![]() I like all the mechanics in the game, and the card system to guide scenes are fantastic. (Note, this is what I am taking away from a thorough reading. I’m sure that it makes fantastic stories, but the process is more about talking it out than playing it out. Then you play out to the point of the conflict, make your rolls, and the player whose scene it is narrates the end. A lot of the scene needs to be worked out between the players, who will be involved, what the conflict will be, who are the extras in the scene, etc. The role-playing itself is kept on something of a tight leash in The Shab-al-Hiri Roach, unlike in Fiasco. It makes for a kind of awkward half-assed goal, when your real goal is to watch the blood and the mayhem-but enjoying the blood and the mayhem is only possible if you care about the goal. So reputation is simultaneously supposed to matter and doesn’t matter. In fact the game tries to walk a tightrope by making reputation a win-condition while at the same time noting that winning doesn’t really amount to anything. I put “win” in quotations because that’s a nominal title at best. ![]() You bid reputation each time your character appears in a scene, so winning the core conflict of your own scene is important if you want to “win” the game. The game relies on a currency, called reputation. The game is structured around six events that take place during the fall semester, and at each event, each player has the opportunity to construct a scene to advance that character’s (and possibly the roach’s) agenda. The game is GMless, or GMful if you prefer the term. It’s a wacky, Lovecraftian bloodfest of pain and humiliation. You vie for reputation at the university, and sometimes being possessed is useful to you and other times it is nothing but terror. You each create professors at a New England university who are fighting for social standing at the same time and a god-like roach and her brood are possessing individuals to do their bidding. This is unsurprisingly a solidly designed game with fun character creation, neat and clean mechanics, and the tools to make a zany and fun story with a number of your friends. Morningstar is not only a fantastic game designer, he’s a fantastic writer of game text he’s clear and humorous and concise, everything you could want in a text. How could I not want to read Bully Pulpit’s first published game and an early effort of Jason Morningstar’s.
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