School’s back in session

The school year has started and that means the weekly after-school gaming program I run will be starting again as well. Our first informational session is next Wednesday after which I will have a better idea of how many potential members we’ll have and what they’re interested in playing. Of most interest is the number of roleplayers I’ll have this year since those numbers really shape what and how I run the weekly RPG(s). Last year I ran InSpectres, Mouse Guard and OSRIC/AD&D, along with a couple of sessions of 4th edition D&D. I also ran a game day in which we played both Dread and The Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries.  All in all it was a good year of gaming.

Of course the biggest challenge every year is recruiting new players. Teaching at an international school means a heavy turn-over (roughly 20% every year), plus kids graduate every year. This year is the final year for half of my current dedicated RPG players so it’s time to start building up our player base again. To do so I’m focusing again on games younger (6th – 9th graders primarily) are interested in and can instantly recognize and understand. I’m thus planning on starting with a streamlined core-focused version of 4th edition D&D – I wish the essentials line was out now because September is actually too late. My current plan is to run an ongoing campaign based on Paizo’s Kingmaker adventure path since it’s story-rich, sandbox format and easy to grasp premise is something that should be easy to run. I am also hoping to run the new edition of Gamma World for our fall game day and perhaps Fiasco or the Dresden Files for our spring date.

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I’m really curious to see what the final film will be like.

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InSpectres is a game about supernatural investigation and elimination by Jared Sorensen and published by Momento Mori Theatricks.  The game is available as an 80-page soft-cover, digest-sized book or as a pdf, although the book is out-of-print at this time.  A free, bare bones version is also available.  I am reviewing the pdf version.

The book’s layout and art is very good – it’s attractive, fits the theme of the game, and is easy to follow.  Similarly, the font is easy to read, whether on screen or printed out. The art does reinforce the default campy/comedic feel of the game, although there is nothing to prevent the game from being played as straight-laced as the group likes.

Aside from some character sheets (or more accurately character sheets, a franchise sheet, & a card sheet), and a handful of d6′s (6-8 will do), all you need is the rulebook to run the game.  Best yet, the game requires no GM prep. None.  Thus, it’s a perfect pick-up game and that alone makes it worth the purchase in my opinion but let’s not get too far ahead of things yet…. on with the review.

How does the author describe the game?

Fighting the Forces of Darkness so you don’t have to InSpectres is a game about the burgeoning supernatural investigation and elimination market. Start a company and try to stay afloat long enough to cash in those sweet, sweet stock options.

• Create and manage your own InSpectres franchise – can you keep it afloat?
• Innovative mechanics make this investigation game actually fun to play
• Influence the game using “The Confessional” – a first in RPG history!
• Rules for “weird agents” - play a vampire, zombie, werewolf and more!

In the game, characters are members of a franchise of InSpectres, Inc. which the book describes as a “paranormal investigation and elimination service based in California and dedicated to safeguarding the human race from extra-dimensional hazards and supernatural manifestations.”  In other words, the game is the RPG version of Ghostbusters or Ghost Hunters. This blend of supernatural investigation with elements of a start-up company, both of which the mechanics address, makes for a very entertaining game whether you play it to its full comedic potential or prefer to stick to a more traditional horror game (e.g., Cthulhu).  Most of the games I’ve run of InSpectres tend towards the former, with zany stuff like demons spewing nacho-cheese and haunted sorority houses.

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I posted a couple of days ago about my plans for this year’s after-school gaming club.  I pitched the various games I want to run at our first meeting this year and a few of the games drew a lot of attention.  In particular InSpectres, Committee for the Exploration of Mysteries, and especially Mouse Guard went over big.  In fact, I may have too many players interested in the games.  One of the ideas I’m toying with is trying to train one of the older kids to run the games as well so that we can run simultaneous sessions – what little prep these games do require I can take care of so that he (we only have 1 girl and she’s more interested in playing) only has to worry about running the game.

In any event, we’re starting with InSpectres since it’s a good game to get the students used to the idea of taking an active role in the narration.  After a session or two, I think we’re going to move on to Mouse Guard which is the game I’m most looking forward to running at the club this year.

