It Slices! It Dices!

So, we had a fairly successful game of InSpectres with some friends a handful of months ago at one of the semi-local game emporiums and coffee shops. While I still need to show some examples of solid Confessionals (I, myself, have failed at that) I saw that it worked well for these friends, and we talked about using it again. More specifically, I saw the opportunity to blend a favourite flavour (in this case, Harry Potter) with it, if only for the duplicated Confessionals between Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger: "I am SURROUNDED by IDIOTS."

So our Elfquest game (yes, I'll actually post some more about that later) was on hiatus as we were missing our healer-trickster (two great tastes that don't taste great together) and our working-class lust goddess (um, yeah) so I offered to run a quick one-shot if people still wanted to get together, and since I'd been hinting at this game for a while, I got the go-ahead early.

I whipped up some character sheets riffing off the ones already available by Ben Morgan - since most of the set-up of the game is in the three charts (skill test, stress test, and stats) they weren't particularly fantastic (or I'd make 'em available) but fun. Some wizard-y clip art, a tiny bit of layout...

The stats in InSpectres are usually Academics, Athletics, Technology, and Contact. For our Hogwarts version (which I riffed as "Aurors, Inc." because it had been a long day and I couldn't think of anything better [although, of course, the ideas are coming now!]) we used, "Wizardry, Quidditch, Artifacts, and Influence." I kept the "Weird Talent" to help differentiate things. I also kept the nine point spread.

There wasn't going to be any "Weird Characters," because I felt that the Very White World of English Wizards worked best for the straight aspect of the characters. (Only about 30% of this particular group are white guys, which is at least half of what amused me writing that sentence.)

I didn't know if people were going to want to make their own characters, but I statt'd out some recommendations. Harry Potter (no one was going to play him with my little sister in the crowd - she has Opinions) would, for example, end up with 2/4/2/1. (He was decent at Wizardry, but where he really shone was on the broomstick, so to speak. He had a magic cape and knowledge of Mugglestuff, so his artifacts wasn't negligible...his influence in the Wizard world, though, was a low, low one. Sure, everyone had heard of him, but his recognition was rarely (if ever!) positive.)

Hermione Granger, on the other hand would be a 4/1/2/2 - fabulous Wizard, no Quidditch skills to speak of, with a fairly decent knowledge of artifacts and some influence amongst the teachers if not the staff of Hogwarts. Draco Malfoy I thought was a 2/3/2/2 - decent at Wizardry, some Quidditch skills, dabbled with dark Artifacts, and knew some people. I could have put that extra point in Quidditch anywhere else, though, with fairly good story-based justification. (Great, Draco Malfoy is the Bleys of Hogwarts. Erm. Let's NOT GO THERE.)

Some other examples:
Ron: 1/3/2/3 * Luna: 3/1/3/2 * Ginny: 2/2/1/4 * Percy: 3/1/2/3

I had left the game a little vague as to whether or not we were going to play in the school or post-Hogwarts, depending on what people wanted. (I left the Gringotts/Quidditch Field/Library analogues to the Bank & Gym, etc., available, but we didn't end up using them.) We ended up choosing post-Hogwarts, and, in fact, we were the "Far Reaches On the East" or somesuch branch. ("Eastside!")

So, it turns out that while most of the players had seen the movies, few of the players had actually read all the books. So there wasn't a lot of point in playing canon characters anyway. Our canon characters ended up being Draco Malfoy and George Weasley. (A lot from book six and on doesn't fit into my internal canon, anyway.) I said the Ministry had put Draco out this way in charge, and George (player had only read the first couple of books?) was trying this out because the joke artifact shop thing was doing its best work through owl-order.

Draco's special talent was a "dark magic magnet." He just had a talent for running into it. George's talent was a joke item; a portable hole.

