Emergency Room C

After some preparations discussed at the Discord (quoted below), I’ve finally run InSpectres. It was a mixed success, but I’m dying and preparing to immediately play it again — not least due to prior discussions:

The course “Playing with the Pool” (which includes a section and activities regarding InSpectres) and several discussions and Actual Play videos at the site (Tinfoil hats, everyone! โ€“ Adept Play and Para Intโ€™l and so many beetles โ€“ Adept Play) proved invaluable. They allowed me to anticipate several difficulties and even though they did not always help me avert them, they (a) helped a lot and (b) gave and give me the confidence that I’ve got this. Most of the ‘lessons’ I mention below were presaged — but learned all the better for it!

I played face-to-face with three friends.

The setting

I chose the city of Aachen, where most of us live or have lived, and this later inspired me to choose the local mega-hospital which proved an excellent choice!

Lesson: Setting things in your area works great!

The players and their agents

1. Gabriel played Herbert Hengst, a bored top manager and hence founder of this InSpectres franchise.
Gabriel wanted Herbert to be stress-resistant as a talent. I initially turned him down because Stress is an important mechanical variable in InSpectres, then thought better of it because the book’s optional supernatural agents – which we did not use – do start with stress resistance via Cool 1. Hence, Cool 1 for Herbert Hengst would not break anything.

2. Hank played Alfred van Durst, a top urban planning bureaucrat placed on leave due to political maneuvering. He is a MacGyver-style tinkerer in his free time.

3. Gary played Caesar Binary (think Kim Dotcom regarding the name), an IT expert who deployed his golden parachute recently and is now looking for a challenge.

As requested, all three characters were “normal people”, but (a) all had ‘funny’ names and (b) none were motivated by money. I had already rejected an unhinged doctor fired for bizarre practices based on a penchant for conspiracy theories, but I think I should have pushed for at least one or two down-to-earth characters.

Lesson: The subject matter makes players go for Ghostbusters and comedy vibes HARD and (almost) NO MATTER what you explicitly spell out before.

The job

I generated three sets of adventure seeds and chose the second:

weird + nurse // ghosts + in an office or shop

After some musing, I was inspired to adapt this as follows:

weird + anesthesiologist // ghost + emergency room

I googled for floor plans of Aachen’s landmark mega-hospital and almost immediately found a wonderful floor plan plus photos of the refurbished emergency room “Schockraum C” and adjacent operating theater. Fantastic material and a name for the adventure!

In the actual session, a young anesthesiologist prone to inappropriate laughter approached the team. She was seriously spooked by inexplicable puddles of water, footsteps and one case of bloodied surgery tools lying around when she was on call at night near the darkened and rarely needed Emergency Room C (due to A and B handling most cases). Her boss, the head of trauma surgery, had placed her on medical leave but also promised to have professionals look into the matter.

Note that I stayed clear of actually deciding on any supernatural content whatsoever! I interpreted “ghosts” as “there are signs which the client interprets as stemming from ‘ghosts’ but which might have perfectly rational explanations”.

Enter InSpectres, for their big break: a prestigious client, full-access badges onsite and a nice payday!

In the interview with the senior surgeon, I put some mild stress on the bureaucrat character but he aced it, earning a point of Cool. A satisfying start!

When the team descended into the depths of the hospital, they did not find the receptionist supposed to be waiting for them — only a steaming mug of coffee. The team proceeded to set up cameras in the area on their own — until they met a recalcitrant janitor who would accept “no steenking ‘full-access badges’”. The bureaucrat rolled Social to deal with him — and earned 2 franchise dice! I explained the mechanic for the first time and noted that given the scale of the mission (reach 10 franchise dice), this was a major development: 20% of the way to solving the mystery!

I had expected Hank to go with some intel from the janitor but instead he chose (a) to have his fellow player’s IT expert enter the operating theater just then – he had said he was going to – to find the missing receptionist unconscious on the table! Also (b), the janitor ran away! WTF? A very promising start!

