Background: I have been itching to get my regular gaming group to try some independent roleplaying games. I had procured the Shab al-Hiri Roach a while ago, read through it, and started talking it up to my gaming group. While they weren't actively opposed, they weren't quite eager to jump in either. We play (almost exclusively) 3.5 D&D and the GM-less, storytelling mechanics that drive the Roach made them a little nervous.
So, flash forward a few months. One of our group is departing for another state and we have one last session with him. The DM for the session cancels the night before and we are left with nothing to play. One person suggests that we 'try that roach game Ian has been talking about.' People sound interested, so I swing into action. I read through the rules, go to the Bully Pulpit Games website and download their free character sheets and the 'inspirational cheat sheets.' The cheat sheets (2 pages) are a tight list of names, places, and events for players to use during the game. For a group new to the narration-driven game, it was invaluable and freed the players to get into the story without getting stuck on details.
The game went very well--everyone had a good time and most of the players really got into the narration. They worked off each other's scenes, which created a dynamic unity to a wild game in which each player alternated between victor and victim.
What you should know: In the Shab al-Hiri Roach, you play professors desperately seeking to advance their own reputation on campus, preferably by showing up their colleagues. Complicating this, an ancient telepathic species of roach has been released on campus and is now seeking out slaves to rebuild its long-dead empire. While you can always invite the roach to enslave your mind, it sometimes takes up residence there uninvited.
The Shab al-Hiri Roach is a classic bit of 'narrativist' gaming. There is no GM, each player takes their turn narrating a scene. They invite players to bring their characters to the scene, assign NPC's to them, and take charge of setting the stakes. While 'setting the stakes' sounds a little strange, it is actually quite straightforward. The player narrating the scene states what they want to get out of the scene if they win the contest at its heart, while explaining what happens if they lose. This is where the player can wager and win points of reputation--the primary win condition is to end the game without being controlled by a roach and having the highest reputation of those free characters.
This is a chance for everyone to offer feedback to the person framing the scene. If the stakes seem too broad, they can suggest limitations. If the stakes seem a little dull, they can suggest things to spice them up. The scene doesn't really get going until the stakes are clearly set, which means that by the time the scene starts everyone has a clear idea of how it can go and where they want it to go. Once you are in the scene, you can bring in NPC's to the story to get more dice to roll to determine whether the framing player wins or loses their stake.
The Shab al-Hiri Roach does everything it can to make that framing easy. It is built around a 'module' of sorts--six events that occur during the first semester at a fictional Pemberton University in 1919. Each player has an opportunity to frame one scene during each event, although they are not required to do so. Each event has characters who must show up during it, so the players have an immediate set of NPC's to access for narration.
Character creation is simple and sets the players within the university context. They choose whether to be full professors or assistant professors. Each has their strength--full professors have bigger dice to roll in university-driven scenes while assistants get bigger dice when they are engaged in conflicts driven by extra-curricular interests. Your selection there already indicates where you will be best able to frame scenes.
Then you move on to determining your department and two enthusiasms (things like cruelty, creativity, wit, and debauchery). Each of these can add a die to your pool when you are rolling to determine who wins stakes during a scene, so they give you ideas for what sort of scenes you should be framing. Got cruelty and an appointment in the psychology department? Sounds like you need to be luring some people to your office for some special counseling sessions so you can roll two extra dice...
Each event (not scene), players draw a card with two options, an opportunity (for those free of the roach) and a command (for those under the roach's power). If your opportunity has the picture of a roach, you are now under the control of the roach and must follow its orders. The players must manage to narrate either their opportunity or command into one of their scenes, granting the appropriate benefit or suffering the appropriate penalty.
Too Much Freedom? One thing I worried about was how well the group would take to having so much freedom to create the story as a player. The group I play with had never played an independent game and is used to having a strong DM. Most of my worries were simply unfounded. I did the most work when it came to setting the stakes. There I would listen to someone start to set the stakes, let them talk a little, then reframe it. I would say things like "it sounds like you want [x] to happen, right? Now let's start thinking about what happens if things go against you. I suggest [y], but what do other people like?"
Once the scene got rolling, they were great. The mechanics seemed pretty intuitive to them. They role played until they felt they could role play no further without knowing the outcome of the stakes. They suggested when it was time to roll dice to determine the outcome of the scene and countered with reasons why we should put off that roll if it seemed premature. Players worked together to set each other up, narrating characters and actions that would make the stakes the natural outcome of the roll.
Players frequently used their cards to inspire their narration and let people know ahead of time what they were planning. So, one player had a 'University Award' card (granting him a reputation) and stated that he would get the reward on his event, so another player framed a scene where she got him lost in the swamp so he would not be there. He still played the card, of course, but lost a point of reputation in her scene which effectively negated the card's benefit.
It might be possible to get carried away with narrating in NPC's to a conflict. Since each NPC comes with a die you can employ to win the stakes of the conflict, some might be tempted to narrate mobs into their scenes. While nothing mechanically prevents this, my group quickly appreciated that this would spoil the story. We came to an agreement that you could only bring in 'faces' (individual NPC's) to add to your die pool and that they had to be narrated into the scene in a way that made their influence on the outcome clear.
Criticisms: I have few substantial criticisms to make about the text. Most are simply nitpicks. Descriptions of play focus mainly upon the setting of stakes rather than the role playing that goes on in within the scene. Such might make it easier to appreciate when to roll dice (although, again, my group had few difficulties with that). The layout was quite attractive, but a hyphen was regularly employed where an m-dash was needed, which made it a touch more difficult to quickly take in some passages.
