. a chemistry/computer science double degree undergrad working in a chem lab part-time as a lab technician who occasionally does path lab work), Dylan Jones (DJ) an alcoholic ex-bikey(played by kerry my younger brother.. he's not that far removed from his character.. minus the bikey bit ;) ). Their calls are made via the diner public phone and answered by the cranky Swedish-Mexican waitress Maud Gonzales.
[Some creative drives by the players and we have them start off as a startup, small in size with just 5 franchise dice to begin with]

Our opening interview is with Aloysius Gerald, an advertising editor for the local community newspaper where the franchise has paid for advertising. He's confused about where to place their ad and thought it would be easier to talk to them in person. In the end he decides to place the ad away from the "serious Private Investigators" and instead puts it in the Science-Fiction/Fantasy Conventions section, right after "VorlonCon '04".

What ensued was hilarity, with a couple of stalled moments. We had old money, headless-horsemen, Cuban refugees, experimental paralysing goo-guns, a Mexican Terrorist/Alien and Doppleganger Robots..oh and the FBI.

Sadly only one player got behind the idea of Confessionals (creating the alcoholic characteristic of DJ) and Brooke's player kind of drifted in and out of the game (we'd had a couple of beers.. just enough to get sleepy it would seem). The revelation of the game however, was my brother's roleplaying ability..boy what a sleeper. He's the kind of guy who spends all day watching movies and in doing so he gets to watch a lot of crappulence. It must have paid off though, he was making up the funniest stuff I've ever seen in a game. In the end I gave him a Cool dice for some of his Scene Framing genius (during Investigation/Research he's down at the bar, ostensibly hitting up the bar-flies for information when he hears the sound of Christine, his stolen classic Norton motorcycle outside, as he looks around he drops his glass of bourbon, the glass shattering and the ice bouncing slo-mo style. He shoves his stool out of the way and it slides across the room, film speed returns to normal as he emerges from the front of the bar). I may encourage him to play in some of my other games at this rate.

Overall the game went well and when it looked like they were achieving their goals too easily, I bumped up the Franchise dice requirement a bit ("complications") so they didn't peak too soon. I think I might need to look at adding in more Stress rolls in the future. The game lasted about 2 hours including me explaining the game and how it works, detailing their franchise and characters. In the end they wanted more but were too tired to keep going.

if you haven't already, go out and play this game! ;)

cheers

Jason K.

Why didn't you open an Australian office? Then you get to deal with all the fun stuff of being part of a multinational!

Mike

Hmmm good question. I've only ever tried to run a game in Australia once... Werewolf:The Apocolypse. It was a disaster. I thought the game was going to be excellent with lots of spiritual stuff, dreamtime etc etc etc.. but Australian's are well known for the "Cultural Cringe" and trying to build up something of a fantasy world with familiar landmarks was a bit too much to ask apparently. Has anyone had similar problems setting games in their own country or home town? This might be a problem with Australians who don't really have the same sense of nationalistic pride that Americans generally do. Also America, to me at least, isn't ...well "real". It's easy to bend it and use cliche and stereotype and not get overly self-conscious about it I guess.

Jason K.

Malechi wrote: I thought the game was going to be excellent with lots of spiritual stuff, dreamtime etc etc etc.. but Australian's are well known for the "Cultural Cringe" and trying to build up something of a fantasy world with familiar landmarks was a bit too much to ask apparently. Has anyone had similar problems setting games in their own country or home town?

cultural cringe

(KUL.chur.ul crinj) n. The belief that one's own culture is backwards and unsophisticated compared to other cultures.

that pretty much sums up a lot of Australias problems .. IMHO. Tall-poppy Syndrome is something else that we have, related to the Cultural Cringe. You can't pop your head up too much and say "I'm kickass look at me" otherwise you get cut down by the media etc.. I blame the poms ;)

Jason K.

Interesting, but wouldn't that sort of self-deprication and referentiality work in your favor in an InSpectres game? I mean, the game makes fun of American corporate culture - you could use it to make fun of your own cultural foibles. That's what it's all about.

Mike

Hi Jason. Yo, Mike:

Interesting thread. I think it's a great idea to bring "local color" into an InSpectres game. This was my first experience with InSpectres (and indies in general):

I live in the Philippines where "cultural cringe" is... well, everywhere. (Around here we've named the phenomena "colonial mentality"). The campaign was called "InSpectres, Cubao. Kontra Lagim!" (Cubao is a place in Manila , great once as a commercial district in the 70's but now very much the steamy pits. "Kontra Lagim!" means "Fight Evil!").

The characters basically started out their franchise from a "pirated copy" of the "Official InSpectres International Operating Manual". This was terribly hilarious since the pirate trade here is incredible -- "absurd" might be a better word (Windows XP sells for about $2.00, US).

Then the players started to give their character's Confessionals in both Filipino and some of the local dialects. Then, the all of the game's in-character dialogue began to be built wholly in "Taglish" (bastardised English-Tagalog-whatever). This got all of us peeing in our pants from all the hilarity. It's very liberating to say "I bash the no good little imp-child with my betel-nut leaves remedy" in your own native tongue. It was also really funny when the characters tried speaking in a "I-wanna-be-American" way.

The main ghost-busting fodder for us was usually made up of all those lurid and horrible tales of local supernatural nasties we've all heard about since childhood. This part really brought a lot of creepiness into the whole game right alonside the hilarity. One of the player's "Technology" trait was geared to making local herbal charms and remedies.

Then, also, the guys started tying in their stories to the local political scene and the impending elections this year. Elections in the Philippines makes for great InSpectres material. Scary thought. But true.

We ended the game with the franchise still very much on the "we're selling a pirated product and they ain't never gonna get us" note.

It was incredible fun.

- W.

Great example, Don. :-)

Mike

You have a great point there. There's so many things Australian to take the piss with. Just so you guys all know..we're not anything like Steve Irwin, unless you come from Queensland (a state here) of course.. ;) I could imagine an InSpectres team made up of Crocodile Hunter types

"CRICKEY! It's a lower Eastern Tablelands Hookey Spirit... WOAH! LOOKOUT HE'S CRANKEY!"...

*oh dear god*

the shame....

;)

Jason K.

New franchise
Croc hunter and Croc Dundee actors... both out of work from TV and movies...launch a franchise hoping to milk their fame a bit more... along with a savvy tech type to actually do stuff and maybe a business type too...

Mayhem ensues