It only occurred to me later how much the players were using incidental or atmospheric details for their mystery! For instance, the mug of coffee and the absent receptionist were meant to evoke an “empty corridors at night” vibe, without giving thought to any specific uses (like abductions etc.).

Lesson: Bring the setting alive with all sorts of characters and details. The players will use that stuff in no time at all!

Minor hijinks ensued and we hit a difficulty I had fully expected:

Gabriel’s manager earned a franchise die โ€ฆ and established that small reflections in the area were weird.

“Give me more: How so?”

“Uh, I guess they refract light in strange angles.”

“Give me more: What do those angles mean?”

“Hmm. They point to a spot above the operating table.”

“Give me more: What do you find out about that spot?”

“Lemme see. There’s some kind of dimensional portal?”

“Give me more: Where does it lead?”

“To โ€ฆ to โ€ฆ โ€ฆ to the senior surgeon’s office!”

“You enter, right? <players nod> Give me more: What do you find there?”

“He did not go home like he said & we saw. He’s back, sitting in his darkened office.”

I wasn’t that rude or monotonous, but the player kept giving me vague stuff and even the portal to another room at the hospital was not good enough this late in the story in my opinion — I wanted a magical artifact, an antagonist, an immediate threat, an active force, a game changer, something bloody actionable.

Lesson: Insist that any Franchise dice earned must advance the mystery, the moreso if you are nearing the end.

The aftermath

By the end of the night, Gabriel and Hank had largely grokked the game, were getting much better and faster at improvising stuff and were really enjoying themselves.

Unfortunately, the game fell entirely flat for Gary. His IT expert had set up the cameras and that was it. He did not try to do anything else and was frustrated by seeing his ability scores go down due to stress (see below). He was frustrated, and understandably so — I had my hands full with learning the game myself and except at the very end, I never even tried to get him into the game. On the way home, the other players pointed out that Gary was largely to blame for not engaging but I still feel very bad about this — I’m usually good at ensuring everyone has their turn and has a chance to contribute (and Gary has even commended me on this in the past – Ouch!).

Stress

Causing stress was fun and I had plenty of ideas โ€“ I used only a fraction -, but twice I had everyone roll Stress at the same time for the same thing. For instance, when they freed and woke up the receptionist, she panicked, brutally tore out her IV and twisted and snapped her ankle trying to jump from the table, still halfway strapped in. “Everybody roll two stress dice!”

The Stress roll and severity were okay, but in retrospect, I feel that applying it to everyone was a bad idea: It caused a lot of penalties all around — but for little dramatic gain, as there are only so many ways you can describe the fallout (jumping back and hitting your head, getting droplets of blood in your face etc.).

Furthermore, it seems to me that getting those Franchise dice to learn how to improvise is the first order of the day for beginners — for advanced play, I can see myself hitting the players harder.

Can’t wait to play more — and do better (both with another group but hopefully with these guys as well — I’ll have to talk to Gary about that)! The great thing is that neither the difficulties nor my failure to include Gary are discouraging me from wanting to run InSpectres. We have a lot to learn, collectively and individually, but we got a good taste of what can be done with the game!

*-*-*

Preparing for this game the way I did is pretty new to me. Not just in terms of techniques (like using adventure seeds or setting things in our city) but also in terms of preparing at the site:

Actual Play videos usually bore me to tears, but with both Fiasco recently on the internet and InSpectres now at Adept Play, I had specific games and specific challenges I wanted to tackle. Suddenly, the aversion went away and I went into research mode with gusto.

Same goes for posts of this length — that’s too long for me if I am ‘just browsing’ the site, but when doing research, I can’t get enough of this sort of material myself! Hence, no apology and no TL;DR.

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10 responses to “Emergency Room C”

  1. Thanks for sharing it! It’s great to see your summation about lessons you’ve learnt in points! Very readable and easy to follow. Nice!

