this is the first time i've attempted any kind of actual play report, so i'll apologize in advance. i probably won't do a very good job. but if anyone has any questions, feel free post to inquire and i'll do my best to answer. for the moment, i'm just posting my recounting of the first two events we played. later, probably later tonight, i'll post about the other three. also, i'd invite Chris to participate and help me fill in details i'm forgetting if he'd like.

---

finally, over a year after purchasing the game, i got to play The Shab-Al-Hiri Roach, and it was a pretty good time. we did a four player game. participating were Ryan and Seth,my two standard gaming buddies, and Chris, someone I hadn't ever gamed with before but I hope I will be able to do so again sometime. i think four was a pretty good number, though i'd be interested in possibly trying it with one or two more sometime.

anyway, we started out by making characters, of course. mine was Professor Church, an assistant professor of foreign and ancient languages, specializing in Sanskrit. while i never really brought it into play directly, i decided that he was concerned his education was completely impractical and pointless and that he was wasting his life. as a result he had turned to drugs to hide from his worries and fears and he had become a lying drug-addict. Ryan played Professor Ulster, who was apparently nobility from England as well as a full professor of physics. Seth was Professor Watkins, a full professor of mathematics. Chris was Professor Woolidge, an assistant professor of botany.

we then moved on to establishing starting relationships. i, unfortunately, only really remember those my character started with. i didn't make much use of my positive relationship, unfortunately, but i decided that Church was an anglophile and like Ulster because of that, whereas Ulster hated Church because Church was always bothering him with questions about England. on the other hand, Church didn't like Woolidge because he had attempted to get Woolidge to grow him opium and marijuana in the university greenhouse, and he'd refused. Woolidge, for his part, had decided that Church was really a good man underneath and he was trying to reform him.

then actual play began. we played through five of the six events, deciding to cut out the christmas ball for the sake of time. before the first event, Prof. Ulster became the first host of the Roach. during the convocation there was some maneuvering for power as Prof. Woolidge attempted to gain the honor of being the only new professor to be allowed to make a speech. however, due to Prof. Church's lies about Woolidge to the chaplain (he claimed that Woolidge WAS growing drugs in the greenhouse) he was not allowed to make a speech. During his speech, Prof. Stoudenmeyer, the Faculty Senate Chair, had a sudden heart attack and died, falling over into the orchestra pit, and Prof. Watkins attempted to use this situation to make himself look good by trying to fill the leadership void and keeping the convocation underway. However, before much more could happen, the lights went out, and when they came back on, the young radical Professor Collins was hanging by his neck from the rafters, with strange words carved into his face. Before the crowd could see too much, Prof. Church lead the orchestra upstairs to remove the body and the chaplain helped to keep order in the crowd. After everyone left, Church went with the chaplain and broke into Woolidge's greenhouse, where he planted some of his own drugs in an attempt to make the chaplain believe that Woolidge really was growing them. Woolidge caught them in the greenhouse, but the chaplain was still convinced.

but Woolidge was later vindicated! there was apparently not enough evidence to prove that he had grown the drugs, and Woolidge was granted tenure. before the founder's day wine and cheese social, Prof. Ulster, sick of the manipulations of the Roach managed to remove it via some impromptu, self-administered surgery with a fondue fork. during the social, Prof. Church found new joy in gossip and began intentionally spreading lies about other members of the faculty, especially Prof. Woolidge. In addition to the lies about growing drugs in the greenhouse, Church began to claim that Woolidge was having an affair with Regina Sutton, the most popular co-ed (this was actually decided retroactively during event three when Chris drew the Public Scandal card). At some point during the social, Prof. Watkins got up to make a speech, then began to dance like a mad man (he had been infected by the Roach without himself or anyone realizing it - possibly the very same Roach Ulster had just managed to extract from himself). The Roach's psychic command to dance was powerful enough to affect the wine-addled crowd as well, and the social turned into a wild party that lasted until dawn. after the party, wired on cocaine, Prof. Church rounded up a few of his grad students and attempted to convince them to help him dig up the body of Prof. Collins so that he could translate the strange writing carved into his face. however, Prof. Woolidge and some of the Pemberton Hunting Club stopped them. frankly, i think the students weren't all that enthusiastic about the idea of digging up dead bodies at the insistence of their drug addicted professor anyway.

Posted By: fnord3125frankly, i think the students weren't all that enthusiastic about the idea of digging up dead bodies at the insistence of their drug addicted professor anyway.

QFT, man, QFT.