My younger sister played Callista, a wet-behind-the-ears Auror whose special talent was, "Making the implausible plan sound like it could really work!" We had Ralph, whose special talent was to make big explosions, and Billy, the American who was very confused as to what all these Brits were doing with their soldiers against the Dark Arts.

We tapped Draco to be in charge, and started creating our franchise. Callista was On Time and very eager to help, including creating something to clean up the owlery which was kind of a roomba-owl that magnetized the owl feathers to itself. George popped in much to Draco's disgust, and dropped Draco into the basement area while taking over the Nice and Neat Desk with his feet.

Ralph came in and made himself at home. Billy showed up during a scene of sheer madness (large owl cleaner-bot, papers flying back and forth, Ralph pouring himself a drink from a cauldron, Draco Malfoy wondering what the woman knocking on the door could want... ah yes, therein lay the tale...)

"I need to cast... what's it called, `Send for help?'" - Draco's player
"The Dark Mark?" - GM, helpfully

[The papers coming in were almost inevitably changes in procedure from the Ministry. One of them required the wearing of green on Fridays. It was noted many times that dress codes did not include mandatory knickers. Changes in procedure always contradicted one of the last.]

Somewhere in here, a challenge was made to George on his artifacts and he created a spell akin to the Pied Piper's flute, which started dragging in rats. While the owls (and the Rogue Owlbot) were quite happy with this, it also brought in the lady at the door, whose arm seemed to be turning into a black rat itself.

A...contagious morphagus of some sort.

Which, of course, Draco and Callista ended up encountering.

"Those rats are vicious! That's awesome! I...think you need a new stapler." - Callista

While the others look up possible cures, it's the village of Far Reaches on the East which is in need of their help. Whiskers, rat eyes, long noses... the evil animorph was quickly taking over the city, called into her curse by George's using the Pipe.

Callista uses the now giant Owlbitbot to search for the dark wizard, having been tagged in Draco's Confessional as having ridden other birds in her past.

Draco contacts his former mentor, Snape, for a rare ingredient. Snape recognizes Ralph, to his disagreement, but agrees to send the anti-shifter article.

The magic holding the remnants of the owlery starts to fail, in an obvious way as Draco goes out finding what happened to the shifter, which means Draco uses his Qudditch skillz to save Callista. (A 6 rolled over a 5 made Callista have to agree that Draco "looks good in doing it.")

"So you want to do yourself with a broomstick?" - George mishearing Callista's aborted Accio!

Ralph and George check Draco's amazing library of books on spellmaking and potion materials for some solutions. Billy assists in triage on those under the worst of the spell, especially as the library says they've got only until the setting of the moon to turn things back to "normal."

"I do have something of a reputation for handling the Dark Arts," - Draco, fully aware of the euphemisms.

While Draco and Callista continue looking for the blood of the magus, the owl comes in from Snape, and the boys make up a potion to reverse the effects. It's mostly successful...as in it will work, but it will taste "most foul."

They find the ratwoman paralyzed in fear from the giant OwlThing and take a sample of her blood. Draco goes back to research in his library, whereupon Ralph and George make sure to scramble things a little. However, due to his overwhelming success, the potion he makes has an effect that vibrates out and cures the ratwoman as well. Mission success!

Since it was quick and easy and people were getting into their characters, we decided to create a new one. I won't go over the particulars, but it had to do with a vitamin-potion causing uber-hyperactivity, the cover-up of "wizard speed" in the ministry and the faked deaths of several wizards involved. George bought a set of tight leathers, and ended up making a "Malfoy flute." It ended up noting that the Minister of Magic had a "Paddling Hour," and a request by a very embarrassed Percy to, "Please allow the Minister his Dignity," with a robe being pushed into the room on the end of Percy's wand.

All in all, silly play, fun play, would have been much different with a group that was far more cognizant of the Potter Mythos, but it gave some of the people a little bit more freedom in their play. I am slowly seducing them to the indie hippie side of gaming. Slowly, but I think they *liked* being able to "call the shots."