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School’s now back in session and that means the after-school gaming club I run will be starting up again next week.   I’ve run the club for the past six years, starting off hour long meetings that were open to high school students but since then we’ve expanded to two-and-a-half hour weekly meetings open to students in grade 6-12.  My 7-year-old son also participates on a fairly regular basis.

We started off playing just Warhammer 40k, because that’s what the students recruited me for – they wanted someone to act as a supervisor so they could use one of the school’s classrooms after-school to play WH40k.  I said “sure” because I figured it would be interesting – it didn’t hurt that the school pays faculty  ~500 Euros per year to supervise after-school activities.  Unfortunately, I discovered very quickly that watching kids argue over rules, cheat, or just best yet, just ignore the rules was not all that interesting, nor fun.  So I decided to step in and organize things a bit, bought myself an army and started painting it in order to encourage them to paint their collections of bare plastic & tin.

Fast-forward 6 years:  WH40k died off when those original students left.  Since then we moved on to Warmachine.  I became a Privateer Pressganger and introduced the game because it was smaller scale and at the time cheaper to get started (it’s not anymore, which is killing my ability to get new students started).  A couple of years ago, I then introduced my favorite part of the gaming hobby to the group, and started some of them roleplaying (more on that in a future article).  I’ve also introduced some board games like Ticket to Ride, Arkham Horror, and Carcassone.  Nowadays, we have a mixture of activities going on, although the RPG group(s) have been the core activity for the past couple years.

Which brings me, finally, to the original purpose of this article:  The start of school.  It’s a bit of mystery each year in terms of how many students will be participating on a regular basis – I’ve had anywhere from a low of six regular attendees (first year) to a high of 16 last year.  How does this compare to the school’s overall attendance?  Using last year’s attendance numbers and club membership, just under 3% of the school’s population were part of the club. 3%.  15 boys, 1 girl.

Yes, gaming is a fringe activity, even with the popularity of things like WoW.  In fact, some of our advertising posters make reference to WoW and I even ran 4E last year to try which provides a bit more of the MMO-feel than say Vampire.   Oddly enough the few WoW players who did play in my 4E game told me that they wanted something different from a tabletop RPG because “if they wanted to play something like a MMO, they’d play WoW.”  That was interesting to me to hear.

I also don’t really enjoy the typical playstyle that games like D&D (pick any edition, I’ve run most of them for students) tend to generate:  I’ve written about that this in the past, but to summarize: The kids tend to fall in to playing these games like a board or video game, plodding along through encounters with almost no actual interaction with each other (as in roleplay).  The power-gamer/min-max approach also tends to dominate these types of games.  While those kinds of games are fine for those who are interested in them, trying to run a weekly game of something you don’t like just isn’t fun.  I also feel like I ought to ..read more

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I’ve been looking at Mutant City Blues. I’m very fond of  the Gumshoe line of game, but recently I find myself questioning the big idea behind them. As Robin D. Laws sees it investigative games (such as Call of Cthulhu and Nemesis) become derailed when players fail skill rolls and their characters fail to spot vital clues. His resolution to this issue is simple – assume the investigators are competent enough to find the clues and give any character who has even the lowest level in the applicable investigative skill the clue. Then to allow higher ranks in the skill to provide additional flavour text or provide the clue in a less ambiguous format. This in theory shifts the emphasis from finding clues to the interpretation of clues. My concern is that by removing the investigative roll the game is removing some of the suspense from the game.

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I’ve recently been playing several games which put a great deal of narrative control in the hands of the players, something that’s relatively new to me. While I have allowed my players to help contribute to the overall story for quite a while, I’ve never actually used a RPG system that actually formally empowers players to narrate the outcome of conflicts. I had some reservations at first (it’ll lead to chaos!) but it turns out that it’s a lot of fun and makes GMing a lot more interesting.

Some games (albeit hardly an exhaustive list) where players have a lot of narrative control:

• Dogs in the Vineyard
• Cold City
• Dunjon
• InSpectres
• Spirit of the Century

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