    I had some problems with my campaign of “Bliss Stage”, which explicitely asks to play in city we are playing or at least the one everybody knows. Unfortunately players weren’t fully sincere about they knowledge of Wrocล‚aw’s zoo and it ended up more of a nuisance (I tried to portrait the zoo in detail but they were more interested in using it as random background to their ANIMAs fighting aliens).

    I will surely try again as I totally see the appeal of knowing the space. Last year I had really great “Sorcerer” campaign set in Wrocล‚aw and it worked much better!

    • I’m only just beginning to use real locations. In the case at hand, there was some mild banter about local politics (which formed the background of one character), we had instant reference points (such as a city district as a posh area) and I had a cool adventure location – the hospital – without the need to actually describe it.

      (It’s one of Europe’s largest hospitals and quite distinct architecturally, looking more like an oil refinery. 25 years ago, we played a special one-shot of Paranoia in the cafeteria as the GM had invited us there for the atmosphere: endless corridors without any windows or skylights, tons of colorful piping everywhere, plus color-coded people (surgeons in green, janitors in blue, nurses in white etc.). In other words, the Alpha Complex!)

      I think many other hospital floor plans would have been feasible, but I lucked out here: The floor plan was just the right size, i.e. with readable room designations and no need to cut anything: the ER and adjacent operating theatre plus a bit of the area around it, including a reception, waiting area, and lifts. Because the latter stuff looks the same in all sections, it was instantly recognizable for everyone of us.

      The map didn’t see much use (certainly not in tactical terms), but communicated a vibe and got us oriented in no time.

      (I also had a player read out the definition of an emergency room, which I was not aware of prior to preparing for the session (never having watched the eponymous TV series): Meant to “treat the most [!] life-threatenting injuries and illnesses” before “polytraumatised patients” are moved to the operating theatre proper. I was totally planning to have a mass pileup on the nearby autobahn to have “Schockraum C” be needed at the most inopportune moment for the characters. That would have warranted some Stress, but never came to pass.)

      I’ve already begun to develop more adventures (starting situations, really, in the case of *InSpectres*) and find the real locations around here a great source of inspiration. The lavish hot springs resort – a heavily subsidized entity accessible to the public – might see some missing person cases soon…

    • (I used an ER as a stage for fictional hijinks, but I don’t mean to make light of the related trials and tragedies. I had meant to ask my players whether and how to proceed with the subject matter, but when they were all pleasantly excited about going there, I didn’t. I should *still* have done that and will do so with the next batch of players.)

  2. Thanks for writing this up, Johann. Short inspirational images (in the sense of words-as-images) + local places seems like a great way to spin up a session. I’ve played (rather, ran) a good amount of one-shots of InSpectres over the years but I don’t feel like picking it up now unless the plan is to do a decent run with a single franchise.

    Anyway, I’m interested: how did the Confessionals go, assuming you had some? That’s always been my favorite part of InSpectres.

  3. So, I’ve played InSpectres twice more and have additional observations as we are learning the game.

    The second game was with the same crew – I had talked to Gary and he was fine with another go – plus four more players (Carl, Kevin, Ralph and Vicky).

    Seven players might really be too much for just about any RPG but one reason I chose to run InSpectres is that I hope it’s at least doable with this many people.

    Because Gary had fallen by the wayside in the first session, I was firmly set on involving everyone. To that end, I systematically zoomed in on what each character was doing or wanted to do, one after the other, asking for action until I got a roll or short succession of rolls (e.g. a skill roll and a stress roll). This has some serious risks (see my next post below) but ensured everyone had a ‘go’. I did not go around the table, but made little checkmarks next to character names.

    In two hours, I almost got to everyone twice. That’s not a lot of interaction per player, but the group seemed fine with it and Hank and another player later remarked that the developing story kept their interest. Hans here at Adept Play wrote about this recently, too.

    (Hank later noted that he was at times burning to develop the clues but by the time it was his turn, things had developed into a direction no longer compatible with his ideas. Time and again, apparently.)

    The team’s second mission took place in the local luxury spa (fed by Aachen’s natural hot springs), another well-known location.

