We continued the perils of small business management (and confronting the possible paranormal) in our InSpectres game, playing by screen due to schedule delays. Which turned out unfortunately in a failed sound recording, so a rather excellent and important play session is not available to view. I’ve provided my summary which I hope the other participants will critique and complete.

Here are my preparation notes:

And my notes during play:

As I tried to describe in the video, this session served as a clinching learning experience regarding backstory content and relation to situational authorities. I didn’t use these terms during the session, but understanding them allowed me to answer Johan’s and Helma’s extremely important procedural questions at a specific point. Questions, wham, answers, bam, keep playing.

I tagged this point for both politics and racism, which I mentioned in the video. Although they were not featured as primary fictional content, they were both addressed in slight ways during play. As I see it, the value in doing so concerned character outlooks, particularly as distinct from the players’ in different ways … yet the players being willing to “see where we get” in a non-directed, occasional way.

One more thing: in later adventures, we may see more of the stuffed fox that our professor somehow decided was an appropriate display item for the company. It didn’t do anything in this session, but it certainly made an impact on everyone in-fiction.

Oh, and here’s a rules error on my part that you would have spotted if the video had recorded properly: assigning Cool for rolling 6’s, which isn’t the case. For a 6, you get an awesome success to describe, the usual opportunity to add backstory content, and two Franchise dice, but not Cool.

The previous travails of Para International may be found in Para Int’l and so many beetles.