[Out There] first episode of X-Filesy new RPG

[David Berg]

Out There is an RPG that delivers TV-style investigative drama (think X-Files, House, Monk). I co-created this in a very short time as part of a contest, and am selling the 15-page PDF here for $1 through January.

Yesterday was my first full playtest of the game using the rules in the published version, and it was a rockin' time. Some of the player roles and responsibilities were quite unfamiliar, but by the end of our very short session we'd gotten into the groove -- and succeeded in churning out a quality "episode"!

The play group included me, John, Terry, and Paul.

Our set-up phase was filled with joking and random conversations, so it took a while to refine our genre. The note in the rules about "specify action vs dialogue vs observation" was handy, because our genre inspirations were all about setting, not activity. We came up with:

- Boston in the cold of winter
- 1800s, before telephones were widespread
- borderline or subtle supernatural presence
- 10% fighting/chasing-type action, 90% talking & investigating

Using that as inspiration, we went ahead and made characters. Despite there being only 4 attributes to each character, we came up with way more cool stuff than we could address in a one-shot, leading to questions about follow up sessions (i.e. "future episodes" in this "show").

Mercy Verga: Reason - tracks down stolen antiques. Background - shut up in crumbling mansion till age 20. Talent - sees ghosts.

Suzanne Stormwick: Reason - thinks she was bitten by vampire. Background - from wealthy family, spent time homeless. Talent - knows how people died.

Neville Chesterton: Reason - wants to know about his origin. Background - has mystery benefactor, raised by mute steward. Talent - is 55, looks 30.

Dr. Hawthorpe: Reason - understand why he's alive, deal with guilt. Background - everyone in his family died of odd illnesses. Talent - surgical genius.

All the concepts were deemed equally cool, so no bonuses were given, leaving each character an equal chance of being Hooked in the beginning and appearing in any given scene thereafter.

We decided that the characters' connection would be the place where they lived, a former opera house called the Biltmore Manor. We rolled for starting Hooks and got 2 for Hawthorpe, 1 for Neville, and 1 non-character-specific. The initial situation we came up with was:

People have been found, frozen in blocks of ice outside the Biltmore. Neville's steward, Reginald, has been arrested and charged with the murders. Also, a cat-like monster has been sighted in town. A "professional monster hunter" has been hired, and he claims to be Hawthorpe's brother. Finally, on a recent surgery, Hawthorpe found a bitten-up human finger in a girl's stomach.

Play started off a little slowly, but after the first scene ended and we used the rules to award an element "Clue" status, we started getting the hang of it. By our final Clue-adding scene, we were coming up with tons of Clue fodder. Hidden letters, creepy NPCs, twitching corpses, hair growing on people's hands... When it came time for the dice to resolve who got to determine "what's the Clue?", I was simultaneously thinking "pick me, so I can use this cool idea I have," and, "pick someone else, I want to see what they do with this!"

We set the game's pacing mechanism ("Story Tokens") for short play, and it delivered, taking us 75 minutes from first scene through last. As such, we only created 3 official Clues:

- Arabic book with cat design
- letter to Neville that Suzanne took
- man in morgue looks like Neville, is unnaturally young, has Arabic birth certificate, and started growing extra hair in death throes

Resolving these steered the session in a pretty clear direction: it was about Neville, and how the current goings-on meshed with his Reason, Background and Talent. As Neville's player, I go to do a lot of roleplaying, and John, Terry and Paul wound up handling more of the GM-tasks.

In the final scene, Terry had a strong vision for a wrap-up, so we gifted her with dice, and she indeed won the roll to Resolve the final Clue (which was the Arabic book). We'd been building up to a complete picture of Neville's were-panther heritage, with Suzanne as an antagonist, and the frozen people still needing explanation. Terry covered it all: the vampiric Suzanne sought to steal the secrets of Neville's were-panther folk for her own ends, with the Arabic book as the key. She was stopped, however, by the manor governess, who had been experimenting with a freeze gun on ill manor members.

The climax complete, we did a quick epilogue scene, with Neville taking up his new role as guardian of the book. All in all, I found it to be a pretty satisfying "episode". With this initial practice under our belts, I'm eager to play the game with this group again!