    The confessional mechanic was used for the first time and in different ways:

    The first time, Gary had just then earned two franchise dice and had his hands full with coming up with the required momentuous clues. Gabriel took the microphone prop and gleefully noted “I was so glad that Binary [Gary’s character] in passing also learned why the hot springs in Aachen smell so awful.”

    This was an in-joke for us living in Aachen and turned up the heat on Gary. Gabriel’s phrasing (“in passing”) made it clear he did not want to explain the franchise dice earned but merely add a challenge on top. Cheers, laughter and friendly ribbing ensued.

    The second time, Gary had just earned a franchise die and was stumped. Other players started making suggestions, but Gary could not decide what to do. Finally, Carl took the mic and narrated a fair bit of what was behind the strange events (in proper confessional mode) to reconcile two clues that had not fit together.

    This helped get Gary moving again and allowed the game to proceed, but I felt and feel it was against the spirit of the rules: It’s my impression that the confessional should not be used to solve things — that’s the job of franchise dice earned by risky rolls, isn’t it? Still, Carl got the game moving again and respected what had been established and I did not interfere. Any input on this point would be welcome!

    Finally, the case seemed solved after the players had earned 11 of 12 dice. Carl tied things up with another confessional, noting that “as the ghosts could not be prevented from entering the spa, we cut a deal with them: โ€ฆ”. The deal was hilarious and once again, I did not interfere.

    However, this left us with 1 die to be earned, but after Carl tying everything up, what were we to do? I opted for tasking Kevin, another player, with giving us a sort-of ‘post credits’ cliffhanger (like the eggs at the end of the movie Critters, say). No roll, either, just an automatic franchise die. Kevin alluded to his character remembering bits of dark folklore of supernatural activities at hot springs in his character’s native country of Czechia.

    After some deliberations, I’m now set on having our next mission be there. Not an easy task, as we’ve already established a lot of lore and my impression is that tying things together gets more difficult the more stuff is in play. Also, I have to be careful not to create supernatural content — I can use what has been established, but will be careful not to add to it.

    • Seven does seem like a lot.

      I think you may be running into some bleed across authorities categories/organization, especially since there are two relevant mechanics at work.

      The authorities are:

        Situational, at a very basic level meaning who is where and what is occurring, what we generally think of as “play,” complicated by also including implied framing or details for upcoming play (Confessionals)
        Backstory, or less technically, “what’s going on” in a conceptual or explanatory sense, “why is this happening,” or in the broadest sense, “the solution to the mystery,” typically expressed as a subset of situation, i.e., evidence or someone’s dialogue
        Narration [important: of resolved outcomes], in two forms: (1) regarding the immediate moment of a resolved dice roll in the context of success/failure; and (2) regarding potential but specific details of something unspecific in upcoming play (again, Confessionals)

      I’m sure that you can see that this is quite a stew! Sometimes we’re talking about the past, sometimes about the future, sometimes it’s a hint, sometimes it’s unambiguously true, sometimes it’s about our typical “subject” (e.g., “my character”), sometimes it’s about some other topic … each bit is, I think, reasonably clear about what it does, but if you’re used to a constant authorities structure throughout play, or worse, not really used to having any, then it’s easy to mistake “talking” for “saying anything! the power!!” or to flail around because you don’t realize that this moment does have structure and feel ike you’re in a void.

      Another consideration is performance anxiety. I have noticed that people may freeze because they think they’re expected to say something brilliant, that a success narration or a Confessional is a moment to shine and delight everyone, or to be super clever in putting it all together, or super provocative by throwing a hot potato at someone or “suspense” for everyone. I have observed many people to claim that saying something completely adequate based on what we already know would be boring … when frankly, it’s the best thing they can do. I think this may also be the reason why I have never seen – although I would really like to! – a case be revealed to be completely ordinary and not occult or ghostly at all. Which would not be boring!

    • Your observation on (a) narration pertaining to “resolved outcomes” is useful, as is (b) confessionals pertaining to “potential but specific details of something unspecific”.

