Using a modified form of the InSpectres ruleset, I ran a game based on the Hugh Laurie-starring TV series House at Concrete Cow Pt. 1 on Saturday. The main modifications are that skills are replaced by relationships to all characters (including your own) and the addition of an intermediate layer of dice called 'spotlight dice'. These are earned through the actions of the PCs in the same way as franchise dice and are used to take authority over the central character, in this case Dr. Gregory House. The plot of the episode can only be resolved through the central character, requiring a certain number of episode points.
The lynchpin for this session was, of course, the patient, which put a fair amount of pressure on Alan who came up with a character, their symptoms and a pre-titles scene on the spur of the moment, so kudos to him! Everyone else chose characters from the TV series, giving us Foreman, Chase, Cameron, Cuddy and Wilson in the mix.
Despite having a patient to attend to, the plot mostly revolved around the inital revelation that House had commissioned a statue of himself and paid for it by putting it through the hospital finances under Wilson's name. This caused a considerable amount of tension between Wilson & Cuddy as they attempted to sort out who was actually going to pay for it. Meanwhile, by spending the spotlight dice they earned to take authority over him, they had House moving the statue around the hospital to keep it out of their hands.
Back in the patient's room, the other characters scratched their heads over the puzzle of a self-proclaimed, self-publicizing psychic-medium who appeared to be suffering from a genuine possession, with physical marks spontaneously manifesting on his body! Foreman & Cameron drew the short straws and had to break into the patient's house, where they were confronted by a cat with poisoned claws. Chase didn't fair much better later, however, when an accident in the lab almost caused the entire hospital to be quarantined to contain a dangerous viral outbreak.
The really effective part of the modification, which I was quite pleased with, was the conversion into a GMless game: in each action, the player picks a relationship with a player-character that will be tested in some way by that action. This can lead to the target or the acting character being imperilled or, if they were already in peril, rescued. Since a character in peril cannot imperil anyone else, a genuine cycle of risk & reward was created, with players thinking up ways to screw over other characters, which set them up to be rescued from the situation, which meant they could be imperilled again and so on. As guide through the session, I was genuinely able to sit back for most of the time, with my input only consisting of reminding players when they gained spotlight dice and whispering bad thoughts in their ears like the Evil side of their conscience.
Feedback was good and I got some ideas for streamlining and tweaking the game: for example, giving each player a two-sided card, which they turned dark-side up when they were in peril and reurned to the light-side when they were rescued. It was also suggested that, instead of losing spotlight dice more or less at random, in the manner of the Bank Roll chart from InSpectres, players should have the option to spend them for directorial authority, in the manner of the Confessional. These tweaks willl be implemented soon in the next playtest of the modification: Doctor Who!
The latest playtest of this
Submitted by James Mullen on Fri, 20/03/2009 - 20:48.
The latest playtest of this mod for InSpectes occurred on Tuesday at my regular gaming club, with 4 players including myself taking part.
The main companion of the Doctor was Albert, a geeky college student; the other PCs were Talos, a blue-skinned bureaucrat who was auditing the activities of the Doctor and Albert; Ms. Drake, Albert's coomputer science lecturer; and Justin, a rich, over-privileged ex-student who had made Albert's life hell at college.
The pre-titles sequence was created largely by Sam playing Talos; in his haste to catch up with the Tardis, he ripped a hole in space-time, creating all sorts of warps at his destination: Contemporary Earth!
After the titles, the Doctor and Albert arrive near Albert's home; Albert goes to give his assignment in to Ms. Drake, only for her to respond that she hasn't set that assignment yet! Meanwhile, Talos bumps into Justin, but the latter thinks he is dressed up as Dr. manhattan and drags him off to Leicester Square for the premiere of Watchmen!