Quoted For Truth.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Great post so far, Brian. I'll be sure to jump in with my thoughts soon, one of them being how the rules of the game really helped us to come up with a truly dark comedy, even thought we were novices to the game.
More soon.

i'm having a bit of difficult remember exactly how the third event, the pemberton follies of 1919 got started. However, it was during this scene that some of the older male members of the faculty, including the chaplain, did a barbershop quartet number, after which, as they were leaving, Prof. Watkins caught the chaplain backstage and killed him by roasting him alive against a leaking steam pipe and then proceeded to become a hero in the eyes of everyone making up a story about having found the man dead and fixing a dangerous steam leak. it was also during this event that Prof. Woolidge got revenge on Prof. Church. He sent some students, members of the hunting club again, I believe, to search Church's office and found the man's stash of drugs, which he held over him as blackmail in retaliation for starting rumors about Woolidge and Regina Sutton. this made Church (who was already upset at having received a letter of reprimand about soliciting students for the exhumation of Prof. Collins) even more angry. As he stormed off he encountered a huge cockroach and before he could crush it, it spoke to him, promising him power and revenge if he would swallow it and serve it. He did so. He then proceeded to send a note to Sutton, asking her to meet him in his office after the show. When she did so, he gave her poisoned wine and dragged her body to Woolidge's office. However, while he wasn't caught, despite the added power of the Roach, his machinations failed and it turned out that Sutton wasn't dead, though the poison did cause her brain damage leaving her mute. I can't recall what happened to Prof. Ulster in this event, except that he became possessed by the Roach once again.

the next even was the homecoming football game. Prof. Watkins attempted to take over as chaplain, but his ploy for power failed, despite the assistance of the Roach. Prof. Ulster had apparently become something of a gambler, possibly due the manipulations of the Roach, and he attempted to convince Bantam Whaley the star quarterback to the throw the game. when another member of the team decided he would help in exchange for a cut of the winnings, Whaley went along with it as well. during the game, Prof. Church went off to the graveyard and dug up Prof. Collins by himself, and he saw things that terrified him, driving him mad. then, driven by the Roach, the headed back toward the school and wandered onto the football field in the middle of the second half, covered in grave dirt and dragging a shovel. one of the members of the opposing team attempted to tackle him, but the knocked him down and proceeded to smash the young man's head in with a shovel. however, before he could do much of anything else, he was stopped by other members of the faculty and sent off to an insane asylum.

Thanks for the write-up Brian! It sounds like you guys definitely jumped on the crazy train right from the start! Did I read correctly that you guys killed two Pembertonians in the first event? Sweet. Did you have any trouble re-incorporating them (as memories, ghosts, etc.) in later scenes where they were required?

oh and it's funny, my character never offed any actual Pembertonians (though he tried to kill Regina), but I did find myself looking at the list of Pembertonians and thinking (and even saying how out) "Hmmm... I need to kill some of these people." I think it's because of the nice little "Cause of Death" column. It sets up this expectation that they're all going to die, so I was almost looking at is as "score card" or something.

so a few thoughts about reputation in the game after having played it...
i know what i am about to say really hits this game from a more "game-y" angle, and that certainly isn't how i played it... but since some of those elements are there, they were on my mind.
if someone is approaching the game from the standpoint of wanting to acquire points and win, it seems like there might be a few problems. if a person has accumulated a large mass of reputation, from that standpoint, there is no longer a reason to frame a scene. framing your own scene allows you to win more reputation, but it also allows you to lose reputation. if you already have a lot and are winning, why bother?
also, it seems like it might be interesting if reputation had another function besides showing who was winning. perhaps the ability for someone to burn reputation for a temporary advantage? maybe this would push the game too far into realms of gamey-ness, but i just kind of felt like once it was clear that i was losing, there wasn't much reason (beyond the story, of course, which provided great motivation, actually, but i'm just not talking about that right now) for me to want to acquire any reputation at all. but if i was able to utilize the points i did have either to make certain things easier for myself or to make things harder for others, that could be interesting.

i dunno. just some things i've had going through my head since playing the game.

We still had an awesome time, but at first I was thinking "I wanna make cool scenes, AND try to win!" but at one point, I just had to say, "No pont fighting for the Rep anymore. I just gotta hit some NPCs in the head with shovels and have fun."
But I wondered if you knew of anyone trying any tweaks as to how Reputation works or what else it might be able to be used for?

The simplest extra use I could think of for Reputation might be spending a point to increase the size of one of your personal dice or to decrease the size of one of your opponent's personal dice. Obviously you'd probably have to include in your narration how you're ruining your own good name for a temporary advantage...

Sounds like a new thread, Brian!