      Regarding both I can certainly observe a tendency of players to extend their time “at the wheel”, i.e. the perception that one has control and make the most of it.

      Regarding (a), earning franchise dice does ask us to invent backstory elements, i.e. clues, doesn’t it? The limitation seems to be that they must advance the case, i.e. uncover information about what transpired (e.g. what’s responsible for the mysterious footsteps in the next room).

      Regarding (b), a confessional looks intimidating: Say something specific about something yet unspecific. I think I kinda get it, but I’ll be damned if I can explain it (so maybe I don’t get it after all).

      And performance anxiety? Definitely. However, part of this is due to me, the GM, insisting on players advancing the investigation. If I didn’t do that, we’d get meandering content all the time, essentially kicking the challenge to reveal something (could be supernatural, could be mundane) down the road.

    • Putting these together:

      Regarding (a), earning franchise dice does ask us to invent backstory elements, i.e. clues, doesnโ€™t it? The limitation seems to be that they must advance the case, i.e. uncover information about what transpired (e.g. whatโ€™s responsible for the mysterious footsteps in the next room).

      And performance anxiety? Definitely. However, part of this is due to me, the GM, insisting on players advancing the investigation.

      I’m thinking about the term “advance the case.” That seems more demanding, as a term, than the concept of providing backstory, even gaudy backstory like the houseplants being aliens, or the cleaning lady being possessed by a very ancient ancestor from the Neander Vale. Those are kind of like chunks or one-time provisions, which is easier than thinking something like, “put in X and make it good so the plot doesn’t suck as we continue.” I may be over-reading it, but “advance” (in either German or English) strikes me as putting pressure on where the fiction is going to go, i.e., more than backstory. I do think you as the game organizer need to hold them to the rules standard, i.e., when you succeed, it’s not just a “clue” or a “suspicious thing,” it’s actually content, knowledge, part of the solution or whatever we call that. I don’t know whether phrasing without “advance” or easy non-clever examples would help.

      You might also be facing a difficulty that’s intrinsic to hobby culture as well: whether people expect to be entertained by a game experience at first encounter, i.e., it’s “good” or not, much like a movie or a box of treats would be; or to enter into a learning state in which mistakes may be made or at the very least competence must go through steps of provision and assessment, and for which “good” is a more complicated experience. I don’t have easy answers about this. Even getting it into coherent or productive form, as a concept, seemed possible only in the Free Radical course, which is mainly about expression but also included the topic of learning in detail.

  4. Here’s session 3…

    After the first two missions – emergency room and luxury spa, see above -, I had a chance to run the emergency room scenario again for a different group.

    I was delighted to see the mystery ‘discovered’ by the players this time around being completely different (as is to be expected given the nature of InSpectres).

    Kenneth played Dr. Rellinger, a linguist
    Daniel played Korten, an IT security consultant (i.e. hacker)
    Fred played Horace, an accountant

    For the first half of the game, Kenneth worked hard at finding and establishing rational explanations for spooky stuff. For instance, he used franchise dice earned by his character to establish the anesthesiologist who had called InSpectres on account of strange events had a vengeful ex-boyfriend trying to drive her mad.

    Fred kept introducing new supernatural stuff and Daniel became agitated, almost panicky: “How are we [as players] going to tie all this stuff together?”

    Kenneth then relented and established evidence that the ex-boyfriend had taken to summoning demons to drive his ex-girlfriend mad.

    I latched onto this opportunity to turn up the heat a few minutes later when I had the team encounter said ex-boyfriend in an adjacent operating theatre, naturally in the midst of a new summoning ritual.

    Hilarity ensued. We had already established that one demon with “transdimensional abilities” was present, so I had the creature manifest right behind Dr. Rellinger. The character was holding a mug of steaming coffee and decided to throw it behind him to splash the menace. However, I asked him to roll two stress dice first — he failed miserably, throwing the coffee in his own face and (temporarily) blinding himself! One reason I liked this was that it allowed me to keep the details of the as-yet-unseen demon open to be established by the players.