I should note that we found it necessary to supplement the game's system in two ways:
1) Assign the duties of initial scene description to a specific person. We just started with the first person who volunteered for Scene 1, and then went around the table clockwise thereafter.
2) Write down our genre choices, Hooks, and NPCs on notecards for easy reference.

[David Berg]

Just a note about supplementing the system by assigning initial scene description duties:

After discussing with some of my players and co-creators, we've decided that that isn't actually the way to go; rather, it's simply a useful option to note.

Group scene framing, including "whoever has a cool idea first yells it out!", is totally within the spirit of the game. In fact, if everyone involved can handle that flexibility without stalling out, it's probably ideal. After all, Out There thrives on the back-and-forth of players interacting with each other's contributions to the fiction.

I'm eager to play again, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards for the next two weeks. Ah well.

All questions welcome!

Ps,
-David

[jenskot]

Dave, thanks for running this for us. I enjoyed the setting we created together. Mechanically I like the way the game determines who is in which scene and the time dedicated to resolving clues in the second half of the game.

Given that this was for a contest and the limited time you had, it's a good start.

As part of the contest, I may post a more detailed review of the game at some point in this thread. Hopefully that will give everyone a sense of the game's potential tied to our actual play above.

Dave, good luck!

[jenskot]

Ok, here’s a quick review of the game for those who are interested. I’ll try not to go over details already covered in this thread.

Out There is a 2-6 player GMless collaborative story telling RPG available as a 12 page PDF.

It’s easy to read and reference with clear titles, headers, readable fonts, table of contents, examples, and bolded key instructional text. Includes atmospherically appropriate illustrations to set the mood. And the text is easy to read out loud as you play (you don’t have to read it through before playing).

To start you collectively decide if your mystery will include supernatural elements, create a premise for your mystery, and choose it’s focus: action, dialog, or observation.

You create characters by detailing their name, reason (why they are involved in the mystery), talent (that helps them solve the mystery), background, and Character Action Numbers (CAN). Your CAN (rated 1-6) is similar to Screen Presence from Prime Time Adventures. It determines who the spotlight characters are in the story.

You discuss what brings all the characters together, what connects them.

Everyone rolls 1d6. Regardless of who rolled what, if a number is rolled that equals your CAN, then your character's talent, reason, or background is somehow directly tied to the evolving mystery. If your CAN is not rolled, you get to add a detail to the evolving mystery outside your own character.

Then you decide how many tokens each player receives. The more tokens, the longer the game is. It suggests starting with 3 each if you have never played before.

Then you decide how the mystery starts. What the first scene looks like. Characters who's talent, reason, or background are tied to the mystery are featured in the first scene. The other players may add details or play NPCs.

After the first scene, at the start of every scene, everyone rolls 1d6. Regardless of who rolled what, if a number is rolled that equals your CAN, then your character is in that scene. The other players may add details or play NPCs.

Scenes are composed of freeform narration where players describe details in the scene that might be clues.

Once there are enough potential clues, each player may either roll 1d6 or give their d6 to another player. Whoever rolls the highest describes which potential clue is the actual clue needed to solve the mystery. The clue is written on an index card and a token is placed on it. If the other players liked the clue, they can choose to place an additional token on it.

Play continues scene to scene till there are no more tokens.

Then any clues that only have 1 token on them are discarded. The remaining clues are placed in front of the players.

Play continues as before except now the player who rolls the highest resolves an existing clue rather than creating a new one.

Once all clues are resolved, each player may have an epilogue scene to end the episode.

When we played above, we started with 3 tokens and were able to start and finish a complete story in around 2 hours.

Hopefully that will give everyone a sense of what Out There has to offer.

[Balbinus]

How did you move from "borderline or subtle supernatural presence" to PCs who could see ghosts, people being killed by being entombed in giant blocks of ice, were-panthers, vampires and freeze guns?

Something seems to have gone very astray between the set-up and the actual play, a sort of gonzo creep which is a problem I often see with shared narration games. How does the set-up phase actually influence play, because here it seems not to have.

Not a hostile question, just curious.