Last night I played another (half) game of The Shab-al-Hiri Roach.
This game was four of us, two who had done only a small amount of roleplaying before (possibly none in one case).
It ran great, just as much fun as my previous attempt. The only downside, I feel, is that we finished up at the end of the evening, after playing out only three events. It was the only option really - any follow up game would be so far off that we would certainly have forgotten everything. But it also meant that the characters were just beginning to descend into the spiral of madness and destruction that the game encourages. We also only had a couple of roach-possessions, so most of the evil deeds were pure human selfishness.
Highlights were:
- Persuading the president of the Students for Social Justice Club that he should murder the chaplain.
- The successful plot of Anais Smith (a Freudian) to abolish the "superstitious" chaplaincy and replace it with a modern and scientific alternative... a psychoanalyst.
- Bantam Whaley, star quarterback, being tricked into murdering a faculty member in public via the Blackadder "replace the stage knife with a real knife" trick.
- The strange (very, very strange) religious studies professor (still possessed) moving on to the Vatican and founding Opus Dei.
- Pemberton University finally being burnt down due to the ex-librarian dropping a cigarette into spilled brandy in a book storage room.
This game I was also really impressed with the 'you like the character to your left and hate the character to your right' part of character generation. In my first game, these starting feelings swiftly were forgotten. However, last night they drove much of the interaction and conflict between the characters.
Also, it really helps to have people who have experienced academic life there. Interesting note: this game was won by the one actual bona fide academic in the group. Coincidence? I think not!
Note: I am now informed that Make Tea Not War has her own comments on the game.
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3 comments:
I was just telling one of my colleagues about some of the *cough* (any resemblance to anything or anyone in real life entirely co-incidental )things I'd done in-game and he said "I hope you took out defamation insurance first"
Well, nothing was published... I think you are pretty safe there.
I did feel I lacked a certain amount of ispiration for 'ways to get ahead in the university' but I had such a wonderful success getting Bantam to stab that OTT theatre guy that I don't care!
It was great fun, and I think Lee even enjoyed it as well.
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