    (I later realized that I had given the demon the ability to manifest at will, interpreting “has transdimensional abilities”, but I think that’s okay, if not 100% staying away from establishing supernatural stuff as a GM.)

    Daniel then earned a franchise die and established that the creature was vulnerable to bright light (due to its reaction to a flashlight) — but that the ex-boyfriend-turned-summoner had taken out the lights’ fuse in the room’s switchbox. The reasoning here was that we had not yet reached the required 10 franchise dice.

    Fred: My character goes to switch box and turns on the lights.
    Me: Roll Athletics to get over there, what with all the chaos.
    Fred: That’s like 2 meters, what’s the problem?
    Me: You can’t just turn on the lights and kill it because we are not at 10 franchise dice yet. We need a skill roll and a successful one at that. If I let you walk over there, you’ll find the ex-boyfriend has done more than just take out the fuse.

    In retrospect, there would have been other possible ways to continue, e.g. have the demon start burning from the lights turned on — and run or teleport out of the operating theatre (the key point being that we have not earned a solution just yet).

    Because everyone was sorely hurt at this point (Athletics 0, and no dice left from the Franchise’s ressources), the players needed to find a solution that would not require physical action (i.e. an Athletics roll). I personally thought that this was a fun challenge and very much in keeping with *Ghostbusters* and similar movies: The monster can’t be beaten by fisticuffs etc., but must be outsmarted.

    However, the players were stumped. After some meandering deliberations (some of which shaded into storyboarding), I outright suggested that somebody find a way to make a Tech roll or Knowledge roll. They were still stumped and Daniel asked “Do I see anything to help us?”. I had him roll Knowledge — essentially an ‘Idea roll’ — and pointed out a computer panel controlling “all manner of things”. He succeeded, hacked through safety measures and turned an x-ray machine on the demon. Ka-boom.

    I see a clear risk here as well as in my approach with the spa mission, where I worked hard to have everyone roll SOMETHING:

    The fiction takes a backseat and from the GM’s side it becomes “I want you to roll something, anything, so we can move the story forward” and from the players’ side it may well become “I want to roll [my highest skill] for some reason, any reason, so I can do the same”.

    I plan on sticking closer to the fiction — i.e. not asking for a skill roll where none is warranted, not using “idea rolls” and not granting rolls because a player is angling for one.

    (I’m not criticising my players — first, this was my doing, and secondly, I do not think they perceive the slippery slope to “let’s just roll some dice to see who gets to narrate”.)

    • โ€œHow are we [as players] going to tie all this stuff together?โ€

      Which they donโ€™t have to do. All they have to do is put stuff in. This is a good example of thinking contribution is the same thing as writing, compounded by a specific anxiety that writing has culturally (and unnecessarily) acquired. I think you inadvertently fostered it by extending their responsibilities, in narrating successes, from what has happened or what โ€œis thereโ€ (because itโ€™s been here all along), inappropriately to what can happen in upcoming moments.

      โ€ฆ I had the team encounter said ex-boyfriend in an adjacent operating theatre, naturally in the midst of a new summoning ritual.

      Keep your eye on this. Itโ€™s very good GM situational authority; if X and Y were established to โ€œbe here at allโ€ (the playersโ€™ contributions), then it is absolutely your job, and no one elseโ€™s, to decide whether and when X and Y will be in the same room. You did it just right. Iโ€™ll use it as the positive contrast to something Iโ€™ll identify in a moment.

      โ€ฆ One reason I liked this was that it allowed me to keep the details of the as-yet-unseen demon open to be established by the players.
      (I later realized that I had given the demon the ability to manifest at will, interpreting โ€œhas transdimensional abilitiesโ€, but I think thatโ€™s okay, if not 100% staying away from establishing supernatural stuff as a GM.)