After a little space-time warp tomfoolery, the four PCs plus the Doctor end up back in the 17th Century with **** Turpin and a squad of Roman soldiers led by Gaius Julius Caesar! Since most of us had rather a lot of spotlight dice at this point, tyhe Doctor got very proactive, after an earlier bout of unconsciousness, and deduced that Talos was the cause of the problems, or at leats his warp manipulator anyway. With the full crew aiding him, the Doctor brought them all back to modern day Cardiff, where Justin confronted some latent secrets about his sexuality with the aid of Captain Jack... Oh, and a 50' high Marie Curie.
Overall the playetest was successful, with the plot being pulled in many entertaining & different directions through the interaction of the players and their bidding to take over the role of the Doctor. The change from losing spotlight dice at random to spending them for directorial authority made for quite a build up of dice over the course of a session, which actually worled well in simulating the title character's tendency to resolve everything neatly in the last few minutes of the episode.
On the other hand, lots of spotlight dice hanging around make it overwhelmingly likely for players to succeed at every action taken by the title character, so another tweak may be needed to allow players to target the dice held by each other. Alternatively, the total pool of spotlight dice available for any session may be limited to increase competition for them. Another play test coming up next week...
Subject line
Submitted by Rich Stokes on Wed, 25/03/2009 - 20:04.
James,
That sounds really interesting. Please let me know how this works out, I think the idea of focusing the plot on one character while giving many players spotlight time has been a problem with rpgs for some time. I think this is the best way of dealing with it that I've ever heard.
More Unofficial Doctor Who
Submitted by James Mullen on Sun, 29/03/2009 - 12:59.
The latest playtest of this mod for InSpectres featured the Doctor as the lead character again, but this time with only 3 'companions': a new version of Rose Tyler, her grandad Albert and her 'best friend' (in a Gregor Huttonesque sense) Debbie. The pre-titles scene had Debbie rushing around to Albert's house with a pram in time to meet the Doctor & Rose returning to Earth for a visit; upon arrival, Debbie revealed the shrunken form of her boyfriend was in the pram!
This session turned into a two-part episode; the cliff hanger at the end of part one followed on from the cast investigating the nightclub visited by Debbie and her boyfriend the previous night which had been converted into a creche by Artrons! Due to a misunderstanding about human biology, the Artrons were shrinking humans instead of regressing them to babies who would be used to revivify their own species. The Doctor's attempt to reverse this process ended with him & Rose plunging down a bottomless shaft, while Debbie & Albert ran through the corridors of an alien spacecraft...
Part two dealt with the divided factions of the Artron race and how the cast used this to make their getaway and also return the shrunken humans to normal size. A cloaked alien ship crashed into Kew gardens, but luckily Debbie's boyfriend worked there (due to a bit of directorial authority!) and was able to whip up a batch of weedkiller that the Doctor pumped into the craft, knocking out the Artrons! UNIT were called in to clean up the mess and the Doctor decided that Rose maybe wasn't the right one for him... but Debbie the slut was! Somewhere out there, the Doctor & Debbie are having kinky adventures in Time & Space...
Mechanically, this was a roaring success, with the rules now pretty much in their final form: now, the spotlight dice you roll to take on authority for the central character are lost after rollling them, but you can still choose to spend spotlight dice for directorial authority at any time. The peril/resuce conditions were also very effective in guiding players to act in certain ways, leading to some metagaming where players rescued an imperiled character then instantly used the spotlight dice earned as a result to take authority over the Doctor for a scene.
The question over the mod at the moment is what to do about Stress checks and Cool dice from the core InSpectres rules: the games so far haven't used them and haven't suffered as a result. The only downside is that games are over very quickly since players succeed at their actions so often; I ran a game of regular InSpectres at the weekend and was reminded of the importance of Stress in challenging the players. As this mod is GMless, any Stress mechanic needs to be embedded into the basic play mechanics... maybe spending spotlight dice to force a Stress check on an equivalent number of dice? Or taking advantage of characters who are imperiled to Stress them? I'd appreciate feedback from any of the players who have taken part in any of the playtests so far, especially if they are also familiar with regular InSpectres.