System
Like most roleplaying games, InSpectres has a method of conflict resolution using dice. However, InSpectres uses an adversarial system in which the player describes what happens if the result is good and the game master if the roll is bad. If the player succeeds, they earn "franchise dice", and when enough are collected the current case is solved. Players can at any time use confessionals, in the style of reality television, to add traits to other players' characters or steer events their way.
InSpectres was written as a solution to the whodunit problem in role-playing games. In any kind of investigative adventure, the players follow a series of clues provided by the game master, which eventually enables them to find out what happened and "who done it". Managing the injection of clues into such a game can be quite difficult; if they come too fast or easy, the players will get bored or simply sit back and enjoy the game master unrolling the plot for them, if the clues are too hard to find, the players will become frustrated and spend their energy following dead ends. InSpectres deals with this problem, by allowing the players to invent their own clues, while the game mechanics regulate the flow of clues to give the players time to develop them and come up with an interesting story.
Read more about this topic: In Spectres
Famous quotes containing the word system:
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You and I ... are convinced of the fact that if our Government in Washington and in a majority of the States should revert to the control of those who frankly put property ahead of human beings instead of working for human beings under a system of government which recognizes property, the nation as a whole would again be in a bad situation.”
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—P.J. (Patrick Jake)