22 July 2006

Looking Back At The Roach

So, we finished off our play of The Shab-al-hiri Roach. My overall feeling remains that this is a wonderful black comedy game.

There are a couple of things that lead to the game working better.
1. Don't hold back - over the top, crazy, absurd plans are what makes the humour work best. Subtlety is a vice.
2. Make sure you describe the intended conflict when you begin each scene. Without this, scenes can easily flounder about. If everyone knows where it is heading, it seems to work much better.

For those who are interested, our version of Pemberton College closed down due to the large number of faculty and student fatalities and (mainly) the debt incurred in the construction of a luxury replica Parthenon for the Classics department. One character went on to become Chancellor, briefly. Another formed a roach-cult in backwoods New England. A third went on to influence certain members of the Third Reich.

Lots of fun. Good for crazy cutting loose play, if you like the black (or splatter) humour that it generates.

1 comment:

Jason Pollock said...

Awesomely fun once we decided to forget about any sort of restraint.

We finished off with the two remaining roach bound characters... One managed to assassinate all of the other members of his faculty. The other attempted to turn the ball into a gas chamber.

Much fun was had by all.