InSpectres: A Peek into “Ghost Adventures” Table Top
Having hosted a few successful evenings of Fiasco (the perfectly palatable link between “traditional gaming” and “touchy-feel-y story gaming”) I’ve been looking for more out-of-the-box games to test on my group. If Mouse Guard and Og taught me anything, it’s that broadening your horizons as a gamer is always a worthwhile endeavor, especially when those endeavors are hilarious alcohol fueled one-shots! One game has come across my radar thanks to RPG.net, and I can’t wait to bust it out for my guys: InSpectres by Momento Mori. A quick peek at the Startup rules and I’m already in love.
Semi-Professional, Semi-Equipped
The game’s premise is a home run right out of the gate: the players run a grass roots paranormal investigation company as semi-professional, semi-equipped investigators. Armed with a passion to seek the truth and pocket change the PCs are hired to solve dangerous paranormal mysteries. While the game is structured as a traditional game with one player as the authority and the rest of the players as characters the game is very clear that the narrative power is shared. When a game starts the mystery is a mystery to everyone: it’s up to the group to collectively “solve”, aka write with the dice’s help, the mystery’s ending and the clues that lead to it.
I have a shameful love of the Travel Channel classic Ghost Adventures, so this concept hit me right in the heart. There is something charming about well intentioned and gullible people yelling at ghosts to “come at them bro”. The only difference in InSpectres is that the ghosts might be real. The game is even framed as a TV show, every session is a “job” that starts with an interview, progresses to crazy investigation where the dice inform the nature of the paranormal events, digresses quickly into zany action, then wraps up with a job well (or poorly) done.
A Quick Confession
InSpectres is as simple as it should be. When a player attempts to accomplish something they roll a number of d6s as determined by their skill and take the highest result. Roll high enough and the player gets to narrate their success and hopefully move towards completing the job itself, roll low enough and the GM gets to hose you. When the paranormal gets the better of a character, the GM asks the player to roll a number of d6s (the more severe the injury or phenomenon the more dice) and take the lowest result. A low roll gives your character skill damage, reducing their ratings in their fields of expertise. It’s quick, dirty, and delightful!
But it’s the “confessional mode” that grabbed my attention. Once per scene any single player can break the action to step their character into a Real-World-esque cofessional booth. This allows the player to narrate the character’s thoughts and feelings “to the camera”, or to the other players directly. With only a few of the most basic of guidelines (players must use the first person perspective and confessionals should only add, never negate or detract) the players are instructed to use these confessional moments to add new story elements, plot complications, and even foreshadow events and play them out during the game. We’ve all seen shows where the characters omnisciently foreshadow with “I thought it couldn’t get worse… boy was I wrong.” Now the group gets to decide exactly how it got worse!
And these are only the rules covered in the Startup rules! The full rules have many more delicious details, like playing “strange” characters that are vampires or werewolves themselves.
Conclusion
I really can’t wait to play InSpectres. Not only does it key into my own personal love for poorly produced Travel Channel schlock, but it’s dripping with hilarious potential. I’m going to be ordering a copy ASAP, hoping that an evening of doomed ghost hunting may rival an evening tossing rocks as Cavemen.