      I think youโ€™re over-doing this business about the GM not contributing things. Once โ€œdemonโ€ is established as backstory, then you are the situational guy regarding it right here and now, which includes things it can do which correspond, as you see fit, to โ€œdemon.โ€ Thatโ€™s not their job at all. Iโ€™m seeing this as the core issue: youโ€™re forcing the players to do more, to be situational authorities, rather than backstory contributors, which to them, understandably, means they must start writing โ€œthe story.โ€

      โ€ฆ The reasoning here was that we had not yet reached the required 10 franchise dice.
      [โ€ฆ] Me: You canโ€™t just turn on the lights and kill it because we are not at 10 franchise dice yet. We need a skill roll and a successful one at that. If I let you walk over there, youโ€™ll find the ex-boyfriend has done more than just take out the fuse.

      OK, we just entered the writerโ€™s room, specifically the part that says, โ€œWe still have ten minutes left in the episode. We have to shift the climax we just wrote along to the last three. How shall we pad out the seven minutes in between?โ€ This isn’t play. I think I can help in terms of play procedure.

      The end of the job is not synonymous with โ€œthe solution.โ€ Arguably the complete answer to โ€œwhatโ€™s going onโ€ might have been established, in practice, by the first player success or two, if the rest of the rolls concerned dangers and struggles of some kind, or social maneuverings as follow-up, or really anything as a consequence of what was discovered, with no new discoveries as they were (as deemed, in retrospect) unnecessary.

      I hope you can see that this is the curse of puzzle media arising once again. Youโ€™re identifying the overall fictional entity as concluding with figuring it all out, rather than with whatever we end up with based on whatโ€™s happening. It’s the same impossible and un-fun alleged magic trick of the 1990s “investigation” GM, to align player realization, character realization, and the “right time” in play; the only difference is spreading it around the table instead of concentrated in one person. Which doesn’t make it work or any fun; it will do/be neither. (This is, incidentally, precisely the problem with nearly anything designated a “story game.”)

      So letโ€™s get to the practical point: as GM, there you are, with a fully-done realization in the fiction, and franchise dice remaining. What do you do? The key lies with my point above: it is in fact your job to establish features, aspects, qualities, and conditions which continue to kick the characters in the shins.

      Did they banish the demon? Sure, but that means its remaining husk, or maybe its floating head, bereft of its intelligence, is now floating there and attacks them with big teeth. Or sure, the whole demon thing is over, but its essence has permeated the building which is now collapsing. Or maybe itโ€™s a couple of days later and a city official shows up with a citation; theyโ€™d double-parked and now face a stiff penalty and a review of their license.

      Donโ€™t put it on them. Itโ€™s your job to take whatever has happened and extend it into more conflict. And critically, this job has nothing, zero, zip, nada to do with whether they โ€œfigured it outโ€ already. They might have done so or they might not. Figuring it out is an in-fiction element of the fact that the characters are trying to do it. It is itself not the fictional corresponding-factor to the franchise dice.

      โ€ฆ (the key point being that we have not earned a solution just yet).

      Right there. This is exactly the mystery/investigation mode I described in the workshop as irretrievably broken, and you shouldnโ€™t be in it. They do not โ€œearn a solution.โ€ They earn a successful job completion which could occur or be defined in thousands of different ways. The solution, or rather, figuring it out, is a fictional phenomenon, inside the job, which may or may not happen and is not necessary for the job to be completed.

      Please review a couple of things: about 37:30 to 38:25 in part 1 of the Investigating Investigation workshop, and, more extensively, the whole week 5 session in the course you took, Playing with The Pool. I made sure that you received the latter recording when you werenโ€™t able to attend that session.

      โ€ฆ the players needed to find a solution that would not require physical action (i.e. an Athletics roll). โ€ฆ

      When โ€œthe players are trying to use their best scoreโ€ is raised as a concern, I have observed that itโ€™s never a concern in the absence of a bigger problem occurring. No one has a problem with optimizing oneโ€™s chances inside a functioning arrangement of authorities. So if the topic Iโ€™ve outlined above gets addressed, then when people seek their best attribute for the moment, itโ€™s nothing more nor less than positively playing their character.

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